Date: March, 1778

"And my similitude between a watch in its case, and the soul in its material frame, will, I persuade myself, be agreeable to all my readers, whose dispositions are mild, and like better to be pleased with what they read, than to attack it."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1778, 1779

"As soon would I discuss the effect of sound with the deaf, or the nature of colours with the blind, as aim at illuminating with conviction a mind so warped by prejudice, so much the slave of unruly and illiberal passions."

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

Date: 1778, 1779

"Let me, therefore, prepare for disappointment those who, in the perusal of these sheets, entertain the gentle expectation of being transported to the fantastic regions of Romance, where Fiction is coloured by all the gay tints of luxurious Imagination, where Reason is an outcast, and where the s...

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

Date: 1778, 1779

"Yet I will hope every thing from the unsullied whiteness of your soul, and the native liveliness of your disposition."

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

Date: 1778, 1779

"My imagination changes the scene perpetually: at one moment, I am embraced by a kind and relenting parent, who takes me to that heart from which I have hitherto been benished, and supplicates, through me, peace and forgiveness from the ashes of my mother!--at another, he regards me with detestat...

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

Date: 1778, 1779

"But I will not afflict you with the melancholy phantasms of my brain."

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

Date: 1778, 1779

"Never! O Miss Anville, how cruel, how piercing to my soul is that icy word!"

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

Date: 1778, 1779

"Stung to the soul, I bid them have but a day's patience, and flung from them, in a state of mind too terrible for description."

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

Date: 1778, 1779

"I would fain encourage more chearful thoughts, fain drive from my mind the melancholy that has taken possession of it."

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

Date: 1778, 1779

"but it was not time, it was not the knowledge of his worth, obtained your regard; your new comrade had not patience to wait any trial; her glowing pencil, dipt in the vivid colours of her creative ideas, painted to you, at the moment of your first acquaintance, all the excellencies, all the good...

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