Date: 360 B.C.
"For it does not admit of exposition like other branches of knowledge; but after much converse about the matter itself and a life lived together, suddenly a light, as it were, is kindled in one soul by a flame that leaps to it from another, and thereafter sustains itself."
preview | full record— Plato (427 BC - 347 BC)
Date: 1652
"Many sparks and appearances fly from variety of objects to the understanding; The minde, that catches them all, and cherishes them, and blows them; and thus the Candle of knowledge is lighted."
preview | full record— Culverwell, Nathanael (bap. 1619, d. 1651)
Date: 1660
"Things that the least of drossy mixture hold, / Last longest; my Hearts flames Ætherial be, / More pure than seven times refined Gold / Than Cedar's flames: rays of a Deitie / They are."
preview | full record— Pordage, Samuel (bap. 1633, d. c. 1691)
Date: 1674
"And as for the Bipartition of this Sensitive Soul into two principle members as it were, or active sourses; vix. the Fiery part, upon which Life depends; and the Lucid, from whence all the faculties Animal are, like so many distinct rayes of light, derived."
preview | full record— Charleton, Walter (1620-1707)
Date: 1670, rev. 1678
"It's a lightening before death ... This is generally observed of sick persons, that a little before they die their pains leave them, and their understanding and memory return to them; as a candle just before it goes out gives a great blaze."
preview | full record— Ray [formerly Wray], John (1627-1705)
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."
preview | full record— Behn, Aphra (1640?-1689)
Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706
"But though we have, here and there, a little of this clear light, some sparks of bright knowledge; yet the greatest part of our ideas are such, that we cannot discern their agreement or disagreement by an immediate comparing them."
preview | full record— Locke, John (1632-1704)
Date: Licens'd Decemb. 22. 1691
"I burn and am consumed with hopeless Love; those Beams in whose soft temperate warmth I wanton'd heretofore, now flash destruction to my Soul, my Treacherous greedy Eyes have suck'd the glaring Light, they have united all its Rays, and, like a burning-Glass, Convey'd the pointed Meteor to-my Hea...
preview | full record— Congreve, William (1670-1729)
Date: 1693
"Though the oddness of Celadon's adventure did for some time employ the Prince's mind, yet at last, by a long chain of thought, he returned to the accustomed Subject his Mistress: For as the Jack of the Lanthorn is said to lead the benighted Country-man about, and makes him tread many a weary ste...
preview | full record— Anonymous
Date: 1699
"Reason's a Taper, which but faintly burns: / A Languid Flame that glows and dies by turns: / We see't a while, and but a little way / We travel by its Light, as Men by Day; / But quickly dying, it forsakes us soon; / Like Morning Stars that never stay till Noon."
preview | full record— Pomfret, John (1667-1702)