Date: 1770

A judge may sit serene "Above all mists of passion"

— Armstrong, John (1708/9-1779)

Date: 1773

"Not all the storms that shake the pole / Can e'er disturb thy halcyon soul, / And smooth unaltered brow."

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

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: 1785

"Oft as I trod my native wilds alone, / Strong gusts of thought would rise, but rise to die; / The portals of the swelling soul ne'er oped / By liberal converse, rude ideas strove / Awhile for vent, but found it not, and died."

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1785

"From shadows thinner than the fleeting night / That floats along the vale, or haply seems / To wrap the mountain in its hazy vest, / (Which the first sun-beam dissipates in air.) / How dost thou conjure monsters which ne'er mov'd / But in the chaos of thy frenzied brain!"

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

Date: 1787

"Fat is foul weather--dims the fancy's sight"

— Wolcot, John, pseud. Peter Pindar, (1738-1819)

Date: 1788

"Mary observed his character, and wrote down a train of reflections, which these observations led her to make; these reflections received a tinge from her mind; the present state of it, was that kind of painful quietness which arises from reason clouded by disgust; she had not yet learned to be r...

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 1786, 1787, 1788; 1789

"Like a snow-ball, the mind, fraught with peace in its prime, / Moves swiftly adown the steep shelvings of Time; / Accumulates filth from Society's sons, / And strengthens and hardens its coat as it runs; / Till habit on habit is negligent laid, / And the object appears motley, vile, and ill-made...

— Williams, John [pseud. Anthony Pasquin] (1754-1818)

Date: 1791

"I compared him at this time to a warm West-Indian climate, where you have a bright sun, quick vegetation, luxuriant foliage, luscious fruits; but where the same heat sometimes produces thunder, lightening, and earthquakes in a terrible degree.

— Boswell, James (1740-1795)

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)