Date: 1790, 1794

"How many fine-spun threads of reasoning would my wandering thoughts have broken; and how difficult should I have found it to arrange arguments and inferences in the cells of my brain!"

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: December 1790

"But it was the poor man with only his native dignity who was thus oppressed – and only metaphysical sophists and cold mathematicians can discern this insubstantial form; it is a work of abstraction – and a gentleman of lively imagination must borrow some drapery from fancy before he can love or ...

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: December 10, 1790; 1791

"When the Student has been habituated to this grand conception of the Art, when the relish for this stile is established, makes a part of himself, and is woven into his mind, he will, by this time, have got a power of selecting from whatever occurs in nature that is grand, and corresponds with th...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: 1794

"When we are suddenly awaked by any violent stimulus, the surprise totally disunites the trains of our sleeping ideas from these of our waking ones; but if we gradually awake, this does not happen; and we readily unravel the preceding trains of imagination."

— Darwin, Erasmus (1731-1802)

Date: 1796

"WIT on all points is out of season, / It's use is to embroider reason."

— Courtenay, John Lees (1775?-1794)

Date: 1796

"Good sense like cloth, the ground-work place, / And then sow on your Wit and lace."

— Courtenay, John Lees (1775?-1794)

Date: 1797

"Thus on the golden thread that Fancy weaves / Buoyant, as Hope's illusive flattery breathes, / The young and visionary Poet leaves / Life's dull realities, while sevenfold wreaths / Of rainbow light around his head revolve."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1799

"I reflected with amazement on the slightness of that thread by which human passions are led from their true direction."

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)

Date: 1799

"[W]hat knowledge they [women] have gotten stands out as it were above the very surface of their minds, like the appliquée of the embroiderer, instead of having been interwoven with the growth of the piece, so as to have become a part of the stuff. They did not, like men, acquire what they...

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1800

"A few incoherent motions and screams, that rent the soul, were followed by a deep swoon."

— Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810)