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)

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)

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)

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)

Date: Monday, August 24. 1724

"Vast Sea of Ecstacy, that drowns the Mind! / That fierce Transfusion of exchanging Hearts! / That gliding Glimpse of Heav'n, in pulsive Starts? / That veiny Rush! That warm, tumultuous, Roll! / That Fire that kindles Bodies into Soul!"

— Hill, Aaron (1685-1750)

Date: 1727

"It is without Doubt, that Fancy and Imagination form a world of Apparitions in the Minds of Men and Women; (for we must not exclude the Ladies in this Part, whatever we do) and People go away as thoroughly possess'd with the Reality of having seen the Devil, as if they convers'd Face to Face wit...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: April 30, 1730

"The spirit of the brain, distilled by the heat of the imagination, like some chemical preparations, when exposed to the air, is apt to smoke, to take fire, to crack, and bounce, to the no small disturbance of the neighbourhood."

— Richard Russel and John Martyn

Date: August 1817

"Whenever any object takes such a hold on the mind as to make us dwell upon it, and brood over it, melting the heart in love, or kindling it to a sentiment of admiration;--whenever a movement of imagination or passion is impressed on the mind, by which it seeks to prolong and repeat the emotion, ...

— Hazlitt, William (1778-1830)

Date: 2001

"Wind, ocean, fire: the things we like to liken our passions to don't break, can't stop."

— Richardson, James (b. 1950)