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Date: 1632

"Looke as it is with a Gold smith that melteth the metall that he is to make a vessell of, if after the melting thereof, there follow a cooling, it had beene as good it had never beene melted, it is as hard, haply harder, as unfit, haply unfitter, then it was before to make vessell of; but after ...

— Hooker, Richard (1554-1600)

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Date: 1637

"I supposed, too, that in the beginning God did not place in this body any rational soul or any other thing to serve as a vegetative or sensitive soul, but rather that he kindled in its heart one of those fires without light which I had already explained, and whose nature I understood to be no di...

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

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Date: 1641

"I am not that structure of limbs which is called a human body. I am not even some thin vapour which permeates the limbs - a wind, fire, air, breath, or whatever I depict in my imagination; for these are things which I have supposed to be nothing."

— Descartes, René (1596-1650)

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Date: 1678

"The Interpreter answered, This fire is the work of Grace that is wrought in the heart; he that casts Water upon it, to extinguish and put it out, is the Devil."

— Bunyan, John (bap. 1628, d. 1688)

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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)

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Date: 1691

"I was nothing but all Flame and Fire, and the red-hot Thoughts glared about my Brains at such a rate, and if visible, wou'd, I fancy, have made just such a dreadful Appearance as the Window of a Glass-house discovers in a dark Night--viz. a parcel of stragling fiery Globes marching about and hiz...

— Dunton, John (1659–1732)

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Date: 1695

"His high Design was with his Heav'nly Light, / To chase away th' Impenetrable Night, / That cover'd this lost World, and re-inspire / Man's frozen Breast with fresh Celestial Fire"

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

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Date: 1697

The soul may be a "Modification or Power of the Body" so that it eventually ceases to act, "either perishing, as a Flame when the Fewel is spent; or returning to its Fountain, whatsoever it was"

— Burnet, Thomas (c.1635-1715)

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Date: 1697

"Let Love's strong Flame by its Celestial Art / To fill my Eyes, dissolve and melt my Heart; / As Central Fire advances watry Steams / Which from the Mountains spring in Crystal Streams."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

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Date: 1700

"E'er since which time, unhappy Lovers see, / Their Passion ne'er can be from Tempests free / It Ebbs and Flows, unfixt, not long the same, / A rowling Ocean of tumultuous Flame."

— Hopkins, John (b. 1675)

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The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.