Date: 1688

"I will be deaf and blind, and guard my Heart with Walls of Ice, and make you know, that when the Flames of true Devotion are kindled in a Heart, it puts out all other Fires; which are as ineffectual, as Candles lighted in the Face of the Sun."

— Behn, Aphra (1640?-1689)

Date: Licens'd Decemb. 22. 1691

"Her Eyes diffus'd Rays comfortable as warmth, and piercing as the light; they would have worked a passage through the straightest Pores, and with a delicious heat, have play'd about the most obdurate frozen Heart, untill 'twere melted down to Love."

— Congreve, William (1670-1729)

Date: 1790

"The airy schemes he once formed of future felicity, resulting from the union of two persons so justly dear to him--with the gay visions of past happiness--floated upon his fancy, and the lustre they reflected, served only to heighten by contrast, the obscurity and gloom of his present views."

— Radcliffe [née Ward], Ann (1764-1823)

Date: 1790

"His disturbed mind resembled a tempestuous flood, whose waves arise dark and turbulent, except where the sun-beam throws a line of trembling radiance across their agitated surface."

— Williams, Helen Maria (1759-1827)

Date: 1992

"His thoughts shimmered like a hesitating stream, gathering into pools of discrete and vivid imagery."

— Edward St. Aubyn (b. 1960)