Date: 1785
"I was delighted with this flash bursting from the cloud which hung upon his mind, closed my letter directly, and joined the company."
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
Date: 1785
"From shadows thinner than the fleeting night / That floats along the vale, or haply seems / To wrap the mountain in its hazy vest, / (Which the first sun-beam dissipates in air.) / How dost thou conjure monsters which ne'er mov'd / But in the chaos of thy frenzied brain!"
preview | full record— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)
Date: 1787
"It is enough--my scruples are at an end--my prejudices, like clouds before the rising sun, vanish before the lights of your superior reason."
preview | full record— Bickerstaff, Isaac (b. 1733, d. after 1808)
Date: 1791
"I have a wonderful superstitious love of mystery; when, perhaps, the truth is, that it is owing to the cloudy darkness of my own mind."
preview | full record— Boswell, James (1740-1795)
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."
preview | full record— Boyd, Hugh (1746-1794)
Date: 1798 [1797?]
"Hail, happy dawn! thy glorious sun shall rise, / Beam on the dreary night of polar skies; / Chase the thick mists of ignorance away, / And on the darkest mind emit full day."
preview | full record— Jones, Jenkin [Captain] (fl. 1798)
Date: October 4, 1802
"Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth / A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud / Enveloping the Earth--"
preview | full record— Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834)
Date: 1803
Genius may "separate the clouds by error spread, / Till all the gloom is vanquish'd, and the light / Of intellectual day wide-blazing streams"
preview | full record— Downman, Hugh (1740-1809)
Date: 1817
"Nor should we pass the secret cell, / Where lonely Science loves to dwell, / Pleas'd, from its lamp, to cast the ray / That lights the mind's beclouded day."
preview | full record— Combe, William (1742 -1823)
Date: 1820
"And we breathe, and sicken not, / The atmosphere of human thought: / Be it dim, and dank, and gray, / Like a storm-extinguished day, / Travelled o'er by dying gleams; / Be it bright as all between / Cloudless skies and windless streams, / Silent, liquid, and serene; / As the birds within the win...
preview | full record— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)