Date: 1786

"Our minds are like blank paper, as a great philosopher has observed, and the first impressions they receive are generally the most permanent and powerful."

— Anonymous

Date: 1787

"That frequently happens; and when once a false idea is impressed, it is very difficult to erase it, particularly at your age; as you are not yet capable of distinguishing the false from the true."

— Louise Florence Pétronille Tardieu d'Ésclavelles Épinay (marquise d') (1726-1783)

Date: 1787

"They converse not, they open not their mouths, they are silent, but they engrave their principles on the heart in indelible characters, instead of inconsistently crowding them on the memory."

— Louise Florence Pétronille Tardieu d'Ésclavelles Épinay (marquise d') (1726-1783)

Date: 1788

"'Father of Mercies, compose this troubled spirit: do I indeed wish it to be composed---to forget my Henry?' the 'my', the pen was directly drawn across in an agony."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1788

"When Rochely got home, he set about examining the state of his heart exactly as he would have examined the check book of one of his customers."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1788

"My Lord, my present concern is of a very different nature; and I do assure and protest to your Lordship that no time nor intreaties nor persuasion will erase and obliterate and wipe away from my mind, the injury and prejudice the parties have done me, by thus."

— Smith, Charlotte (1749-1806)

Date: 1790

"But her efforts to erase him from her remembrance were ineffectual."

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

Date: 1791, 1794

"I would endure it all chearfully, could I but once more see my dear, blessed mother, hear her pronounce my pardon, and bless me before I died; but alas! I shall never see her more; she has blotted the ungrateful Charlotte from her remembrance, and I shall sink to the grave loaded with her's and ...

— Rowson, Susanna (1762-1828)

Date: 1791, 1794

"Oh! never, never! whilst I have existence, will the agony of that moment be erased from my memory."

— Rowson, Susanna (1762-1828)

Date: 1793

"Her mind was a kind of circulating library in little, and I sincerely wish romances were always attended with the same good effects they produced in her; for there is scarcely a good moral inculcated by them that she did not act up to."

— Dibdin, Charles (bap. 1745, d. 1814)