
“Absence is to love as wind is to fire: it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big.”
The Poppy http://books.google.com/books?id=qM8VAAAAYAAJ&q="Summer+set+lip+to+earth's+bosom+bare+And+left+the+flushed+print+in+a+poppy+there+Like+a+yawn+of+fire+from+the+grass+it+came+And+the+fanning+wind+puffed+it+to+flapping+flame"&pg=PA6#v=onepage.
“Absence is to love as wind is to fire: it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big.”
The Ultimate Sin, written by Robert John Daisley, Ozzy Osbourne, John Osbourne, Jake Williams, Robert Daisley
Song lyrics, The Ultimate Sin (1986)
Disdain Returned, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
L'absence diminue les médiocres passions, et augmente les grandes, comme le vent éteint les bougies et allume le feu.
http://books.google.com/books?id=QSdPNfXQavAC&q=%22L'absence+diminue+les+m%C3%A9diocres+passions+et+augmente+les+grandes+comme+le+vent+%C3%A9teint+les+bougies+et+allume+le+feu%22&pg=PA75#v=onepage
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)
“Summer — summer — summer! The soundless footsteps on the grass!”
Indian Summer of a Forsyte (1918)