page 1 of 2     per page:
sorted by:

Date: 1660

"Things that the least of drossy mixture hold, / Last longest; my Hearts flames Ætherial be, / More pure than seven times refined Gold / Than Cedar's flames: rays of a Deitie / They are."

— Pordage, Samuel (bap. 1633, d. c. 1691)

preview | full record

Date: 1690, 1694, 1695, 1700, 1706

"But though we have, here and there, a little of this clear light, some sparks of bright knowledge; yet the greatest part of our ideas are such, that we cannot discern their agreement or disagreement by an immediate comparing them."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

preview | full record

Date: Licens'd Decemb. 22. 1691

"I burn and am consumed with hopeless Love; those Beams in whose soft temperate warmth I wanton'd heretofore, now flash destruction to my Soul, my Treacherous greedy Eyes have suck'd the glaring Light, they have united all its Rays, and, like a burning-Glass, Convey'd the pointed Meteor to-my Hea...

— Congreve, William (1670-1729)

preview | full record

Date: 1700, 1702

"What is the Soul of Man but Light, / Drawn down from thy transcendant height? / What but an Intellectual Beam? / A Spark of thy immortal Flame?"

— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)

preview | full record

Date: 1700, 1702

"And all fires those that lighted up my Soul / Glory and bright Ambition languish now, / And leave me dark and gloomy as the Grave."

— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)

preview | full record

Date: November 25, 1707; 1708

"Since the same Flame, by different Ways express'd, / Glows in the Heroe's and the Poet's Breast."

— Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718)

preview | full record

Date: 1712

"Strong as the Winds, and sprightly as the Light? / She [the mind] moves unweary'd, as the active Fire, / And, like the Flame, her Flights to Heav'n aspire."

— Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654-1729)

preview | full record

Date: 1713

Thus o'er the dying Lamp th'unsteady Flame / Hang's quiv'ring on a Point, leap's off by Fits, / And fall's again, as loath to quit its Hold / --Thou must not go, my Soul still hover's o'er thee / And can't get loose."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

preview | full record

Date: 1713

"I've been surprized in an unguarded Hour, / But must not now go back: The Love, that lay / Half smother'd in my Breast, has broke through all / Its weak Restraints, and burn's in its full Lustre, / I cannot, if I wou'd, conceal it from thee."

— Addison, Joseph (1672-1719)

preview | full record

Date: 1745

"All these Pleasures of his Breast should die, / The Beams of Science from his Soul retire / And fade, extinguish'd by a nobler Fire, / As kindled Wood, howe'er its Flames may rise, / When the bright Sun appears, in Embers dies."

— Whaley, John (bap. 1710, d. 1745)

preview | full record

The Mind is a Metaphor is authored by Brad Pasanek, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia.