Date: 1792

"Like the lightning's flash are many recollections; one idea assimilating and explaining another, with astonishing rapidity."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"For it is the right use of reason alone which makes us independent of everything--excepting the unclouded reason--'Whose service is perfect freedom.'"

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"The senses and the imagination give a form to the character, during childhood and youth; and the understanding, as life advances, gives firmness to the first fair purposes of sensibility, till virtue, arising rather from the clear conviction of reason than the impulses of the heart, morality is ...

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"Thus degraded, her reason, her misty reason! is employed rather to burnish than to snap her chains."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1793

"Nothing is more luxuriant to a thinking mind than self approbation: It is a sun which dispels the clouds of solicitude and anxiety."

— Anonymous [By an American Lady]

Date: November 19, 1793

"Like the blue firmament above us, our minds and fortunes are constantly changing. The sun that descends in glory amidst the serenity of an evening sky, frequently rises in the morning, through the gloom of clouds, and the rage of storms."

— Boyd, Hugh (1746-1794)

Date: June, 1793

"FANCY, sportive goddess, hail! / Fleeting as the vernal gale, / Hail! thou dear illusive power / Changing with the swift-wing'd hour; / Now despairing, now reviving, / Now with tenfold vigour thriving, / Now tormenting, now delighting, / Now in midst of battle fighting."

— Anonymous

Date: 1794

"But, as his imagination magnified to her the possible evils she was going to meet, the mists of her own fancy began to dissipate, and allowed her to distinguish the exaggerated images, which imposed on his reason."

— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)

Date: 1794

"The contending elements seemed to have retired from their natural spheres, and to have collected themselves into the minds of men, for there alone the tempest now reigned."

— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)

Date: 1794

"The fierce and terrible passions, too, which so often agitated the inhabitants of this edifice, seemed now hushed in sleep;--those mysterious workings, that rouse the elements of man's nature into tempest--were calm."

— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)