Date: 1762
"Je méditois donc sur le triste sort des mortels flottant sur cette mer des opinions humaines, sans gouvernail, sans boussole, & livrés à leurs passions orageuses, sans autre guide qu’un pilote inexpérimenté qui méconnaît sa route, & qui ne sait ni d’où il vient ni où il va."
preview | full record— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778)
Date: 1760-1761, 1762
"Those storms may discompose in proportion as they are strong, or the mind is pliant to their impression."
preview | full record— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)
Date: 1760-1761, 1762
"YOUR last letters betray a mind seemingly fond of wisdom, yet tempested up by a thousand various passions."
preview | full record— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)
Date: 1764
"Nobody knows what really is the being called 'spirit', to which even you give the material name of 'spirit', which means wind."
preview | full record— Arouet, François-Marie [known as Voltaire] (1694-1778)
Date: 1766
"'Melancholy', is, generally, the effect of constitution; its cloudy ideas overpower and banish all that are chearful."
preview | full record— Trusler, John (1735-1820)
Date: 1767
"These topics will, for the most part, be very extraordinary, and altogether unexpected; but they will constantly produce the intended effect. They will operate upon the mind by surprise; they will strike like lightening, and penetrate the heart at once."
preview | full record— Duff, William (1732-1815)
Date: January 2, 1769
"Every seminary of learning may be said to be surrounded with an atmosphere of floating knowledge, where every mind may gather somewhat congenial to its own original conceptions."
preview | full record— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)
Date: 1774
"This activity of imagination, by which it darts with the quickness of lightning, through all possible views of the ideas which are presented, arises from the same perfection of the associating principles, which produces the other qualities of genius."
preview | full record— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)
Date: 1776
"Whatever regards the analysis of the operations of the mind, which is quicker than lightning in all her energies, must in a great measure be abstruse and dark."
preview | full record— Campbell, George (1719-1796)
Date: 1779-1780, 1781
"These clouds which he perceived gathering on his intellects he endeavoured to disperse by travel, and passed into France; but found himself constrained to yield to his malady, and returned."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)