“Ever hold your hand over a torch (sorry, a flashlight for you Americans).”
Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid
Source: The Red Pyramid
The Philosophy of Paine (1925)
Context: He has been called an atheist, but atheist he was not. Paine believed in a supreme intelligence, as representing the idea which other men often express by the name of deity.
His Bible was the open face of nature, the broad skies, the green hills. He disbelieved the ancient myths and miracles taught by established creeds. But the attacks on those creeds — or on persons devoted to them — have served to darken his memory, casting a shadow across the closing years of his life.
When Theodore Roosevelt termed Tom Paine a "dirty little atheist" he surely spoke from lack of understanding. It was a stricture, an inaccurate charge of the sort that has dimmed the greatness of this eminent American. But the true measure of his stature will yet be appreciated. The torch which he handed on will not be extinguished.
“Ever hold your hand over a torch (sorry, a flashlight for you Americans).”
Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid
Source: The Red Pyramid
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey
Speech on the tenth anniversary of the Republic, 1933 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atat%C3%BCrk%27s_Tenth_Year_Speech
Kabir (1440–1518) Indian mystic poet
The Bijak of Kabir (1983;2002) as translated by Linda Hess and Shukdeo Singh.
Bijak
“No boaster he,
But with a hand which sees the thing to do.”
Aeschylus (-525–-456 BC) ancient Athenian playwright
Source: Seven Against Thebes (467 BC), line 554 (tr. Anna Swanwick)
Khalil Gibran book Jesus, The Son of Man
Mary Magdalen (Thirty years later): On the Resurrection of the Spirit
Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)
Context: Once again I say that with death Jesus conquered death, and rose from the grave a spirit and a power. And He walked in our solitude and visited the gardens of our passion.
He lies not there in that cleft rock behind the stone.
We who love Him beheld Him with these our eyes which He made to see; and we touched Him with these our hands which He taught to reach forth.
Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan
Source: Quotes from secondary sources, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, 1895, P. 230.