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."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1782

"[A] sultry calm fails not to produce a storm, which dissipates the noxious vapours, and restores a purer air; the fiercest tempest, exhausted by its own violence, at length subsides; and an intense sun-shine, whilst it parches up the thirsty earth, exhales clouds, which quickly water it with ref...

— Jenyns, Soame (1704-1787)

Date: December 1790

"Ambition becomes only the tool of vanity, and his reason, the weather-cock of unrestrained feelings, is only employed to varnish over the faults which it ought to have corrected."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: December 1790

"These lively conjectures are the breezes that preserve the still lake from stagnating"

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"The passions also, the winds of life, would be useless, if not injurious, did the substance which composes our thinking being, after we have thought in vain, only become the support of vegetable life, and invigorate a cabbage, or blush in a rose."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"Like the lightning's flash are many recollections; one idea assimilating and explaining another, with astonishing rapidity."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

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.'"

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"The senses and the imagination give a form to the character, during childhood and youth; and the understanding, as life advances, gives firmness to the first fair purposes of sensibility, till virtue, arising rather from the clear conviction of reason than the impulses of the heart, morality is ...

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1792

"Thus degraded, her reason, her misty reason! is employed rather to burnish than to snap her chains."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: w. 1788-93, 1796 (rev. 1815, 1827, 1837, 1897)

"His argument on topics of less absurdity is specious and acute, his manner is lively, his style forcible and clear; and, had not his vigorous mind been clouded by enthusiasm, he might be ranked with the most agreeable and ingenious writers of the times."

— Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794)