Quotes about fire (2443 quotes, page 16)

“Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

2005, The World without Zionism, 2005
Source: CNN http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/10/26/ahmadinejad/index.html

“There is a shy client who uses invisible ink on Nagiko's body to hide his obvious talent. The woman attempts to develop the invisible ink by bathing in warm water, by standing as close as she dare to a hot fire, by washing her body in the juice of onion-skins until the onions make her weep and her tears prove to be the necessary solvent to reveal the writing.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Section J of 26 Facts About Flesh and Ink
The Pillow Book

Tear , Water

“And sun and moon and starry fires and earth and air and sea
Are creatures from the deep let loose who pause in ecstasy,
Or wing their wild and heavenly way until again they find
The ancient deep and fade therein, enraptured, bright and blind.”

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

By Still Waters (1906)

Way , Sun , Sea

“You have all Manner of News there: You have a good Fire, which you may sit by as long as you please: You have a Dish of Coffee; you meet your Friends for the Transaction of Business, and all for a Penny, if you don't care to spend more.”

Maximilien Misson (1650–1722) writer

speaking of London coffeehouses in the late 1600s
[Drummond, J.C., Wilbraham, Anne, The Englishman's food: a history of five centuries of English diet., 1957, Cape, London, 978-0224601689, 116, Rev. ed.] This source cites Misson; citation needed for original statement.

Coffee , Business

“After a volcano has erupted our landscape is filled with silence. A moment ago it was on fire, now the rapid ashes are warming our feet. a moment ago it was dazzlingly light, now it is blessed twilight, kind to our eyes. All is at rest. The volcano is asleep, even our poor nerves are asleep. We are not happy, but we have a momentary peace. A moment ago we have seen the desert of our life in all its appalling vastness, now we see that the desert is in flower. The oases are few are afar between, but they do exist; we know that the desert is vast, but we also know that in the biggest deserts are the most oases. To gain this knowledge we must pay dearly, and an eruption is the price; it is high; but there is no lower one. That is why we should bless the volcanoes, thank them because their glare is so strong and their first so hot. Thank them for having dazzled us, for only then do we acquired our full sight; thank them, too, for having burnt us, for only as burnt children can we warm each other.But moments of peace are short. All other moments are much longer, and to know this is also wisdom. But because they are so short we must life in those moments as thought it were only then we lived. They knew this too.”

Stig Dagerman book A Burnt Child

Source: A Burnt Child (1948), p. 263

Life , Wisdom , Children , Peace

“Cause I never thought I'd lose.
I only thought I'd win.
I never dreamed I'd feel
This fire beneath my skin.
I can't believe you love me.
I never thought you'd come.
I guess I misjudged love
Between a father and his son.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

The Last Song
Song lyrics, The One (1992)

Love , Dreams , Feeling

“Mark: Yeah, I'm sorry to say, I'm agreeing with Dicko again. There's a mentor of mine who used to say to me, you've got to have a body of fire, mind of ice so that you're mind is going through all of those strange timings and knowing where it's got to go but outwardly you just seem to be going and being released, being free. We see too much of the work with you on that song. We're seeing too much of it. We're seeing too much of the worry and the thinking and not enough of the release. You saw too much of it to me but you know, once again your risk taking is fantastic. I really admire you for that.”

Hayley Jensen (1983) Australian singer

Australian Idol, Final Performances, Final 8

Thinking , Time

“I don't approve of open fires. You can't think, or talk or even make love in front of a fireplace. All you can do is stare at it.”

Rex Stout (1886–1975) American writer

Life, "Author Rex Stout vs. the F.B.I."

Love , Making love , Thinking

“I began to lose heart. The appalling desert of darkness and barren fire, the huge emptiness so sparsely pricked with scintillations, the colossal futility of the whole universe, hideously oppressed me.”

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter II: Interstellar Travel (p. 20)

Universe , Heart

“My disposals get taken away in the back of a taxi! (referring to the task in week 6, which centred around waste disposal and where Edna eventually fired).”

Alan Sugar (1947) British business magnate, media personality, and political advisor

The Apprentice, Series 7

“From a high tower I have looked to the four points of the horizon.
I will go and lift up the dead on the battlefield.
I will stretch out their contorted arms and legs.
I will close their cold eyelids on their fixed pupils.
I cannot bear to see eyes if I do not receive any words.
Invisible life entrusts us with sad tasks,
I look back to my years, and the pains I have suffered
are not enough.
Soon there will be clashings of men and horrible clanging sounds.
And people hunted, pushed, wrenched.
Also I will find myself in the midst of the madness of war.
I will open pure words, orders of thought, fraternal acts.
In the meantime they will bring forward the man
condemned to death and they will tell him to dig his own grave.
He will look up at the still hills and the sky.
Some distant sounds of life will still reach him.
He will not have time to think back to his many days –
to the voices of his dear people, and the close relationships.
Not even will he be able to look ahead,
to come to terms with what is happening now.
And when the shots will be fired, with the flash a cry will go up
The human cry which is too late, and it’s lost.
To free, to free as soon as possible.
They will ask me: why don’t you come to fight with us?
They will not understand, they will carry on with the war.
I loved to be with other people, as the light of the day.
It is so good to work together, in trust, in mutual help.
To lose myself in the crowd in modest clothes.
In a circle of equals to listen and to speak.
And now nobody wants to listen, and yet they are all people.
I have become a stranger, the others do not know that I am there.
The abrupt reply, the friend who looks the other way.
It would be easy to join them in earnest action.
Forgetting the deeper unity, beyond the war?
I remain here, isolated from everybody,
working for a deeper togetherness.
Everything was only a trial, reality must yet begin.
Every being was partaking of another reality yet he did not know.
But now this reality is becoming clear,
and it matters only what opens us to it.”

Aldo Capitini (1899–1968) Italian philosopher and political activist

Love , Life , Death , Men

“Very few of the Christians recanted, although an altar with a fire burning on it was generally kept in the arena for their convenience. All a prisoner had to do was scatter a pinch of incense on the flame and he was given a Certificate of Sacrifice and turned free.
It was also carefully explained to him that he was not worshiping the emperor; merely acknowledging the divine character of the emperor as head of the Roman state. Still, almost no Christians availed themselves of the chance to escape.”

Daniel P. Mannix (1911–1997) animal collector and author

About early Christians in the Arena. Those about to Die (1958), Chapter 14

Chance

“Historically, Garton Ash belongs to the last levy of the Cold War, a cohort fired by an uncomplicated anti-Communism. His staunchness made him a natural candidate for recruitment to MI6, which propositioned him early on, as it had Ascherson in his time.”

Perry Anderson (1938) British historian

Source: Spectrum: From Right to Left in the World of Ideas (2005), Ch 3. "Dreams of Central Europe, Timothy Garton Ash" (1999), p. 65

War , Communication , Nature , Time

“A few of them fire their pieces. At first they do so almost timidly, as if fearing a rebuke for wasting ammunition when they do not see the enemy. Others do nothing. Some fail to act mainly because they are puzzled what to do and their leaders do not tell them; others are wholly unnerved and can neither think nor move in sensible relation to the situation.”

S.L.A. Marshall (1900–1977) United States Army general and Military historian

Combat Isolation. p. 48.
Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command (1947)

Fear , Thinking

“I am sitting on the sofa.
By the fire and staying in.
Me head is free of comfort
And me nose is free of skin
Me friends have run for cover,
They have left me pale and sick
With me pockets full of tissues
And me nostrils full of Vick.”

Pam Ayres (1947) English poet, songwriter and presenter of radio and television programmes

Oh No, I've Got A Cold

“Richard’s ex-girlfriends were long gone, but their voices followed him all the time and spoke to him, like Muses or Furies. It was like having seven superegos arranged in a firing squad before a single beleaguered id, making sure he didn’t enjoy that last cigarette.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Thanksgiving (prologue)
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

Time

“I had killed over twenty before the German major said he would make them give up. I covered him with my automatic and told him if he didn't make them stop firing I would take off his head next. And he knew I meant it. He told me if I didn't kill him, and if I stopped shooting the others in the trench, he would make them surrender.
He blew a little whistle and they came down and began to gather around and throw down their guns and belts. All but one of them came off the hill with their hands up, and just before that one got to me he threw a little hand grenade which burst in the air in front of me.
I had to touch him off. The rest surrendered without any more trouble. There were nearly 100 of them.”

Alvin C. York (1887–1964) United States Army Medal of Honor recipient

Account of 8 October 1918.
Diary of Alvin York

“As a piece of rope, when burnt, retains its form, but cannot serve to bind, so is the ego which is burnt by the fire of supreme Knowledge.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 132

Knowledge

“The golden toad was the first documented victim of global warming. We had killed it with our profligate use of coal-fired electricity and our oversize cars just as surely as if we had flattened its forest with bulldozers. It was as if, having experienced it, we did not recognize what happiness was.”

Tim Flannery book The Weather Makers

Source: The Weather Makers (2005), Chapter 12 (p. 119)

Cars , Happiness

“What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open-wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and blue-birds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last Spring. In Summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round.”

Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907) American poet, novelist, editor

Miss Mehitabel's Son; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Spring , Bird , Tree , Singing

“When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back,
Three from the circle, three from the track;
Wood, bronze, iron; water, fire, stone;
Five will return, and one go alone.”

Susan Cooper (1935) English fantasy writer

Source: The Dark Is Rising (1965-1977), The Dark Is Rising (1973), Chapter 3 “The Sign-Seeker” (p. 45)

Water

“The first time I fired up a car, felt the engine shudder and the wheel come to life in my hands, I was hooked. It was a feeling I can't describe. I still get it every time I get into a race car.”

Mario Andretti (1940) Italian-American racing driver

[Mario Andretti - Began Racing In Italy, sports.jrank.org, http://sports.jrank.org/pages/146/Andretti-Mario-Began-Racing-in-Italy.html, 2007-04-12].
1990s

Life , Cars , Feeling , Time

“We call that fire of the black thunder-cloud "electricity," and lecture learnedly about it, and grind the like of it out of glass and silk: but what is it? What made it? Whence comes it? Whither goes it? Science has done much for us; but it is a poor science that would hide from us the great deep sacred infinitude of Nescience, whither we can never penetrate, on which all science swims as a mere superficial film. This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

World , Thinking , Science

“Yosemite Park is a place of rest, a refuge from the roar and dust and weary, nervous, wasting work of the lowlands, in which one gains the advantages of both solitude and society. Nowhere will you find more company of a soothing peace-be-still kind. Your animal fellow beings, so seldom regarded in civilization, and every rock-brow and mountain, stream, and lake, and every plant soon come to be regarded as brothers; even one learns to like the storms and clouds and tireless winds. This one noble park is big enough and rich enough for a whole life of study and aesthetic enjoyment. It is good for everybody, no matter how benumbed with care, encrusted with a mail of business habits like a tree with bark. None can escape its charms. Its natural beauty cleans and warms like a fire, and you will be willing to stay forever in one place like a tree.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

1895, page 350
John of the Mountains, 1938

Life , Peace , Beauty , Mountain

“Call us not weeds, we are flowers of the Sea,
For lovely and bright and gay tinted are we,
And quite independent of sun's fire or showers-
Then call us not weeds! We are ocean's bright flowers,
Not nursed like the plants of a summer parterre,
Where gales are but sighs of an evening air,
Our exquisite, fragile and delicate forms
Are nursed by the Ocean and rocked by the Storms.”

Petar Beron

Historia naturalis bulgarica 4: 10 - 15.

Love , Flowers , Sun , Summer

“And new philosophy calls all in doubt,
The element of fire is quite put out;
The sun is lost, and the earth, and no man's wit,
Can well direct him where to look for it.
And freely men confess that this world's spent,
When in the planets, and the firmament
They seek so many new; then see that this
Is crumbled out again to his atomies.
'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone;
All just supply, and all relation:
Prince, subject, Father, Son, are things forgot.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

An Anatomy of the World, The First Anniversary

Men , World , Sun

“A wife who keeps the home warm, watches expenses, knows what is on your mind and acts accordingly is everything. Who cares if the heavens catch fire!”

Sarvajna Kannada poet, pragmatist and philosopher

Tripadis

Home

“Man is the animal who weeps and laughs — and writes. If the first Prometheus brought fire from heaven in a fennel-stalk, the last will take it back — in a book.”

John Cowper Powys (1872–1963) British writer, lecturer and philosopher

The Pleasures of Literature (1938), p. 17

Books , Animals

“England is a cesspit. England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence. And yet England allows it. Remember, that country was the breeding ground for communism, too. Karl Marx did all his work in libraries there…. We should assemble all those who are pure and cannot abide other faiths, put them all in rockets, and fire them into space….. A virus has attacked the world of sense and sensibility, and it has spread to Nigeria…. The assumption of power over life and death then passed to every single inconsequential Muslim in the world-as if someone had given them a new stature…Al Qaeda is the descendent of this phenomenon. The proselytization of Islam became vigorous after this. People went to Saudi Arabia. Madrassas were established everywhere.”

Wole Soyinka (1934) Nigerian writer

Wole Soyinka: Duncan Gardham - Mutallab: Again Soyinka Blames UK For Breeding Terrorists http://thewillnigeria.com/world/3592-Mutallab-Again-Soyinka-Blames-For-Breeding-Terrorists.html - TheWill, February 2, 2010</ref><ref>James Meikle - England is 'cesspit' breeding Islamists, says Soyinka http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/02/soyinka-england-cesspit-islamists - The Guardian, February 2, 2010

Life , Death , People , World

“You'd be so nice to come home to
You'd be so nice by the fire…”

Cole Porter (1891–1964) American composer and songwriter

"You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To"
Something To Shout About (1943)

Home

“To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the paredón”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

execution wall
As quoted in The Cuban Revolution : Years of Promise (2005) by Teo A. Babun and Victor Andres Triay, p. 57, citing "Che Guevara: Assassin and Bumbler" by Humberto Fontova from Mensnewsdaily.com, 2 March 2004; Fontava does not identify a source for Guevara's statement.
Disputed

Men , Hate , Motivation

“I never set fire to a piano. I'd like to have got away with it, though. I pushed a couple of them in the river. They wasn't any good.”

Jerry Lee Lewis (1935) American singer-songwriter and pianist

As quoted in Esquire (January 2010), p. 89

“We threaten to rain fire upon North Korea and Iran, yet we quail before an elderly, impoverished and decrepit Russia. How diminished we are as a civilization.”

Daniel Hannan (1971) British politician

2010s, Russian aggression (2018)

“Wong Shun Leung said that when you punch the head the brain hits the side of the skull. If the brain is against the side of the skull and a second hit follows, then damage and a knockout results because there is no cushioning possible. This is why Wing Chun has its rapid fire punches instead of the pull back approach.”

Wong Shun Leung (1935–1997) martial artist

Wong Shun Leung Comments on the Effect of a Punch
Punching
Source: Comments From Wong Shun Leung and Tsui Shan Ting, by Ray Van Raamsdonk http://www.springtimesong.com/wcqanda.htm

“A leading Welsh minister — and Welsh ministers are, I think, among the best preachers — was invited to preach an anniversary sermon before one of the great societies in London. Naturally anxious to disregard no propriety, he consulted the proper authority, the secretary. "Should I read my sermon?" "Oh, it is no matter, only bring some of your Welsh fire with you." " But you cannot, my dear sir, carry fire on paper."”

John Hall (1829–1898) Presbyterian pastor from Northern Ireland in New York, died 1898

"No, that is true; but you may use the paper to kindle the fire."
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 483.

Nature , Thinking , Reading

“Haritha ibn Wahb said, "I heard the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, say, 'Shall I tell you about the people of the Fire? All those who are coarse, domineering, and arrogant.'"”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 4, hadith number 614
Sunni Hadith

People , Peace

“.. that the Army is using defoliants in Honduras to create fire-free zones. This charge has been strongly denied by the Pentagon. Asked to comment just prior to leaving for Hawaii, where he will convalesce for the next two or three weeks, Prexy said, quote, Well, if you can’t see them you can’t shoot them. End quote. Support has been growing for a bill which Senator Richard Howell will introduce at the earliest opportunity, forbidding the issue of a passport to any male between sixteen and sixty not in possession of a valid discharge certificate or medical exemption. Welcoming the proposal, a Pentagon spokesman today admitted that of the last class called for the draft more than one in three failed to report. Your steaks are going to cost you more. This warning was today issued by the Department of Agriculture. The price of animal fodder has quote taken off like a rocket unquote, following the mysterious...”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

.
June “IF IT MOVES, SHOOT IT”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Quotes , Support , Animals

“1905
Tsar Nicholas II made inept efforts to mollify his angry people by granting basic liberties and allowing a parliament (Duma), which he kept dissolving. Meanwhile he ruthlessly suppressed the people’s rising. Royal troops fired ona peaceful march of workers in St. Petersburg on January 9, known as Bloody Sunday. Anti-Jewish pogroms were rampant. The Russian edition, published by Dr. Nilus, of the “Protocols of Zion” was widely circulated. Monarchists frequently read it aloud to illiterate peasants.
1914
The start of World War I led to Russian military defeats. A failing economy brought about terrible civilian suffering. Loyalists openly spoke about a “Jewish plot”.
Food riots, strikes, and the tsar’s panicky dissolution of the Fourth Duma exploded into revolution. By November, the Bolsheviks (the revolutionary faction of the former Social Democratic workers’ party) had seized control of the government. Royalist Russians began a civil warand were defeated. Tsar Nicholas II abdicated and was executed, along with his family, by Bolsheviks in 1918.
Russian aristocrats fled Russia and dispersed throughout Europe, the Far East, and the Middle East. There they settled as expatriates. Most had little work experience. In order to earn money, they frequently sold valuables. Some of these items provided information on the Russian use of anti-Semitic literature.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Money , War , People , World

“The other, his brow heavy with threats, had long been muttering and smouldering with hidden fire.”
Talibus orantem vultu gravis ille minaci iamdudum premit et furiis ignescit opertis.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book V, Lines 519–520

“Water were your limbs
And the fire was your hair
And then the moon caught your eye,
and you rose through the air.
Well if you've seen true light,
then this is my prayer:
Will you call me
When you get there?”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

Cosmia
Ys (2006)

Light , Water

“It may be objected that a man cannot subsist in the sun; but does it follow from thence, that God cannot or has not constituted a nature peculiar to that fiery region, and caused it to be as natural and necessary for it to suck in and breathe out flames of fire, as it is for us to do the like in air.”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

Source: Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784), Ch. II Section III - Of The Eternity and Infinitude of Divine Providence

God , Nature , Sun

“Nothung, Nothung, envious sword — what is the sword Nothung, but that unbreakable legacy which Siegfried, as the only son of the father, re-tempers in the fire of youth. What else, but the symbol of the primal-sword (primal-Phallus!) The primal-father has stuck this primal-sword into the trunk of the primal-tree, and whoever pulls out this sword wins a woman with it — as bride and sister! These are no symbols of sexual-abstinence!”

Theodor Reuss (1855–1923) German singer

II. Main Part : The Unveiling of the Secret.
Parsifal and the Secret of the Graal Unveiled (1914)

Youth , Sister , Tree

“Primates, some birds, and humans have mirror neurons… that fire both when performing an action and when observing someone else performing… We've found mirror neurons in Broca's area, a part… involved in speaking, and learning to speak. …our mirror neurons may be firing when we see or hear musicians perform … in preparation for being able to mirror or echo them back as part of a signaling system.”

Daniel Levitin (1957) American psychologist

This is Your Brain on Music (2006)

Bird , Learning , Parting

“I squint down at my feet and see that my metal plate is surrounded by blue waves that lap up over my boots. Slowly I raise my eyes and take in the water spreading out in every direction.
I can only form one clear thought.
This is no place for a girl on fire.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Katniss, p. 263
The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire (2009)

Girl , Water

“Woman: Do come along quick, there's a house on fire.
Fire Chief: A house on fire? Just a moment, lady – what's the address?
Woman: Grimshaw Street.
Fire Chief: Grimshaw Street – Grimshaw … now wait a minute, I know it as well as can be, and I just can't place it.
Woman: Oh come along, it's only just round…
Fire Chief: No, no, no – don't tell me, let me try and think of it for myself. Grimshaw St–… oh, isn't that annoying, I could walk straight to it, and I can't think of it.”

Robb Wilton (1881–1957) comedian

The Fire Chief

Thinking , Waiting , Housing

“Remember when the music
Came from wooden boxes strung with silver wire
And as we sang the words, it would set our minds on fire,
For we believed in things, and so we'd sing.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Remember When the Music
Song lyrics, Sequel (1981)

Music , Singing , Box

“Kiki-The-Demure: Once when I was little She tried to give me castor oil. I scratched and bit her so, she never tried again. Ha! She must have thought she held the devil between her knees. I squirmed, blew fire through my nostrils, multiplied my twenty claws by a hundred, my teeth by one thousand, and finally — disappeared as if by magic.
Toby-Dog: I wouldn't dare do that. You see, I love her. I love her enough to forgive her even the torture of the bath.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

Barks and Purrs

Love , Dogs , Forgiveness

“With our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

Column, March 6, 2009, "The Great Non Sequitur: The Sleight of Hand Behind Obama's Agenda" http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer030609.php3 at jewishworldreview.com.
2000s, 2009

Health , Education , Housing

“I spent a career carrying typically either an M16 or an M4 Carbine. An M4 Carbine fires a.223 caliber round which is 5.56mm at about 3000 feet per second. When it hits a human body, the effects are devastating. It’s designed for that. That’s what our soldiers ought to carry. I personally don’t think there’s any need for that kind of weaponry on the streets and particularly around the schools in America.”

Stanley A. McChrystal (1954) American general

From McChrystal's appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe program, on January 8, 2013
2013

School , Thinking , Personality

“Oh! sweet and sudden fire that springs
With but a look to light its wings;
How false to say thou needest time
The bright ascent of hope to climb;
A star thou art, that may not be
Reckoned by dull astronomy!”

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

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Hope , Art , Star , Spring

“Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must first set yourself on fire.”

Fred Shero (1925–1990) Former ice hockey player and coach

Jim
Jackson
Walking Together Forever: The Broad Street Bullies, Then and Now
2004
31 &32
Sports Publishing L.L.C.
1-58261-389-3

Graduation , Success

“In the desert I had found a freedom unattainable in civilization; a life unhampered by possessions, since everything that was not a necessity was an encumbrance. I had found, too, a comradeship inherent in the circumstances, and the belief that tranquillity was to be found there. I had learnt the satisfaction which comes from hardship and the pleasure which derives from abstinence: the contentment of a full belly; the richness of meat; the taste of clean water; the ecstasy of surrender when the craving for sleep becomes a torment; the warmth of a fire in the chill of dawn.”

Wilfred Thesiger book Arabian Sands

Source: Arabian Sands (1959), p. 22.

Life , Pleasure , Sleep , Freedom

“Popery is such a thing as cannot, but for want of a word to express it, be called a religion; nor is it to be mentioned with that civility which is otherwise decent to be used in speaking about the differences of human opinion about divine matters…There has now for divers years a design been carried on, to change the lawful government of England into an absolute tyranny, and to convert the established Protestant religion into downright Popery…If under his present Majesty we have as yet seen no more visible effects of the same spirit than the firing of London…it is not to be attributed to the good nature or better principles of that sect, but to the wisdom of his Holiness, who observes that we are not of late so dangerous Protestants as to deserve any special mark of his indignation, but that we may be made better use of to the wrecking of those that are of our religion, and that if he do not disturb us, there are those amongst ourselves that are leading us into a fair way of reconciliation with him.”

Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) English metaphysical poet and politician

An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government in England [1677] (reprinted in State Tracts: Volume I (1692), pp. 69 ff.).

Wisdom , Religion , Law , Way

“One who walks from fire to fire dies from the cold.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Voces (1943)

“Argument is conclusive… but… it does not remove doubt, so that the mind may never rest in the sure knowledge of the truth, unless it finds it by the method of experiment. For if any man who never saw fire proved by satisfactory arguments that fire burns, his hearer's mind would never be satisfied, nor would he avoid the fire until he put his hand in it that he might learn by experiment what argument taught.”

Roger Bacon (1220–1292) medieval philosopher and theologian

Cited in: Carol A. Dingle (2000) Memorable Quotations: Philosophers of Western Civilization. p. 21

Truth , Knowledge , Learning

“In one room, silently, lover looks upon lover,
And thinks the air is fire.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Lovers , Thinking

“I have been afraid of putting air in a tire ever since I saw a tractor tire blow up and throw Newt Hardbine's father over the top of the Standard Oil sign. I'm not lying. He got stuck up there. About nineteen people congregated during the time it took for Norman Strick to walk up to the Courthouse and blow the whistle for the volunteer fire department. They eventually did come with the ladder and haul him down, and he wasn't dead but lost his hearing and in many other ways was never the same afterward. They said he overfilled the tire.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Bean Trees

The Bean Trees (1988).

People , Way , Lying , Time

“Last year, initially The Scotsman newspaper — being Scottish and J. K. Rowling being Scottish — and because of the English tendency to try and tear down their idols, they kept trying to build stories which said J. K. Rowling ripped off Neil Gaiman. They kept getting in touch with me and I kept declining to play because I thought it was silly. And then The Daily Mirror in England ran an article about that mad woman who was trying to sue J. K. Rowling over having stolen muggles from her. And they finished off with a line saying [something like]: And Neil Gaiman has accused her of stealing.
Luckily I found this online and I found it the night it came out by pure coincidence and the reporter's e-mail address was at the bottom of the thing so I fired off an e-mail saying: "This is not true, I never said this. You are making this up." I got an apologetic e-mail back, but by the time I'd gotten the apologetic e-mail back it was already in The Daily Mail the following morning and it was very obvious that The Daily Mail‘s research [had] consisted of reading The Daily Mirror. And you're going: journalists are so lazy.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

On stories which implied that Harry Potter was merely a revised Timothy Hunter of Gaiman's The Books of Magic, in January magazine interview (2002) http://januarymagazine.com/profiles/gaiman.html

Tear , Time , Reading , Madness

“Wind, earthquake, fire—meteorology, seismology, physics—pass in review, as we have been reviewing the natural forces of evolution; the Lord was not in them. Afterwards, a stirring, an awakening in the organ of the brain, a voice which asks "What doest thou here?"”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Science and the Unseen World (1929)

Nature

“The British army fought against other infantry arrayed in two ranks and every man could use his musket, and if cavalry threatened they marched and wheeled into a square of four ranks, and still every man could use his musket, but the soldiers at the heart of the two French columns could never fire without hitting the men in front.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Lieutenant Richard Sharpe, p. 226
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Havoc (2003)

Men , Heart

“Then brought they a fagot kindled with fire, and layd the same downe at D. Ridleys feete. To whome Maister Latymer spake in this maner: Be of good comfort maister Ridley, and play the man: wee shall this day light such a candle by Gods grace in England, as (I trust) shall neuer be put out.”

John Foxe (1516–1587) British historian

Bk. 11, p. 1770
Acts and Monuments (1563)

God , Light

“Hell, Chuck Yeager could do it in his sleep while on fire, I'm sure.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[b1rcb7$83k$1@panix1.panix.com, 2003]
2000s

Hell , Sleep

“Hayek sees that the zero-sum vision is fired by an implacable negative energy. It is not the concrete vision of some real alternative that animates the socialist critic of the capitalist order. It is hostility toward the actual, and in particular toward those who enjoy advantages within it. Hence the belief in equality remains vague and undefined, except negatively. For it is essentially a weapon against the existing order – a way of undermining its claims to legitimacy, by discovering a victim for every form of success. The striving for equality is, in other words, based in ressentiment in Nietzsche’s sense, the state of mind that Max Scheler identified as the principal motive behind the socialist orthodoxy of his day. It is one of the major problems of modern politics, which no classical liberal could possibly solve, how to govern a society in which resentment has acquired the kind of privileged social, intellectual, and political position that we witness today.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"Hayek and conservatism", in Edward Feser (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hayek (2006)

Hostility , Way , Motivation , Problem

“"I don't believe this!" Peter said. "Why is it respectable not to know how to do things? Is it respectable to light a fire with a bar of soap?"
"That," Charmain said haughtily, "was an accident."”

Diana Wynne Jones (1934–2011) English children's fantasy writer

Source: Castle Series, House of Many Ways (2008), p. 109.

Light

“Yet in our ashen cold is fire yreken.”

Geoffrey Chaucer book The Canterbury Tales

The Reeve's Tale, l. 388
The Canterbury Tales

“2826. Provoke not even a patient Man too far; extreme Sufferance when it comes to dissolve, breaks out into the most severe Revenge; for taking Fire at last, Anger and Fury being combined into one, discharge their utmost Force at the first Blast. Irarumque omnes effundit habenas.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Latin fragment from Vergil's Aeneid, Book XII, line 499 : ‘He threw away all restraint on his anger.’
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

Revenge , Suffering , Anger

“Punk: I'm not gonna have you sit here and belittle me. Say I've lost sight? I've lost sight of things, John? The reason I say I'm gonna take that and walk out is because I don't fit a certain mold. Because I am the underdog, and that's exactly what you've lost sight of. Earlier in this ring, you mentioned great wrestlers like Eddie Guerrero and you said they used to look at you and say that the kid couldn't hang. And now you stand here and look at me as the kid that can't hang. John, I was hanging off of your gangster car, WrestleMania 22, as it rolled down in Chicago, Illinois, and I stood there in a suit looking as ridiculous as [points to Vince McMahon] that man looks right now in his suit, holding a phony Tommy gun, and I said to myself someday, I'm not gonna be standing out there watching you in the ring; I was gonna be in the ring watching you go down to CM Punk. And now here we are in your hometown of Boston. And now next week, we'll be back there in my hometown—Chicago, Illinois. And this… this is the part where I talk 'em into the building. See, you are the one that's lost sight, and I apologize for raising my voice because I'm not that guy. But when you stand here and tell me that I've lost sight, when you, the 10-time Champion who stands for hustle, loyalty and respect; who, from Boston, Massachusetts, lives and breathes these red colors, the same colors as your beloved Red Sox, who also portray themselves as the underdog, I'm sure just like the Bruins portray themselves as the underdog. Just like the Patriots think they're the underdog! Hey, how about those Celtics? Are they the underdogs too? Here's what you've lost sight of, John, and I'm really happy that your father and your wife are sitting in the front row so they can hear it!
John Cena: That's the last time I'm gonna tell you, man, ease up.
Punk: What you've lost sight of is what you are, and what you are is what you hate. You're the 10-time WWE Champion! You're the man! You, like the Red Sox, like Boston, are no longer the underdog! You're a dynasty. You are what you hate. You have become the New York Yankees! [John immediately punches Punk, who scoots out of the ring, grabs the contract, and goes up the ramp. Points respectively to Vince and John] You're Steinbrenner, and you might as well be Jeter! Mr. 3000, I'm the underdog! [John's music plays for fourteen seconds] Turn it off! Turn the music off because I have something to say, and I'm positive that everybody here wants to hear it, and everybody sitting at home has their DVRs fired up because they wanna hear it! I'm glad you just punched me in the face, John. I'm glad it went down this way because it hit me like a bolt of lightning—exactly why I no longer wanna be here, why I wanna leave. It's because I'm tired of this. I'm tired of you. I'm just tired. So ladies and gentlemen of the WWE Universe, Vince, John, Sunday night, say goodbye to the WWE Title, say goodbye to John Cena, and say goodbye to CM Punk! [Rips up the contract] I'll go be the best in the world somewhere else.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

July 11, 2011
WWE Raw

Hate , World , Music , Cars

“Let's say there were 7,000 or 8,000 people who had to die to win the war against subversion… We couldn't execute them by firing squad. Neither could we take them to court… For that reason, so as not to provoke protests inside and outside the country, the decision was reached that these people should be disappeared.”

Jorge Rafael Videla (1925–2013) Argentinian President

As quoted in anon (May 18, 2013) "Argentine 'Dirty War' leader Jorge Rafael Videla dies". ABC News.

War , People , Decision , Country

“When the necessity for shelter is great and the means for obtaining it scant, flimsy and makeshift methods of building find ready acceptance; and once introduced are hard to eradicate. Such habits, formed here in early times, still influence construction; as abundantly proved by our inordinate fire loss…”

Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) American architect

Introduction
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Loss , Time

“Most of my scars are not fire-related and I no longer say "I know what I am doing" at critical moments.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[dgpfn2$h61$1@reader1.panix.com, 2005]
2000s

“Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day when one's body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one's master. And every day without fail one should consider himself as dead.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

Hagakure (c. 1716)

Death , Disease , Peace , Dead

“Nature gave horns to the bull,
Hoofs gave she to the horse.
To the lion cavernous jaws,
And swiftness to the hare.
The fish taught she to swim,
The bird to cleave the air;
To man she reason gave;
Not yet was woman dowered.
What, then, to woman gave she?
The priceless gift of beauty.
Stronger than any buckler,
Than any spear more piercing.
Who hath the gift of beauty.
Nor fire nor steel shall harm her.”

Anacreon (-570–-485 BC) Greek lyric poet, notable for his drinking songs and hymns

Odes, XXIV.
Variant: The bull by nature hath his horns, The horse his hoofs, to daunt their foes; The light-foot hare the hunter scorns; The lion's teeth his strength disclose.The fish, by swimming, 'scapes the weel; The bird, by flight, the fowler's net; With wisdom man is arm'd as steel; Poor women none of these can get. What have they then?—fair Beauty's grace, A two-edged sword, a trusty shield; No force resists a lovely face, Both fire and sword to Beauty yield.

Beauty , Nature , Bird , Fish

“European public opinion will apparently tolerate people being fired in industries where they really care about performance. Unfortunately the only industry they care enough about so far is soccer.”

Paul Graham (1964) English programmer, venture capitalist, and essayist

"Why Startups Condense in America" http://www.paulgraham.com/america.html, May 2006

People

“In developped countries, successive governments have always acted like firemen putting out fires instead of architects designing new buildings. The tax loopholes they have created are responses to emotions provoked by a given event, or an attempt to ease social tension caused by taxpayer exasperation (and/or reflecting their power). Any rational global management policy must satisfy two imperatives: simplicity; and stability.”

Éric Pichet (1960) economist

General Theory of Social and Tax Expenditures and Proposals for Recasting the French System of Tax 'Loopholes' https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2841200 Article in Revue de Droit Fiscal n36 (2016).
Tax policy, Tax and Social Expenditures

Success , Country

“Well, as soon as he [Trump] travels to 112 countries and negotiates a peace deal, a cease fire, the release of dissidents, an opening of new opportunities in nations around the world, or even spends eleven hours testifying in front of a congressional committee, he can talk to me about stamina.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

World , Peace , Travel , Country

“Snatch them baldheaded, slap their teeth out. Little starved faces four feet from the screen, you’d speak to them in a loud, commanding voice, get not even a twitch. Use of the preemptive splint, not everyone knows about it. The world reminds us of its power, again and again and again. Going along minding your own business, and suddenly an act of God, right there in front of you. Great falls of snow and bursting birds. Getting guilty, letting it all slide. Sown here and there like little…petunias, one planted in Old Lyme, one in Fairbanks, one in Tempe. Alleged that he slept with her while she was asleep, I can see it, under certain circumstances. You may wink, but not at another person. You may wink only at pigeons. You may pound in your tent pegs, pitch your tent, gather wood for the fire, form the hush puppies. They seek to return? Back to the nest? The warm arms? The ineffable smells? Not on your tintype. Well, I think that’s a little harsh. Think that’s a little harsh do you? Yes, harsh. Harsh. Well that’s a sketch, that is, that’s a tin-plated sketch— They write and telephone. Short of cash? Give us a call, all inquiries handled with the utmost confidentiality. They call constantly, they’re calling still, saying williwaw, williwaw”

Donald Barthelme book Sixty Stories

“Aria”.
Sixty Stories (1981)

God , World , Business , Bird

“I don't like the definition 'war correspondent'. It is history, not journalism, that has condemned the Middle East to war. I think 'war correspondent' smells a bit, reeks of false romanticism: it has too much of the whiff of Victorian reporters who would view battles from hilltops in the company of ladies, immune to suffering, only occasionally glancing towards the distant pop-pop of cannon fire.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

Preface (page XXI)
The Great War for Civilization (2005)

War , History , Thinking , Suffering

“All we know is that, sometimes, in our battles with the Russians, we had to remove the mounds of enemy corpses from before our trenches, in order to get a clear field of fire against fresh assaulting waves.”

Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934) Prussian-German field marshal, statesman, and president of Germany

The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War (2013) by Peter Hart, p. 242
Undated

“Hags do not haggle over "equality," for we know there is no equality among unique Selves. Noting that one definition of the term equal is "capable of meeting the requirements of a situation or a task," Jan Raymond observes that what each asks of the other is that she be equal to the task at hand…. Crones expect and en-courage each other to become sister pyrotechnists, building the fire that is fueled by Fury, the fire that warms and lights the place where we can each have a loom of our own, where we can spin and weave the tapestries of Crone-centered creation.”

Mary Daly (1928–2010) American radical feminist philosopher and theologian

Source: Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (1978–1990), p. 384.

Courage , Sister , Light

“We soon put the enemy to the rout, and I had the pleasure to see them run in worse disorder than they did at the battle of Monniouth. Our troops behaved with great spirit; and the brigade of militia, under the command of General Lovell, advanced with great resolution and in good order, and stood the fire of the enemy with great firmness. Lieutenant-Colonel Livingston, Colonel Jackson, and Colonel Henry B. Livingston, did themselves great honor in the transactions of the day; but it's not in my power to do justice to Colonel Laurens, who acted both the General and the partisan. His command of regular troops was small, but he did every thing possible to be done by their numbers. He had two most excellent officers with him, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry and Major Talbot.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (August 1778)

Pleasure , Justice

“But from my grave across my brow
Plays no wind of healing now,
And fire and ice within me fight
Beneath the suffocating night.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 30, st. 4.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

Fight , Night

“The dream end of this is that this keeps up to the convention and we have a replay of Chicago 1968 with burning cars, protests, fires, literal riots, and all of that. That's that's the objective here.”

Rush Limbaugh (1951) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, author, and television personality

telling his listeners about his idea to turn the National Democratic Convention into "Operation Chaos" on The Rush Limbaugh Show http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjwE-kJpyts (April 9, 2008)

Dreams , Cars

“And yet I will venture to believe that in no time, since the beginnings of Society, was the lot of those same dumb millions of toilers so entirely unbearable as it is even in the days now passing over us. It is not to die, or even to die of hunger, that makes a man wretched; many men have died; all men must die,—the last exit of us all is in a Fire-Chariot of Pain. But it is to live miserable we know not why; to work sore and yet gain nothing; to be heart-worn, weary, yet isolated, unrelated, girt in with a cold universal Laissez-faire: it is to die slowly all our life long, imprisoned in a deaf, dead, Infinite Injustice, as in the accursed iron belly of a Phalaris' Bull! This is and remains forever intolerable to all men whom God has made. Do we wonder at French Revolutions, Chartisms, Revolts of Three Days? The times, if we will consider them, are really unexampled.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Life , Men , Hunger , God

“You need to try to do the impossible, to anticipate the unexpected. And when the unexpected happens, you should double the efforts to make order from the disorder it creates in your life. The motto I'm advocating is — Let chaos reign, then rein chaos. Does that mean that you shouldn't plan? Not at all. You need to plan the way a fire department plans. It cannot anticipate fires, so it has to shape a flexible organization that is capable of responding to unpredictable events.”

Andrew S. Grove (1936–2016) Hungarian-born American businessman, engineer, and author

1995, p. 229; As cited in: Cristina Chaminade, ‎Bino Catasús (2007) Intellectual Capital Revisited: Paradoxes in the Knowledge Intensive Organization.. p. 94
1980s - 1990s, High Output Management (1983)

Life , Way , Effort

“He moved closer to the wall up there, past mounds of bodies, no line any more, just men moving forward at different speeds, stopping to fire, stopping to die, drifting back like leaves blown from the fire ahead.”

Michael Shaara book The Killer Angels

Lewis Armistead, Part IV, CH 4: Armistead, p. 347
The Killer Angels (1974)

Men , Past , Speed