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: 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: 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: 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)

Date: 1789

"Thus all things added to my pain, / While grief compell'd me to complain; / When sable clouds began to rise / My mind grew darker than the skies."

— Equiano, Olaudah [Gustavus Vasa] (c. 1745-1797)