Date: 1755

"However, I must beg Leave to inform those Ladies and Gentlemen, whose Tenderness and Compassion may excite 'em to make this little Brat of my Brain the Companion of an idle Hour, that I have paid all due Regard to Decency wherever I have introduc'd the Passion of Love; and have only suffer'd it ...

— Charke [née Cibber; other married name Sacheverell], Charlotte [alias Mr Brown] (1713-1760)

Date: 1755

"THE SHOCK OF RECEIVING MY OWN LETTER did not excite a sudden Gust of unwarrantable Passion, but prey'd upon my Heart with the slow and eating Fire of Distraction and Despair, 'till it ended in a Fever, which now remains upon my Spirits; and which, I fear, I shall find a difficult Task to overcome."

— Charke [née Cibber; other married name Sacheverell], Charlotte [alias Mr Brown] (1713-1760)

Date: 1773

"May you be enabled, by reading them frequently, to transfuse into your own breast that holy flame which inspired the writer!"

— Mulso [later Chapone], Hester (1727-1801)

Date: 1777

"How cruel is it to extinguish by neglect or unkindness, the precious sensibility of an open temper, to chill the amiable glow of an ingenous soul, and to quench the bright flame of a noble and generous spirit!"

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"If I may be allowed to change the allusion so soon, I would say, that the passions also resemble fires, which are friendly and beneficial when under proper direction, but if suffered to blaze without restraint, they carry devastation along with them, and, if totally extinguished, leave the benig...

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1777

"People do not always know what taste they have, till it is awakened by some corresponding object; nay, genius itself is a fire, which in many minds would never blaze, if not kindled by some external cause."

— More, Hannah (1745-1833)

Date: 1786

"'Remember,' concluded he, 'that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad: the mind stagnates for want of employment, grows morbid, and is extinguished like a candle in foul air.'"

— Piozzi, [née Salusbury; other married name Thrale] Hester Lynch (1741-1821)

Date: December 1790

"But it is not that enthusiastic flame which in Greece and Rome consumed every sordid passion: no, self is the focus; and the disparting rays rise not above our foggy atmosphere."

— Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759-1797)

Date: 2010

"Brain on fire, I then leadfooted it at once back to my mother's house."

— Castle, Terry (b. 1953)

Date: 2010

"Yet seared into my brain forever is one of her parting utterances: a cool assessment--delivered with ghoulish panache as she and my friend were about to leave--of the Professor in the sack."

— Castle, Terry (b. 1953)