Date: April 5, 1781, 1788

"Cultivated ground has few weeds; a mind occupied by lawful business, has little room for useless regret."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1788

"Nothing was a stronger proof of the deep root which his passion had taken in his heart, than the influence Emmeline had obtained over his ungovernable and violent spirit, hitherto unused to controul, and accustomed from his infancy to exert over his own family the most boundless despotism."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1788

"The seeds of jealousy and mistrust thus skillfully sown, could hardly fail of taking root in an heart so full of sensibility, and a temper so irritable as his."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1788

"Or, if where savage habit steels / The vulgar mind, one bosom feels / The sacred claim of helpless woe-- / If Pity in that soil can grow; / Pity! whose tender impulse darts / With keenest force on nobler hearts; / As flames that purest essence boast, / Rise highest when they tremble most."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1788

"Ah, not alone of power possest / To check each virtue of the breast; / As when the numbing frosts arise / The charm of vegetation dies."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1789

"But what gay blossoms of luxuriant Spring, / With rose, mimosa, amaranth entwin'd, / Shall fabled Sylphs and fairy people bring, / As a just emblem of the lovely mind?"

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1789

"Ah! hide for ever from my sight / The faithless flatterer Hope--whose pencil, gay, / Portrays some vision of delight, / Then bids the fairy tablet fade away; / While in dire contrast, to mine eyes / Thy phantoms, yet more hideous, rise, / And Memory draws, from Pleasure's wither'd flower, / Corr...

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1789

"You stupify them with stripes, and think it necessary to keep them in a state of ignorance; and yet you assert that they are incapable of learning; that their minds are such a barren soil or moor, that culture would be lost on them; and that they come from a climate, where nature, though prodiga...

— Equiano, Olaudah [Gustavus Vasa] (c. 1745-1797)

Date: 1790

"I shall, perhaps, deserve censure for concealing a name which belongs to so much excellence, but I fear to offend the delicacy of your nature; true merit is ever modest, and your mind, like the sensitive plant at the touch, would shrink from the voice of public celebrity."

— Anonymous

Date: 1790

"When they are habitually convinced that no evil can be acceptable, either in the act or the permission, to him whose essence is good, they will be better able to extirpate out of the minds of all magistrates, civil, ecclesiastical, or military, any thing that bears the least resemblance to a pro...

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)