“To set a forest on fire, you light a match. To set a character on fire, you put him in conflict.”
Source: How to Write a Damn Good Novel: A Step-by-Step No Nonsense Guide to Dramatic Storytelling
1910 - 1935, The mysteries of the forest' (1934)
“To set a forest on fire, you light a match. To set a character on fire, you put him in conflict.”
Source: How to Write a Damn Good Novel: A Step-by-Step No Nonsense Guide to Dramatic Storytelling
“Some days you can’t see the forest for the fire.”
Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)
1910 - 1935, The mysteries of the forest' (1934)
Earliest instance of this quote found on google books is the 1989 book Forest primeval: the natural history of an ancient forest by Chris Maser, but there it appears to be Maser's own thought (see p. 230 http://books.google.com/books?id=8EAHQM54E5gC&q=%a+mirror% followed by a different supposed Gandhi quote http://books.google.com/books?id=8EAHQM54E5gC&q=gandhi).
Disputed
Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)
Context: It is often said that Anarchists live in a world of dreams to come, and do not see the things which happen today. We do see them only too well, and in their true colors, and that is what makes us carry the hatchet into the forest of prejudice that besets us.
Far from living in a world of visions and imagining men better than they are, we see them as they are; and that is why we affirm that the best of men is made essentially bad by the exercise of authority, and that the theory of the "balancing of powers" and "control of authorities" is a hypocritical formula, invented by those who have seized power, to make the "sovereign people," whom they despise, believe that the people themselves are governing. It is because we know men that we say to those who imagine that men would devour one another without those governors: "You reason like the king, who, being sent across the frontier, called out, 'What will become of my poor subjects without me?'"
“Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!”
St. V
Ode to the West Wind (1819)
Context: Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
“If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”