Quotes about fire (2443 quotes, page 7)

“That's what I love about fire, how it would kill me as quick as anybody else. How it can't know I'm its mother. It's so beautiful and powerful and beyond feeling anything for anybody, that's what I love about fire.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Source: Invisible Monsters

Love , Beauty , Feeling

“It wasn't so easy though, ending the war. A war is a huge fire; the ashes from it drift far, and settle slowly.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

War

“… the heart is an organ of fire.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

Heart

“It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Catherine Earnshaw (Ch. IX).
Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.

Love , Soul

“I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer. My bank of wild grass is majestic and full of music. It is a fire that solitude presses against my lips.”

Violette Leduc (1907–1972) French writer

Source: Mad in Pursuit

Music , Solitude , Grass , Summer

“We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

We Didn't Start the Fire.
Song lyrics, Storm Front (1989)

World , Light , Fight

“Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window, and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22 (1961)
Context: Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollably.... It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all.

Secret

“A fight is like a fire. You think you have it under control, you think you can stop it whenever you want, but before you know it, it’s living, breathing thing and there’s no controlling it and you were a fool to think you could.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Fools , Thinking , Fight

“Absence is to love as wind is to fire: it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

Love

“To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

For Wife , Heart Touching , Valentine's Day , Love

“You will die a worse death if you do not leave my domain,” a voice thundered down from the third story of the old tenement. “I am a servant of the Sacred Fire, the wielder of the flame of Arnor—”
“So I should call you Gandalf?”

Karen Chance American writer

Source: Death's Mistress

Death

“It's an illusion I've noticed before-- words on a page are like oxygen to a petrol engine, firing up ghosts. It only lasts while the words are in your head. After you put down the paper or pen, the pistons fall lifeless again.”

Elizabeth Wein book Rose Under Fire

Source: Rose Under Fire

“Fire can warm or consume,
water can quench or drown,
wind can caress or cut.

And so it is with human relationshps;
we can both create and destroy,
nurture and terrorize,
traumatize and heal each other”

Bruce D. Perry (1955) American psychiatrist

Water

“I wondered if I should start a small fire in Percy Jackson's sink, perhaps burn some bandages in thanks, but I decided that might strain that Jackson's hospitality.”

Rick Riordan book The Hidden Oracle

Source: The Hidden Oracle

“The fire blazing in her dark and injured heart seemed to glow around her like a flame.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

Heart

“A man would rather be trampled by elephants on fire than tell you he's just not that into you.”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

“And when things start to go wrong, a good boss doesn't just fire everybody and start over.”

Lisi Harrison (1970) Canadian writer

Source: Boys "R" Us

“Nothing goes so well with a hot fire and buttered crumpets as a wet day without and a good dose of comfortable horrors within. The heavier the lashing of the rain and the ghastlier the details, the better the flavour seems to be.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Strong Poison

Source: Strong Poison

“Fire tests Gold”
Ignis aurum probat

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

City of Lost Souls

“When she awoke, the world was on fire.”

Scott Westerfeld book Uglies

Source: Uglies

World

“I paused with the pen in my hand. "He burst into flames?"
"He became engulfed in fire."
"Was his buddy made out of orange rocks and at any point yell, 'It's clobbering time'?”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

Time

“The fire was silent, the little houses collapsing into the flames without complaint, flocks of sparks rising to the sky. At a distance it seemed beautiful, and I thought it was strange that powerful violence is often so pleasing to the eye…”

David Benioff book City of Thieves

Source: City of Thieves

Beauty , Housing

“Wherever we go we do harm, forgiving
ourselves as wheels do cement for wearing
each other out. We set this house
on fire, forgetting that we live within.

(from "To a Meadowlark," for M. L. Smoker)”

Jim Harrison (1937–2016) American novelist, poet, essayist

Forgiveness , Housing , Forgetting

“If you take a shot at someone, you keep firing until they can no longer return fire. Wound them, and you have an angry enemy who knows your position.”

Karen Traviss British science fiction author

“Evil's just destructive? Then storms are evil, if it's that simple. And we have fire, and there there's hail. Underwriters lump it all under 'Acts of God.”

Thomas Harris The Silence of the Lambs

Source: The Silence of the Lambs

God , Evil

“Keep the fire of your testimony of the restored gospel and your witness of our Redeemer burning so brightly that our children can warm their hands by the fire of your faith.”

Boyd K. Packer (1924–2015) American Mormon leader

Children , Faith

“It's only that ye looked so beautiful, wi' the fire on your face, and your hair waving in the wind. I wanted to remember it.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

Beauty

“behind the mask of ice that people wear, there beats a heart of fire.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Warrior of the Light

People , Heart

“We don't live alone. We are members of one body. We are responsible for each other. And I tell you that the time will soon come when if men will not learn that lesson, then they will be taught it in fire and blood and anguish. Good night.”

J.B. Priestley An Inspector Calls

Source: An Inspector Calls

Men , Learning , Time , Night

“Cats were the gangsters of the animal world, living outside the law and often dying there. There were a great many of them who never grew old by the fire.”

Stephen King book Pet Sematary

Source: Pet Sematary

World , Law , Cats , Animals

“It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in the minds of men.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Misattributed to Samuel Adams as early as 1990. Also misattributed to John Adams. Actually originates with Diane Ackerman, who, in an article on Samuel Adams, "The Man Who Made a Revolution", published in the September 6, 1987 issue of the widely circulated Sunday newspaper supplement Parade, wrote: "Early on, he realized that revolutions don't require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brushfires in people's minds." (page numbers vary, article on pp. 20–23 in most editions with the preceding quote on p. 22 https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=qfQaAAAAIBAJ&pg=4292%2C1111900) Source: Mansour Khalid, The Government They Deserve: The Role of the Elite in Sudan's Political Evolution, London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1990, p. 17 https://books.google.com/books?id=jZ9yAAAAMAAJ&q=brushfires. Source: Will Bunch, The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, Hi-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama, New York: Harper, 2010, p. 49. Source: https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/it_does_not_require_a_majority_to_prevail_but_rather_an_irate_tireless_mino, https://lists.h-net.org/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=lx&sort=3&list=H-OIEAHC&month=1310, http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2013-October/
Misattributed

Men

“Fire to my ice. Ice to my fever.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

“Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. Yes indeed.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Variant: Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.
Source: A Poetry Handbook

Life

“Faster!" Shane yelled. Eve hit the gas hard, and whipped around a slower-moving van. The firing ceased, at least for now. "You see why I didn't want you to stop?"
"Okay, your father is officially!" Eve yelled. "Oh my God, look at my car!”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Lord of Misrule

God , Cars

“I never ran out of ammo, because each time I fired a round, a new round was teleported into the bottom of the clip. My bullet bill this month was going to be huge.”

Ernest Cline book Ready Player One

Source: Ready Player One

Time

“That everything is on fire, slow fire, and we're all less than a million breaths away from an oblivion more total than we can even bring ourselves to even try to imagine…”

David Foster Wallace book The Pale King

Source: The Pale King (2011)
Context: "Maybe it's not metaphysics. Maybe it's existential. I'm talking about the individual US citizen's deep fear, the same basic fear that you and I have and that everybody has except nobody ever talks about it except existentialists in convoluted French prose. Or Pascal. Our smallness, our insignificance and mortality, yours and mine, the thing that we all spend all our time not thinking about directly, that we are tiny and at the mercy of large forces and that time is always passing and that every day we've lost one more day that will never come back and our childhoods are over and our adolescence and the vigor of youth and soon our adulthood, that everything we see around us all the time is decaying and passing, it's all passing away, and so are we, so am I, and given how fast the first forty-two years have shot by it's not going to be long before I too pass away, whoever imagined that there was a more truthful way to put it than "die," "pass away," the very sound of it makes me feel the way I feel at dusk on a wintry Sunday--... And not only that, but everybody who knows me or even knows I exist will die, and then everybody who knows those people and might even conceivably have even heard of me will die, and so on, and the gravestones and monuments we spend money to have pour in to make sure we're remembered, these'll last what-- a hundred years? two hundred?-- and they'll crumble, and the grass and insects my decomposition will go to feed will die, and their offspring, or if I'm cremated the trees that are nourished by my windblown ash will die or get cut down and decay, and my urn will decay, and that before maybe three of four generations it will be like I never existed, not only will I have passed away but it will be like I was never here, and people in 2104 or whatever will no more think of Stuart A. Nichols Jr. than you or I think of John T. Smith, 1790 to 1864, of Livingston, Virginia, or some such. That everything is on fire, slow fire, and we're all less than a million breaths away from an oblivion more total than we can even bring ourselves to even try to imagine, in fact, probably that's why the manic US obsession with production, produce, produce, impact the world, contribute, shape things, to help distract us from how little and totally insignificant and temporary we are... The post-production capitalist has something to do with the death of civics. But so does fear of smallness and death and everything being on fire."

Imagination

“To love is to burn, to be on fire.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Love

“I would rather insult you than lose you, he said, and before any of them could make a move to stop him, he cast both items into the fire.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

“Anyway that other thing we almost did in Paris-that's probably off the table for a while. Unless you want that whole baby-I'm-on-fire-when-we kiss thing to become freakishly literal”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Kiss , Baby

“Lies are neither bad nor good. Like a fire they can either keep you warm or burn you to death, depending on how they're used.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

Death , Dependency

“To set a forest on fire, you light a match. To set a character on fire, you put him in conflict.”

James N. Frey (1943) American writer

Source: How to Write a Damn Good Novel: A Step-by-Step No Nonsense Guide to Dramatic Storytelling

Light

“We go about in the night and are consumed by fire.”
In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni

Guy Debord (1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)

Night

“The Heart is a lonely hunter with only one desire! To find some lasting comfort in the arms of anothers fire… driven by a desperate hunger to the arms of a neon light, the heart is a lonely hunter when there's no sign of love in sight!”

Carson McCullers book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Source: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Love , Hunger , Light , Heart

“When I was little I bragged about my firefighting father: my father would go to heaven, because if he went to hell he would put out all the fires”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Hell

“I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn’t park anywhere near the place.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

“Pain wanders through my bones like a lost fire;
What burns me now? Desire, desire, desire.”

Theodore Roethke book The Far Field

"The Marrow," ll. 11-12
The Far Field (1964)

Pain

“Wait!" Conrad said. "Did someone… one of my enemies set this fire?"
Nix turned back with a grin. "Unless you'd pissed off some wirring-hungry nutrias, then I'm going with no.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dark Needs at Night's Edge

Waiting

“You have to carry the fire."
I don't know how to."
Yes, you do."
Is the fire real? The fire?"
Yes it is."
Where is it? I don't know where it is."
Yes you do. It's inside you. It always was there. I can see it.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

“I wish to go beyond the fire that burns me.”

Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374) Italian scholar and poet

Motivational

“Temper us in fire, and we grow stronger. When we suffer, we survive.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Suffering

“Upon him I will visit famine and a fire.
Till all around him desolation rings
And all the demons in the outer dark
Look on amazed and recognize
That vengeance is the business of a man.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 43, “The Flickering Way” (p. 323)

Business

“I know what you're thinking 'Did he fire six shots or only five?”

Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States

Thinking

“Oh, yeah?" Leo growled. "Well, maybe you got the smoke, buddy, but I've got the fire.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

“… wanting things for the wrong reasons can turn anyone's life into a marshmallow on a stick over a hot fire: impossibly messy and eventually consumed, one way or another.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Queen of Everything

Life , Way

“Whenever he saw the sea, or a fire, he fell silent, impressed by their elemental force.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

Sea

“He was now in that state of fire that she loved. She wanted to be burnt.”

Anaïs Nin book Delta of Venus

Source: Delta of Venus

For Him , For Boyfriend , Love

“I am the Vampire Lestat. I'm immortal more or less. The light of the sun, the sustained heat of an intense fire-these things might destroy me. But then again, they might not.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

Light , Sun

“I can't give you the white picket fence, and if I did, you'd set it on fire.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

“Those who are fired with an enthusiastic idea and who allow it to take hold and dominate their thoughts find that new worlds open for them. As long as enthusiasm holds out, so will new opportunities.”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

World , Idea

“Like when you sit in front of a fire in winter — you are just there in front of the fire. You don't have to be smart or anything. The fire warms you.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

Winter

“The purest surrealist act is walking into a crowd with a loaded gun and firing into it randomly”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

“Once, in second grade, Kate drew a picture of a firefighter with a halo above his helmet. She told her class that I would only be allowed to go to Heaven, because if I went to Hell, I'd put out all the fires.
~Brian Fitzgerald”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Hell

“… I am with fire between my teeth and still nothing but my blank page.”

Monique Wittig (1935–2003) French writer

“The strongest steel is forged by the fires of hell. (Savitar)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Hell

“Nothing is really lost or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form--no object of the world,
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing…
The body, sluggish, aged, cold--the embers
left from early fires,
… shall duly flame again”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Life , Age , World , Birth

“A fire can't burn forever. Eventually, it consumes itself.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

“Love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds. Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind, must be destroyed. And our God is a consuming fire.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

Love , God , Beauty

“A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Coffee , Support , Bird , Sun

“Love, however, cannot be forbidden. The more that flame is covered up, the hotter it burns. Also love can always find a way. It was impossible that these two whose hearts were on fire should be kept apart. (Pyramus and Thisbe)”

Edith Hamilton book Mythology

Source: Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

Love , Way , Heart

“fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while”

Don Marquis (1878–1937) American writer

Beauty , Time , Happiness

“So this is hell. I'd never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the "burning marl." Old wives' tales! There's no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is—other people!”

Jean Paul Sartre No Exit

Garcin, Act 1, sc. 5
Variant: So that is what hell is. I would never have believed it. You remember: the fire and brimstone, the torture. Ah! the farce. There is no need for torture: Hell is other people.
Source: No Exit (1944)

People , Hell

“I stand entwined in fire on the inextinguishable bonfire of inconceivable love.”

Daniel Handler book Why We Broke Up

Source: Why We Broke Up

Love

“One afternoon, when I was four years old, my father came home, and he found me in the living room in front of a roaring fire, which made him very angry. Because we didn't have a fireplace.”

Victor Borge (1909–2000) Danish and US-American comedian and musician

Home

“Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Painting

“Besides, if there were no dragons of flesh and blood and fire, whence would come the idea for these stone carvings?”

Robin Hobb book Assassin's Quest

Source: Assassin's Quest

Idea

“So of course time is necessary. But nevertheless damn painful, for it transforms all the pieces of your life - joy and sorrow, youth and age, love and hate, terror and bliss - from fire into smoke rising up the air and dissipating on a breeze.”

Charles Frazier (1950) American writer

Love , Life , Pain , Hate

“In the desert of my dreams I saw you there;
And I'm walking towards the water steaming body cold and bare.
But your words cut loose the fire and you left my soul to bleed.
And the pain that's in your truth's deceiving me, has got me scared.
Oh why?”

Sarah McLachlan (1968) Canadian musician, singer, and songwriter

Vox
Song lyrics, Touch (1988)

Pain , Truth , Dreams , Soul

“Junk does that. Junk is a forge. You enter the fire and come out twisted.”

Lisa Mason book Summer of Love

Source: Summer of Love (1994), Chapter 15 “Over Under Sideways Down” (p. 329)

“Bucky: "So I was watching TV today, and there was the most stupidest show on."
Rob: "You don't say. Offended you, did it?"
Bucky: "Yes… Yes. 'Offended.' That's exactly what it did. It said we evolved from monkeys! Well, lemme tell ya something, Bucky Katt don't come from no monkey!"
Rob: "No. No you don't. Cats actually come from a tiny, less developed, rat-like creature."
Bucky: "Wha… Hu… Fe… Shu…"
Satchel: "Ohhhh-ho-ho! Burn! Look out! Cat on fire! Uncle monkey's lookin' pretty good now, eh, Ratboy? Ha Ha Ha!"”

Darby Conley (1970) American cartoonist

Strip October 13, 2004
Daily strip circa 2000
Bucky Katt, Dialogue

Cats

“I have the right to do whatever I wish with my property. If I own a pile of wood, I can set fire to it even if it is currently nailed together in the shape of a barn. Cigarettes may not be healthy for me in the long run, but I have the freedom to smoke them anyway. Drinking alcohol may or may not have negative side effects, but even if it does, the government has no authority to prohibit you from consuming it, even if it is "in your own best interest." Since when do we let the government decide what is or isn't good for us? What the hell does Congress know about nutrition, anyway? (For that matter, what does Congress know about the Constitution?) If the government can use force whenever something is "in our best interest" then government should force everyone to wake up at 6am every morning for calisthenics in the front yard. Fast food establishments should be torn down and replaced with bars that serve carrot juice and alfalfa sprouts, since - "it's in your best interest."”

Michael Badnarik (1954) American software engineer

This paternalistic attitude that "the government knows best" and that you are merely a helpless child is insulting and reprehensible. Hitler used the same attitude to persuade the Germans to subjugate themselves to the "Fatherland."
Source: Good to be King (2004)

Alcohol , Food , Hell , Drink

“You mess with people’s religion and you mess with fire. Even people who don’t much give a damn. Religion is something that gets hammered in early, and never really goes away. And has powers to move which go beyond anything rational.”

Glen Cook book Shadows Linger

Source: Shadows Linger (1984), Chapter 38, “Juniper: The Storm” (p. 390)

People , Religion

“This light is for the world
send it out with sword of fire,
with cymbal, drum and angel choir,
music in the heart of it
proclaiming that the lamp is lit
this light is for the world.”

Mike Scott (1958) songwriter, musician

"This Light Is for the World"
Universal Hall (2003)

World , Music , Angels , Light

“Fear is like a fire in your belly. Controlled, it warms you and keeps you alive. Uncontrolled, it burns and destroys you.”

David Gemmell book Waylander II: In the Realm of the Wolf

Source: Drenai series, Waylander II: In the Realm of the Wolf, Ch. 1

Fear

“Every word is a messenger. Some have wings; some are filled with fire; some are filled with death.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

"Sand Dabs, Six"
Winter Hours (1999)

Death

“I'd hear, "Because they paid the man, there's no money for the woman." How many times do you think I heard this? Over and over. Then I became a sex symbol. Now, how the hell did that happen? I don't exactly know the moment when it happened, but all of a sudden I'm a bombshell. The way I discovered this was I did Desperado. I had a very hard time with the love scene. I cried throughout the love scene. That's why you never see long pieces of the love scene — it's little pieces cut together. I'm crying most of the time so they have to take little pieces. It took eight hours instead of an hour. I nearly got fired. … Because I didn't want to be naked in front of a camera. The whole time, I'm thinking of my father and my brother… And then when the movie comes out, I read the first review. What do they say about me. "Salma Hayek is a bombshell." I had heard that when a movie does badly here, they say it bombs. So I'm crying. Thinking they're saying, "That terrible actress! It's a bomb! Salma Hayek is the worst part of the movie!" I called my friend and said, "The critics are destroying me!" She says, "No, they're saying you're very sexy." And then I look at all the reviews, and everybody said I was very sexy. So I'm very confused. I said, "I wonder if that's good or bad." I hear, "Yes, that's good." Then I do Fools Rush In, and I'm a pregnant woman. And they say I'm sexy again! I go, "But I'm pregnant!"”

Salma Hayek (1966) Mexican-American actress and producer

I'm not even naked in this movie, and they still say I'm sexy. And then it became very depressing — I thought, I guess I'm reduced to that now. That's all I am in the perception of these people.
O interview (2003)

Love , Money , People , Fools

“The suffering man ought really 'to consume his own smoke'; there is no good in emitting smoke till you have made it into fire, — which, in the metaphorical sense too, all smoke is capable of becoming!”

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

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Man of Letters

Sense , Suffering

“I may just add, that in addition to the hand-guns, I meet with other instruments of like kind mentioned in the reign of Elizabeth, namely, demy hags, or hag butts. They shot with these engines not only at butts and other dead marks, but also at birds and beasts, using sometimes bullets and sometimes half shots; but in the beginning of the seventeenth century the word artillery was used in a much more extensive sense, and comprehended long-bows, cross-bows, slur-bows, and stone-bows; also scorpions, rams, and catapults, which, the writer tells us, were formerly used; he then names the fire-arms as follows, cannons, basilisks, culverins, jakers, faulcons, minions, fowlers, chambers, harguebusses, calivers, petronils, pistols, and dags. "This," says he, "is the artillerie which is nowe in the most estimation, and they are divided into great ordinance, and into shot or guns," which proves that the use of fire-arms had then in great measure superseded the practice of archery.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 57
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Weapons

Bird , Sense , Dead

“For me, I have seen worlds and people begin and end, actually and metaphorically, and it will always be the same. It’s always fire and water.
No matter what your scientific background, emotionally you’re an alchemist. You live in a world of liquids, solids, gases and heat-transfer effects that accompany their changes of state. These are the things you perceive, the things you feel. Whatever you know about their true natures is rafted on top of that. So, when it comes to the day-to-day sensations of living, from mixing a cup of coffee to flying a kite, you treat with the four ideal elements of the old philosophers: earth, air, fire, water.
Let’s face it, air isn’t very glamorous, no matter how you look at it. I mean, I’d hate to be without it, but it’s invisible and so long as it behaves itself it can be taken for granted and pretty much ignored. Earth? The trouble with earth is that it endures. Solid objects tend to persist with a monotonous regularity.
Not so fire and water, however. They’re formless, colorful, and they’re always doing something. While suggesting you repent, prophets very seldom predict the wrath of the gods in terms of landslides and hurricanes. No. Floods and fires are what you get for the rottenness of your ways. Primitive man was really on his way when he learned to kindle the one and had enough of the other nearby to put it out. It is coincidence that we’ve filled hells with fires and oceans with monsters? I don’t think so. Both principles are mobile, which is generally a sign of life. Both are mysterious and possess the power to hurt or kill. It is no wonder that intelligent creatures the universe over have reacted to them in a similar fashion. It is the alchemical response.”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 6 (pp. 137-138)

Life , God , Hate , People

“With chemical film, it was possible to alter photographs, but you had to be an expert. That's not true any more. The LA Times fired a photographer at the beginning of the Iraq War for editing two shots together. Photography is crumbling. Certainly it is for the newspapers a bit now, isn't it? There will be painting again, absolutely!”

David Hockney (1937) British artist

Interview with Martin Gayford, " 'Photography is crumbling,' " http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2004/05/18/bahock18.xml The Telegraph, (18 May 2004)
2000s

War , Time , Painting

“I will follow the good side right to the fire, but not into it if I can help it.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III (1595), Ch. 1
Essais (1595), Book III

Help

“They call me Boosie Baddazz and I Zoom right by ya, 760 partna crispy cream on the tires, I smoke that fire purple kush by the pound, ask my dog Webbie this is how it goes down, from my hood to yo hood, man we makin money”

Lil Boosie (1982) American rapper from Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Boosie

Money , Dogs

“Dialectics is the way of seeking for truth by talking with others from different points of view, through "Yes" and "No," until a "Yes" has been reached which is hardened in the fire of many "No's" and which unites the elements of truth promoted in the discussion. It is most unfortunate that in recent years the name "dialectical theology" has been applied to a theology that is strongly opposed to any kind of dialectics and mediation and that constantly repeats the "Yes" to its own and the "No" to any other position. This has made it difficult to use the term "dialectical" to denote theological movements of a really dialectical, that is a mediating, character; and it has resulted in the cheap and clumsy way of dividing all theologians into naturalists and supernaturalists, or into liberals and orthodox. The Protestant Era by Paul Tillich 1948 Introduction”

Paul Tillich (1886–1965) German-American theologian and philosopher

The Protestant Era (1948)

Truth , Way

“Mrs. Burgoyne passed the last twenty years of her life in a large, solemn-looking house at Kensington; it is now a mad-house. How curiously do these changes in dwelling places, once cheerful and familiar, bring the mutability of our existence home! It would be an eventful chronicle, the history of even a few of the old-fashioned houses in the vicinity of London. You ascended a flight of steps, with a balustrade and two indescribable birds on either side, and a large hall, which, strange to say, was more cheerful in winter than in summer. In summer the narrow windows, the black wood with which it was panelled, seemed heavy and dull; but in winter the huge fire gave its own gladness, and had besides the association with old English hospitality which a blazing grate always brings. You passed next through two long drawing-rooms, whose white wainscoting was almost covered with family portraits. There cannot be much said for the taste of Queen Anne's time downwards — bagged, wigged, and hooped; there was not a picture of which the African's question might not have been asked, "Pray tell me, white woman, if this is all you?””

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

The Monthly Magazine

Life , Family , Home , History

“Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly -- yet, our purpose is sure. The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder. We will meet that threat now, with our Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and Marines, so that we do not have to meet it later with armies of fire fighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities.”

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

2000s, 2003, Invasion of Iraq (March 2003)

People , Peace

“It’s legend now, but legend is the smoke from the fire, and the wood that the fire consumes is the substance.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Two, Part I “Across the Ring”, Chapter 2 (p. 151)
The Birthgrave (1975)

“It is a revolution; a revolution of the most intense character; in which belief in the justice, prudence, and wisdom of secession is blended with the keenest sense of wrong and outrage, and it can no more be checked by human effort for the time than a prairie fire by a gardener’s watering pot.”

Judah P. Benjamin (1811–1884) American politician and lawyer

On the secession movement in the South (1860). Reported in Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln (1950), p. 387.

Wisdom , Justice , Sense , Effort

“Clyde: You're telling me. What about those first three nights, we had to light fires to keep the animals away.”

Jack Benny (1894–1974) comedian, vaudeville performer, and radio, television, and film actor

The Jack Benny Program (Radio: 1932-1955), The Jack Benny Program (Television: 1950-1965)

Light , Animals , Night

“Just yesterday morning, they let me know that you were gone.
Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you.
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song,
I just can't remember who to send it to. I've seen fire and I've seen rain.
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end.
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend.
But I always thought that I'd see you again.”

James Taylor (1948) American singer-songwriter and guitarist

"Fire and Rain" · Live performance (1970) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOIo4lEpsPY
Song lyrics, Sweet Baby James (1970)

Time

“The whole world is against Hitler and Hitlerism. Men of every race and clime feel that this monstrous apparition stands between them and the forward move which is their due, and for which the age is ripe. Even in Germany itself there are millions who stand aloof from the seething mass of criminality and corruption constituted by the Nazi Party machine. Let them take courage amid perplexities and perils, for it may well be that the final extinction of a baleful domination will pave the way to a broader solidarity of all the men in all the lands than we could ever have planned if we had not marched together through the fire.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

The Second World War (1939–1945)
Source: Broadcast (12 November 1939), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), p. 81

Men , Age , World , Way

“Air, fire, water and the earth evolve out of the spiritual and material staminibus in periodic cycles of time. Diverse connections of water, air, and light precede the emergence of the seed of the simplest plant, for instance moss. Many plants had to come into being, then die away before an animal emerged. Insects, birds, water animals, and night animals preceded the present animal forms; until finally the crown of earthly organization appeared—the human being, microcosm. He is the son of all the elements and beings, Nature’s most carefully chosen conception and the blossom of creation. He must be the youngest child of Nature; many evolutions and revolutions must have preceded his formation.”

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) German philosopher, theologian, poet, and literary critic

Book 1, as cited in Frank Teichmann (tr. Jon McAlice), "The Emergence of the Idea of Evolution in the Time of Goethe" http://www.waldorfresearchinstitute.org/pdf/BAIdeaEvolTeich.pdf
Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-91)

Nature , Bird , Light , Water

Quotes about fire page 7

Quotes about fire
page 7