Quotes about flame
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“But such meanness can incite you to achieve great things. I take insults - insults to my physical being, to my mental being, to my pride - very deeply. I can't shake them off! I bear these insults to my sense of fair play and justice to this day. It's almost an inextinguishable flame, which is why I make a very bad enemy. I just felt "I want to show you. I will show you." From early on, I developed this strong anger which, in many ways, propelled me forward in life.”

Robert Kuok (1923) Malaysian businessman

Cap 1 "Moulded by Mother"

Life, Justice, Way, Sense

“I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

"Her Kind"
To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960)

Learning

“For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor;
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed;
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky.
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of him that walked the waves.”

John Milton Lycidas

Source: Lycidas (1637), Line 166

Star, Dead

“A good night for the fireplace to be
crackling with flames - or so he figured,
Crumpling the papers he could only see
As testimonials to long plateaus of emptiness.”

Weldon Kees (1914–1955) American artist

The Heat in the Room (Jarkko Laine: Amerikan Cowboy. Helsinki: Otava, 1981. ISBN 951-1-06597-1

Night

“"Ylma is having you work it out in the most gruesome way possible… so that when she teaches you how it's really done, it'll seem that much easier…. Like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer—it feels so good when you stop." This was the oldest joke in the world, but Barb hadn't heard it before, and he became so amused that he got physically excited and had to run back and forth across the kitchen several times to flame off energy. A few weeks ago, I would have been alarmed by this and would have tried to calm him down, but now I was used to it, and knew that if I approached him physically things would get much worse.”

Neal Stephenson book Anathem

Part 4, "Anathem"
Anathem (2008)

World, Way, Feeling, Time

“"I would give anything to know what you thought at the moment you died," Pierce said. His voice echoed in the tomb. The flame went out.”

Michael Crichton book Easy Go

Easy Go (1967)

“Having written all that, I must admit that there is some soul searching going on in the economics profession. As obvious as the financial crisis seems after the fact, few economists saw it coming (with some notable exceptions). Virtually none anticipated how severe it might be. In the fall of 2005, several prominent economists wrote in a prestigious journal, “As of the end of 2004, our analysis reveals little evidence of a housing bubble.”
Wrong. Actually the article was worse than wrong, because it was written explicitly to refute the signs of a bubble that had become obvious to many laypeople—which is kind of like the fire department showing up at a house with smoke wafting from the roof and declaring, “No, that’s not a fire,” only to have flames start leaping from the attic twenty minutes later. There was a bubble. And it can be explained best by incorporating psychology into economics, namely the tendency of individuals to believe that whatever is happening now is what’s most likely to happen in the future.”

Charles Wheelan (1966) American politician

Introduction
Naked Economics (rev. and updated ed., 2010)

Soul, Search, Future, Housing

“Nolan Ryan is simply a flame-thrower. They call him The Express. Get it? Ryan's Express. Harmon Killebrew says if he ever gets hit by Ryan's express, he'll have the pitcher arrested for manslaughter. Oakland slugger Reggie Jackson says Ryan is the only pitcher he's afraid of, down-deep-in-the-guts afraid of. "If a pitch ever gets away from him, he will kill someone." Nolan Ryan pitches for the California Angels, in Anaheim, which you also wouldn't confuse with New York. Thus, few people really know what an exciting young man this is, perhaps the most exciting single performer in baseball today. Yes, I've heard of Hank Aaron. For years I beat the drums, by myself, for Roberto Clemente. I like the cool gall of Vida Blue, the hot moxie of Pete Rose. They all excite me. But not down deep in the guts, the way this kid does. He excites me. He frightens me. He puts me on that double-pronged fork of attraction and revulsion. When you watch Nolan Ryan rear and throw that screaming blur of white toward the plate, you don't know whether to watch or cover your eyes. Will he strike out the hitter, or will he strike him dead?”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From "Nolan Ryan: The Untouchable," in Baseball Stars of 1973 (March 1973), edited by Ray Robinson, p. 92
Sports-related

People, Angels, Way, Dead

“There is, then, no danger in the circumstances that anti-semitism will disappear, for it is the Jews themselves who add fuel to its flames and see that it is kept well stoked. Before the opposition to it can disappear, the malady itself must disappear. And from that point of view, you can rely on the Jews: as long as they survive, anti-semitism will never fade.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

13 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)

“My soul is like this cloudy, flaming opal ring.”

Arthur Symons (1865–1945) British poet

Opals (1896).

Soul

“The Christian movement began with John the Baptist. … in his recorded teaching to the people there is not a word about the customary ritual of religion, about increased Sabbath observance, about stricter washings and sacrifices, or the ordinary exercises of piety. He spoke only of repentance, of ceasing from wrongdoing. He hailed the professional exponents of religion who came to hear him, as a brood of snakes wriggling away from the flames of the judgment. …The way to prepare for the Messianic era and to escape the wrath of the Messiah was to institute a brotherly life and to equalize social inequalities.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.2 The Social Aims of Jesus, p. 49-50

Life, People, Religion, Way

“Fame, (fame) makes a man take things over
Fame, (fame) lets him loose, hard to swallow
Fame, (fame) puts you there where things are hollow
Fame (fame)Fame, it's not your brain, it's just the flame
That burns your change to keep you insane”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

sane
Fame, written with Carlos Alomar and John Lennon
Song lyrics, Young Americans (1975)

Change

“Sir George Ross (Federal Cabinet, Premier of Ontario)– “Mackenzie was sui generis a debater. His humorous sallies blistered like a blast from a flaming smelter. His sterling honesty is a great heritage, and will keep his memory green to all future generations.””

Alexander Mackenzie (1822–1892) 2nd Prime Minister of Canada

Ross 1913, p. 31
His Character

Memory, Future

“Today is different, and tomorrow the same.
It's hard to take the world the way that it came.
Too many rapids keep us sweeping along.
Too many captains keep on steering us wrong.
It's hard to take the heat.
It's hard to lay blame.
To fight the fire, while we're feeding the flames.
-- Second Nature (1987)”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

World, Way, Nature, Fight

“Some men, like a tiled house, are long before they take fire, but once on flame there is no coming near to quench them.”

Thomas Fuller (1608–1661) English churchman and historian

Of Anger.
The Holy State and the Profane State (1642)

Men, Housing

“We mourned with you then in brotherhood,
And I'll weep with you now for those whose names
Burn on your monuments like altar flames.”

Donald Davidson (1893–1968) American poet, essayist, critic and author

Late Answer: A Civil War Seminar

“If you stare into a flame
You'll get an eye full of energy
If you write your nightscapades
You'll get a dawn full of promises”

Happy Rhodes (1965) American singer-songwriter

"Many Worlds Are Born Tonight" - Live performance at The Tin Angel (24 July 1999) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGdnjC48aJg Many Worlds Are Born Tonight (1998)

“Nothing was said. And on crawled the little procession in the direction of Summerhouses, men and animals, men-animals, five souls. The pale red sun grazed the surface of the moorland bluffs on this northern winter's morning which was really only an evening. And yet it was midday. The light gilded the clouds of snow flying over the moors so that they seemed one unbroken ocean of fire, one radiant fire of gold with streaming flames and glimmering smoke from east to west over the whole frozen expanse. Through this golden fire of frost, comparable in its magic to nothing but the most powerful and elaborate witchcraft of the Ballads, lay their homeward way.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book One, Part I: Icelandic Pioneers

Men, Way, Soul, Light

“At the very heart, that is. Other things, like humanity, and mercy, and charity, that most good men hold more precious than all else, they do not come first for the Light. Oh, sometimes they are there; often, indeed. But in the very long run the concern of you people is with the absolute good, ahead of all else. You are like fanatics. Your masters, at any rate. Like the old Crusaders—oh, like certain groups in every belief, though this is not a matter of religion, of course. At the centre of the Light there is a cold white flame, just as at the centre of the Dark there is a great black pit bottomless as the Universe.”

Susan Cooper (1935) English fantasy writer

Source: The Dark Is Rising (1965-1977), The Grey King (1975), Chapter 10 “The Pleasant Lake” (p. 115)

Men, People, Religion, Light

“Consume hostility;
employ your weapon in this meeting-place of surging enmity!
Insurgent feet shall not outrun
multiplied flames, O Sun.”

Marianne Moore (1887–1972) American poet and writer

"Sun" from Tell Me, Tell Me (1966)
Poetry

Hostility, Sun

“The wrath of God burns against them, their damnation does not slumber; the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and glow.”

Jonathan Edwards book Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741)

God, Rage

“My heart is like the failing hearth
Now by my side,
One by one its bursts of flame
Have burnt and died.”

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

The Golden Violet - Clemenza’s Song
The Golden Violet (1827)

Heart

“Etna! 'tis amid you, visited by Venus
On your lava fields placing her candid feet,
When a sad stillness thunders wherein the flame dies.
I hold the queen!”

Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) French Symbolist poet

The Afternoon of a Faun (1876)

Sadness

“The title of poet's a noble thing, worth living and dying for,
Though all the devils on earth and in Hell spit at me their disdain.
It is stern work, it is perilous work, to thrust your hand in the sun
And pull out a spark of immortal flame to warm the hearts of men:
But Prometheus, torn by the claws and beaks whose task is never done,
Would be tortured another eternity to go stealing fire again.”

Joyce Kilmer (1886–1918) American poet, editor, literary critic, soldier

Main Street and Other Poems (1917), The Proud Poet

Men, Hell, Sun, Heart

“O no, my heart can never be
Again in lighted hopes the same —
The love that lingers there for thee
Has more of ashes than of flame.”

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

(1826-2) Ci-Devant
The Monthly Magazine

Love, Hope, Light, Heart

“…if my fire is not large, it is yet real, and there may be those who can light their candle at its flame.”

Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897–1963) American missionary

forward
The Pursuit of God (1957)

Light

“Halfway up the slope, guarded by a group of tall, slim, cypress-trees, nestled a small strawberry-pink villa, like some exotic fruit lying in the greenery. The cypress-trees undulated gently in the breeze, as if they were busily painting the sky a still brighter blue for our arrival.
The villa was small and square, standing in its tiny garden with an air of pink-faced determination. Its shutters had been faded by the sun to a delicate creamy-green, cracked and bubbled in places. The garden, surrounded by tall fuschia hedges, had the flower beds worked in complicated geometrical patterns, marked with smooth white stones. The white cobbled paths, scarcely as wide as a rake's head, wound laboriously round beds hardly larger than a big straw hat, beds in the shape of stars, half-moons, triangles, and circles all overgrown with a shaggy tangle of flowers run wild. Roses dropped petals that seemed as big and smooth as saucers, flame-red, moon-white, glossy, and unwrinkled; marigolds like broods of shaggy suns stood watching their parent's progress through the sky. In the low growth the pansies pushed their velvety, innocent faces through the leaves, and the violets drooped sorrowfully under their heart-shaped leaves. The bougainvillaea that sprawled luxuriously over the tiny iron balcony was hung, as though for a carnival, with its lantern-shaped magenta flowers. In the darkness of the fuschia-hedge a thousand ballerina-like blooms quivered expectantly. The warm air was thick with the scent of a hundred dying flowers, and full of the gentle, soothing whisper and murmur of insects.”

Gerald Durrell book My Family and Other Animals

My Family and Other Animals (1956)

Star, Flowers, Lying, Parent

“My body is a monster driven insane,
My heart is a fish toasted in flames.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, Prayers on Fire (1981), Zoo-Music Girl

Fish, Heart

“In the village where I live, in Sussex, we made our bonfire in the Vicarage paddock and every year, as soon as it was lit, the Vicar's cow would begin to dance. She danced while the flames rose up to the sky, she danced till the ashes were black and cold. And the next morning — it was always the same — the Vicar would have no milk for his breakfast. It is strange to think of a simple cow rejoicing at the saving of Parliament so many years ago.”

P. L. Travers book Mary Poppins Opens the Door

NOTE
Mary Poppins Opens the Door (1943)

Thinking, Dance

“Esmerelda, the grieving widow, continues to burn and scream. In our minds we rush to save her from the consuming flames. But cannot.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Rosa: The Death of a Composer

“I've been lookin' for someone
Between the fire and the flame.
We're all lookin' for somethin'
To ease the pain.
Now who can you turn to
When it's all black and white?
And the winners are losers.
You see it every night.I need somebody,
Somebody like you.
Everybody needs somebody.”

Bryan Adams (1959) Canadian singer-songwriter

Somebody
Song lyrics, Reckless (1984)

Pain

“Abstinence sows sand all over
The ruddy limbs and flaming hair,
But desire gratified
Plants fruits of life and beauty there.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Abstinence Sows Sand
1790s, Poems from Blake's Notebook (c. 1791-1792)

Life, Beauty

“To minimize my guilt at going to the pictures — to call this wanton pursuit of an effete pleasure by another name — I needed movie companions as drunkards need drinking partners. If I entered a cinema alone, God might plunge his arm through the roof of the auditorium booming in a stereophonic voice, "And you, Crisp, what are you doing here?" I would never have dared reply, "I’m just enjoying myself, Lord." I remembered too well what happened to Mr and Mrs Adam. A commissionaire with a flaming sword came and asked them to leave.”

Quentin Crisp book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 27

God, Pleasure, Drink

“Nero watched the conflagration from the Tower of Maecenas, enraptured by what he called "the beauty of the flames"; then put on his tragedian's costume and sang The Sack of Ilium from beginning to end.”
Hoc incendium e turre Maecenatiana prospectans laetusque "flammae," ut aiebat, "pulchritudine" Halosin Ilii in illo suo scaenico habitu decantavit.

Sueton book The Twelve Caesars

Source: The Twelve Caesars, Nero, Ch. 38

Beauty

“Christianity - and that is its greatest merit - has somewhat mitigated that brutal Germanic love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame. This talisman is fragile, and the day will come when it will collapse miserably. Then the ancient stony gods will rise from the forgotten debris and rub the dust of a thousand years from their eyes, and finally Thor with his giant hammer will jump up and smash the Gothic cathedrals.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

"The History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany" (1834)

Love, God, War, Rage

“…letters of a burning book
dance in flame not every time
and not every time literally.”

Anatoly Kudryavitsky (1954) a Russian/Irish novelist, poet, literary translator and magazine editor

Poems, Shadow of Time (2005)

Books, Time, Dance

“The narrative of thy battles eclipses the stories of Rustam and Isfandiyar. Thou didst bring an army in one night from Dhangan to Jalandhar… Thou didst direct but one assault and by that alone brought destruction upon the country. By the morning meal not one soldier, not one Brahman, remained unkilled or uncaptured. Their beads were severed by the carriers of swords. Their houses were levelled with the ground with flaming fire… Thou has secured victory to the country and to religion, for amongst the Hindus this achievement will be remembered till the day of resurrection.”

Ibrahim of Ghazna (1032–1099) sultan of the Ghaznavid Empire

Jalandhar (Punjab). Khwaja Mas'ud bin Sa'd bin Salman:Diwan-i-Salman in Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, Vol. IV, pp. 518 ff.

Religion, Victory, Housing, Night

“For a country without a past is nothing, a word
That, hardly spoken, loses its meaning,
A perishable wall destroyed by flame,
An echo of animal emotions.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"A Legend" (1949), trans. Czesŀaw Miŀosz and Robert Hass
Daylight (1953)

Past, Animals, Country

“This light is for the world.
Send out from this wooden frame
a beacon made of holy flame
like a bridge across the morning sky
from candle to the hills of high
this light is for the world.”

Mike Scott (1958) songwriter, musician

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

World, Light

“The illustrious archbishop of Cambray was of more worth than his chambermaid, and there are few of us that would hesitate to pronounce, if his palace were in flames, and the life of only one of them could be preserved, which of the two ought to be preferred … Supposing the chambermaid had been my wife, my mother or my benefactor. This would not alter the truth of the proposition. The life of Fenelon would still be more valuable than that of the chambermaid; and justice, pure, unadulterated justice, would still have preferred that which was most valuable. Justice would have taught me to save the life of Fenelon at the expence of the other. What magic is there in the pronoun "my", to overturn the decisions of everlasting truth?”

William Godwin (1756–1836) English journalist, political philosopher and novelist

Vol.1, bk. 2, ch. 2
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

Life, Truth, Justice, Decision

“No orthodox church ever had power that it did not endeavor to make people think its way by force and flame.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)

People, Way, Thinking

“Everard was not so sure; he had seen enough human misery in all the ages. You got case-hardened after a while, but down underneath, when a peasant stared at you with sick brutalized eyes, or a soldier screamed with a pike through him, or a city went up in radioactive flame, something wept. He could understand the fanatics who had tried to change events. It was only that their work was so unlikely to make anything better…”

Poul Anderson (1926–2001) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Delenda Est (p. 177)
Time Patrol

Age, Understanding, Change

“Like a moth to a flame
Burned by the fire.
My love is blind
Can't you see my desire?”

Janet Jackson (1966) singer from the United States

That's the Way Love Goes
janet. (1993)

Love

“When Bonaparte was to be dethroned, the Sovereigns of Europe called up their people to their aid; they invoked them in the sacred names of Freedom and National Independence; the cry went forth throughout Europe: and those, whom Subsidies had no power to buy, and Conscriptions no force to compel, roused by the magic sound of Constitutional Rights, started spontaneously into arms. The long-suffering Nations of Europe rose up as one man, and by an effort tremendous and wide spreading, like a great convulsion of nature, they hurled the conqueror from his throne. But promises made in days of distress, were forgotten in the hour of triumph…The rulers of mankind…had set free a gigantic spirit from its iron prison, but when that spirit had done their bidding, they shrunk back with alarm, from the vastness of that power, which they themselves had set into action, and modestly requested, it would go down again into its former dungeon. Hence, that gloomy discontent, that restless disquiet, that murmuring sullenness, which pervaded Europe after the overthrow of Bonaparte; and which were so unlike that joyful gladness, which might have been looked for, among men, who had just been released from the galling yoke of a foreign and a military tyrant. In 1820 the long brooding fire burst out into open flame; in Germany it was still kept down and smothered, but in Italy, in Spain, and in Portugal, it overpowered every resistance.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1830/mar/10/affairs-of-portugal in the House of Commons (10 March 1830). 1830s

Men, People, Nature, Effort

“With a choked cry the Englishman woke from his trance of horror, drew and fired at a darting flame-eyed shadow which fell at his feet with a shattered skull. And Kane gave tongue to one deep, fierce roar and bounded into the melee, all the berserk fury of his heathen Saxon ancestors bursting into terrible being.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"Wings in the Night" (1932)

Cry

“I know the symptoms of the ancient flame.”

Giusto de' Conti (1390–1449) Italian poet

Conosco i segni de l'rantico foco.
La Bella Mano (Ed. Vinegia, 1531), p. 50.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 281.

“I am the sunlight in the heart, the silver moonglow in the mind;
My laughter runs and ripples through the wavy tresses of the wind.
I am the fire upon the hills, the dancing flame that leads afar
Each burning-hearted wanderer, and I the dear and homeward star.”

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

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Star, Laughter, Heart, Dance

“Heroes have filled the zodiac of beneficent labors, and then given up their mortal part to the fire without a murmur. Sages and lawgivers have bent their whole nature to the search for truth, and thought themselves happy if they could buy, with the sacrifice of all temporal ease and pleasure, one seed for the future Eden. Poets and priests have strung the lyre with heart-strings, poured out their best blood upon the altar which, reare'd anew from age to age, shall at last sustain the flame which rises to highest heaven. What shall we say of those who, if not so directly, or so consciously, in connection with the central truth, yet, led and fashioned by a divine instinct, serve no less to develop and interpret the open secret of love passing into life, the divine energy creating for the purpose of happiness; — of the artist, whose hand, drawn by a preexistent harmony to a certain medium, moulds it to expressions of life more highly and completely organized than are seen elsewhere, and, by carrying out the intention of nature, reveals her meaning to those who are not yet sufficiently matured to divine it; of the philosopher, who listens steadily for causes, and, from those obvious, infers those yet unknown; of the historian, who, in faith that all events must have their reason and their aim, records them, and lays up archives from which the youth of prophets may be fed. The man of science dissects the statement, verifies the facts, and demonstrates connection even where he cannot its purpose·”

Margaret Fuller book Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Woman in the Nineteenth Century (1845)

Love, Life, Pleasure, Truth

“The darkness crumbles away.
It is the same old druid Time as ever,
Only a live thing leaps my hand,
A queer sardonic rat,
As I pull the parapet's poppy
To stick behind my ear.
Droll rat, they would shoot you if they knew
Your cosmopolitan sympathies.
Now you have touched this English hand
You will do the same to a German
Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure
To cross the sleeping green between.
It seems you inwardly grin as you pass
Strong eyes, fine limbs, haughty athletes,
Less chanced than you for life,
Bonds to the whims of murder,
Sprawled in the bowels of the earth,
The torn fields of France.
What do you see in our eyes
At the shrieking iron and flame
Hurled through still heavens?
What quaver--what heart aghast?
Poppies whose roots are in man's veins
Drop, and are ever dropping;
But mine in my ear is safe--
Just a little white with the dust.”

Isaac Rosenberg (1890–1918) English poet

On Receiving News of the War (1914), Break of Day in the Trenches (1916)

Life, Pleasure, Sleep, Strong

“I look upon prayer-meetings as the most profitable exercises (excepting the public preaching) in which Christians can engage. They have a direct tendency to kill a worldly, trifling spirit, and to draw down a Divine blessing upon all our concerns, compose differences, and enkindle (at least maintain) the flames of Divine love amongst brethren.”

John Newton (1725–1807) Anglican clergyman and hymn-writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 475.

Love, Exercises, Drawing

“The tongue of the sword of the Khalifa of the time, which is the tongue of the flame of Islam, has imparted light to the entire darkness of Hindustan by the illumination of its guidance… and on the right hand and on the left hand the army has conquered from sea to sea, and several capitals of the gods of the Hindus in which Satanism had prevailed since the time of the Jinns, have been demolished. All these impurities of infidelity have been cleansed by the Sultan’s destruction of idol temples, beginning with his first expedition against Deogir, so that the flames of the light of the law illumine all these unholy countries, and places for the criers to prayers are exalted on high, and prayers are read in mosques. Allah be praised!”

Amir Khusrow (1253–1325) Indian poet, writer, musician and scholar

Ma’bar: (Parts of South India), About Sultan ‘Alau’d-Din Khalji (AD 1296-1316) and his generals conquests in Deccan and South India Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians,Vol. III, p. 81-85
Khazainu’l-Futuh

God, Law, Light, Time

“I'm impaled on the blue flames of his blowtorch eyes, you see.”

Jani Allan (1952) South African columnist and broadcaster

Description of Eugene Terre'Blanche in the Face to Face column published on 31 January 1989.
Sunday Times

“One voice in the Great Conversation itself announces this modern point of view. In the closing paragraph of his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume writes: "When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume… let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."… the positivists of our own day, would commit to burning or, what is the same, to dismissal from serious consideration… Those books… argue the case against the kind of positivism that asserts that everything except mathematics and experimental science is sophistry and illusion…. The Great Conversation… contains both sides of the issue.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

Books, Mathematics, Understanding, Science

“No, the Great Man does not boast himself sincere, far from that; perhaps does not ask himself if he is so: I would say rather, his sincerity does not depend on himself; he cannot help being sincere! The great Fact of Existence is great to him. Fly as he will, he cannot get out of the awful presence of this Reality. His mind is so made; he is great by that, first of all. Fearful and wonderful, real as Life, real as Death, is this Universe to him. Though all men should forget its truth, and walk in a vain show, he cannot. At all moments the Flame-image glares in upon him; undeniable, there, there!—I wish you to take this as my primary definition of a Great Man. A little man may have this, it is competent to all men that God has made: but a Great Man cannot be without it.”

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

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

Life, Death, Men, God

“The richest source of power to wage war lies in the masses of the people. It is mainly because of the unorganized state of the Chinese masses that Japan dares to bully us. When this defect is remedied, the the Japanese aggressor, like a mad bull crashing into a ring of flames, will be surrounded by hundreds of millions of our people standing upright, the mere sound of their voices will strike terror into him, and he will be burned to death.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On Protracted Warfare (1938)
Original: (zh-CN) 战争的伟力之最深厚的根源，存在于民众之中。日本敢于欺负我们，主要的原因在于中国民众的无组织状态。克服了这一缺点，就把日本侵略者置于我们数万万站起来了的人民之前，使它像一匹野牛冲入火阵，我们一声唤也要把它吓一大跳，这匹野牛就非烧死不可。

Death, War, People, Madness

“When Israel, of the Lord belov'd,
Out of the land of bondage came,
Her fathers' God before her mov'd,
An awful guide in smoke and flame.”

Walter Scott book Ivanhoe

Ivanhoe, Chap. xxxix.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

God

“This is my best work, but only because The Flaming Angel is my greatest.”

Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953) Ukrainian & Russian Soviet pianist and composer

He made a rare admission to a visiting musicologist when he was conducting his Third Symphony in Rome in 1934. time.com http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,864759,00.html

Angels

“I hate all virtues based on food and bloated bellies;
though food and drink are good, I'm better slaked and fed
by that inhuman flame which burns in our black bowels.
I like to name that flame which burns within me God!”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

Odysseus, Book XI, line 840
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

God, Hate, Food, Drink

“Around her, lovers, newly met
'Mid deathless love's acclaims,
Spoke evermore among themselves
Their heart-remember'd names;
And the souls mounting up to God
Went by her like thin flames.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) English poet, illustrator, painter and translator

Stanza 7. The Blessed Damozel http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/715.html (1850)

Love, God, Soul, Lovers

“The Sultan himself joined in the pursuit, and went after them as far as the fort called Bhimnagar [Nagarkot, modern Kangra], which is very strong, situated on the promontory of a lofty hill, in the midst of impassable waters. The kings of Hind, the chiefs of that country, and rich devotees, used to amass their treasures and precious jewels, and send them time after time to be presented to the large idol that they might receive a reward for their good deeds and draw near to their God. So the Sultan advanced near to this crow's fruit, ^ and this accumulation of years, which had attained such an amount that the backs of camels would not carry it, nor vessels contain it, nor writers hands record it, nor the imagination of an arithmetician conceive it. The Sultan brought his forces under the fort and surrounded it, and prepared to attack the garrison vigorously, boldly, and wisely. When the defenders saw the hills covered with the armies of plunderers, and the arrows ascending towards them like flaming sparks of fire, great fear came upon them, and, calling out for mercy, they opened the gates, and fell on the earth, like sparrows before a hawk, or rain before lightning. Thus did God grant an easy conquest of this fort to the Sultan, and bestowed on him as plunder the products of mines and seas, the ornaments of heads and breasts, to his heart's content. … After this he returned to Ghazna in triumph; and, on his arrival there, he ordered the court-yard of his palace to be covered with a carpet, on which he displayed jewels and unbored pearls and rubies, shining like sparks, or like wine congealed with ice, and emeralds like fresh sprigs of myrtle, and diamonds in size and weight like pomegranates. Then ambassadors from foreign countries, including the envoy from Tagh^n Khan, king of Turkistin, assembled to see the wealth which they had never yet even read of in books of the ancients, and which had never been accumulated by kings of Persia or of Rum, or even by Karun, who had only to express a wish and Grod granted it.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

About the capture of Bhimnagar, Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 34-35 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes (971 CE to 1013 CE)

God, Books, Fear, Imagination

“Far in the stillness a cat
Languishes loudly. A cinder
Falls, and the shadows
Lurch to the leap of the flame.”

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) English poet, critic and editor

Source: In Hospital (1908), p. 11

Cats

“Would we have played with our lives for nothing but worldly gain?
If our people had run after earth's goods and gold,
Need they have smashed idols, and not idols sold?…
Fake gods that men had made, who did break and shatter?
Who routed infidel armies and destroyed them with bloody slaughter?
Who put out and made cold the sacred flame in Iran?”

Muhammad Iqbál (1877–1938) Urdu poet and leader of the Pakistan Movement

Shikwa. https://archive.org/details/ShikwaJawabIShikwaIqbalsDialogueWithAllahTrKhushwantSinghIqbal Shikwa & Jawab Shikwa : The complaint and the answer : the human grievance and the divine response

Men, God, People

“All the suns labor to kindle your flame and a microbe puts it out.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Todos los soles se esfuerzan en encender tu llama y un microbio la extingue.
Voces (1943)

Sun

“When the afiairs of this tract was settled, the royal army marched, in the year 592 h., (1196 a. d.) "towards Galewar (Gwalior), and invested that fort, which is the pearl of the necklace of the castles of Hind, the summit of which the nimble-footed wind from below cannot reach, and on the bastion of which the rapid clouds have never cast their shade, and which the swift imagination has never surmounted, and at the height of which the celestial sphere is dazzled."…In compliance with the divine injunction of holy war, they drew out the bloodthirsty sword before the faces of the enemies of religion…Solankh Pal who had raised the standard of infidelity, and perdition, and prided himself on his countless army and elephants, and who expanded the fist^ of oppression from the hiding place of deceit, and who had lighted the flame of turbulence and rebellion, and who had fixed the root of sedition and enmity firm in his heart, and in the courtyard of whose breast the shrub of tyranny and commotion had shot forth its branches, when he saw the power and majesty of the army of Islam," he became alarmed and dispirited. " Wherever he looked, he saw the road of flight blocked up."”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

He therefore " sued for pardon, and placed the ring of servitude in his ear," and agreed to pay tribute...
About the capture of Gwalior. Hasan Nizami. Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 227-228 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.

War, Religion, Imagination, Light

“We loved each other. No faithfulness my love did lack.
Love, you divine flame; you hole of colour: black.”

Paul-Jean Toulet (1867–1920) French poet

Coples

Love, Faith

“Life’s always been a business of working hard and fighting the cold,” Pa was saying. “The earth’s always been a lonely place, millions of miles from the next planet. And no matter how long the human race might have lived, the end would have come some night. Those things don’t matter. What matters is that life is good. It has a lovely texture, like some thick fur or the petals of flowers—you’ve never seen those, but you know our ice-flowers—or like the texture of flames, never twice the same. It makes everything else worth while. And that’s as true for the last man as for the first.”

Fritz Leiber (1910–1992) American writer of fantasy, horror, and science fiction

“A Pail of Air” (p. 20); originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1951
Short Fiction, A Pail of Air (1964)

Love, Life, Flowers, Business

“The martyr who longs for the flames can be no right candidate for them.”

Cormac McCarthy book Cities of the Plain

Cities of the Plain (1998)

“Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.”

W. H. Auden September 1, 1939

Source: September 1, 1939 (1939), Lines 89–99

World, Light, Despair, Night

“"You. Are. Not. Leaving. Me." His eyes blazed — burning brighter than I had ever seen them, blue flames.”

Stephenie Meyer book The Host

Ian O'Shea to Wanderer, p. 572
The Host (2008)

“The most significant feature of our histories, however, is the religious zeal felt or exhibited by the swordsmen of Islam before and after the “infidels” who resisted “were sent to hell”, the Brahmans massacred or molested or expelled, idols desecrated, temples demolished, and mosques raised in their stead. The prophet of Islam appears in a dream and bids a sultãn to start on the “holy expedition”, leaving no doubt that the “victory of religion” was assured. Amîr Khusrû was very eloquent about the transformation that was taking place. When the hordes of Alãu’d-Dîn Khaljî sacked the temple of Somnath, he exulted, “The sword of Islãm purified the land as the Sun purifies the earth.” His enthusiasm broke all bounds when the same hordes swept over South India: “The tongue of the sword of the Khalifa of the time, which is the tongue of the flame of Islãm, has imparted light to the entire darkness of Hindustãn by the illumination of its guidance… and several capitals of the gods of the Hindus in which Satanism had prevailed since the time of Jinns, have been demolished. All these impurities of infidelity have been cleansed by the Sultãn’s destruction of idol-temples, beginning with his first expedition to Deogîr, so that the flames of the fight of the law illumine all these unholy countries… God be praised!” One wonders whether the poet of Islam is being honoured or slandered when he is presented in our own times as the pioneer of Secularism. Or, perhaps, Secularism in India has a meaning deeper than that we find in the dictionaries or dissertations on political science. We may not be much mistaken if, seeing its studied exercise in blackening everything Hindu and whitewashing everything Islamic, we suspect that this Secularism is nothing more than the good old doctrine of Islam in disguise.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

God, Religion, Law, Dreams

“I tell you, struggle is what is missing in the lives of most young people today. If they think I'm going to support them while they create great works of art, then they've missed the point of my work, of my life! In the process of becoming a writer or an artist one has to be willing to starve. Struggle is the most invaluable experience of all. Suffering seems to be the inevitable fate of the creative sensitive types. Poverty, disease, death, unrequited love affairs, and disappointments of every sort fan the flame of the artistic spirit. The greatest works of art were not created by spoiled brats. They were born for the most part out of a sense of despair, and if not despair then just plain hard work. Somewhere along the line the artist learns the art of transformation.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Reflections (1981)

Love, Life, Death, Fate

“For a hundred years hell has been gradually growing cool, the flames have been slowly dying out, the brimstone is nearly exhausted, the fires have been burning lower and lower, and the climate gradually changing. To such an extent has the change already been effected that if I were going there to-night I would take an overcoat and a box of matches.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)

Hell, Change, Night, Box

“No man loves God who hates his kind,
Who tramples on his brother's heart and soul;
Who seeks to shackle, cloud, or fog the mind
By fears of hell has not perceived our goal.

God-sent are all religions blest;
And Christ, the Way, the Truth, the Life,
To give the heavy laden rest
And peace from sorrow, sin, and strife.

Behold the Universal Spirit came
To all the churches, not to one alone;
On Pentecostal morn a tongue of flame
Round each apostle as a halo shone.

Since then, as vultures ravenous with greed,
We oft have battled for an empty name,
And sought by dogma, edict, cult, or creed,
To send each other to the quenchless flame.

Is Christ then twain? Was Cephas, Paul,
To save the world, nailed to the tree?
Then why divisions here at all?
Christ's love enfolds both you and me.

His pure sweet love is not confined
By creed which segregate and raise a wall.
His love enfolds, embraces human kind,
No matter what ourselves or Him we call.

Then why not take Him at His word?
Why hold to creeds which tear apart?
But one thing matters, be it heard
That brother love fill every heart.

There's but one thing the world has need to know.
There's but one balm for all our human woe:

There's but one way that leads to heaven above--
That way is human sympathy and love.”

Max Heindel (1865–1919) American asrologer and occultist

Creed or Christ (1909) Source: http://www.rosicrucian.com/rcc/rcceng00.htm http://www.rosicrucian.com/rcc/rcceng00.htm

Love, Life, God, Hate

“Looking carefully, one discovers at last that this gorgeous combination of all the hues of Paradise contains or hides a Last Judgment [....]

To the Virgin and her suppliants, as to us, who though outcasts in other churches can still hope in hers, the Last Judgment was not a symbol of God's justice or man's corruption but of her own infinite mercy. The Trinity judged, through Christ;— Christ loved and pardoned, through her. She wielded the last and highest power on earth and in hell. In the glow and beauty of her nature, the light of her Son's infinite love shone as the sunlight through the glass, turning the Last Judgement itself into the highest proof of her divine and supreme authority. The rudest ruffian of the middle-ages, when he looked at this Last Judgment, laughed, for what was the Last Judgment to her! An ornament, a play-thing, a pleasure! a jewelled decoration which she wore on her breast! Her chief joy was to pardon; her eternal instinct was to love; her deepest passion was pity! On her imperial heart the flames of hell showed only the opaline colors of heaven. Christ the Trinity might judge as much as he pleased, but Christ the Mother would rescue; and her servants could look boldly into the flames.”

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

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

Love, God, Pleasure, Age

“Return, O Power of the Pentecost, return to Thy people! Shed down Thy flame on many heads! To us, as to our fathers and to those of the old time before them, give fullness of grace! Without Thee we can do nothing; but filled with the Holy Ghost, the excellency of the power will be of Thee, O God! and not of us.”

William Arthur (minister) (1819–1901) Wesleyan Methodist minister and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 323.

God, People, Time

“(on the plane crash) I saw Travis running and flailing, trying to put out fire on his body. He screamed, ‘What do I do?’ and I said, ‘Roll!’ He did, but the fire didn’t go out. He tried to rip his clothes off. I finally put the flames out by smothering him with my body. Some of my burns are from that. His sock was on fire – I burned my fingers taking it off.”

Adam Goldstein (1973–2009) American DJ

DJ AM opens up about the plane crash http://www.celebritysmackblog.com/2008/10/16/dj-am-opens-up-about-the-plane-crash-that-nearly-took-his-life/ People Magazine. October 10, 2008.

Clothes

“If you want to be a flaming youth, you must have money to burn.”

Thomas Lansing Masson (1866–1934) American journalist

Thomas Lansing Masson (1927) Tom Masson's Book of Wit & Humor. p. 1.

Money, Youth

“They walked together like that all night, and there was no night, just a slight unreality, a momentary trance, with mist here and there as if the landscape were about to dissolve, and then nothing dissolved and the mist had vanished again. There was a crimson glow on the highest mountain ridges, and shining birds swarming in their thousands over the flame-gilded, mirror-smooth sea. And they went on talking together. Ólafur Kárason had no perception of the passing of time; only that voice with its dark, silk-edged, golden tones reverberated through his consciousness. When a man has lost what he loves most, there is no need to write poetry; the timber of a man's voice expresses all the poetry of life.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland

Love, Life, Mountain, Bird

“We to a little ale-house on the Bankside, over against the Three Cranes, and there stayed till it was dark almost, and saw the fire grow; and, as it grew darker, appeared more and more, and in corners and upon steeples, and between churches and houses, as far as we could see up the hill of the City, in a most horrid malicious bloody flame, not like the fine flame of an ordinary fire. Barbary and her husband away before us. We stayed till, it being darkish, we saw the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to the other side the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long: it made me weep to see it.”

Samuel Pepys (1633–1703) English naval administrator and member of parliament

September 2, 1666
Of the Great Fire of London.
Diary

Appearance, Housing

“If I speak to thee in friendship's name,
Thou think'st I speak too coldly;
If I mention love's devoted flame,
Thou say'st I speak too boldly.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

How shall I woo?
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Love, Friendship

“Jay gave me a co-sign like I was RocaWear, but be clear I'm not the air/heir
I'm the water, fire and the earth
That means I'm doing dirt, spitting flames and quenching thirst”

Lupe Fiasco (1982) rapper

"Popular Demand"
Mixtapes, Enemy of the State: A Love Story (2009)

Water

“Love is a burnin' thing
And it makes a fiery ring
Bound by wild desire
I fell into a ring of fire I fell into a burnin' ring of fire
I went down, down, down
And the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns
The ring of fire, the ring of fire”

June Carter Cash (1929–2003) American singer, songwriter and actress

Ring of Fire (1963); co-written with Merle Kilgore · June Carter Cash performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyNf6sw8xaE · Anita Carter version (1963) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlWGsaorj6U · Johnny Cash performance (1987) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEOdXU_JQPA · Johnny Cash performance (1994) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-zNQA5Xi4Q · Live performance by June (1999) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpRa6JbywTc

Love

“… [Y]our observer's camera is clicking steadily. It's beautiful up above the sunlit clouds. The smooth drone of your twin motors makes you happy. You feel like singing and then you do. Then out of the corner of your eye, you see four black dots, growing larger momentarily. It's an enemy patrol of German Messerschmitts. Your gunner has seen them too. You hear the rattle of the machine gun as you put your bomber in a fast climbing turn, but the Messerschmitt fighters climb faster. They form under your tail, two on each side. One by one, they attack. A yellow light flashes in front of you. The first fighter slips away while the next comes on at you. Again that smashing yellow flame. Your observer falls over unconscious. Before you can think, the next Messerschmitt is upon you. A terrific jolt. Your port engine belches smoke. It's been hit…. You force-land on the first Allied airfield. That night, seated next to a hospital bed where your observer nurses a scalp wound, you hear an enemy communique. A British bomber was shot down over the lines today. Well, you puff a cigarette and grin.”

Larry LeSueur (1909–2003) American journalist

Woo, Elaine. " Larry LeSueur/'Murrow Boy' former war correspondant http://articles.latimes.com/2003/feb/07/local/me-lesueur7", (obituary), Los Angeles Times, February 8, 2003, accessed June 21, 2011. As quoted by Stanley W. Cloud and Lynne Olson in The Murrow Boys: Pioneers on the Front Lines of Broadcast Journalism, ISBN 0395877539. LeSueur just "after interviewing a young British pilot who had just flown a reconnaissance mission over Germany.

Beauty, Feeling, Thinking, Light

“She had called Martin a 'lie-hunter,' a 'truth-seeker.' They decided now that most people who call themselves 'truth-seekers'—persons who scurry about chattering of Truth as though it were a tangible separable thing, like houses or salt or bread—did not so much desire to find Truth as to cure their mental itch. In novels, these truth-seekers quested the 'secret of life' in laboratories which did not seem to be provided with Bunsen flames or reagents; or they went, at great expense and much discomfort from hot trains and undesirable snakes, to Himalayan monasteries, to learn from unaseptic sages that the Mind can do all sort of edifying things if one will but spend thirty or forty years in eating rice and gazing on one's navel. To these high matters Martin responded, 'Rot!' He insisted that there is no Truth but only many truths; that Truth is not a colored bird to be chased among the rocks and captured by its tail, but a skeptical attitude toward life. He insisted that no one could expect more than, by stubbornness or luck, to have the kind of work he enjoyed and an ability to become better acquainted with the facts of that work than the average job-holder.”

Sinclair Lewis book Arrowsmith

Arrowsmith (1925), Ch. 25

Life, People, Truth, Lie

“I want to bring down civilization. It's really clear that civilization is killing the planet. I’m interested in living in a world that has more wild salmon every year than the year before. A world that has more migratory songbirds every year than the year before. A world that has less dioxins and flame retardants in mothers' breast milk. A world not being destroyed. A world where krill populations aren’t collapsing. A world where there are not dead zones in the oceans. A world not being systematically dismantled. I want to live in a world that is not being killed. I will do whatever it takes to get there.”

Derrick Jensen (1960) American environmentalist

Interview with No Compromise, 2005. http://www.nocompromise.org/issues/26jensen.html

World, Dead

“Light like the wan blue flames that wave
Their death-torch o'er the murderer's grave;
And flickering shapes beset the way,
Watching in gloom to seize their prey,
Most terrible, for that the eye
Wander'd in dim uncertainty;”

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

The Golden Violet - The Broken Spell
The Golden Violet (1827)

Death, Way, Light

“As, when one torch has been fired, flame is transmitted to all the neighbouring candlesticks, without either the first light being lessened or blazing with unequal brilliance on the other points where it has been caught; so the saintliness of a life is transmitted from him who has achieved it, to those who come within his circle.”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

On Virginity, Chapter 24

Life, Light

“And so it went until the alarm was struck in the famous Missouri debate. Then wise men remembered what Washington had said, 'Resist with care the spirit of innovation upon the principles of the Constitution'. They saw that the letting alone was all on one side, that the unfortunate anomaly was deeply scheming to become the rule, and they roused the country. The old American love of liberty flamed out again. Meetings were everywhere held. The lips of young orators burned with the eloquence of freedom. The spirit of John Knox and of Hugh Peters thundered and lightened in the pulpits, and men were not called political preachers because they preached that we are all equal children of God. The legislatures of the free States instructed their representatives to stand fast for liberty. Daniel Webster, speaking for the merchants of Boston, said that it was a question essentially involving the perpetuity of the blessings of liberty for which the Constitution itself was formed. Daniel Webster, speaking for humanity at Plymouth, described the future of the slave as 'a widespread prospect of suffering, anguish, and death'. The land was loud with the debate, and Rufus King stated its substance in saying that it was a question of slave or free policy in the national government. Slavery hissed disunion; liberty smiled disdain. The moment of final trial came. Pinckney exulted. John Quincy Adams shook his head. Slavery triumphed and, with Southern chivalry, politely called victory compromise.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Love, Death, Men, God

“We live in an age of science and abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create the Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all of our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage bequeathed to us, we must be like minded as the Founders who created. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had and for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshipped.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

Age, Appearance, Science

“The inadequacy of the short paragraphs that follow is due to the insufficiency of their expression. They are offered in the hope that the verity which underlies them may penetrate the mist of their presentation and kindle a spark that shall develop into the flame of fulfilment.
Please be so good as to believe that there is nothing whatever mysterious about this matter. If it were easy, should we not all be Buddhas? No doubt, but the apparent difficulty is due to our conditioning. The apparent mystery, on the other hand, is just obnubilation, an inability to perceive the obvious owing to a conditioned reflex which causes us persistently to look in the wrong direction!”

Wei Wu Wei (1895–1986) writer

Foreword
All Else Is Bondage : Non-Volitional Living (1964)

Hope

“Then they died.
And other men came after them. Wars flamed up and burned out; the howling peoples dwelt in smashed cities and kindled their fires with books.”

Poul Anderson book The Enemy Stars

Prologue (p. 1)
The Enemy Stars (1959)

Men, War, People, Books

“Again time passed. In one of the remoter galaxies a supernova flamed, and on a rocky, barren world a small living thing squirmed experimentally—and to mankind the one event was just as important as the other.”

Murray Leinster book The Pirates of Zan

Source: The Pirates of Zan (1959), Chapter 3

World, Time

“This is a love that equals in its power the love of man for woman and reaches inwards as deeply. It is the love of a man or of a woman for their world. For the world of their centre where their lives burn genuinely and with a free flame.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Groan

Source: Titus Groan (1946), Chapter 11 “The Attic” (p. 58)

Love, World

“He felt himself melting away, but he still remained firm with his gun on his shoulder. Suddenly the door of the room flew open and the draught of air caught up the little dancer, she fluttered like a sylph right into the stove by the side of the tin soldier, and was instantly in flames and was gone. The tin soldier melted down into a lump, and the next morning, when the maid servant took the ashes out of the stove, she found him in the shape of a little tin heart. But of the little dancer nothing remained but the tinsel rose, which was burnt black as a cinder.”

Hans Christian Andersen The Steadfast Tin Soldier

The Steadfast Tin Soldier
Fairy Tales (1835)

Heart

“I think the US is in a terrible state of denial … Worse than that, we seem to be caught in a kind of Götterdämmerung response: we'd rather have the world go down in flames than change our lifestyle or admit we're wrong.”

Kim Stanley Robinson (1952) American science fiction writer

As quoted in "Future tense" in The Guardian (14 September 2005)

World, Thinking, Change

“Now while we speak, the sun speeds forth: can I
Or thou assure him of his goal? God's breath
Even at this moment haply quickeneth
The air to a flame; till spirits, always nigh
Though screen'd and hid, shall walk the daylight here.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) English poet, illustrator, painter and translator

The Choice

God, Sun, Speed

“But now in this Valley of Humiliation poor Christian was hard put to it, for he had gone but a little way before he espied a foul Fiend coming over the field to meet him; his name is Apollyon. Then did Christian begin to be afraid, and to cast in his mind whether to go back, or to stand his ground. But he considered again, that he had no Armor for his back, and therefore thought that to turn the back to him might give him greater advantage with ease to pierce him with his Darts; therefore he resolved to venture, and stand his ground. For thought he, had I no more in mine eye than the saving of my life, 'twould be the best way to stand.
So he went on, and Apollyon met him. Now the Monster was hideous to behold, he was cloathed with scales like a Fish (and they are his pride) he had Wings like a Dragon, feet like a Bear, and out of his belly came Fire and Smoke, and his mouth was as the mouth of a Lion. When he was come up to Christian, he beheld him with a disdainful countenance, and thus began to question with him.
Apollyon: Whence come you, and whither are you bound?
Christian: I am come from the City of Destruction, which is the place of all evil, and am going to the City of Zion.
Apollyon: By this I perceive thou art one of my Subjects, for all that Country is mine; and I am the Prince and God of it. How is it then that thou hast run away from thy King? Were it not that I hope thou mayest do me more service, I would strike thee now at one blow to the ground.
Christian: I was born indeed in your Dominions, but your service was hard, and your wages such as a man could not live on, for the wages of Sin is death; therefore when I was come to years, I did as other considerate persons do, look out if perhaps I might mend my self.
Apollyon: There is no Prince that will thus lightly lose his Subjects, neither will I as yet lose thee. But since thou complainest of thy service and wages be content to go back; what our Country will afford, I do here promise to give thee.
Christian: But I have let myself to another, even to the King of Princes, and how can I with fairness go back with thee?
Apollyon: Thou hast done in this, according to the Proverb, Changed a bad for a worse: but it is ordinary for those that have professed themselves his Servants, after a while to give him the slip, and return again to me: do thou so to, and all shall be well.
Christian: I have given him my faith, and sworn my Allegiance to him; how then can I go back from this, and not be hanged as a Traitor?
Apollyon: Thou didst the same to me, and yet I am willing to pass by all, if now thou wilt yet turn again, and go back.
Christian: What I promised thee was in my nonage; and besides, I count that the Prince under whose Banner now I stand, is able to absolve me; yea, and to pardon also what I did as to my compliance with thee: and besides, (O thou destroying Apollyon) to speak truth, I like his Service, his Wages, his Servants, his Government, his Company, and Country better than thine: and, therefore, leave off to perswade me further, I am his Servant, and I will follow him.
Apollyon: Consider again when thou art in cool blood, what thou art like to meet with in the way that thou goest. Thou knowest that for the most part, his Servants come to an ill end, because they are transgressors against me, and my ways. How many of them have been put to shameful deaths! and besides, thou countest his service better than mine, whereas he never came yet from the place where he is, to deliver any that served him out of our hands; but as for me, how many times, as all the World very well knows, have I delivered, either by power or fraud, those that have faithfully served me, from him and his, though taken by them, and so I will deliver thee.
Christian: His forbearing at present to deliver them, is on purpose to try their love, whether they will cleave to him to the end: and as for the ill end thou sayest they come to, that is most glorious in their account. For for present deliverance, they do not much expect it; for they stay for their Glory, and then they shall have it, when their Prince comes in his, and the Glory of the Angels.
Apollyon: Thou hast already been unfaithful in thy service to him, and how doest thou think to receive wages of him?
Christian: Wherein, O Apollyon, have I been unfaithful to him?
Apollyon: Thou didst faint at first setting out, when thou wast almost choked in the Gulf of Dispond; thou didst attempt wrong ways to be rid of thy burden, whereas thou shouldest have stayed till thy Prince had taken it off: thou didst sinfully sleep and lose thy choice thing: thou wast also almost perswaded to go back, at the sight of the Lions; and when thou talkest of thy Journey, and of what thou hast heard, and seen, thou art inwardly desirous of vain-glory in all that thou sayest or doest.
Christian:All this is true, and much more, which thou hast left out; but the Prince whom I serve and honour, is merciful, and ready to forgive: but besides, these infirmities possessed me in thy Country, for there I suckt them in, and I have groaned under them, been sorry for them, and have obtained pardon of my Prince.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon broke out into a grievous rage, saying, I am an enemy to this Prince: I hate his Person, his Laws, and People: I am come out on purpose to withstand thee.
Christian: Apollyon beware what you do, for I am in the King's Highway, the way of Holiness, therefore take heed to your self.
Apollyon: Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the way, and said, I am void of fear in this matter, prepare thy self to die, for I swear by my Infernal Den, that thou shalt go no further, here will I spill thy soul; and with that, he threw a flaming Dart at his breast, but Christian had a Shield in his hand, with which he caught it, and so prevented the danger of that. Then did Christian draw, for he saw 'twas time to bestir him; and Apollyon as fast made at him, throwing Darts as thick as Hail; by the which, notwithstanding all that Christian could do to avoid it, Apollyon wounded him in his head, his hand and foot; this made Christian give a little back: Apollyon therefore followed his work amain, and Christian again took courage, and resisted as manfully as he could. This sore combat lasted for above half a day, even till Christian was almost quite spent. For you must know that Christian by reason of his wounds, must needs grow weaker and weaker.
Then Apollyon espying his opportunity, began to gather up close to Christian, and wrestling with him, gave him a dreadful fall; and with that, Christian's Sword flew out of his hand. Then said Apollyon, I am sure of thee now, and with that, he had almost prest him to death, so that Christian began to despair of life. But as God would have it, while Apollyon was fetching of his last blow, thereby to make a full end of this good Man, Christian nimbly reached out his hand for his Sword, and caught it, saying, Rejoice not against me, O mine Enemy! when I fall, I shall arise; and with that, gave him a deadly thrust, which made him give back, as one that had received his mortal wound: Christian perceiving that, made at him again, saying, Nay, in all these things we are more than Conquerors, through him that loved us. And with that, Apollyon spread forth his Dragon's wings, and sped him away, that Christian saw him no more….”

John Bunyan The Pilgrim's Progress

Source: The Pilgrim's Progress (1678), Part I, Ch. IX : Apollyon

Love, Life, Death, God

“Throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart, "Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T. V. Star to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius…. and a very stable genius at that!”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

7:27am https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/949618475877765120 and 7:30am https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/949619270631256064, quoted in * 2020-01-21 A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig Penguin 198487750X 2019952799 Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Donald Trump / Quotes / Donald Trump on social media / Twitter 2010s, 2018, January

Star, Thinking, Life, Success

“While the lime-burner was struggling with the horror of these thoughts, Ethan Brand rose from the log, and flung open the door of the kiln. The action was in such accordance with the idea in Bertram's mind, that he almost expected to see the Evil One issue forth, red-hot, from the raging furnace.
Hold! hold!" cried he, with a tremulous attempt to laugh; for he was ashamed of his fears, although they overmastered him. "Don't, for mercy's sake, bring out your Devil now!"
"Man!" sternly replied Ethan Brand, "what need have I of the Devil? I have left him behind me, on my track. It is with such half-way sinners as you that he busies himself. Fear not, because I open the door. I do but act by old custom, and am going to trim your fire, like a lime-burner, as I was once."
He stirred the vast coals, thrust in more wood, and bent forward to gaze into the hollow prison-house of the fire, regardless of the fierce glow that reddened his face. The lime-burner sat watching him, and half suspected this strange guest of a purpose, if not to evoke a fiend, at least to plunge into the flames, and thus vanish from the sight of man. Ethan Brand, however, drew quietly back, and closed the door of the kiln.
"I have looked," said he, "into many a human heart that was seven times hotter with sinful passions than yonder furnace is with fire. But I found not there what I sought. No, not the Unpardonable Sin!"”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

"Ethan Brand" (1850)

Fear, Way, Idea, Business

“A restless flame
Someone calls your name
Through the empty hall
Casting shadows on the wall
In the sound of emptiness
Isolation
Nowhere left to run
Now the time has come…”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Heaven's Open (1991)

Time

Quotes about flame page 4

Quotes about flame
page 4