Date: May 10, 1704

"Besides, there is something individual in human minds that easily kindles at the accidental approach and collision of certain circumstances, which, though of paltry and mean appearance, do often flame out into the greatest emergencies of life."

— Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745)

Date: 1706, 1715 [1706-1721]

"Dear object of my soul, cries he, with a feeble voice, receive my faith with this hand, while I assure you with the other, that my heart shall for ever preserve the fire with which it burns for you."

— Anonymous

Date: 1706, 1715 [1706-1721]

"On the one hand, they make me shed tears in abundance; and, on the other, they inflame my heart with a fire which supports it, and hinders me to die of grief."

— Anonymous

Date: 1706, 1715 [1706-1721]

"Yes, I love you, my dear soul, and shall account it my glory to burn all my days with that sweet fire you have kindled in my heart."

— Anonymous

Date: 1708

"Now, when this Form prevails to such a degree that all others are nothing before it, but it remains alone, so as to consume, with the glory of its Light, whatsoever stands; in it's way; then it is properly compared to those Glasses, which reflect Light upon themselves, and burn every thing else;...

— Ockley, Simon (bap. 1679, d. 1720)

Date: 1709

"That fatal Night the Duke felt hostile Fires in his Breast, Love was entred with all his dreadful Artillery; he took possession in a moment of the Avenues that lead to the Heart! neither did the resistance he found there serve for any thing but to make his Conquest more illustrious."

— Manley, Delarivier (c. 1670-1724)

Date: 1719

"I bad him go to the Tree, and bring me Word if he could see there plainly what they were doing; he did so, and came immediately back to me, and told me they might be plainly view'd there; that they were all about their Fire, eating the Flesh of one of their Prisoners; and that another lay bound...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719

"As long as I kept up my daily Tour to the Hill to look out, so long also I kept up the Vigour of my Design, and my Spirits seem'd to be all the while in a suitable Form for so outragious an Execution as the killing twenty or thirty naked Savages, for an Offence which I had not at all entred into...

— Defoe, Daniel (1660?-1731)

Date: 1719-1720, 1725

"Be Witness for me Heaven! how much I have struggled with this rising passion, even to Madness struggled!--but in vain; the mounting Flame blazes the more, the more I would suppress it--my very Soul's on fire."

— Haywood [née Fowler], Eliza (1693?-1756)

Date: 1719-1720, 1725

"How I cou'd despise thee for this Narrowness of Mind, were there not something in thy Eyes and Mien which assure me, that this negligent Behaviour is but affected; and that there are within thy Breast, some Seeds of hidden Fire, which want but the Influence of Charms, more potent perhaps than yo...

— Haywood [née Fowler], Eliza (1693?-1756)