“Unknown those powers that raise the soul to flame,
Catch every nerve, and vibrate through the frame.
Their level life is but a mouldering fire,
Unquenched by want, unfanned by strong desire.”

—  Oliver Goldsmith

Source: The Traveller (1764), Line 219.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Unknown those powers that raise the soul to flame, Catch every nerve, and vibrate through the frame. Their level life…" by Oliver Goldsmith?
Oliver Goldsmith photo
Oliver Goldsmith134
Irish physician and writer 1728–1774

Related quotes

William Sharp (writer) photo

“The desire of love, Joy:
The desire of life, Peace:
The desire of the soul, Heaven:
The desire of God … a flame-white secret forever.”

William Sharp (writer) (1855–1905) Scottish writer

Desire, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Samuel Johnson photo

“A frame of adamant, a soul of fire,
No dangers fright him, and no labors tire.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Source: Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), Line 193

Bhagawan Nityananda photo

“Just as camphor is consumed by the flames of fire, so also, mind must be consumed by soul-fire.”

Bhagawan Nityananda (1897–1961) Hindu guru and saint

4
The Chidakasha Gita (1927)

Rabindranath Tagore photo

“for we women are not only the deities of the household fire, but the flame of the soul itself.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Source: The Home and the World

Peter Gabriel photo

“You can blow out a candle
But you can't blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher”

Peter Gabriel (1950) English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian

Biko
Song lyrics, Peter Gabriel (III) (1980)

Bruce Lee photo

“Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Janet Jackson photo

“Like a moth to a flame
Burned by the fire.
My love is blind
Can't you see my desire?”

Janet Jackson (1966) singer from the United States

That's the Way Love Goes
janet. (1993)

“I can tell you that solitude
Is not all exaltation, inner space
Where the soul breathes and work can be done.
Solitude exposes the nerve,
Raises up ghosts.
The past, never at rest, flows through it.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Ingmar Bergman photo

“Film has dream, film has music. No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul. A little twitch in our optic nerve, a shock effect: twenty-four illuminated frames in a second, darkness in between, the optic nerve incapable of registering darkness. At the editing table, when I run the trip of film through, frame by frame, I still feel that dizzy sense of magic of my childhood: in the darkness of the wardrobe, I slowly wind one frame after another, see almost imperceptible changes, wind faster — a movement.”

Ingmar Bergman book Laterna Magica

Laterna Magica (1987); The Magic Lantern : An Autobiography as translated by Joan Tate (1988).
Variant translation: Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.
As quoted in "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" by John Berger, Sight and Sound (June 1991).

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Genius doth catch the music of the spheres,
Which mortal ear was never meant to know.
Genius can penetrate the mysteries
Of feeling, all unknown to other hearts;
A power hath entered in the inmost soul,
Whose presence may not be contained.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Translations, From the French

Related topics