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: 1755

"THE SHOCK OF RECEIVING MY OWN LETTER did not excite a sudden Gust of unwarrantable Passion, but prey'd upon my Heart with the slow and eating Fire of Distraction and Despair, 'till it ended in a Fever, which now remains upon my Spirits; and which, I fear, I shall find a difficult Task to overcome."

— Charke [née Cibber; other married name Sacheverell], Charlotte [alias Mr Brown] (1713-1760)

Date: 1755

"Thy Words have shot like Lightning through my Frame; / And all my Soul's on Fire!"

— Brown, John (1715-1766)

Date: 1755, 1771

"The' etherial soul that Heaven itself inspires / With all its virtues, and with all its fires, / Led by these sirens to some wild extreme, / Sets in a vapour when it ought to beam; / Like a Dutch sun that in the' autumnal sky / Looks through a fog, and rises but to die."

— Cawthorn, James (1719-1761)

Date: 1785

"The effort rude to quench the cheering flame / Was mine, and e'en on Stella could I gaze / With sullen envy, and admiring pride, / Till, doubly roused by Montagu, the pair / Conspire to clear my dull, imprisoned sense, / And chase the mists which dimmed my visual beam."

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1785

"O, Montagu! forgive me, if I sing / red with the milder ray / Of soft humanity, and kindness bland: / So wide its influence, that the bright beams / Reach the low vale where mists of ignorance lodge, / Strike on the innate spark which lay immersed, / Thick-clogged, and almost quenched in total n...

— Yearsley, Ann (bap. 1753, d. 1806)

Date: 1825

"Thus, when the fervid Passions cool, / And Judgement, late, begins to rule; / When Reason mounts her throne serene, / And social Friendship gilds the scene; / When man, of ripened powers possest, / Broods o'er the treasures of his breast; / Exults, in conscious worth elate, / Lord of himself--al...

— Barbauld, Anna Letitia [née Aikin] (1743-1825)

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: 2001

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

— Richardson, James (b. 1950)

Date: 2011

"He felt ash filling up his chest and throat from the inside, blocking his mouth and thickening his heart and filling up his head, he hoped, blocking it out like the heavy gray ceiling of winter settling in over the plains, so that he would not be able to see into it."

— Nadzam, Bonnie