Date: 1837

"As these white robes are soil'd and dark, / To yonder shining ground; / As this pale taper's earthly spark, / To yonder argent round; / So shows my soul before the Lamb, / My spirit before Thee; / So in mine earthly house I am, / To that I hope to be."

— Tennyson, Alfred, first Baron Tennyson (1809–1892)

Date: August 31, 1837

"But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame."

— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882)

Date: w. 1821, 1840

"A single sentence may be considered as a whole, though it may be found in the midst of a series of unassimilated portions; a single word even may be a spark of inextinguishable thought."

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: w. 1821, 1840

"The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within, like the color of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious p...

— Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822)

Date: 1845

"Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, / Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before."

— Poe, Edgar Allan (1809-1849)

Date: 1845

"My soul was set all on fire."

— Douglass, Frederick (1818-1895)

Date: 1854

"There was an air of jaded sullenness in them both, and particularly in the girl: yet, struggling through the dissatisfaction of her face, there was a light with nothing to rest upon, a fire with nothing to burn, a starved imagination keeping life in itself somehow, which brightened its expression."

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"A dull anger that she should be seen in her distress, and that the involuntary look she had so resented should come to this fulfilment, smouldered within her like an unwholesome fire."

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"For you remember how he stood here before you on this platform; you remember how, face to face and foot to foot, I pursued him through all his intricate windings; you remember how, he sneaked, and slunk, and sidled, and splitted of straws, until, with not an inch of ground to which to cling, I h...

— Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

Date: 1854

"And now he saw by the heap of shavings still fresh at his feet, that, for him and his work, the former lapse of time had been an illusion, and that no more time had elapsed than is required for a single scintillation from the brain of Brahma to fall on and inflame the tinder of a mortal brain."

— Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)