Date: 1746

"Social friends, / Attuned to happy unison of soul; / To whose exalting eye a fairer world, / Of which the vulgar never had a glimpse, / Displays its charms; whose minds are richly fraught / With philosophic stores, superior light; / And in whose breast, enthusiastic, burns / Virtue, the sons of ...

— Thomson, James (1700-1748)

Date: 1746, 1753

"The time shall come--(nor far the destin'd day!) / When soul-touch'd actors shall do more, than play: / When passion, flaming, from th'asserted stage, / Shall, to taught greatness, fire a feeling age."

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1746, 1753

"Bid the face, red'ning, warm'd idea take, / Strait, the soul's wildfires all obstruction break: / Stung, by inflicted thought's imagin'd pain, / Hard heave the muscles, rolling eye-balls strain: / 'Twixt the clos'd teeth, indignantly, supprest, / Or, storm-like, loud, out pours th' unguarded bre...

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1748

Thought is "The fire that warms the poet's brain."

— Philips, Ambrose (1674-1749)

Date: 1748, 1749

"Without proper food the soul languishes, raves, and dies with faintness. It is like a taper, which revives in the moment it is going to be extinguished."

— Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

Date: 1749

Charles XII of Sweden has "A Frame of Adamant, a Soul of Fire, / No Dangers fright him, and no Labours tire."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Date: 1749

"These were Esteem and Pity; for sure the most outragiously rigid among her Sex will excuse her pitying a Man, whom she saw miserable on her own Account; nor can they blame her for esteeming one who visibly from the most honourable Motives, endeavoured to smother a Flame in his own Bosom, which, ...

— Fielding, Henry (1707-1754)

Date: October 1750, 1752, 1791

"Still pouring forth executive desire, / As bright, as brisk, and lasting, as the vestal fire."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: April 1750, 1791

"Tho' gratitude were bless'd with all the pow'rs / Her bursting heart cou'd long for, tho' the swift, / The firey-wing'd imagination soar'd / Beyond ambition's wish--yet all were vain / To speak him as he is, who is INEFFABLE."

— Smart, Christopher (1722-1771)

Date: Tuesday, May 15, 1750

"That the maxim of Epictetus is founded on just observation will easily be granted, when we reflect, how that vehemence of eagerness after the common objects of pursuit is kindled in our minds."

— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)