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."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1792
"For it is the right use of reason alone which makes us independent of everything--excepting the unclouded reason--'Whose service is perfect freedom.'"
preview | full record— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)
Date: 1796
"Thus he restored his plastic mind to its usual satisfaction, and arose the next morning without a cloud upon his brow."
preview | full record— Burney [married name D'Arblay], Frances (1752-1840)
Date: w. 1821, 1840
"It is as it were the interpretation of a diviner nature through our own; but its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the coming calm erases, and whose traces remain only as on the wrinkled sand which paves it."
preview | full record— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)