Quotes about burning
page 12

“When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Ellie Dunn, Act II
1910s, Heartbreak House (1919)

Happiness, Peace, Heart

“They made some low wide gallows on which the hanged victim's feet almost touched the ground, stringing up their victims in lots of thirteen, in memory of Our Redeemer and His twelve Apostles, then set burning wood at their feet and thus burned them alive.”

Bartolomé de las Casas (1474–1566) Spanish Dominican friar, historian, and social reformer

History of the Indies (1561)

Memory

“We didn't have any civil rights. It was just a matter of survival, of existing from one day to the next. I remember going to sleep as a girl hearing the Klan ride at night and hearing a lynching and being afraid the house would burn down.”

Rosa Parks (1913–2005) African-American civil rights activist

Quoted in "Standing Up for Freedom," http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/par0bio-1 Academy of Achievement.org (2005-10-31)

Girl, Sleep, Housing, Night

“He is blind to the dead, to the burning villages, to the starving children. As is the Rebel. Two blind armies, able to see nothing but one another.”

Glen Cook The Black Company

Source: The Black Company (1984), Chapter 3, “Raker” (p. 79)

Children, Dead

“After Beverly Hills there was no fog. The palms along the road stood out green in the bluish darkness, and the white line in the pavement leaped ahead of us like a burning fuse. A few clouds tumbled and tossed, but there were no stars.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Star

“The memory of war weighs undiminished upon the people's minds. That is because deeper than material wounds, moral wounds are smarting, inflicted by the so-called peace treaties. … Material loss can be made up through renewed labor, but the moral wrong which has been inflicted upon the conquered peoples, in the peace dictates, leaves a burning scar on the people's conscience. … The Versailles Dictate cannot be an eternal document, because not only its economic, but also its spiritual and moral premises are wrong.”

Hjalmar Schacht (1877–1970) German politician

On the Treaty of Versailles, as quoted in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (1946) by the United States Department of State, Vol. 2, p. 754.

War, People, Peace, Memory

“Even a very general knowledge of Indian history already shows that any instances of Hindu persecution of Buddhism could never have been more than marginal. After fully seventeen centuries of Buddhism's existence, from the 6 th century BC to the late 12 th century AD, most of it under the rule of Hindu kings, we find Buddhist establishments flourishing all over India. Under king Pushyamitra Shunga, often falsely labelled as a persecutor of Buddhism, important Buddhist centres such as the Sanchi stupa were built. As late as the early 12 th century, the Buddhist monastery Dharmachakrajina Vihara at Sarnath was built under the patronage of queen Kumaradevi, wife of Govindachandra, the Hindu king of Kanauj in whose reign the contentious Rama temple in Ayodhya was built. This may be contrasted with the ruined state of Buddhism in countries like Afghanistan or Uzbekistan after one thousand or even one hundred years of Muslim rule. Indeed, the Muslim chroniclers themselves have described in gleeful detail how they destroyed Buddhism root and branch in the entire Gangetic plain in just a few years after Mohammed Ghori's victory in the second battle of Tarain in 1192. The famous university of Nalanda with its fabulous library burned for weeks. Its inmates were put to the sword except for those who managed to flee. The latter spread the word to other Indian regions where Buddhist monks packed up and left in anticipation of further Muslim conquests. It is apparent that this way, some abandoned Buddhist establishments were taken over by Hindus; but that is an entirely different matter from the forcible occupation or destruction of Buddhist institutions by the foreign invaders.”

Pushyamitra Shunga King of Sunga Dynasty

Koenraad Elst: Religious Cleansing of Hindus, 2004, Agni conference in The Hague, and in: K. Elst The Problem with Secularism, 2007

Way, History, Knowledge, Universe

“His speech is a burning fire.”

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic

Second chorus, line 51.
Atalanta in Calydon (1865)

“My mind has to be ready. My body also has to be ready. But even more important, my heart has to be ready. What I mean by that is for the swims I do, I must have a burning reason.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

Website

Heart

“Doesn't it seem as though the thrill's gone out of it? Somehow Burning Man now feels like what Christmas becomes in your grown-up years: a lot of spending, a brief party, and twelve months of fond reminiscences.”

Mark Pesce (1962) American writer

McBurners http://www.tripzine.com/listing.php?id=mcburners

Feeling, Christmas

“And you know the reason I really love the stars is that we cannot hurt them.
We can't burn them or melt them or make them overflow. We can't flood them or blow them up or turn them out.
But we are reaching for them.
We are reaching for them.”

Laurie Anderson (1947) American musician

"Another Day in America" (2010)
Homeland (2010)

Love, Star, Hurt

“A man who allows wild passion to arise within, himself burns his heart, then after burning adds the wind that thereto which ignites the fire again, or not, as the case may be.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Some of the Dharma (1997)

Passion, Heart

“The case had caused considerable excitement among the “believers” (Mu'mins) and interest among the “infidels” (KAfirs) in April-May, 1985. The press in India and abroad gave many headlines to what was rightly regarded as an unprecedented event in the history of religion. It was the first time that a Pagan had questioned the character of a document hailed as the very Word of God by a People of the Book. The roles now stood reversed. So far it had been the privilege of the Peoples of the Book to ban and burn the sacred literature of the Pagans.”

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

God, People, Books, Religion

“The foundation of all religion is the belief in a God, and that He exists in certain relation with His creatures. Such belief necessarily leads to the consciousness of some obligation towards the Deity; and this consciousness suggests the duty of worship; and in the selection of the form of this worship originates the various creeds which distinguish and distract mankind. There is a sort of geography of religion; and I regret to think that the majority of mankind take their creed from the clime in which they happen to be born; and that many, and not an inconsiderable portion of mankind, suffer the sacred torch to burn out altogether, in their contact with the world, and then vainly imagine that they can recover the sacred fire by striking a park out of dogmatic theology.”

Charles Babbage Passages from the life of a philosopher

"Passages from the life of a philosopher", Appendix: Religion, Note (B) pp. 491-492
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher (1864)

God, World, Religion, Imagination

“The problem is, after a week of intense googling, we’ve started to burn out on knowing the answer to everything. God must feel that way all the time. I think people in the year 2020 are going to be nostalgic for the sensation of feeling clueless.”

Douglas Coupland book JPod

JPod (2006)

God, People, Way, Feeling

“We'll be raising our hands
Shining up to the sky
Cause we've got the fire fire fire
And we gonna let it burn”

Ellie Goulding (1986) English singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist

Song lyric of "Burn", written by Goulding, Greg Kurstin, Brent Kutzle, Ryan Tedder, and Noel Zancanella
Halcyon Days (2013)

“Oh, communism! That was a burning issue. It was an outrageous issue. To be termed a communist would damage your whole family, damage your whole world — your friends wouldn’t talk to you. I’m talking about other people — because I wouldn’t go near the stuff. Sure, I was against the reds. I became a witch hunter. My enemies were the commies — I called them commies. In fact, Granny Goodness was a commie, Doubleheader was a commie.”

Jack Kirby (1917–1994) American comic book artist, writer and editor

TCJ Archive, "Jack Kirby Interview" http://www.tcj.com/jack-kirby-interview/5/, The Comics Journal, (February 1990, posted May 23, 2011).

People, World, Family, Communication

“Most government and corporate leaders would have trouble getting people to follow them out of a burning building. One way you can tell the worst of them is that they talk about leadership a lot. I doubt Winston Churchill ever used the word. Or, for that matter, Attila the Hun.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 5 (p. 38)

People, Way

“It's hard to get burned out on doing a TV show.”

Pat Sajak (1946) American television host

2000s
Source: Chicago, Vol. 57, Nr, 1-4 (2008), p. 28

“My good Mama, I am always the same.... always the same happy life, always fresh for seeing, vigorous for running, and diligent for one end... The Mont Blanc is our alarm clock in the morning, our vis-a-vis are the folk on the other side of the lake of Geneva, (8 leagues). I could not say that we get along badly, though we do dispense with the ceremony of saluting each other and saying bon jour when we look out at the window, for we don't meddle in our neighbors' affairs. Our sight carries fifty leagues about us, and we are equally everywhere, although only occupying the space of our two feet. I am delighted with having received my stretchers in order to commence my view of the Alps. I burn with the desire of fulfilling the difficult task of giving upon canvas an idea of the immensity which surrounds me in order to distribute its benefits to those less fortunate than myself... I ask without scruple, because it seems to me that I have something to give. I have so much confidence in myself, mon Dieu, when I examine myself.”

Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867) French painter (1812-1867)

Quote of Th. Rousseau, in a letter to his mother, late Summer 1834, from the Alps, Switzerland; as cited in Barbizon days, Millet-Corot-Rousseau-Barye by Charles Sprague Smith, A. Wessels Company, New York, July 1902, pp. 152-53
1830 - 1850

Life, Happiness, Confidence, Idea

“Your thoughts about life and music have changed within the 45 years of the existence as a band and so it still can be seen as a burning process in order to transform the entire picture of everything you came in touch with.”

Edgar Froese (1944–2015) German musician and founder of Tangerine Dream

Life, Music, Change

“Teetering in between worlds with a sleepy conscious, pestilence, infinite knowledge, alienation, burning cigarettes, vibes & male seahorses.”

Frances Bean Cobain (1992) American artist

24 March 2015 https://twitter.com/alka_seltzer666/status/580432645550641152 Twitter https://twitter.com/alka_seltzer666 posts

World, Knowledge

“I've got a lot of white associates. Elijah Muhammad, is the one who preached that the white man of America, number one, is the Devil. He's been preaching — he never mentioned England. England's people have never lynched us, raped us, castrated us, tarred and feathered us, burned us up, pulled our sockets apart, stick knives in pregnant women's stomachs, enslaved us, rob us of our names, our knowledge, our — Elijah Mohammad's been preaching that the white man of America – God taught him – is the blue-eyed, blond-headed Devil! No good in him, no justice, he's gonna be destroyed! His rule is over. He is the Devil!”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

interview with Michael Parkinson (1974), quoted in Adam Lusher, " 'The white man is the devil' – what the Nation of Islam taught Muhammad Ali https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/muhammad-ali-nation-of-islam-michael-parkinson-interview-who-were-elijah-muhammad-a7066301.html", _The Independent_ (June 5, 2016)

Women, God, People, Justice

“The war hung over us like a storm cloud. […] They told us how the animals escaped from the zoo after the bombing raid and rushed about the streets. They fled not from people, but to people, and, let's say, the bear roared and shook its paw, the ostrich waved a burnt wing, and the elephant knelt, lifted its trunk and trumpeted plaintively. But what could people do when the earth was burning beneath them? A coral aspid, a very venomous and beautiful snake, slithered up to the sixth floor and meekly curled up under someone's bed. And in these stories about the ruins of great cities, about streets where African reptiles creep and dying elephants trumpet, there was something from Wells and from the Apocalypse — more generally from legends about the end of the world and the total destruction of humanity.”

Yury Dombrovsky (1909–1978) Soviet writer

Russian text
The Monkey Comes for His Skull (1943)

War, People, World, Beauty

“Burn worldly love,
rub the ashes and make ink of it,
make the heart the pen,
the intellect the writer,
write that which has no end or limit.”

Nanak (1469–1539) Founder of Sikhism

Guru Nanak quotes

Love, Heart

“Most of the world's people have been robbed of their freedom by tyrants… In the last century alone, 272,000,000 were shot, burned, stabbed, tortured, beaten, starved to death, blasted to death, buried alive, or whatever other ways of murdering their slaves these thugs could imagine. This horrific and evil toll of bodies could head-to-toe circle the earth more than ten times. It is as though a catastrophic nuclear war had happened, but its mountain of deaths spread over each day of the last century”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p. 11

Death, War, People, World

“I always look at everything with the eyes of a child. I feel enthusiastic for things today fort he same reasons as I was enthusiastic about them as a child... I remember one summer morning when I was twelve years old [1888], I was with my father. We were following a road which crossed the plain from Rueil to Croissy. The whole plain was a solid field of corn and the ears stood higher than my head. I still retain today the impression of the vast expanse, spangled with flowers and filled with the drone of insects. Often, later on, I have tried to recapture, to fix firmly in my mind once again, the impression of that world around me, of the sun which burns my face and hands... Every time a see a field of corn I an reminded of that morning.”

Maurice de Vlaminck (1876–1958) French painter

Source: Quotes dated, Dangerous Corner', 1929, p. 18-19

World, Feeling, Flowers, Time

“I heard a heavy step approaching behind the great door, and saw through the chinks the gleam of a coming light. Then there was the sound of rattling chains and the clanking of massive bolts drawn back. A key was turned with the loud grating noise of long disuse, and the great door swung back.
Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. He held in his hand an antique silver lamp, in which the flame burned without a chimney or globe of any kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the open door. The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation.
"Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!"”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Jonathan Harker's journal
Dracula (1897)

Light, Housing

“GG Allin: I got to tell you one thing that is really bothering me. I went to prison for two years for what I did to a girl and she did the same thing to me but because she was a girl they let her of and put me in prison because she was the weaker sex. Now if women want equal rights they got to do equal time. Ok, I cut her, I burned her, I drank her blood but she also did the same to me. It was consexual agreement but in the courtroom they said that I was to blame because I'm GG Allin, I'm the king of the underground. They need to nail me to a cross.”

GG Allin (1956–1993) American singer-songwriter

GG Allin on The Jerry Springer Show, May 5. 1993.
On The Jerry Springer Show

Women, Sex, Girl, Time

“Now, the smoke fills the air
In this honky-tonk bar.
And I'm thinking 'bout where I'd rather be.
But I burned all my bridges;
I sank all my ships.
And I'm stranded at the edge of the sea.”

James Taylor (1948) American singer-songwriter and guitarist

"Bartender's Blues"
Song lyrics, JT (1977)

Thinking, Sea

“It is when we unbosom ourselves to Him, and confide to Him all our cares and sorrows and temptations, that He walks with us, and abides with us, and opens to us the Scriptures concerning Himself — His dignity, His suitableness, His loveliness. His truth, His tenderness, His faithfulness, revealing Himself in us; causing our hearts to burn within us — to burn with love, gratitude, devotion, courage, joy — to burn with a celestial fire, which consumes all selfishness and sin, and glows, a pure, perennial flame, upon pure, living altars.”

Richard Fuller (minister) (1804–1876) United States Baptist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 97.

Love, Truth, Faith, Confidence

“And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they're nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Sputnik Sweetheart

Beauty, Travel, Star, Reality

“I never burned down synagogues. It was a revolution, and Russians burned churches during their revolution. If there are many different nationalities in a country, the leadership should be divided among people by percentages. In finance, press, radio - the Jews had taken over positions. That feeling existed before Hitler.”

Fritz Sauckel (1894–1946) German general

To Leon Goldensohn, February 9, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004.

People, Feeling, Country

“I sometimes think a mighty lover
Takes every burning kiss we give:
His lights are those which round us hover:
For him alone our lives we live.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

By Still Waters (1906)

Lovers, Kiss, Thinking, Light

“We know that these challenges can be overcome because history moves in the direction of justice. The evils of slavery were accepted and unchanged for centuries, yet eventually the human heart would not abide them. There is a voice of conscience and hope in every man and woman that will not be silenced, what Martin Luther King called a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. That flame could not be extinguished at the Birmingham jail. It could not be stamped out at Robben Island prison. It was seen in the darkness here at Goree Island, where no chain could bind the soul. This untamed fire of justice continues to burn in the affairs of man, and it lights the way before us. May God bless you all.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Hope and Conscience Will Not Be Silenced (July 2003)

God, Justice, Hope, Way

“It is the Soldier, not the minister, who has given us freedom of religion.
It is the Soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the Soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us freedom to protest.
It is the Soldier, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial.
It is the Soldier, not the politician, who has given us the right to vote.
It is the Soldier who salutes the flag,
Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag,
Who allows the protester to burn the flag.”

Charles Province

Published on the George Patton Historical Society http://www.pattonhq.com/koreamemorial.html website. Also attributed through reading in the U.S. House http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/R?r108:FLD001:H01969. This poem is often attributed to Fr. Dennis Edward O'Brien. Father O'Brien apparently sent the poem to Dear Abbey, who incorrectly attributed it to him. Before his death, he was always quick to say that he had not written the verse.

Religion, Freedom

“You have just constructed a straw man so large you could burn it in the desert and hold an annoying festival around it.”

John Oliver (1977) English comedian

Last Week Tonight (15 June 2014)
Last Week Tonight (2014–present)

“Her face seems ravaged by both lightning and hail. But on yours there is something like the promise of a storm: one day passion will burn it to the bone.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

Act 1
The Flies (1943)

Passion

“I suggest that we might want to depose this incumbent God and start dealing with The Real World. He's proven — time and again — to be cruel, capricious, and vindictive. He drowns, crushes, burns, and starves millions of us every day. He created cancer, viruses, and germs to invade and destroy our bodies as He sees fit, and uses them very effectively. In His wisdom, He directed those in charge to impede stem cell research so that such a powerful approach would not be available to us and He wouldn't have to strain the Divine Intellect to disarm that defense. We amuse Him as we flail about vainly trying to appease Him. I vote that we dump Him.”

James Randi (1928) Canadian-American stage magician and scientific skeptic

Swift, 2 September 2005, "Off-Subject But Necessary" http://www.randi.org/jr/200509/090205alley.html#2; in response to efforts to deflect Hurricane Katrina by prayer.

Wisdom, God, World, Time

“When I was in the military I always made it my first mission to burn the enemy's crops!”

William J. Crowe (1925–2007) United States admiral

After being caught smoking a Havana cigar in the embassy, he was accused of breaking his country's strict embargo on all things Cuban. The Times Obituary http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article2718310.ece (23 October 2007).

“Perhaps His experiment went spectacularly wrong, sir. Perhaps He's just baffled. Seeing the mess, not knowing how to put it right. Perhaps not wanting to put it right. Perhaps He only had enough power left for one final intervention. So He made it. Whoever He is, whatever He is, I hope he burns in His own Hell.”

P. D. James book The Children of Men

A driver upon being asked if he believed in God.
The Children of Men (1992)

Hope, Hell

“O illustrious Kshattri, Bhimasena is missing! Where has he gone? The other brothers have all come back from the gardens, only Bhima of mighty arms does not come home! Duryodhana likes him not. The w:KauravaKaurava is crooked and malicious and low-minded and imprudent. He coveteth the throne openly. I am afraid he may have in a fit of anger slain my darling. This afflicts me sorely, indeed, it burns my heart.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

The Mahabharata/Book 1: Adi Parva/Section CXXIX

Home, Affliction, Heart, Anger

“And you throw your head back laughing
Like a little kid.
I think it's strange that you think I’m funny cause
He never did.
I've been spending the last 8 months
Thinking all love ever does
Is break and burn and end.
But on a Wednesday in a cafe,
I watched it begin again.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

Begin Again.
Song lyrics, Red (2012)

Love, Thinking

“On that far horizon the Sandia Mountains stand behind their outliers in receding gradations of gray or blue or violet, paper cutouts against the lighter sky, vanishing into night when the lights of the city come on. Then the stars look down and the air is sweet with piñon smoke as centuries-old nut-bearing trees are burned for the momentary pleasure of those who, unlike the native peoples, never think of the food the trees produce.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: Gibbon's Decline & Fall (1996), Chapter 2 (p. 41)

People, Pleasure, Food, Mountain

“It was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that halted the free inquiry of the Golden Age and substituted for it the credulous imbecility of the Age of Faith. It was a fixed moral code and a fixed theology which robbed the human race of a thousand years by wasting them upon alchemy, heretic-burning, witchcraft and sacerdotalism.”

H.L. Mencken book The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1908/1913)
1900s

Books, Age, Faith

“Lenin is not comparable to any revolutionary figure in history. Revolutionaries have had ideals. Lenin has none. He is a madman, an immolator, wishful of burning, and slaughter, and sacrificing.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

As quoted in Peter Kropotkin : From Prince to Rebel (1990) by George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, p. 407

History

“In these days he promoted a bramin, by name Seeva Dew Bhut, to the office of prime minister, who embracing the Mahomedan faith, became such a persecutor of Hindoos that he induced Sikundur to issue orders proscribing the residence of any other than Mahomedans in Kashmeer; and he required that no man should wear the mark on his forehead, or any woman be permitted to burn with her husband’s corpse. Lastly, he insisted on all golden and silver images being broken and melted down, and the metal coined into money. Many of the bramins, rather than abandon their religion or their country, poisoned themselves; some emigrated from their native homes, while a few escaped the evil of banishment by becoming Mahomedans. After the emigration of the bramins, Sikundur ordered all the temples in Kashmeer to be thrown down; among which was one dedicated to Maha Dew, in the district of Punjhuzara, which they were unable to destroy, in consequence of its foundation being below the surface of the neighbouring water. But the temple dedicated to Jug Dew was levelled with the ground; and on digging into its foundation the earth emitted volumes of fire and smoke which the infidels declared to be the emblem of the wrath of the Deity; but Sikundur, who witnessed the phenomenon, did not desist till the building was entirely razed to the ground, and its foundations dug up….. “In another place in Kashmeer was a temple built by Raja Bulnat, the destruction of which was attended with a remarkable incident. After it had been levelled, and the people were employed in digging the foundation, a copper-plate was discovered, on which was the following inscription:- ‘Raja Bulnat, having built this temple, was desirous of ascertaining from his astrologers how long it would last, and was informed by them, that after eleven hundred years, a king named Sikundur would destroy it, as well as the other temples in Kashmeer’…Having broken all the images in Kashmeer, he acquired the title of the Iconoclast, ‘Destroyer of Idols’…”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Sikandar Butshikan of Kashmir (AD 1389-1413)Kashmir
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Money, People, Faith, Religion

“Anger be now your song, immortal one,
Akhilleus' anger, doomed and ruinous,
that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss
and crowded brave souls into the undergloom,
leaving so many dead men—carrion
for dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done.
Begin it when the two men first contending
broke with one another—the Lord Marshal
Agamémnon, Atreus' son, and Prince Akhilleus.
Among the gods, who brought this quarrel on?
The son of Zeus by Lêto. Agamémnon
angered him, so he made a burning wind
of plague rise in the army: rank and file
sickened and died for the ill their chief had done
in despising a man of prayer.”

Robert Fitzgerald (1910–1985) American poet, critic and translator

opening lines
The Iliad (1974)

Men, God, Dogs, Soul

“He painted till the lamps grew dim, his hand
Scarce conscious what it wrought; at length his lids
Closed in a heavy slumber, and he dream'd
That a fair creature came and kissed his brow,
And bade him follow her: he knew the look,
And rose. Awakening, he found himself
Kneeling before the portrait:—'twas so fair
He deemed it lived, and press'd his burning lips
To the sweet mouth; his soul pass'd in that kiss,—
Young Guido died beside his masterpiece!”

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

The Painter. from The London Literary Gazette: 15th November 1823 Poetic Sketches. Fourth Series. Sketch I.
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Soul, Kiss, Painting

“Above all communism is a poetic vocation. Without poetry, without a burning, purifying altruistic fervor, communism is only a farce, the receptacle of all anger, of all plebian resentment, the decadent playhouse of sharks, of all the tragic pimps, of all Jews, performing their Talmudic imposture.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) French writer

130
L'Ecole des cadavres (1938)

Communication, Anger

“Now hollow fires burn out to black,
And lights are guttering low:
Square your shoulders, lift your pack,
And leave your friends and go.

Oh never fear, man, nought's to dread,
Look not to left nor right:
In all the endless road you tread
There's nothing but the night.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 60.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

Fear, Light, Night

“At that moment Marx puts himself in a position where he becomes the necessary target of all who have a special interest in maintaining the old-similar to Democritus before him, whose work was burned by Plato and his disciples, the ideologues of Athenian slave aristocracy. Beginning with the revolutionary Marx, a political group with concrete ideas establishes itself. Basing itself on the giants, Marx and Engels, and developing through successive steps with personalities like Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung and the new Soviet and Chinese rulers, it establishes a body of doctrine and, let us say, examples to follow.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Notes on the Cuban Revolution (1960)

Idea, Success, Personality

“The state of international relations in the sixteenth century is hardly conceivable at this day. The Puritans of England and the Huguenots of France regarded Spain as their natural enemy, and on the high seas and in the British Channel they joined hands with godless freebooters to rifle her ships, kill her sailors, or throw them alive into the sea. Spain on her side seized English Protestant sailors who ventured into her ports, and burned them as heretics, or consigned them to a living death in the dungeons of the Inquisition. Yet in the latter half of the century these mutual outrages went on for years while the nations professed to be at peace. There was complaint, protest, and occasional menace, but no redress, and no declaration of war.”

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) American historian

Pt. I, Ch. 9 Charles IX and Philip II
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

Death, War, Peace, Nature

“It may not be factually true that Nero fiddled while Rome burned, but the saying has passed into common usage because the image has the ring of truth to it. Time and time again, the good and decent common people have manned the walls of the city, and have been ready to give their lives in its defense, only to discover too late that some silk-robed (expletive) has snuck out of the palace at midnight and thrown open the gates to the barbarians outside.”

Bill Whittle (1959) author, director, screenwriter, editor

The Undefended City https://www.nationalreview.com/2008/09/undefended-city-bill-whittle/, National Review (19 September 2008) 2000s

People, Truth, Time

“You do not come
On this moonless night.
I wake wanting you.
My breasts heave and blaze.
My heart burns up.”

Ono no Komachi (825–900) Japanese poet

Source: Kenneth Rexroth's translations, One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese (1976), p. 34

Heart, Night

“These movies belonged to the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries—that period of great, unsustainable, and hedonistic prosperity, driven by the burning of Earth’s reserves of perishable oil, which culminated in the False Tribulation, and the wars, and the plagues, and the painful dwindling of inflated populations to more reasonable numbers.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America

Source: Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (2009), p. 29

Pain, War, Falseness

“But what do you think would happen if we had burned a copy of the Koran on tonight's show? There would be riots in scores of countries. Embassies would fall. In response to our mistreating a book, millions of Muslims would take to the streets, and we would spend the rest of our lives fending off credible threats of murder. But when ISIS crucifies people, buries children alive, and rapes and tortures women by the thousands—all in the name of Islam—the response is a few small demonstrations in Europe and a hashtag.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "Can Liberalism Be Saved From Itself?" (October 7, 2014) http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/can-liberalism-be-saved-from-itself 2010s

Women, Children, People, Books

“Thousands of lips repeated the benediction, bent over like trees in a storm.
Blessed be God's name?
Because He caused thousands of children to burn in His mass graves? Because He kept six crematoria working day and night, including Sabbath and the Holy Days? Because in His great might, He had created Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna, and so many other factories of death? How could I say to Him: Blessed be Thou, Almighty, Master of the Universe, who chose us among all nations to be tortured day and night, to watch as our fathers, our mothers, our brothers end up in the furnaces?”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Night (1960)

Death, God, Children, Tree

“I could not find the way to God;
There were too many flaming suns
For signposts, and the fearful road
Led over wastes where millions
Of tangled comets hissed and burned—
I was bewildered and I turned.”

Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863–1944) British writer and literary critic

Poem The White Moth http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-white-moth/

God, Fear, Way, Sun

“You can tell
By the laugh in the dark
at the sound of the bell
You can tell
It's the nucleus burning
inside of the cell…”

Aimee Mann (1960) American indie rock singer-songwriter (born 1960)

"Milwaukee" · YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqSYzOXkthg Song lyrics, The Both (2014)

“Often Burne found himself saying, “I don’t think you would make a very good soldier,” and with grating predictability he heard that he wouldn’t make a very good pacifist.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: The Wine of Violence (1981), Chapter 16 (p. 188)

Thinking

“The statue of Freedom has not been cast yet, the furnace is hot, we can all still burn our fingers.”

Georg Büchner Danton's Death

Act I.
Dantons Tod (Danton's Death) (1835)

Freedom

“I could not believe what I was seeing: everywhere there were whale bones. Thousands of them stacked on top of each other. They rose from the seabed almost to the surface of the water. There were big bones. I could make out many of them: rib bones, jaw bones, vertebrae. In some places they were piled so high that, when I took a stroke, my hands touched them. I thought of all the beautiful whales I’d seen around the coast of South Africa and Norway that add so much to the area. How many whales were hunted and brought to this island before having their carcasses burned for oil and their bones dumped in this way? It disgusted me to such an extent that I considered stopping the swim to move it elsewhere, but I decided I had to press on.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

p 233, describing his swim at Deception Island, Antarctica (2005)
Achieving The Impossible (2010)

Beauty, Way, Water

“A bunch of bong-smoking, America-bashing, flag-burning, yoga-posing, incense-burning, dolphin-saving, salmon-eating hypocrites. These are the sensitive, liberal people who are always yelling about people's freedom of speech and expression, unless you happen to say something that pisses them off.”

Richard Jeni (1957–2007) American comedian

On the left wing
A Big, Steaming Pile Of Me

People, Freedom

“Even when, after centuries of license, the Church reformed its discipline, and, to prove it, burned Giordano Bruno in 1600, besides condemning Galileo in 1630 — as science goes on repeating to us every day — it condemned anarchists, not atheists. None of the astronomers were irreligious men; all of them made a point of magnifying God through his works; a form of science which did their religion no credit. Neither Galileo nor Kepler, neither Spinoza nor Descartes, neither Leibnitz nor Newton, any more than Constantine the Great — if so much — doubted Unity. The utmost range of their heresies reached only its personality.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Men, God, Religion, Science

“Death is an angel with two faces:
To us he turns
A face of terror, blighting all things fair;
The other burns
With glory of the stars, and love is there.”

Theodore Chickering Williams (1855–1915) American hymnwriter

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

Love, Death, Angels, Star

“When last comes to last,
I have little power:
I am merely an urn. I hold the bone-sap of myself,
and watch the marrow burn.
When last comes to last,
I have little strength:
I am only a tool. I work its work; and in its hands
I am the fool.
When last comes to last,
I have little life.
I am simply a deed: an action done while courage holds:
a seed.”

Stephen R. Donaldson book The Power that Preserves

Healer, The Power that Preserves, the third book of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever

Life, Fools, Courage

“The pavement slabs burn loose beneath my feet,
A chafing savage, down the decent street;
And passion rends my vitals as I pass,
Where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass.”

Claude McKay (1889–1948) Jamaican American writer, poet

The White House, l. 5-8

Passion

“My yearning is my cup, my burning thirst is my drink, and my solitude is my intoxication; I do not and shall not quench my thirst. But in this burning that is never extinguished is a joy that never wanes.”

Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese artist, poet, and writer

The Vision: Reflections on the Way of the Soul (1994)

Drink, Solitude, Joy

“The knight raises both eyebrows, like someone by Burne-Jones who's just trodden on something sharp. 'I am Prince Boamund, eldest son of King -'
'Boamund?'
'That's right,' says the knight, 'Boamund, eldest son of -'
'How do you spell that?'
Boamund looks worried. Where he comes from you can take advanced falconry, or you can take spelling; not both. Guess which one he opted for.”

Tom Holt (1961) British writer

c. 1
Grailblazers (1994)

“When we all got back to camp, our General communicated by heliograph through a distant mountain top with Sir valley and lay it waste with fire and sword in vengeance. This accordingly we did, but with great precautions. We proceeded systematically, village by village, and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the great shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation. So long as the villages were in the plain, this was quite easy. The tribesmen sat on the mountains and sullen watched the destruction of their homes and means of livelihood. When however we had to attack the villas on the sides of the mountains they resisted fiercely, and we lost for every village two or three British officers and fifteen or twenty native soldiers. Whether it was worth it, I cannot tell. At any rate, at the end of a fortnight the valley was a desert, and honour was satisfied.”

Winston S. Churchill book My Early Life

My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930)
Source: https://books.google.com/books?id=ooFGl74WbXsC&pg=PT149

Home, Mountain, Communication, Tree

“Standing on my watch-tower I am commanded, if I see aught of evil coming, to give warning. I solemnly declare that I do discern evil approaching; I see a storm collecting in the heavens; I discover the commotion of the troubled elements; I hear the roar of a distant wind — heaven and earth seem mingled in the conflict — and I cry to those for whom I watch, "A storm! A storm! Get you into the ark or you are swept away. "Oh! what is it I see? I see a world convulsed and falling to ruins — the sea burning like oil — nations rising from under ground — the sun falling — the damned in chains before the bar, and some of my poor hearers among them! I see them cast from the battlements of the judgment scene. My God! the eternal pit has closed upon them forever!”

Edward Dorr Griffin (1770–1837) American academic administrator

Sermons, vol. II (1839), sermon XXXIX: "The Watchman".

God, World, Distant, Evil

“An Alma girl! oh shame, deep shame,
To Brahma's race and Brahma's name!
Unmarked, unpitied, she turned aside,
For a moment her bursting tears to hide.
None thought of the Bayadere, till the fire
Blazed redly and fiercely the funeral pyre,
Then like a thought she darted by,
And sprang on the burning pile to die!”

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

The Bayadere from The London Literary Gazette (30th August, 6th and 13th September 1823)
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Girl, Tear

“Love is too pure a light to burn long among the noisome gases that we breathe, but before it is choked out we may use it as a torch to ignite the cozy fire of affection.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Love, Light

“A long time ago they brought me here eastward over the heath, along with one Jón Þeófílusson from the Westfjörds, who was burned after the devil testified against him. And I've got one thing to say about that: a ladies' man like him, who could sit up in the gables an entire night holding on to a Blusterer while his girl was in bed with another man, didn't deserve any better, and that's why I told him so many times in the black pit, 'You'll definitely be burned.'”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Jón Hreggviðsson
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part II: The Fair Maiden

Girl, Time, Night

“The wealthiest have garnered the vast majority of wealth and burned the vast majority of carbon at the expense of the lives and the health of the poor.”

Laurie Zoloth (1950) American ethicist

"Interrupting Your Life: An Ethics for the Coming Storm" (2014)

Health, Wealth

“Oh, you don't wanna mess with the R-I-double-A
They'll sue you if you burn that CD-R
It doesn't matter if you're a grandma, or a seven-year-old girl
They'll treat you like the evil, hard-bitten, criminal scum you are”

"Weird Al" Yankovic (1959) American singer-songwriter, music producer, accordionist, actor, comedian, writer, satirist, and parodist

"Don't Download This Song", Straight Outta Lynwood (2006).
Song lyrics

Girl, Evil, Grandma

“The Work is merely four questions; it's not even a thing. It has no motive, no strings. It's nothing without your answers. These four questions will join any program you've got and enhance it. Any religion you have - they'll enhance it. If you have no religion, they will bring you joy. And they'll burn up anything that isn't true for you. They'll burn through to the reality that has always been waiting.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)

Religion, Motivation, Question, Reality

“There is no remedy, but you must either turn or burn.”

Joseph Alleine (1634–1668) Pastor, author

Source: An Alarm to the Unconverted aka A Sure Guide to Heaven (first published 1671), P. 65.

“Dancing with the wind: the fire burns, the water drowns.”

Travis Meeks (1979) American musician

Dancing with the wind (Red - 2003).
Lyrics

Water, Dance

“Black life expectancy is much lower than white and they do their best to kill us before we are even born. We are burned alive in fire-trap tenements. Our brothers and sisters OD daily from heroin and methadone. Our babies die from lead poisoning. Millions of Black people have died as a result of indecent medical care. This is murder. But they have got the gall to call us murderers.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

To My People (July 4, 1973)

Life, People, Sister, Baby

“Search for the high austere and lonely way
The Spirit moves in through eternities.
Ah, in the soul what memories arise!
And with what yearning inexpressible,
Rising from long forgetfulness I turn
To Thee, invisible, unrumoured, still:
White for Thy whiteness all desires burn.
Ah, with what longing once again I turn!”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Way, Soul, Search, Memory

“The egotism of wisdom: to burn all that is pettily, painfully, stupidly selfish in the fire of love of spiritual vision and freedom.”

Vilhelm Ekelund (1880–1949) Swedish poet

Source: The Second Light (1986), p. 14

Love, Wisdom, Freedom, Selfishness

“Mahmood having reached Tahnesur before the Hindoos had time to take measures for its defence, the city was plundered, the idols broken, and the idol Jugsom was sent to Ghizny to be trodden under foot…Mahmood having refreshed his troops, and understanding that at some distance stood the rich city of Mutra [Mathura], consecrated to Krishn-Vasdew, whom the Hindoos venerate as an emanation of God, directed his march thither and entering it with little opposition from the troops of the Raja of Delhy, to whom it belonged, gave it up to plunder. He broke down or burned all the idols, and amassed a vast quantity of gold and silver, of which the idols were mostly composed. He would have destroyed the temples also, but he found the labour would have been excessive; while some say that he was averted from his purpose by their admirable beauty. He certainly extravagantly extolled the magnificence of the buildings and city in a letter to the governor of Ghizny, in which the following passage occurs: "There are here a thousand edifices as firm as the faith of the faithful; most of them of marble, besides innumerable temples; nor is it likely that this city has attained its present condition but at the expense of many millions of deenars, nor could such another be constructed under a period of two centuries."…The King tarried in Mutra 20 days; in which time the city suffered greatly from fire, beside the damage it sustained by being pillaged. At length he continued his march along the course of a stream on whose banks were seven strong fortifications, all of which fell in succession: there were also discovered some very ancient temples, which, according to the Hindoos, had existed for 4000 years. Having sacked these temples and forts, the troops were led against the fort of Munj…The King, on his return, ordered a magnificent mosque to be built of marble and granite, of such beauty as struck every beholder with astonishment, and furnished it with rich carpets, and with candelabras and other ornaments of silver and gold. This mosque was universally known by the name of the Celestial Bride. In its neighbourhood the King founded an university, supplied with a vast collection of curious books in various languages. It contained also a museum of natural curiosities. For the maintenance of this establishment he appropriated a large sum of money, besides a sufficient fund for the maintenance of the students, and proper persons to instruct youth in the arts and sciences…The King, in the year AH 410 (AD 1019), caused an account of his exploits to be written and sent to the Caliph, who ordered it to be read to the people of Bagdad, making a great festival upon the occasion, expressive of his joy at the propagation of the faith.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Tarikh-i-Firishta, translated by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, first published in 1829, New Delhi Reprint 1981, Vol. I, pp. 27-37.
Quotes from Muslim medieval histories

Money, God, People, Books

“Each time I dip a living creature into the bath of burning pain, I say: 'This time I will burn out all the animal; this time I will make a rational creature of my own!' After all, what is ten years? Men have been a hundred thousand in the making.”

H. G. Wells book The Island of Doctor Moreau

Source: The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), Ch. 14: Doctor Moreau Explains

Men, Pain, Time, Animals

“All my life I have, more of less consciously, sought an alternative way of life to his, one which is purer, one which is more intense and pays less regard to others, which is more exacting, which burns more dangerously, which gives one everything except a flabby happiness.”

Stig Dagerman book A Burnt Child

Source: A Burnt Child (1948), p. 200

Life, Happiness, Way

““I haven’t changed my mind, if that’s what you’re getting at,” he said at length. The stench and crackle of burning boats was vivid to him.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

continuity (3) “After One Decade”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Change

“Rather than go to a demonstration to burn an effigy of the author Salman Rushdie, I would have hoped that it'd be the real thing.”

Cat Stevens (1948) British singer-songwriter

As quoted in "Cat Stevens Gives Support To Call for Death of Rushdie," by Craig R. Whitney, in The New York Times (23 May 1989), p. C18 http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/04/18/specials/rushdie-cat.html

Hope

“At dusk they halted and built a fire and roasted the deer. The night was much enclosed about them and there were no stars. To the north they could see other fires that burned red and sullen along the invisible ridges. They ate and moved on, leaving the fire on the ground behind them, and as they rode up into the mountains this fire seemed to become altered of its location, now here, now there, drawing away, or shifting unaccountably along the flank of their movement. Like some ignis fatuus belated upon the road behind them which all could see and of which none spoke. For this will to deceive that is in things luminous may manifest itself likewise in retrospect and so by sleight of some fixed part of a journey already accomplished may also post men to fraudulent destinies.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

Men, Mountain, Star, Parting

“Where there is desire,
There is gonna be a flame.
Where there is a flame,
Someone’s bound to get burned.
But just because it burns
Doesn’t mean you’re gonna die.
You’ve gotta get up and try, try, try.”

Pink (singer) (1979) American singer-songwriter

Try, written by Michael Busbee and Ben West
Song lyrics, The Truth About Love (2012)

“From the time Muslims started arriving, around 632 AD, the history of India becomes a long, monotonous series of murders, massacres, spoliations, and destructions. It is, as usual, in the name of 'a holy war' of their faith, of their sole God, that the barbarians have destroyed civilizations, wiped out entire races. Mahmoud Ghazni was an early example of Muslim ruthlessness, burning in 1018 of the temples of Mathura, razing Kanauj to the ground and destroying the famous temple of Somnath, sacred to all Hindus. His successors were as ruthless as Ghazni: 103 temples in the holy city of Benaras were razed to the ground, its marvelous temples destroyed, its magnificent palaces wrecked.”

Alain Daniélou (1907–1994) French historian, musicologist, Indologist and expert on Shaivite Hinduism

Alain Danielou: Histoire de l' Inde

God, War, Faith, History

“I gave to you, now, you give to me
I'd like to know what you learned.
The sky is blue and so is the sea
What is the color, when black is burned?”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

I Am a Child, from Last Time Around (1968)
Song lyrics, With Buffalo Springfield

Color, Learning, Sea

“When she got to an angle of about 60 degrees, there was a sullen sort of rumbling roar as her massive boilers all left their beds and went crashing down through the bulkheads and everything that stood in their way.Up to that moment, she had stood out as clear as clear with her rows of electric lights all burning. When the boilers broke away, she was, of course, plunged into absolute darkness though her huge black outline was still perfectly distinct up against the stars and sky.Slowly she reared up on end till, at last, she was absolutely perpendicular. Then quite quietly, but quicker and quicker, she seemed just to slide away under the surface and disappear.As she vanished, everyone around me on the upturned boat, as though they could hardly believe it, just said, "She's gone."”

Charles Lightoller (1874–1952) British sailor

Interview with the BBC, 1936

Star, Light

“You have by this time surely seen with your own eyes what your iron ships, with which you think you can accomplish wonders and on which you boast so much, can do against my junks; how one of them has been burned by one of my junks and has disappeared in smoke; how the others would have met with the same doom had they not taken to flight and gone out to sea.”

Koxinga (1624–1662) Chinese military leader

Formosa under the Dutch: described from contemporary records, with explanatory notes and a bibliography of the island, 1903, William Campbell, Kegan Paul, 424, Dec. 20 2011 http://books.google.com/books?id=OpdMq-YJoeoC&pg=PA423&dq=koxinga+formosa+always+belonged+to+china&hl=en&ei=vsjiTergDM3TgAekqbzKBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=same%20doom%20had%20they%20not%20taken%20to%20flight%20and%20gone%20out%20to%20sea.&f=false, Original from the University of Michigan(LONDON : KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO. LTD DRYDEN HOUSE, 43 GERRARD STREET, SOHO MDCCCCIII Edinburgh : T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty)

Thinking, Time, Sea

“The mysterious name of God, revealed from the burning bush, a name which separates this God from all other divinities with their many names and simply asserts being, "I am", already presents a challenge to the notion of myth, to which Socrates' attempt to vanquish and transcend myth stands in close analogy. Within the Old Testament, the process which started at the burning bush came to new maturity at the time of the Exile, when the God of Israel, an Israel now deprived of its land and worship, was proclaimed as the God of heaven and earth and described in a simple formula which echoes the words uttered at the burning bush: "I am". This new understanding of God is accompanied by a kind of enlightenment, which finds stark expression in the mockery of gods who are merely the work of human hands (cf. Ps 115). Thus, despite the bitter conflict with those Hellenistic rulers who sought to accommodate it forcibly to the customs and idolatrous cult of the Greeks, biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in a mutual enrichment evident especially in the later wisdom literature. Today we know that the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria - the Septuagint - is more than a simple (and in that sense really less than satisfactory) translation of the Hebrew text: it is an independent textual witness and a distinct and important step in the history of revelation, one which brought about this encounter in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity. A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act "with logos" is contrary to God's nature.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2006, Faith, Reason and the University — Memories and Reflections (2006)

Wisdom, God, Faith, Religion

“A religious spirit animates the infancy of our literature, and must continue to gloe in its maturity. The public taste calls for this quality, and would relish no work in which it might be supplanted by a principle of infidelity. Our best authors have written under the influence of Christian feeling; but had they been destitute of this sentiment, they would have found it necessary to accommodate themselves to the opinions of the people, and follow Christian precedents. The beneficent influence of religion on literature, is like that of our evening sun, when it awakens in the clouds those beautiful and burning tints, which clothe the firmament in gold and purple. It constitutes the heart of learning - the great source of its moral power. Religion addresses itself to the highest and holiest of our sentiments - benevolence and veneration, and their excitement stirs up the imagination, strengthens the undeerstanding, and purifies the taste. Thus, both in the mind of the author and the reader, Christianity and literature act and react on each other, with the effect of elevating both, and carrying the human character to the highest perfection which it is destined to reach. Learning should be proud of this companionship, and exert all her wisdom to render it perpetual.”

Daniel Drake (1785–1852) American physician and writer

Daniel Drake (1834). Discourse on the History, Character, and Prospects of the West: Delivered to the Union Literary Society of Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, at Their Ninth Anniversary, September 23, 1834. Truman and Smith. p. 31

Wisdom, People, Religion, Beauty