Date: 1765

"Let those, whose arts to fatal paths betray, / The soul with passion's gloom tempestuous blind, / And snatch from Reason's ken th'auspicious ray / Truth darts from Heaven to guide th'exploring mind."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1765

""Unwise, who, tossing on the watery way, / All to the storm th'unfetter'd sail devolve; / Man more unwise resigns the mental sway, / Born headlong on by passion's keen resolve."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1765

""How hideous and forlorn! when ruthless care / With cankering tooth corrodes the seeds of life, / And deaf with passion's storms when pines despair, / And howling furies rouse th'eternal strife."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

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."

— Duff, William (1732-1815)

Date: 1771, 1776

"'The gusts of appetite, the clouds of care, / 'And storms of disappointment, all o'erpast, / 'Henceforth no earthly hope with heaven shall share / 'This heart, where peace serenely shines at last."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1771, 1776

"The mind untaught / 'Is a dark waste, where fiends and tempests howl; / 'As Phebus to the world, is Science to the soul."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

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: 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: 1783

The human body is like a barometer: "If the external air can affect the motions of so heavy a substance as mercury, in the tube of the barometer; we need no wonder, that it should affect those finer fluids, that circulate through the human body."

— Beattie, James (1735-1803)

Date: 1783

"The utmost we can expect is, that this fire of imagination should sometimes flash upon us like lightning from heaven, and then disappear."

— Blair, Hugh (1718-1800)