Date: 1771

"And, like my friend, a gen'rous aim pursues: / To combat vice in this licentious age, / To teach the pleasing moral from the stage, / The rising gusts of passion to controul"

— Stevens, George Alexander (1710?-1784)

Date: 1772, 1810

"He spoke: a sudden cloud his senses stole, / And thickening darkness swam o'er all his soul"

— Jones, Sir William (1746-1794)

Date: 1772, 1810

"'I saw thee near the murmuring fountain lie; / 'Mark'd the rough storm that gather'd in thy breast, / 'And knew what care thy joyless soul opprest."

— Jones, Sir William (1746-1794)

Date: 1772, 1810

"'So vain his wishes, and so weak his mind, / 'His soul, a bright obscurity at best, / 'And rough with tempests his afflicted breast, / 'His life, a flower ere evening sure to fade, / 'His highest joys, the shadow of a shade."

— Jones, Sir William (1746-1794)

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."

— Gerard, Alexander (1728-1795)

Date: 1774, rev. 1787, 1779 in English

"My mind is calm and serene, like the first fine mornings of spring."

— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749-1832)

Date: 1774, rev. 1787, 1779 in English

"My sensations change with the rapidity of lightning."

— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749-1832)

Date: 1774, rev. 1787, 1779 in English

"The whole force of these words fell like a stroke of thunder on the heart of the unfortunate Werter."

— Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (1749-1832)

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."

— Campbell, George (1719-1796)

Date: 1767, 1778

"Here science, like the sun, see radiant rise, / With intellectual beam, through mental skies, / To gild, to gladden all th' improving space, / With taste, with candor, learning, sense, and grace; / To light up all the mind's remotest cells, / Where fancy fledges, and where genius dwells."

— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)