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)

Date: 1778

Stocks and mercury may stand "All on the elevation, madam, as if they kept time with my passion."

— Robertson, James (fl.1768-1788)

Date: 1773, 1778

One may "tempest up the Soul, or make it calm and still."

— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)

Date: 1779

"Fierce passions discompose the mind, as tempests vex the sea"

— Cowper, William (1731-1800)

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."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1779, 1781

"The variable weather of the mind, the flying vapours of incipient madness, which from time to time cloud reason, without eclipsing it, it requires so much nicety to exhibit, that Addison seems to have been deterred from prosecuting his own design."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1782

"[A] sultry calm fails not to produce a storm, which dissipates the noxious vapours, and restores a purer air; the fiercest tempest, exhausted by its own violence, at length subsides; and an intense sun-shine, whilst it parches up the thirsty earth, exhales clouds, which quickly water it with ref...

— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787)