Canto XXX, lines 46–48.
Compare: Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae ("I feel once more the scars of the old flame", tr. C. Day Lewis), Virgil, Aeneid, Book IV, line 23.
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Purgatorio
“I know the symptoms of the ancient flame.”
Giusto de' Conti (1390–1449) Italian poet
Conosco i segni de l'rantico foco.
La Bella Mano (Ed. Vinegia, 1531), p. 50.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 281.
“On me the tempest falls. It does not make me tremble.”
Source: Prometheus Bound, line 1089
Context: On me the tempest falls. It does not make me tremble. O holy Mother Earth, O air and sun, behold me. I am wronged.
“I won't accept that another drop of blood of a Tunisian be spilled.”
Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (1936–2019) Tunisian politician
Ordering Tunisian troops to stop firing on protesters, unless they attack. (January 2011) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12187084
Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933) Greek poet
Collected Poems (1992), When the Watchman Saw the Light (1900)
Context: Now the longed-for signal has appeared. Yet when happiness comes
it brings less joy than one expected.
But at least we've gained this much: we've rid ourselves
of hope and expectation.
“I have not one drop of blood in my veins but what is American.”
John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States
To an ambassador (1785), as quoted in The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: Autobiography http://books.google.com/books?id=lWcsAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA392 (1851), by Charles F. Adams, p. 392. <br class="br">1780s <br class="br">Context: Neither my father or mother, grandfather or grandmother, great grandfather or great grandmother, nor any other relation that I know of, or care a farthing for, has been in England these one hundred and fifty years; so that you see I have not one drop of blood in my veins but what is American.
Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator
Source: The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995), Ch. 2 : Science and Hope
Context: I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us-then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.
