It was one of those hot, silent nights, when people sit at windows, listening for the thunder which they know will shortly break; when they recall dismal tales of hurricanes and earthquakes; and of lonely travellers on open plains, and lonely ships at sea, struck by lightning. – Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit, Chapter XLII

Rain! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains. – Henry Ward Beecher

[T]he cold warms me—after a different fashion from that of the kitchen stove. – John Burroughs, “The Snow-Walkers,” 1866