Date: 1776-1789

"The ancient families of Rome had successively fallen beneath the tyranny of the Cæsars; and, whilst those princes were shackled by the forms of a commonwealth, and disappointed by the repeated failure of their posterity, it was impossible that any idea of hereditary succession should have ...

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)

Date: 1774-1776, 1788, 1803

"Well-skill'd / To form the growing soul, and on its young / And opening bud to fix the impression deep / Of every generous thought"

— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)

Date: 1776

"As chaste, as delicate, believe me Lucy, as the opening rose, shou'd be the female heart."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

Date: 1777

Women "may cultivate the rose of imagination, and the valuable fruits of morals and criticism; but the steeps of Parnassus few comparatively, have attempted to scale with success."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"Almost all the other passions may be made to take an amiable hue; but these two must either be totally extirpated, or be always contented to preserve their original deformity, and to wear their native black."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"It [Genius] is an incommunicable faculty: no art or skill of the possessor can bestow the smallest portion of it on another: no pains or labour can reach the summit of perfection, where the seeds of it are wanting in the mind; yet it is capable of infinite improvement where it actually exists, a...

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"The mind, says he, is a barren soil, is a soil soon exhausted, and will produce no crop, or only one, unless it be continually fertilized, and enriched with foreign matter."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"He must invigorate them by exercise, polish them by conversation, and increase them by every species of elegant and virtuous knowledge, and the mind will not fail to reproduce with interest those seeds, which are sown in it by study and observation."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"He was born with better feelings; he was naturally humane, tender, compassionate but he had, unfortunately for himself, been educated by a father, who, as we have already observed, had taken the most unwearied pains to eradicate from his expanding mind those social affections which the Deity has...

— Brooke [née Moore], Frances (bap. 1724, d. 1789)

Date: 1778

The "pure flame" of virtue is planted "by an unerring rule" and glows in the heart

— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)