Quotes about fire

page 23

Many Long Years Ago (1945), Song To Be Sung by the Father of Infant Female Children
Context: A fig for embryo Lohengrins!
I'll open all his safety pins,
I'll pepper his powder, and salt his bottle,
And give him readings from Aristotle.
Sand for his spinach I'll gladly bring,
And Tabasco sauce for his teething ring.
Then perhaps he'll struggle through fire and water
To marry somebody else's daughter.

On the issue of nuclear weapons, in England Their England : Monsters, Maniacs and Moore (1987) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv44V4d_fDQ
Context: It doesn’t even matter if we ever fire these missiles or not. They are having their effect upon us because there is a generation growing up now who cannot see past the final exclamation mark of a mushroom cloud. They are a generation who can see no moral values that do not end in a crackling crater somewhere. I’m not saying that nuclear bombs are at the root of all of it, but I think it is very, very naïve to assume that you can expose the entire population of the world to the threat of being turned to cinders without them starting to act, perhaps, a little oddly.
I believe in some sort of strange fashion that the presence of the atom bomb might almost be forcing a level of human development that wouldn’t have occurred without the presence of the atom bomb. Maybe this degree of terror will force changes in human attitudes that could not have occurred without the presence of these awful, destructive things. Perhaps we are faced with a race between the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse in one line and the 7th Cavalry in the other. We have not got an awful lot of mid ground between Utopia and Apocalypse, and if somehow our children ever see the day in which it is announced that we do not have these weapons any more, and that we can no longer destroy ourselves and that we’ve got to do something else to do with our time than they will have the right to throw up their arms, let down their streamers and let forth a resounding cheer.

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter VII, Sec. 3-4
Context: There are also several quarries called Anician in the territory of Tarquinii, the stone being of the color of peperino.... Neither the season of frost nor exposure to fire can harm it, but it remains solid and lasts to a great age, because there is only a little air and fire in its natural composition, a moderate amount of moisture, and a great deal of the earthy. Hence its structure is of close texture and solid, and so it cannot be injured by the weather or by the force of fire. Monuments in the neighborhood of the town of Ferento which are made of stone from these quarries... gracefully carved. Old as these are, they look as fresh as if they were only just finished. Bronze workers, also, make molds for the casting of bronze out of stone from these quarries and find it very useful in bronze-founding.

Oath of the four Grant children, first used in Ch. 2 : And Continues
The Ship that Flew (1939)

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1925/mar/06/industrial-peace in the House of Commons (6 March 1925).
1925
Context: We find ourselves, after these two years in power, in possession of perhaps the greatest majority our party has ever had, and with the general assent of the country. Now, how did we get there? It was not by promising to bring this Bill in; it was because, rightly or wrongly, we succeeding in creating an impression throughout the country that we stood for stable Government and for peace in the country between all classes of the community... We have our majority; we believe in the justice of this Bill which has been brought in to-day, but we are going to withdraw our hand, and we are not going to push our political advantage home at a moment like this. Suspicion which has prevented stability in Europe is the one poison that is preventing stability at home, and we offer the country to-day this: We, at any rate, are not going to fire the first shot. We stand for peace. We stand for the removal of suspicion in the country. We want to create an atmosphere, a new atmosphere in a new Parliament for a new age, in which the people can come together. We abandon what we have laid our hands to. We know we may be called cowards for doing it. We know we may be told that we have gone back on our principles. But we believe we know what at this moment the country wants, and we believe it is for us in our strength to do what no other party can do at this moment, and to say that we at any rate stand for peace... Although I know that there are those who work for different ends from most of us in this House, yet there are many in all ranks and all parties who will re-echo my prayer: "Give peace in our time, O Lord."

Source: Violent Universe (1969), p. 25

The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: "Fire is the first and final mask of my God. We dance and weep between two enormous pyres."
Our thoughts and our bodies flash and glitter with reflected light. Between the two pyres I stand serenely, my brain unshaken amid the vertigo, and I say:
"Time is most short and space most narrow between these two pyres, the rhythm of this life is most sluggish, and I have no time, nor a place to dance in. I cannot wait."
Then all at once the rhythm of the earth becomes a vertigo, time disappears, the moment whirls, becomes eternity, and every point in space — insect or star or idea — turns into dance.

Part Troll (2004)

"The Desert. Sinai.", Ch. 21, p. 278
Report to Greco (1965)
Context: "Tomorrow, go forth and stand before the Lord. A great and strong wind will blow over you and rend the mountains and break in pieces the rocks, but the Lord will not be in the wind. And after the wind and earthquake, but the Lord will not be in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord will not be in the fire. And after the fire a gentle, cooling breeze. That is where the Lord will be."
This is how the spirit comes. After the gale, the earthquake, and fire: a gentle, cooling breeze. This is how it will come in our own day as well. We are passing through the period of earthquake, the fire is approaching, and eventually (when? after how many generations?) the gentle, cool breeze will blow.

Young Adventure (1918), The Quality of Courage
Context: It is not given me to trace
The lovely laughter of that face,
Like a clear brook most full of light,
Or olives swaying on a height,
So silver they have wings, almost;
Like a great word once known and lost
And meaning all things. Nor her voice
A happy sound where larks rejoice,
Her body, that great loveliness,
The tender fashion of her dress,
I may not paint them.
These I see,
Blazing through all eternity,
A fire-winged sign, a glorious tree!

Stanza 21
Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886)

Nobel lecture (2001)
Context: We have entered the third millennium through a gate of fire. If today, after the horror of 11 September, we see better, and we see further — we will realize that humanity is indivisible. New threats make no distinction between races, nations or regions. A new insecurity has entered every mind, regardless of wealth or status. A deeper awareness of the bonds that bind us all — in pain as in prosperity — has gripped young and old.

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter IX, Sec. 14
Context: The larch... is not only preserved from decay and the worm by the great bitterness of its sap, but also it cannot be kindled with fire nor ignite of itself, unless like stone in a limekiln it is burned with other wood.... This is because there is a very small proportion of the elements of fire and air in its composition, which is a dense and solid mass of moisture and the earthy, so that it has no open pores through which fire can find its way... Further, its weight will not let it float in water.

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)
Context: Poor little Angelina, too, sheds silent tears, for Edwin has given up carrying her old handkerchief in the inside pocket of his waistcoat. Both are astonished at the falling off in the other one, but neither sees their own change. If they did they would not suffer as they do. They would look for the cause in the right quarter—in the littleness of poor human nature—join hands over their common failing, and start building their house anew on a more earthly and enduring foundation. But we are so blind to our own shortcomings, so wide awake to those of others. Everything that happens to us is always the other person's fault. Angelina would have gone on loving Edwin forever and ever and ever if only Edwin had not grown so strange and different. Edwin would have adored Angelina through eternity if Angelina had only remained the same as when he first adored her. It is a cheerless hour for you both when the lamp of love has gone out and the fire of affection is not yet lit, and you have to grope about in the cold, raw dawn of life to kindle it. God grant it catches light before the day is too far spent. Many sit shivering by the dead coals till night come.

In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched With Fire (1884)
Context: We know that, if the armies of our war did anything worth remembering, the credit belongs not mainly to the individuals who did it, but to average human nature. We also know very well that we cannot live in associations with the past alone, and we admit that, if we would be worthy of the past, we must find new fields for action or thought, and make for ourselves new careers.
But, nevertheless, the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference, and do not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition, we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us.

"I Think of Those Who Were Truly Great"
Poems (1933)
Context: Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,
See how these names are fêted in the waving grass
And by the streamers of the white cloud
And whispers of the wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire's centre.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

"Lion In The Winter" on Southbound (1975) · Performance with Linda Ronstadt http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya2dSRcqLBE
Context: And when I first saw you I first loved you
With a song that I sang to the fire in your eyes
But somebody told you that it wouldn't be easy
And you carried that lie for the devil to sing Some sail rivers deep and muddy some sail rivers clear and cold
But the river that I'm sailin' goes to sea
And sometimes I do grow weary sometimes I feel old
And sometimes I wonder if you think of me

how can your aching hearts believe it, but this war of four years, so full of doubt and anguish, was infinitely nobler and more glorious than the thirty years of peace before it. Four years more of such peace would have slain the very soul of the nation ; and because the country was still strong enough to tear off that fair and fatal robe of compromise, because she bared her bosom and bravely endured the sharp torture of the knife, to-day the cancer is cut away, and she stands erect, though bleeding, and thanks God for health renewed.
1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

James M. McPherson. "The War of Southern Aggression" https://web.archive.org/web/20160317110023/http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1989/01/19/the-war-of-southern-aggression/ (19 January 1989), The New York Review of Books
1980s
Context: To a good many southerners the events of 1861–1865 have been known as 'The War of Northern Aggression'. Never mind that the South took the initiative by seceding in defiance of an election of a president by a constitutional majority. Never mind that the Confederacy started the war by firing on the American flag. These were seen as preemptive acts of defense against northern aggression.

Quotes, Our Larger Tasks (2002)
Context: The evil we now confront is not just the one-time creation of a charismatic leader and his co-conspirators, or even of a handful of regimes. What we deal with now is today's manifestation of an anger welling up from deep layers of grievance shared by many millions of people.
Military force alone cannot deal with this. Public diplomacy alone cannot drain this reservoir. What will be needed is a far reaching American strategy for encouraging reform, and for engaging day in and day out with societies that are trying to cast off the curse of bitter experience relived continuously. Hope for the future is the only way to put out these fires.

Orthodoxy (1884)
Context: Only a little while ago, when the great flood came upon the Ohio, sent by him who is ruling the world and paying particular attention to the affairs of nations, just in the gray of the morning they saw a house floating down and on its top a human being. A few men went out to the rescue. They found there a woman, a mother, and they wished to save her life. She said: “No, I am going to stay where I am. In this house I have three dead babes; I will not desert them.” Think of a love so limitless—stronger and deeper than despair and death! And yet, the Christian religion says, that if that woman, that mother, did not happen to believe in their creed God would send her soul to eternal fire!

The Poet (1830)

Book 4; Universal Love III
Mozi
Context: Now, as to universal love and mutual aid, they are beneficial and easy beyond a doubt. It seems to me that the only trouble is that there is no superior who encourages it. If there is a superior who encourages it, promoting it with rewards and commendations, threatening its reverse with punishments, I feel people will tend toward universal love and mutual aid like fire tending upward and water downwards — it will be unpreventable in the world.

Quotes from "The Blind Desire", using the pseudonym "Charles A. Ballance" in William and Mary College Monthly (September 1897), V, p. 51
Context: Nay, 'tis not fitting that we should require
Within this World but Raiment, Food and Fire;
Powerless Atoms of Eternity
Why should we hope to know of Something higher? This Knowledge could but add, not lessen. Woe;
The Magian who To-day forms fire with snow
Shares with the Sudra in Infinity.
We come from Nothing and to Nothing go. So best consent, although with forced grace,
Upon this dingy Ball to run our race
Untrammeled with the thoughts of higher things,
Until we reach the shadowy Stopping place.

Source: Goodbye to All That (1929), Ch.22.
Context: Opposite our trenches a German salient protruded, and the brigadier wanted to "bite it off" in proof of the division's offensive spirit. Trench soldiers could never understand the Staff's desire to bite off an enemy salient. It was hardly desirable to be fired at from both flanks; if the Germans had got caught in a salient, our obvious duty was to keep them there as long as they could be persuaded to stay. We concluded that a passion for straight lines, for which headquarters were well known, had dictated this plan, which had no strategic or tactical excuse.

1920s, Whose Country Is This? (1921)
Context: From its very beginning our country has been enriched by a complete blend of varied strains in the same ethnic family. We are, in some sense, an immigrant nation, molded in the fires of a common experience. That common experience is our history. And it is that common experience we must hand down to our children, even as the fundamental principles of Americanism, based on righteousness, were handed down to us, in perpetuity, by the founders of our government.

"No Offense Intended, But Fuck Xmas!" (1972) The Harlan Ellison Hornbook
Context: Christmas is an awfulness that compares favorably with the great London plague and fire of 1665-66. No one escapes the feelings of mortal dejection, inadequacy, frustration, loneliness, guilt and pity. No one escapes feeling used by society, by religion, by friends and relatives, by the utterly artificial responsibilities of extending false greetings, sending banal cards, reciprocating unsolicited gifts, going to dull parties, putting up with acquaintances and family one avoids all the rest of the year... in short, of being brutalized by a 'holiday' that has lost virtually all of its original meanings and has become a merchandising ploy for color TV set manufacturers and ravagers of the woodlands.

Of Immortality.
Proverbial Philosophy (1838-1849)
Context: God, from a beautiful necessity, is Love in all he doeth,
Love, a brilliant fire, to gladden or consume:
The wicked work their woe by looking upon love, and hating it:
The righteous find their joys in yearning on its loveliness for ever.

Julius Sumner Miller, in What Science Teaching Needs, Junior college journal, volume 38 (1967), by American Association of Junior Colleges, Stanford University.
Context: My view is this: We teach nothing. We do not teach physics nor do we teach students. (I take physics merely as an example.) What is the same thing: No one is taught anything! Here lies the folly of this business. We try to teach somebody nothing. This is a sorry endeavour for no one can be taught a thing.
What we do, if we are successful, is to stir interest in the matter at hand, awaken enthusiasm for it, arouse a curiosity, kindle a feeling, fire up the imagination. To my own teachers who handled me in this way, I owe a great and lasting debt.

Young Men and Fire (1992)
Context: It shouldn't be hard to imagine just what most of the crew must have thought when they first looked across the open hill-side and saw their boss seemingly playing with a matchbook in dry grass. Although the Mann Gulch fire occurred early in the history of the Smokejumpers, it is still their special tragedy, the one in which their crew suffered almost a total loss and the only one in which their loss came from the fire itself. It is also the only fire any member of the Forest Service had ever seen or heard of in which the foreman got out ahead of his crew only to light a fire in advance of the fire he and his crew were trying to escape. In case I hadn't understood him the first time, Sallee repeated, "We thought he must have gone nuts." A few minutes later his fire became more spectacular still, when Sallee, having reached the top of the ridge, looked back and saw the foreman enter his own fire and lie down in its hot ashes to let the main fire pass over him.

"Points of Character", p. 37.
Faraday as a Discoverer (1868)
Context: A point highly illustrative of the character of Faraday now comes into view. He gave an account of his discovery of Magneto-electricity in a letter to his friend M. Hachette, of Paris, who communicated the letter to the Academy of Sciences. The letter was translated and published; and immediately afterwards two distinguished Italian philosophers took up the subject, made numerous experiments, and published their results before the complete memoirs of Faraday had met the public eye. This evidently irritated him. He reprinted the paper of the learned Italians in the Philosophical Magazine accompanied by sharp critical notes from himself. He also wrote a letter dated Dec. 1,1832, to Gay Lussac, who was then one of the editors of the Annales de Chimie in which he analysed the results of the Italian philosophers, pointing out their errors, and' defending himself from what he regarded as imputations on his character. The style of this letter is unexceptionable, for Faraday could not write otherwise than as a gentleman; but the letter shows that had he willed it he could have hit hard. We have heard much of Faraday's gentleness and sweetness and tenderness. It is all true, but it is very incomplete. You cannot resolve a powerful nature into these elements, and Faraday's character would have been less admirable than it was had it not embraced forces and tendencies to which the silky adjectives "gentle" and "tender" would by no means apply. Underneath his sweetness and gentleness was the heat of a volcano. He was a man of excitable and fiery nature; but through high self-discipline he had converted the fire into a central glow and motive power of life, instead of permitting it to waste itself in useless passion. "He that is slow to anger" saith the sage, "is greater than the mighty, and he that ruleth his own spirit than he that taketh a city." Faraday was not slow to anger, but he completely ruled his own spirit, and thus, though he took no cities, he captivated all hearts.

Song lyrics, Cat People (Putting Out Fire) (1982)

The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: It is our duty to help liberate that God who is stifling in us, in mankind, in masses of people living in darkness.
We must be ready at any moment to give up our lives for his sake. For life is not a goal; it is also an instrument, like death, like beauty, like virtue, like knowledge. Whose instrument? Of that God who fights for freedom.
We are all one, we are all an imperiled essence. If at the far end of the world a spirit degenerates, it drags down our spirit into its own degradation. If one mind at the far end of the world sinks into idiocy, our own temples over-brim with darkness.
For it is only One who struggles at the far end of earth and sky. One. And if He goes lost, it is we who must bear the responsibility. If He goes lost, then we go lost.
This is why the salvation of the Universe is also our salvation, why solidarity among men is no longer a tenderhearted luxury but a deep necessity and self-preservation, as much a necessity as, in an army under fire, the salvation of your comrade-in-arms.

The Golden Man (1954)
Context: The chamber was an inferno of energy. The figure had completely disappeared. Wisdom waited a moment, then nodded to the technicians operating the cube. They touched guide buttons and the muzzles slowed and died. Some sank back into the cube. All became silent. The works of the cube ceased humming.
Cris Johnson was still alive. He emerged from the settling clouds of ash, blackened and singed. But unhurt. He had avoided each beam. He had weaved between them and among them as they came, a dancer leaping over glittering sword-points of pink fire. He had survived.

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The Song of the Horses
Context: It broke out with matchless fury.
The rapid vehement fire.
Him we praise above the earth,
Fire, the fiery meteor of the dawn.
Above the high gale,
Higher than every cloud.
Great his animal.

1960s, The American Promise (1965)
Context: We must preserve the right of free speech and the right of free assembly. But the right of free speech does not carry with it, as has been said, the right to holler fire in a crowded theater. We must preserve the right to free assembly, but free assembly does not carry with it the right to block public thoroughfares to traffic. We do have a right to protest, and a right to march under conditions that do not infringe the constitutional rights of our neighbors. And I intend to protect all those rights as long as I am permitted to serve in this office. We will guard against violence, knowing it strikes from our hands the very weapons which we seek — progress, obedience to law, and belief in American values.

Canto I, line 189
Hudibras, Part I (1663–1664)
Context: For his Religion, it was fit
To match his learning and his wit;
'Twas Presbyterian true blue;
For he was of that stubborn crew
Of errant saints, whom all men grant
To be the true Church Militant;
Such as do build their faith upon
The holy text of pike and gun;
Decide all controversies by
Infallible artillery;
And prove their doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks;
Call fire and sword and desolation,
A godly thorough reformation,
Which always must be carried on,
And still be doing, never done;
As if religion were intended
For nothing else but to be mended.
A sect, whose chief devotion lies
In odd perverse antipathies;
In falling out with that or this,
And finding somewhat still amiss;
More peevish, cross, and splenetick,
Than dog distract, or monkey sick.
That with more care keep holy-day
The wrong, than others the right way;
Compound for sins they are inclin'd to,
By damning those they have no mind to:
Still so perverse and opposite,
As if they worshipp'd God for spite.
The self-same thing they will abhor
One way, and long another for.
Free-will they one way disavow,
Another, nothing else allow:
All piety consists therein
In them, in other men all sin...

"The Abyss"
The Far Field (1964)
Context: A terrible violence of creation,
A flash into the burning heart of the abominable;
Yet if we wait, unafraid, beyond the fearful instant,
The burning lake turns into a forest pool,
The fire subsides into rings of water,
A sunlit silence.

"The Rainbow".
Silex Scintillans (1655)
Context: I will on thee as on a comet look,
A comet, the sad world's ill-boding book;
Thy light as luctual and stain'd with woes
I'll judge, where penal flames sit mixt and close.
But though some think thou shin'st but to restrain
Bold storms, and simply dost attend on rain;
Yet I know well, and so our sins require,
Thou dost but court cold rain, till rain turns fire.

Dulce et Decorum Est (1917)
Context: Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! — An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

Letter to John Adams (10 July 1775)
Context: How difficult the task to quench the fire and the pride of private ambition, and to sacrifice ourselves and all our hopes and expectations to the public weal! How few have souls capable of so noble an undertaking! How often are the laurels worn by those who have had no share in earning them! But there is a future recompense of reward, to which the upright man looks, and which he will most assuredly obtain, provided he perseveres unto the end.

Canto 1: st. 8 & st. 9, lines 1–12
The Hasty-Pudding (1793)
Context: But here tho' distant from our native shore,
With mutual glee we meet and laugh once more,
The same! I know thee by that yellow face,
That strong complexion of true Indian race,
Which time can never change, nor soil impair,
Nor Alpine snows, nor Turkey's morbid air;
For endless years, thro' every mild domain,
Where grows the maize, there thou art sure to reign.
But man, more fickle, the bold license claims,
In different realms to give thee different names.
Thee soft nations round the warm Levant
Palanta call, the French of course Polante;
E'en in thy native regions, how I blush
To hear the Pennsylvanians call thee Mush!
On Hudson's banks, while men of Belgic spawn
Insult and eat thee by the name suppawn.
All spurious appellations, void of truth:
I've better known thee from my earliest youth,
Thy name is Hasty-Pudding! thus our sires
Were wont to greet thee fuming from the fires.

Introductory Chapter.
Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922)
Context: I am afraid that I hope so. We pay for these things too much in honour and in innocent lives. I went up the Tigris with one hundred Devon Territorials, young, clean, delightful fellows, full of the power of happiness and of making women and children glad. By them one saw vividly how great it was to be their kin, and English. And we were casting them by thousands into the fire to the worst of deaths, not to win the war but that the corn and rice and oil of Mesopotamia might be ours. The only need was to defeat our enemies (Turkey among them), and this was at last done in the wisdom of Allenby with less than four hundred killed, by turning to our uses the hands of the oppressed in Turkey. I am proudest of my thirty fights in that I did not have any of our own blood shed. All our subject provinces to me were not worth one dead Englishman.

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Context: When the Pequots resisted the migration of settlers into the Connecticut Valley in 1637, a party of Puritans surrounded the Pequot village and set fire to it. About five hundred Indians were burned to death or shot while trying to escape... The woods were then combed for any Pequots who had managed to survive, and these were sold into slavery. Cotton Mather was grateful to the Lord that "on this day we have sent six hundred heathen souls to hell."

Some Mistakes of Moses (1879) http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/ingermm1.htm Section III, "The Politicians".
Context: Churches are becoming political organizations... It probably will not be long until the churches will divide as sharply upon political, as upon theological questions; and when that day comes, if there are not liberals enough to hold the balance of power, this Government will be destroyed. The liberty of man is not safe in the hands of any church. Wherever the Bible and sword are in partnership, man is a slave. All laws for the purpose of making man worship God, are born of the same spirit that kindled the fires of the auto da fe, and lovingly built the dungeons of the Inquisition. All laws defining and punishing blasphemy — making it a crime to give your honest ideas about the Bible, or to laugh at the ignorance of the ancient Jews, or to enjoy yourself on the Sabbath, or to give your opinion of Jehovah, were passed by impudent bigots, and should be at once repealed by honest men. An infinite God ought to be able to protect himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures. Certainly he ought not so to act that laws become necessary to keep him from being laughed at. No one thinks of protecting Shakespeare from ridicule, by the threat of fine and imprisonment. It strikes me that God might write a book that would not necessarily excite the laughter of his children. In fact, I think it would be safe to say that a real God could produce a work that would excite the admiration of mankind. Surely politicians could be better employed than in passing laws to protect the literary reputation of the Jewish God.

" The Starlight Night http://www.bartleby.com/122/8.html" (1877), lines 1-3
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)
Context: Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!

Love is Enough (1872), Song VI: Cherish Life that Abideth
Context: Live on, for Love liveth, and earth shall be shaken
By the wind of his wings on the triumphing morning,
When the dead, and their deeds that die not shall awaken,
And the world's tale shall sound in your trumpet of warning,
And the sun smite the banner called Scorn of the Scorning,
And dead pain ye shall trample, dead fruitless desire,
As ye wend to pluck out the new world from the fire.

In response to the September 11 attacks on New York City
2001
Context: I can't even think about this movie. I don't WANT to think about it because if I think about it I will have to face an ugly truth that has been gnawing through my head...
This started out as a documentary on gun violence in America, but the largest mass murder in our history was just committed — without the use of a single gun! Not a single bullet fired! No bomb was set off, no missile was fired, no weapon (i. e., a device that was solely and specifically manufactured to kill humans) was used. A boxcutter! — I can't stop thinking about this. A thousand gun control laws would not have prevented this massacre. What am I doing?

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)
Context: We must pass like smoke or live within the spirit's fire;
For we can no more than smoke unto the flame return
If our thought has changed to dream, our will unto desire,
As smoke we vanish though the fire may burn.

"Lie Down In Darkness", This Quiet Dust and Other Writings (1982)
Context: When, in the autumn of 1947, I was fired from the first and only job I have ever held, I wanted one thing out of life: to become a writer. I left my position as manuscript reader at the McGraw-Hill Book Company with no regrets; the job had been onerous and boring. It did not occur to me that there would be many difficulties to impede my ambition; in fact, the job itself had been an impediment. All I knew was that I burned to write a novel and I could not have cared less that my bank account was close to zero, with no replenishment in sight. At the age of twenty-two I had such pure hopes in my ability to write not just a respectable first novel, but a novel that would be completely out of the ordinary, that when I left the McGraw-Hill Building for the last time I felt the exultancy of a man just released from slavery and ready to set the universe on fire.

What Will Get Us Ready (1944)
Context: Most persons are awakened and set on their new track of life through the quickening and kindling power of some person who becomes for them the instrument of inspiration and of the creation of faith and the vision of a nobler way of life. Persons are set on fire by someone who is already aflame. It is a trumpet call to high adventure that starts the forward movements away from old forms.
That is one of the greatest stories in the long history of religion. It was through a long and wonderful circuit of souls, in a succession of forerunners, that the kindling idea of “Something of God in the soul of man” came to George Fox.

"Continent's End" in Tamar and Other Poems (1924)
Context: Mother, though my song's measure is like your surf-beat's ancient rhythm I never learned it of you.
Before there was any water there were tides of fire, both our tones flow from the older fountain.

A Tree Telling of Orpheus (1968)
Context: Fire he sang,
that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.
New buds broke forth from me though it was full summer.
As though his lyre (now I knew its name)
were both frost and fire, its chords flamed
up to the crown of me.
I was seed again.
I was fern in the swamp.
I was coal.

From, On Loving of God, Paul Halsall trans., Ch. 10
Context: Seeing that the Scripture saith, God has made all for His own glory (Isa. 43.7), surely His creatures ought to conform themselves, as much as they can, to His will. In Him should all our affections center, so that in all things we should seek only to do His will, not to please ourselves. And real happiness will come, not in gratifying our desires or in gaining transient pleasures, but in accomplishing God’s will for us: even as we pray every day: ‘Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven’ (Matt. 6.10). O chaste and holy love! O sweet and gracious affection! O pure and cleansed purpose, thoroughly washed and purged from any admixture of selfishness, and sweetened by contact with the divine will! To reach this state is to become deified. As a drop of water poured into wine loses itself, and takes the color and savor of wine; or as a bar of iron, heated red-hot, becomes like fire itself, forgetting its own nature; or as the air, radiant with sun-beams, seems not so much to be illuminated as to be light itself; so in the saints all human affections melt away by some unspeakable transmutation into the will of God. For how could God be all in all, if anything merely human remained in man? The substance will endure, but in another beauty, a higher power, a greater glory. When will that be? Who will see, who possess it? ‘When shall I come to appear before the presence of God?’ (Ps. 42.2). ‘My heart hath talked of Thee, Seek ye My face: Thy face, Lord, will I seek’ (Ps. 27.8). Lord, thinkest Thou that I, even I shall see Thy holy temple?

Native Son (1940)

The good are befriended even by weakness and defect. As no man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him, so no man had ever a defect that was not somewhere made useful to him.
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Compensation

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29
Context: The Immortal Principle was first called water by Thales. Anaximenes called it air. The Pythagoreans called it number and were thus the first to see the Immortal Principle as something nonmaterial. Heraclitus called the Immortal Principle fire and introduced change as part of the Principle. He said the world exists as a conflict and tension of opposites. He said there is a One and there is a Many and the One is the universal law which is immanent in all things. Anaxagoras was the first to identify the One as nous, meaning "mind."
Parmenides made it clear for the first time that the Immortal Principle, the One, Truth, God, is separate from appearance and from opinion, and the importance of this separation and its effect upon subsequent history cannot be overstated. It's here that the classic mind, for the first time, took leave of its romantic origins and said, "The Good and the True are not necessarily the same," and goes its separate way. Anaxagoras and Parmenides had a listener named Socrates who carried their ideas into full fruition.

Orthodoxy (1884).
Context: Love is the only bow on Life's dark cloud. It is the morning and the evening star. It shines upon the babe, and sheds its radiance on the quiet tomb. It is the mother of art, inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher. It is the air and light of every heart — builder of every home, kindler of every fire on every hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. It fills the world with melody — for music is the voice of love. Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to Joy, and makes royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is heaven, and we are gods.

Book I, Ch. VI, pp. 53-55.
Physics

June, 1850
Journals (1838-1859)
Context: Men go to a fire for entertainment. When I see how eagerly men will run to a fire, whether in warm or in cold weather, by day or by night, dragging an engine at their heels, I'm astonished to perceive how good a purpose the level of excitement is made to serve.

Heretics and Heresies (1874)
Context: By this time the whole world should know that the real Bible has not yet been written, but is being written, and that it will never be finished until the race begins its downward march, or ceases to exist.
The real Bible is not the work of inspired men, nor prophets, nor apostles, nor evangelists, nor of Christs. Every man who finds a fact, adds, as it were, a word to this great book. It is not attested by prophecy, by miracles or signs. It makes no appeal to faith, to ignorance, to credulity or fear. It has no punishment for unbelief, and no reward for hypocrisy. It appeals to man in the name of demonstration. It has nothing to conceal. It has no fear of being read, of being contradicted, of being investigated and understood. It does not pretend to be holy, or sacred; it simply claims to be true. It challenges the scrutiny of all, and implores every reader to verify every line for himself. It is incapable of being blasphemed. This book appeals to all the surroundings of man. Each thing that exists testifies of its perfection. The earth, with its heart of fire and crowns of snow; with its forests and plains, its rocks and seas; with its every wave and cloud; with its every leaf and bud and flower, confirms its every word, and the solemn stars, shining in the infinite abysses, are the eternal witnesses of its truth.

Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf : Zen Poems of Ryokan (1993)

La Nuit Sera Calme [The Night Will Be Calm] (1974)
Context: Gari in Russian means "burn!"… I want to test myself, a trial by fire, so that my I is burned off.

Book III, Ch. VII, p. 162.
Physics

2014, "Narendra Modi on the Role of NDTV during the 2002 Riots", 2014
Context: What is worse, when I got the matter enquired into by the local police, we found out that it was a small, insignificant structure under a tree which had been damaged a little bit by some crazy individual. But NDTV presented it as an attack on a Hanuman mandir. When the fires were raging these journalists were pouring fuel on those fires.

Source: Into the Green (1993), Ch. 36 p. 233
Context: He had seen trances before — wise men far in the east, who could feign death; a herbwife as she bent over her patient, searching for invisible hurts.
But this was different. He could sense something here, within the circle cast by the light of the fire. A presence.
Presences...

I Know You Got Soul (2004)
Context: When the Argentine light cruiser Belgrano was hit by two torpedoes from the snout of Conqueror, a British hunter-killer, the enemy escort ships immediately gave chase. They were out of ideas after just five miles. The Royal Navy vessel had approached unseen, fired unseen, and simply disappeared.

Life Without and Life Within (1859), The Captured Wild Horse
Context: p>On the boundless plain careering
By an unseen compass steering, Wildly flying, reappearing, —
With untamed fire their broad eyes glowing
In every step a grand pride showing,
Of no servile moment knowing, —Happy as the trees and flowers, In their instinct cradled hours,
Happier in fuller powers, —See the wild herd nobly ranging,
Nature varying, not changing,
Lawful in their lawless ranging.</p

Part 2, Chapter 8, Workers and Bosses, p. 103
Economics For Everyone (2008)

As quoted by Mark Pitzke, 'Iran Is My True and Only Home' http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/iran-s-crown-prince-reza-pahlavi-iran-is-my-true-and-only-home-a-641984-2.html, August 12, 2009.
Interviews, 2009

As quoted by Luc de Barochez, Reza Pahlavi : «Lançons une campagne de désobéissance civile» http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/20060608.FIG000000177_reza_pahlavi_lancons_une_campagne_de_desobeissance_civile.html, June 8, 2006.
Interviews, 2006

VII. On the Nature of the World and its Eternity.
On the Gods and the Cosmos

Among the things (2012), Page 18-20, verse V

"Alex Jones is in a Death Battle" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5lGpU-OnAs, The Alex Jones Show, January 29, 2017.
2017

How to Avoid a Hole in the Head in Marvel Science Stories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_Science_Stories (May 1951), p. 115

Section 2.2
Workers Councils (1947)

The True Levellers Standard Advanced (1649)

Source: "On the Aims and Instruments of Scientific Thought" (Aug 19, 1872), pp. 156-157.

The Prophecy of Hermes Trismegistus

The Paris Review interview (1999)

299
Leaves of Morya’s Garden: Book One (The Call) (1924)

John Pilger, The War on Venezuela is Built on Lies, CounterPunch, https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02/22/the-war-on-venezuela-is-built-on-lies/ (22 February 2019)

Arundhati Roy commenting on the Godhra train attack The God of false things : How Arundhati Roy creates fake news and gets away with it https://www.opindia.com/2017/05/the-god-of-false-things-how-arundhati-roy-creates-fake-news-and-gets-away-with-it/ also https://www.opindia.com/2019/04/urban-naxals-congress-hacks-and-eminent-historians-what-media-wont-tell-you-about-writers-who-signed-the-anti-modi-statement/ (Her statement was criticized as being counter-factual.)

Marcus Cato, sec. 4
Parallel Lives

On writing about various types of relationships in “Interviews: Beverly Jenkins” https://bookpage.com/interviews/24085-beverly-jenkins-romance#.Xflpo-lKjcs in BookPage (2019 May 28)

1900s, Hind Swaraj (1908)

quoted in Vikram Sampath - Savarkar, Echoes from a Forgotten Past, 1883–1924 (2019)

"We Are the Initiators" (1980)

"Freedom is Lost

Urban Naxals (2018)

Letter to Aurangzeb

Account of his famous dream of the benzene structure, as quoted in A Life of Magic Chemistry : Autobiographical Reflections of a Nobel Prize Winner (2001) by George A. Olah, p. 54

And yet, and yet … Negar la sucesión temporal, negar el yo, negar el universo astronómico, son desesperaciones aparentes y consuelos secretos. Nuestro destino no es espantoso por irreal: es espantoso porque es irreversible y de hierro. El tiempo es la sustancia de que estoy hecho. El tiempo es un río que me arrebata, pero yo soy el río; es un tigre que me destroza, pero yo soy el tigre; es un fuego que me consume, pero yo soy el fuego. El mundo desgraciadamente es real; yo, desgraciadamente, soy Borges.
"A New Refutation of Time" (1946) [" Nueva refutación del tiempo http://www.monografias.com/trabajos11/filoylit/filoylit.shtml"]
Variant translations:
And yet, and yet... Denying temporal succession, denying the self, denying the astronomical universe, are obvious acts of desperation and secret consolation. Our fate (unlike the hell of Swedenborg or the hell of Tibetan mythology) is not frightful because it is unreal; it is frightful because it is irreversible and ironclad. Time is the thing I am made of. Time is a river that sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that tears me apart, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges.
Time is the substance from which I am made. Time is a river which carries me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger that devours me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire.
Other Inquisitions (1952)

http://koenraadelst.blogspot.com/2012/04/meera-nanda-against-hinduism-and-its.html
2010s, The argumentative Hindu (2012)

1990s, Negationism in India, (1992)

On nature in “Edmonia Lewis https://americanart.si.edu/artist/edmonia-lewis-2914 (Smithsonian American Art Museum)

The Pale King (2011)