Date: April, 1783

"I asked him, if he could give me any notion of the situation of our ideas which we have totally forgotten at the time, yet shall afterwards recollect. He paused, meditated a little, and acknowledged his ignorance in the spirit of a philosophical poet, by repeating as a very happy allusion a pass...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: April, 1783

"Or it may be thus: his ideas hide themselves like birds in gloomy weather; but in warm sunshine they spring forth gay and airy."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: April, 1783

"Let an Hypochondriack then have his park well stocked. Let him get as many agreeable ideas into his mind as he can; and though there may in wintery days seem: a total vacancy, yet when summer glows benignant, and the time of singing of birds is come, he will be delighted with gay colours and enc...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

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)

Date: 1784

"Thy piercing thought / Unaided saw each movement of the mind, / As skilful artists view the small machine, / The secret springs and nice dependencies, / And to thy mimic scenes, by fancy wrought / To such a wond'rous shape, th'impassion'd breast / In floods of grief, or peals of laughter bow'd, ...

— Jago, Richard (1715-1781)

Date: 1785

In the heart, "by jarring tempests tost, / Truth, honour, reason, virtue all are lost"

— Combe, William (1742 -1823)

Date: 1785

"Ere Gold appear'd the Passions took their course; / Like whirldwinds swept the flowers of life along, / And crush'd the weak, and undermin'd the strong."

— Pratt, Samuel Jackson [pseud. Courtney Melmoth] (1749-1814)

Date: 1785

"Heav'ns! of how cynnical a Nature / The school-taught Race of ALMA MATER! / Who, of cramp'd Mind and clouded Brain / Bind GENIUS in a Gothic Chain."

— Polwhele, Richard (1760-1838)

Date: 1785

"I was delighted with this flash bursting from the cloud which hung upon his mind, closed my letter directly, and joined the company."

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

Date: 1785

"Transient clouds darkened my imagination, and in those clouds I saw events from which I shrunk; but a sentence or two of the Rambler's conversation gave me firmness, and I considered that I was upon an expedition for which I had wished for years, and the recollection of which would be a treasure...

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)