
Variant: There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.
Quote in his Letter (no. 155), June 1880; published in the online version of http://www.vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let155/letter.html "Vincent van Gogh – The Letters; The Complete Illustrated and Annotated Edition"]. Retrieved 29 July 2014
Variants: One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way. // There may be a great fire in our hearts, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.
1880s, 1880
Variant: There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.
http://www.gothamist.com/2007/05/29/bloombergs_memo.php
Illegal Immigration
Letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1870), letter #342a of The Letters of Emily Dickinson (1958), edited by Thomas H. Johnson, associate editor Theodora Ward, page 474
Source: Selected Letters
Source: The House at Pooh Corner (1928)
Context: Then Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh walked hand in hand down the forest path and they said goodbye. So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the forest a little boy and his bear will always be playing.
“There can no great smoke arise, but there must be some fire.”
Euphues and his Euphœbus, p. 153, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "There is no fire without some smoke", John Heywood, Proverbes, Part ii, Chap. v.
Variant: Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Source: Jingo
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Neurotics and neurosis