“The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.”
As quoted in The 32d Infantry Division in World War II (1956) by Harold Whittle Blakeley, p. 3
“The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.”
As quoted in The 32d Infantry Division in World War II (1956) by Harold Whittle Blakeley, p. 3
Miracle Man, written by Ozzy Osbourne, Zakk Wylde and Bob Daisley
Song lyrics, No Rest for the Wicked (1988)
“Fire and Axe to those who submit!”
During a crucial phase of the Revolution, when Ibrahim Pasha invaded the Morea.
Kolokotronis's Memoirs, (2013)
"Lettre XII: sur M. Pope et quelques autres poètes fameux," Lettres philosophiques (1756 edition)
Variants:
He looked on everything as imitation. The most original writers, he said, borrowed one from another. Boyardo has imitated Pulci, and Ariofio Boyardo. The instruction we find in books is like fire; we fetch it from our neighbour, kindle it as home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
Historical and Critical Memoirs of the Life and Writings of M. de Voltaire (1786) by Louis Mayeul Chaudon, p. 348
What we find in books is like the fire in our hearths. We fetch it from our neighbors, we kindle it at home, we communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
As translated in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists (2008), by James Geary, p. 373
Context: Thus, almost everything is imitation. The idea of The Persian Letters was taken from The Turkish Spy. Boiardo imitated Pulci, Ariosto imitated Boiardo. The most original minds borrowed from one another. Miguel de Cervantes makes his Don Quixote a fool; but pray is Orlando any other? It would puzzle one to decide whether knight errantry has been made more ridiculous by the grotesque painting of Cervantes, than by the luxuriant imagination of Ariosto. Metastasio has taken the greatest part of his operas from our French tragedies. Several English writers have copied us without saying one word of the matter. It is with books as with the fire in our hearths; we go to a neighbor to get the embers and light it when we return home, pass it on to others, and it belongs to everyone
Sermon 346A:6 (c. 399 A.D.) "On the Word of God as Leader of the Christians on Their Pilgrimage," Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, III/10, Sermons, 341-400, New City Press, Edmund Hill O.P., trans., (1995), , p. 74. http://books.google.com/books?id=iE30Zob4v98C&pg=PA74&dq=%22But+just+a+minute,+Mr.+Poor+Man;+consider+whether+you+can%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-cHUUbqIIJO68wTn-YC4DA&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22But%20just%20a%20minute%2C%20Mr.%20Poor%20Man%3B%20consider%20whether%20you%20can%22&f=false
Sermons
Context: But let us realize what sort of rich people. Here comes heaven knows who across our path, wrapped in rags, and he has been jumping for joy and laughing on hearing it said that the rich man can’t enter the kingdom of heaven; and he’s been saying, “I, though, will enter; that’s what theses rags will earn me; those who treat s badly and insult us, those who bear down hard upon us won’t enter; no, that sort certainly won’t enter. But just a minute, Mr. Poor Man; consider whether you can, in fact, enter. What if you’re poor, and also happen to be greedy? What if you’re sunk in destitution, and at the same time on fire with avarice? So if that’s what you’re like, whoever you are that are poor, it’s not because you haven’t wanted to be rich, but because you haven’t been able to. So God doesn’t inspect your means, but he observes your will. So if that’s what you’re like, leading a bad life, of bad morals, a blasphemer, an adulterer, a drunkard, proud, cross yourself off the list of God’s poor; you won’t be among those of whom it is said, Blessed are the poor in spirit, since theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Mt 5:3).
Fragment 30
Variant translations:
The world, an entity out of everything, was created by neither gods nor men, but was, is and will be eternally living fire, regularly becoming ignited and regularly becoming extinguished.
This world . . . ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living Fire, in measures being kindled and in measure going out.
That which always was,
and is, and will be everlasting fire,
the same for all, the cosmos,
made neither by god nor man,
replenishes in measure
as it burns away.
Translated by Brooks Haxton
Numbered fragments
Source: Terre des Hommes (1939), Ch. IX Barcelona and Madrid (1936)
Context: Human drama does not show itself on the surface of life. It is not played out in the visible world, but in the hearts of men. … One man in misery can disrupt the peace of a city. It is another of the miraculous things about mankind that there is no pain nor passion that does not radiate to the ends of the earth. Let a man in a garret but burn with enough intensity and he will set fire to the world.
1860s, Cooper Union speech (1860)
Context: Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed. There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling — that sentiment — by breaking up the political organization which rallies around it. You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which has been formed into order in the face of your heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out of the peaceful channel of the ballot-box, into some other channel?
Jean-Christophe (1904 - 1912), Journey's End: The Burning Bush (1911)
Context: God was not to him the impassive Creator, a Nero from his tower of brass watching the burning of the City to which he himself has set fire. God was fighting. God was suffering. Fighting and suffering with all who fight and for all who suffer. For God was Life, the drop of light fallen into the darkness, spreading out, reaching out, drinking up the night. But the night is limitless, and the Divine struggle will never cease: and none can know how it will end. It was a heroic symphony wherein the very discords clashed together and mingled and grew into a serene whole! Just as the beech-forest in silence furiously wages war, so Life carries war into the eternal peace.
The wars and the peace rang echoing through Christophe. He was like a shell wherein the ocean roars. Epic shouts passed, and trumpet calls, and tempestuous sounds borne upon sovereign rhythms. For in that sonorous soul everything took shape in sound. It sang of light. It sang of darkness, sang of life and death. It sang for those who were victorious in battle. It sang for himself who was conquered and laid low. It sang. All was song. It was nothing but song.
John Proctor
The Crucible (1953)
Context: A fire, a fire is burning! I hear the boot of Lucifer, I see his filthy face! And it is my face, and yours, Danforth! For them that quail to bring men out of ignorance, as I have quailed, and as you quail now when you know in all your black hearts that this be fraud — God damns our kind especially, and we will burn, we will burn together!
The Energies of Men
1910s, Memories and Studies (1911)
Context: Every one is familiar with the phenomenon of feeling more or less alive on different days. Every one knows on any given day that there are energies slumbering in him which the incitements of that day do not call forth, but which he might display if these were greater. Most of us feel as if we lived habitually with a sort of cloud weighing on us, below our highest notch of clearness in discernment, sureness in reasoning, or firmness in deciding. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half-awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.
now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail — if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.
1850s, The House Divided speech (1858)
“The happiness that is derived from excitement is like a brilliant fire — soon it will go out.”
Source: The Warrior Within : The Philosophies of Bruce Lee (1996), p. 66
Context: The happiness that is derived from excitement is like a brilliant fire — soon it will go out. Before we married, we never had the chance to go out to nightclubs. We only spent our nights watching TV and chatting. Many young couples live a very exciting life when they are in love. So, when they marry, and their lives are reduced to calmness and dullness, they will feel impatient and will drink the bitter cup of a sad marriage.
Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
Context: In a battle, as in a siege, the art consists in concentrating very heavy fire on a particular point. The line of battle once established, the one who has the ability to concentrate an unlooked for mass of artillery suddenly and unexpectedly on one of these points is sure to carry the day.
Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics
Context: The way to true mysticism leads up through rational thought to deep experience of the world and of our will-to-live. We must all venture once more to be "thinkers," so as to reach mysticism, which is the only direct and the only profound world-view. We must all wander in the field of knowledge to the point where knowledge passes over into experience of the world. We must all, through thought, become religious.
This rational thought must become the prevailing force among us, for all the valuable ideas that we need develop out of it. In no other fire than that of the mysticism of reverence for life can the broken sword of idealism be forged anew.
Jean-Christophe (1904 - 1912), Journey's End: The Burning Bush (1911)
Context: "Thou art come back to me, Thou art come back to me! O Thou, whom I had lost!... Why didst Thou abandon me?"
"To fulfil My task, that thou didst abandon."
"What task?"
"My fight."
"What need hast Thou to fight? Art Thou not master of all?"
"I am not the master."
"Art Thou not All that Is?"
"I am not all that is. I am Life fighting Nothingness. I am not Nothingness, I am the Fire which burns in the Night. I am not the Night. I am the eternal Light; I am not an eternal destiny soaring above the fight. I am free Will which struggles eternally. Struggle and burn with Me."
My Day (1935–1962)
Context: It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death. (1 April 1939)
2005-09, Address at Stanford University (2005)
Context: I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
Source: The Shoes of Happiness, and Other Poems (1913), The Crowning Hour, II
Context: p>If this is a dream, then perhaps our dreaming
Can touch life's height to a finer fire:
Who knows but the heavens and all their seeming
Were made by the heart's desire?One thing shines clear in the heart's sweet reason,
One lightning over the chasm runs —
That to turn from love is the world's one treason
That darkens all the suns.</p
Entering the Castle : An Inner Path to God and Your Soul (2007), p. 57
Context: The Soul is a fact, but it is not physical. … Survivors of near-death experiences attest that some part of them apparently detaches from their physical bodies following the death of the body, but while that is proof of the soul for them, it does not prove it to us. The Soul is like divine music that only God can hear; it is the force of endless resurrection; the soul is like a fire that never goes out.
The Masters and the Path of Occultism (1939)
A Good Start: A Book for Young Men and Women, (1898)
2018, Speech at the University of Illinoise Speech (2018)
2010, Weekly Address (May 29, 2010)
1910 - 1935, The mysteries of the forest' (1934)
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
Source: The Best That Money Can't Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty, & War (2002), p. 76
"Lettre XII: sur M. Pope et quelques autres poètes fameux," Lettres philosophiques (1756 edition)
Variants:
He looked on everything as imitation. The most original writers, he said, borrowed one from another. Boyardo has imitated Pulci, and Ariofio Boyardo. The instruction we find in books is like fire; we fetch it from our neighbour, kindle it as home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
Historical and Critical Memoirs of the Life and Writings of M. de Voltaire (1786) by Louis Mayeul Chaudon, p. 348
What we find in books is like the fire in our hearths. We fetch it from our neighbors, we kindle it at home, we communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.
As translated in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists (2008), by James Geary, p. 373
Original: (fr) Ainsi, presque tout est imitation. L’idée des Lettres persanes est prise de celle de l’Espion turc. Le Boiardo a imité le Pulci, l’Arioste a imité le Boiardo. Les esprits les plus originaux empruntent les uns des autres. Michel Cervantes fait un fou de son don Quichotte; mais Roland est-il autre chose qu'un fou? Il serait difficile de décider si la chevalerie errante est plus tournée en ridicule par les peintures grotesques de Cervantes que par la féconde imagination de l'Arioste. Métastase a pris la plupart de ses opéras dans nos tragédies françaises. Plusieurs auteurs anglais nous ont copiés, et n'en ont rien dit. Il en est des livres comme du feu de nos foyers; on va prendre ce feu chez son voisin, on l’allume chez soi, on le communique à d’autres, et il appartient à tous.
On the coronavirus and environmental crises. Cited in Pope salutes 'saints next door' in fight against coronavirus https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/08/pope-salutes-saints-next-door-fight-against-coronavirus-hyprocrisy in the Guardian. (8 April 2020)
2010s, 2020
Charles Manson's first prison interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbW0agGFv88 by 60 Minutes Australia (1981)
Legacy of the Hegemon (1902)
The Interview https://www.morrisseycentral.com/messagesfrommorrissey/234417-the-interview, June 24 2019, morrisseycentral.com
About the Notre Dame fire
“Just as camphor is consumed by the flames of fire, so also, mind must be consumed by soul-fire.”
4
The Chidakasha Gita (1927)
Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
“I have cast fire upon the world, and see, I am guarding it until it blazes.”
10
Gnostic Gospels, Gospel of Thomas (c. 2nd century AD manuscript)
“I am fire and air; you other apps I give to baser life.”
As quoted, Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare, Act V, (1623)
1995
“Closing my eyes doesn’t help. Fire burns brighter in the darkness.”
Katniss (p. 352)
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)
Source: The Woman Destroyed
“Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.”
Source: The Wise Man's Fear
“Remember, for every shot you fire, someone, somewhere, is making money.”
“Light yourself on fire with passion and people will come from miles to watch you burn.”
As quoted in The Peaceful Path of Prosperity : Practical and Spiritual Approaches to Enrich Your Life with Your Inner Wealth (2001) by Danny Babineaux; not found in any record of Wesley before 2001.
Misattributed
Variant: I set myself on fire and people come to watch me burn.
Source: Today I Will: A Year of Quotes, Notes, and Promises to Myself
Source: Lord of the Silver Bow
Source: Sandman Slim
“He lives.
I breathe.
I want. Him. Always.
Fire to my ice. Ice to my fever.
-Mac”
Source: Shadowfever
“The Wanderlust has got me… by the belly-aching fire”
Source: Rhymes of a Rolling Stone
“Don't own so much clutter that you will be relieved to see your house catch fire.”
Source: Farming: a hand book
"You will hear thunder and remember me...", translated by D. M. Thomas
There will be thunder then. Remember me.
Say 'She asked for storms.' The entire
world will turn the colour of crimson stone,
and your heart, as then, will turn to fire.
"Thunder," translated by A.S.Kline
Source: The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova