Date: 1582

"So great a Light hath set my mind on fire, / That flesh and bone consume with secret flame"

— Watson, Thomas (1555/6-1592)

Date: w. 1592-3 or 1595?, 1623

"I cannot weep, for all my body's moisture / Scarce serves to quench my furnace-burning heart; / Nor can my tongue unload my heart's great burden, / For selfsame wind that I should speak withal / Is kindling coals that fires all my breast, / And burns me up with flames that tears would quench."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1593

"And care consumes the minde of man, / as fire melts Virgin Waxe."

— Churchyard, Thomas (1523?-1604)

Date: 1598

"And our supplies live largely in the hope / Of great Northumberland, whose bosom burns / With an incensèd fire of injuries."

— Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)

Date: 1605, 1640

"But the poets and writers of histories are the best doctors of this knowledge; where we may find painted forth, with great life, how affections are kindled and incited; and how pacified and refrained; and how again contained from act and further degree; how they disclose themselves; how they wor...

— Bacon, Sir Francis, Lord Verulam (1561-1626)

Date: 1607

"[Y]our continuance after in all studious actions, constancy in your fauours and kind disposition (for I must needs say as hee of Augustus -- 'Rarus tu quidem ad recipiendas amicitias, ad retinendas vero constantissimus') these incited mee to cause that which as a sparke lay shrowded in embers in...

— Walkington, Thomas (b. c. 1575, d. 1621)

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: 1651

"Many erroneous opinions are about the essence and original of [the rational soul]; whether it be fire, as Zeno held; harmony, as Aristoxenus; number, as Xenocrates; whether it be organical, or inorganical; seated in the brain, heart or blood; mortal or immortal; how it comes into the body."

— Burton, Robert (1577-1640)

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."

— Culverwell, Nathanael (bap. 1619, d. 1651)

Date: 1653

"My heart the fire, whose flames are ever pure, / Laid on Loves Altar last, till life endure."

— Cavendish, Margaret (1623-1673)