L'absence diminue les médiocres passions, et augmente les grandes, comme le vent éteint les bougies et allume le feu.
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Variant translation: Absence weakens the minor passions and adds to the effects of great ones, as the wind blows out a candle and fans a fire.
Maxim 276.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
“Wind indeed increases fire, but custom love.”
"Pythagorean Ethical Sentences From Stobæus" (1904)
Florilegium
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Pythagoras 121
ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher -585–-495 BCRelated quotes
“Absence is to love as wind is to fire: it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big.”
“Dancing with the wind: the fire burns, the water drowns.”
Dancing with the wind (Red - 2003).
Lyrics
This is how the spirit comes. After the gale, the earthquake, and fire: a gentle, cooling breeze. This is how it will come in our own day as well. We are passing through the period of earthquake, the fire is approaching, and eventually (when? after how many generations?) the gentle, cool breeze will blow.
"The Desert. Sinai.", Ch. 21, p. 278
Report to Greco (1965)
“676. A little wind kindles, much puts out the fire.”
Jacula Prudentum (1651)
“The winds gives me
Enough fallen leaves
To make a fire”
Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf : Zen Poems of Ryokan (1993)
The Callahan Chronicals <!-- [Sic] -->(1996) [originally published as Callahan and Company (1988)] "Backword", p. xii
Context: In a culture where pessimism has metastasized like slow carcinoma, that crazy Irishman was backward enough to try to raise hopes, like hothouse flowers. In an era during which even judicious use of alcohol has been increasingly bad-rapped, the man who came to be known as The Mick of Time was backward enough to think that the world can look just that essential tad better when seen through a flask, brightly. (As long as you let someone else drive you home afterward.) Above all, he — and his goofball customers — believed that shared pain is lessened, and shared Joy increased.
Now he is gone. Gone back whence he came, and we are all the poorer for it. But I refuse to say that we will not see his like again. Or his love again.
2014, Speech: Sponsorship Speech for the FY 2015 National Budget
“These are the stories the Dogs tell, when the fires burn high and the wind is from the north.”
Editor’s Preface (p. 5)
City (1952)