Date: 1751, 1777

"Tempests were not alone removed from nature; but those more furious tempests were unknown to human breasts, which now cause such uproar, and engender such confusion."

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1751, 1777

"There seems here a necessity for confessing that the happiness and misery of others are not spectacles entirely indifferent to us; but that the view of the former, whether in its causes or effects, like sun-shine or the prospect of well-cultivated plains, (to carry our pretensions no higher), co...

— Hume, David (1711-1776)

Date: 1751

"There are few among Mankind, who have not been often struck with Admiration at the Sight of that Variety of Colours and Magnificence of Form, which appear in an Evening Rainbow. The uninstructed in Philosophy consider that splendid Object, not as dependent on any other, but as being possessed of...

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: Tuesday, August 14, 1753

"But from the opposite errour, from torpid despondency, can come no advantage; it is the frost of the soul, which binds up all its powers, and congeals life in perpetual sterility."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1757

"The tossing of the sea remains after the storm; and when this remain of horror has entirely subsided, all the passion, which the accident raised, subsides along with it; and the mind returns to its usual state of indifference"

— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)

Date: 1762

"Je méditois donc sur le triste sort des mortels flottant sur cette mer des opinions humaines, sans gouvernail, sans boussole, & livrés à leurs passions orageuses, sans autre guide qu’un pilote inexpérimenté qui méconnaît sa route, & qui ne sait ni d’où il vient ni où il va."

— Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712-1778)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"Those storms may discompose in proportion as they are strong, or the mind is pliant to their impression."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1760-1761, 1762

"YOUR last letters betray a mind seemingly fond of wisdom, yet tempested up by a thousand various passions."

— Goldsmith, Oliver (1728?-1774)

Date: 1764

"Nobody knows what really is the being called 'spirit', to which even you give the material name of 'spirit', which means wind."

— Arouet, François-Marie [known as Voltaire] (1694-1778)

Date: 1766

"'Melancholy', is, generally, the effect of constitution; its cloudy ideas overpower and banish all that are chearful."

— Trusler, John (1735-1820)