Date: 1768

"I'm persuaded, to a man who feels for others as well as for himself, every rainy night, disguise it as you will, must cast a damp upon your spirits."

— Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768)

Date: 1770

"But all his serious thoughts had rest in Heaven. / As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form, / Swells from the vale and midway leaves the storm, / Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, / Eternal sunshine settles on its head."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1776

"I really begin to think that his heart is 'soused in snow,' as Madame de l'Enclos says of Sevigné, which neither your bright eyes or mine can thaw."

— Griffith, Elizabeth (1720-1793)

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: 1773, 1778

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

— Jones, Henry (1721-1770)

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."

— Bickerstaff, Isaac (b. 1733, d. after 1808)

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."

— Boyd, Hugh (1746-1794)

Date: 1796

"It has nothing that can keep the mind erect under the gusts of adversity."

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1898

"Silently we went round and round, / And through each hollow mind / The Memory of dreadful things / Rushed like a dreadful wind, / And Horror stalked before each man, / And Terror crept behind."

— Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills (1854-1900)

Date: w. 1943, 1944

"The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only be reading old books."

— Lewis, C. S. (1898-1963)