Quotes about flame (655 quotes, page 6)

“Sitting back in the hard plastic chair on the hotel roof, I reflected on that talk I'd given to the CENTCOM intelligence staff the previous Friday. America was in deep shock, reeling from the images of airliners smashing into buildings and those proud towers collapsing like flaming tinsel. Would my fellow citizens now be persuaded to abandon their hard-won individual freedoms to earn a bit more security in a clearly insecure world? As I stood up, another thought struck me. Today is like Pearl Harbor. The world was one way before today, and will never be that way again. We stand at a crease in history.”

Tommy Franks (1945) United States Army general

Source: American Soldier (2004), p. 246

World , Way , History , Intelligence

“Curse the blasted, jelly-boned swines, the slimy, the belly-wriggling invertebrates, the miserable sodding rotters, the flaming sods, the sniveling, dribbling, dithering palsied pulse-less lot that make up England today. They've got white of egg in their veins, and their spunk is that watery its a marvel they can breed. They can nothing but frog-spawn — the gibberers! God, how I hate them! God curse them, funkers. God blast them, wish-wash. Exterminate them, slime.
I could curse for hours and hours — God help me.”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

Letter to Edward Garnett, expressing anger that his manuscript for Sons and Lovers was rejected by Heinemann (3 July 1912)

God , Hate , Swine , Help

“In the machine for a new use of gunpowder, which is described in the 'Acta Eruditorum' for the month of September, 1688, the first desideratum was, that the gunpowder fired in the bottom of the tube AA should fill the whole cavity with flame, so that the air might be entirely expelled from it, and the tube remain a perfect vacuum beneath the piston BB. But there it was mentioned, that the desired effect could not be sufficiently attained… But hitherto such attempts have been in vain; and always, after the flame of the gunpowder is extinguished, about a fifth part of the air remains in the tube AA.”

Denis Papin (1647–1713) French physicist, mathematician and inventor

"A New Method of Obtaining Very Great Moving Powers at Small Cost" (1690)

Parting , Perfection

“The people who invaded and destroyed Iraq and have murdered more than a million Iraqi people by sanctions and war will burn in Hell in the hell-fires, and their name in history will be branded as killers and war criminals for all time. Fallujah is a Guernica, Falluaja is a Stalingrad, and Iraq is in flames as a result of the actions of these criminals. Not the resistance, not anybody else but these criminals who invaded and fell like wolves upon the people of Iraq. And by the way, those Arab regimes which helped them to do it will burn in the same hell-fires.”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

Interview on Abu Dhabi TV http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP91805, November 20, 2004.

War , People , Way , History

“There is in most Americans some spark of idealism, which can be fanned into a flame. It takes sometimes a divining rod to find what it is; but when found, and that means often, when disclosed to the owners, the results are often extraordinary.”

Louis Brandeis (1856–1941) American Supreme Court Justice

The Words of Justice Brandeis (1953).
Extra-judicial writings

“But if we hide ourselves away, afraid to grow and learn, we might wake up in the flames of the ignorance that burns and we’ll never be much more than only casualties of war in a struggle we can’t win if we have no faith to begin. We’ve got to tip the lid and let some sunlight in.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"The People of The Boxes"
The Prophet's Hands (2003)

War , Faith , Learning

“Friendship's an abstract of this noble flame,
'Tis love refined and purged from all its dross,
The next to angel's love, if not the same,
As strong as passion is, though not so gross:
It antedates a glad eternity
And is an heaven in epitome.”

Katherine Philips (1632–1664) Anglo-Welsh poet and translator

st. 2
Poem LXIV: 'A Friend

Love , Friendship , Angels , Strong

“…And the rising sun shall rise yet higher, destroying with its flaming fire the evil will of the wicked West, but smiling warmly on the rest”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Beds in the East (1959)

Smile , Evil , Sun

“From life, from the apple cut by the flaming knife,
what grain will be saved?My son, believe me, nothing remains,
Only adult toil,
the furrow of fate in the palm.
Only toil,
Nothing more.”

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

"Farewell" (1945)
Rescue (1945)

Life , Fate

“A second sun blazed white and swelled visibly as he watched. What on Earth would have been—so many times had been—a climbing mushroom cloud was here in open space a perfect geometrical sphere, growing unbelievably. It swelled still larger, dropping from limelight white to to silvery violet, became blotched with purple, red and flame. And still it grew, until it blanked out the earth beyond it.
At the time it had been transformed into a radioactive cosmic cloud Circum-Terra had been passing over, or opposite, the North Atlantic; the swollen incandescent cloud was visible to most of the habitable portions of the globe, a burning symbol in the sky.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Between Planets

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 6, “The Sign in the Sky” (p. 75)

Time , Sun , Perfection

“When the soul has been deeply touched, it is by love alone that it desires to be intimately joined to God. This is why we advocate reducing ardent aspiration to a few words, even to the mere word ‘love’. This love sends forth ardent and fiery flames with all its strength. As a result. A blazing divine fire is enkindled in the soul. It is in this way that God stirs up the soul and draws it strongly inward. p. 86”

John of St. Samson (1571–1636)

From Prayer, Aspiration, and Contemplation

Love , God , Way , Soul

Chinua Achebe book Things Fall Apart

Source: Things Fall Apart (1958), Chapter 17 (p. 143)

“And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round. Let us then declare that King Arthur and his noble knights, guarding the Sacred Flame of Christianity and the theme of a world order, sustained by valour, physical strength, and good horses and armour, slaughtered innumerable hosts of foul barbarians and set decent folk an example for all time.”

Winston S. Churchill book A History of the English-Speaking Peoples

On King Arthur Vol I; The Birth of Britain.
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (1956–58)

Men , World , Law , Freedom

“Nature, far from being logical, 'is perhaps entirely the excess of itself', smeared ash and flame upon zero, and zero is immense.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

Source: The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism (1992), Chapter 6: "The rage of jealous time", p. 73

Nature

“That servile path thou nobly dost decline
Of tracing word by word, and line by line;
A new and nobler way thou dost pursue
To make translations, and translators too;
They but preserve the ashes, thou the flame,
True to his sense, but truer to his fame.”

John Denham (1615–1669) English poet and courtier

To Sir Richard Fanshaw, Upon his Translation of Pastor Fido, line 15.

Way , Sense

“I made the flames lick the surface of the painting in such a way that is recorded the spontaneous traces of the fire. But what is it that provokes in me this pursuit of the impression of fire? Why must I search for its traces? Because every work of creation, quite apart from its cosmic position, is the representation of pure phenomenology – every phenomenon manifests itself of its own accord. This manifestation is always distinct from form, and is the essence of the immediate, the trace of the immediate.”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

In 1961; p. 67
Klein's quote on making paintings with a flame-thrower
1960 -1964, "Yves Klein, 1928 – 1962, Selected Writings"

Way , Search , Painting

“Curious, if we will reflect on it, this of having no books. Except by what he could see for himself, or hear of by uncertain rumor of speech in the obscure Arabian Desert, he could know nothing. The wisdom that had been before him or at a distance from him in the world, was in a manner as good as not there for him. Of the great brother souls, flame-beacons through so many lands and times, no one directly communicates with this great soul. He is alone there, deep down in the bosom of the Wilderness; has to grow up so,—alone with Nature and his own Thoughts. But, from an early age, he had been remarked as a thoughtful man.”

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

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

Wisdom , Books , Age , World

“O my love my dear lady
The world is not very big
There is only room for our wonder
And the light leaning winds of heaven
Are not more sweet or pure
Than your mouth on my throat
O my love there are larks in our morning
And the finding flame of your hands
And the moss on the bank of the river
And the butterflies
And the whirling-mad
Butterflies!”

Kenneth Patchen (1911–1972) American writer and poet

"'O My Love the Pretty Towns'"

Love , World , Light , Madness

“True majorities, in a TV-dominated and anti-intellectual age, may need sound bites and flashing lights—and I am not against supplying such lures if they draw children into even a transient concern with science. But every classroom has one [Oliver] Sacks, one [Eric] Korn, or one [Jonathan] Miller, usually a lonely child with a passionate curiosity about nature, and a zeal that overcomes pressures for conformity. Do not the one in fifty deserve their institutions as well—magic places, like cabinet museums, that can spark the rare flames of genius?”

Stephen Jay Gould book Dinosaur in a Haystack

"Cabinet Museums: Alive, Alive, O!", p. 246
Dinosaur in a Haystack (1995)

Children , Age , Nature , Light

“[National Socialism] has survived the flames of war and the tempest of vilification because, when war has done its worst and vilification has run its entire gamut, National Socialism remains, in the final analysis, synonymous with higher man's will to survive, his instinct for health and strength, and his desire for beauty in life; and, as long as that will, that instinct, and that desire remain on this earth, the creed of National Socialism will remain, indestructible.”

Colin Jordan (1923–2009) British holocaust denier

"National Socialism: A Philosophical Appraisal," National Socialist World, I (1966), 5-7. Quoted in Fascism (1995), edited by Roger Griffin, p. 325.

Life , War , Health , Beauty

“The soul of woman must therefore be expansive and open to all human beings; it must be quiet so that no small weak flame will be extinguished by stormy winds; warm so as not to benumb fragile buds; clear, so that no vermin will settle in dark corners and recesses; self-contained, so that no invasions from without can imperil the inner life; empty of self, in order that extraneous life may have room in it; finally, mistress of itself and also of its body, so that the entire person is readily at the disposal of every call.”

Edith Stein (1891–1942) Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher

Essays on Woman (1996), Fundamental Principles of Women's Education (1931)

Life , Soul , Personality

“There had been a lot of death in the newspapers lately. […] and then before Christmas that Pan Am Flight 103 ripping open like a rotten melon five miles above Scotland and dropping all these bodies and flaming wreckage all over the golf course and the streets of this little town like Glockamorra, what was its real name, Lockerbie. Imagine sitting there in your seat being lulled by the hum of the big Rolls-Royce engines and the stewardesses bringing the clinking drinks caddy and the feeling of having caught the plane and nothing to do now but relax and then with a roar and a giant ripping noise and scattered screams this whole cozy world dropping away and nothing under you but black space and your chest squeezed by the terrible unbreathable cold, that cold you can scarcely believe is there but that you sometimes actually feel still packed into the suitcases, stored in the unpressurised hold, when you unpack your clothes, the dirty underwear and beach towels with the merciless chill of death from outer space still in them. […] Those bodies with hearts pumping tumbling down in the dark. How much did they know as they fell, through air dense like tepid water, tepid gray like this terminal where people blow through like dust in an air duct, to the airline we're all just numbers on the computer, one more or less, who cares? A blip on the screen, then no blip on the screen. Those bodies tumbling down like wet melon seeds.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Death , People , World , Feeling

“Morpheus' gifts used to come to me in bottles, Beam and black Jack Daniel's, straight up with a frosted schooner of Jax on the side, while the rain poor down in the neon glow outside the window of an all-night bar not far from the Huey Long Bridge. In a half hour I could kick open a furnace door and fling into the flames all the snakes and squeaking bats that lived inside me. Except the next morning they would writhe with new life in the ashes and come back home, stinking and hungry.”

James Lee Burke (1936) Novelist, short story writer

A Morning for Flamingos (1990)

Life , Home , Night

“Will you let darker angels win as you add fire to the flame, or will you seek out and spread real news?”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

Dalhousie University Commencement Speech (2017)

Angels

“A report was brought to the Sultan that there was in Delhi an old Brahman (zunar dar) who persisted in publicly performing the worship of idols in his house; and that people of the city, both Musulmans and Hindus, used to resort to his house to worship the idol. The Brahman had constructed a wooden tablet (muhrak), which was covered within and without with paintings of demons and other objects. On days appointed, the infidels went to his house and worshipped the idol, without the fact becoming known to the public officers. The Sultan was informed that this Brahman had perverted Muhammadan women, and had led them to become infidels. An order was accordingly given that the Brahman, with his tablet, should be brought into the presence of the Sultan at Firozabad. The judges and doctors and elders and lawyers were summoned, and the case of the Brahman was submitted for their opinion. Their reply was that the provisions of the Law were clear: the Brahman must either become a Musulman or be burned. The true faith was declared to the Brahman, and the right course pointed out, but he refused to accept it. Orders were given for raising a pile of faggots before the door of the darbar. The Brahman was tied hand and foot and cast into it; the tablet was thrown on top and the pile was lighted. The writer of this book was present at the darbar and witnessed the execution. The tablet of the Brahman was lighted in two places, at his head and at his feet; the wood was dry, and the fire first reached his feet, and drew from him a cry, but the flames quickly enveloped his head and consumed him. Behold the Sultans strict adherence to law and rectitude, how he would not deviate in the least from its decrees!”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Delhi. Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. Elliot and Dowson. Vol. III, p. 365 ff https://archive.org/stream/cu31924073036737#page/n379/mode/2up Quoted in Shourie, Arun (2014). Eminent historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud. Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India : HarperCollins Publishers.

Women , People , Books , Faith

“Since ever and ever the world began
They danced like a ribbon of flame,
They have sung their song through the centuries long,
And yet it is never the same.
And though you be foolish or though you be wise,
With hair of silver or gold,
You can never be as young as the fairies are,
And never be as old.”

Rose Fyleman (1877–1957) British writer

The Fairies

World , Dance

“All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

" Love http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Love.html", st. 1 (1799)

Love , Passion

“Ah if only this voice could stop, this meaningless voice which prevents you from being nothing, just barely prevents you from being nothing and nowhere, just enough to keep alight this little yellow flame feebly darting from side to side, panting, as if straining to tear itself from its wick, it should never have been lit, or it should never have been fed, or it should have been put out, put out, it should have been let go out.”

Samuel Beckett book The Unnamable

The Unnamable (1954)

Tear

“It is part of the Jews to be sneaky and sly. The genius of our people has ever been joyous strength, robust forcefulness, directness, manly courage, and flaming heroism. When the Jews, with their economic terrorism, jails, bullies and hangmen, scare the White man into laying down his cudgel and goad him into trying to out-sneak Jewish tyranny, the Jews have completely emasculated the once-strong White man, and doomed him to dishonor and defeat. The White man can NEVER win by sneaking!”

George Lincoln Rockwell (1918–1967) American politician, founder of the American Nazi Party

In Hoc Signo Vinces
1960, In Hoc Signo Vinces

People , Courage , Strong , Parting

“Put out the lights now!
Look at the Tree, the rough tree dazzled
In oriole plumes of flame,
Tinselled with twinkling frost fire, tasselled
With stars and moons”

Cecil Day Lewis (1904–1972) English poet

The Christmas Tree (1953)

Star , Tree , Light

“The clean delicate lines of her figure, the exquisite pure colouring of hair and skin, the charming young arrogance of the eyes — this was beauty, he reflected, a miracle, a revelation. Her virginal fineness and her dress, which was the tint of pale fire, gave her the air of a creature of ice and flame.”

John Buchan book Huntingtower

Prologue
Huntingtower (1922)

Beauty

“My name is Kvothe, pronounced nearly the same as “Quothe.” Names are important as they tell you a great deal about a person. I’ve had more names than anyone has a right to.
The Adem call me Maedre. Which, depending on how it’s spoken, can mean “The Flame,” “The Thunder,” or “The Broken Tree.””

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 7, “Of Beginnings and the Names of Things” (p. 57)

Tree , Dependency , Personality

“I know that the Crusaders of Majorca put to death, in a single night, all the prisoners who were huddled in the Catalonian trenches. They took the whole herd down to the shore and shot them, one beast at a time - they were quite leisurely about it. The Lord High Archbishop of Palma arranged to be represented at the ceremony, by a certain number of his priests. You can picture the scene can't you? 'Come on, father, isn't that one ready?' - 'Just a moment captain, I'm handing him over to you at once.' When the job was finished, the Crusaders piled their cattle in two heaps - those who'd been given absolution and those who hadn't- then sprinkled petrol over them. It is quite likely that this purification by fire may then have taken on, by reason of the presence of priests officiating a liturgical significance. Unfortunately I only saw these blackened, shiny creatures two days after that, contorted by the flames, some of them counterfeiting obscene poses in death, which must have been very distressing for the ladies of Palma and for their eminent confessors. A reeking tar oozed out of them…”

Georges Bernanos book Les grands cimetières sous la lune

Source: Les grands cimetieres sous la lune (A Diary of My Times) 1938, p.153-154

Death , Time , Night

“I know it works for me.
As we cross the bridge — the burning bridge —
With flames behind us,
We front the line.
It's you and me, baby, against the world.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Singles and rarities

World , Baby

“Convince yourself. Kovno is a treasure-trove for artists. It is gloomy, the lamps don't make it lighter and the streets are getting darker. Their violet windows hover threateningly in the darkness. The elusive lines of low houses, on them - the glimmer of green and red flames - illuminating rows of shops. Bright green bright red stripes [all] fall on the violet sidewalk. And all those shadows are full of people who only speak about one thing, about love, in the dialect, Polish or broken Russian. Whispers and loud words touch the silence, like the green and red bands of light - the darkness of the night. Something terrible, terrible lies over everything, I feel a shudder, it seems I am in another world, far away from real life.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

Quote from Werefkin's letter to Alexej von Jawlensky, between December 1909 and Spring 1910; as cited in 'Ambiguity of Home: Identity and Reminiscence in Marianne Werefkin's Return Home, c. 1909', Adrienne Kochman http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring06/52-spring06/spring06article/171-ambiguity-of-home-identity-and-reminiscence-in-marianne-werefkins-return-home-c-1909
1906 - 1911

Love , Life , People , World

“The Prophet said, "No prayer is harder for the hypocrites than the Fajr and the 'Isha' prayers and if they knew the reward for these prayers at their respective times, they would certainly present themselves (in the mosques) even if they had to crawl." The Prophet added, "Certainly I decided to order the Mu'adh-dhin (call-maker) to pronounce Iqama and order a man to lead the prayer and then take a fire flame to burn all those who had not left their houses so far for the prayer along with their houses."”

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

Narrated Abu Huraira
Sunni Hadith

Time , Housing

“Through the hurrying rocks the brand with thin flame takes its flight.”
Illa volans tenui per concita saxa luce fugit.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book IV, Lines 672–673

“Oh some I know! I have embalmed the days,
Even the sacred moments when we played,
All innocent of passion, uncorrupt,
At noon and evening in the flame-heart’s shade.”

Claude McKay (1889–1948) Jamaican American writer, poet

Flame-Heart, l. 26-29

Passion , Heart

“Don't allow the lucid moment to dissolve
Let the radiant thought last in stillness
though the page is almost filled and the flame flickers
We haven't risen yet to the level of ourselves.”

Adam Zagajewski (1945) Poet

Don't Allow The Lucid Moment To Dissolve.

“Having failed, do you accept failure, saying only: Well, it is so. I will turn to other things? When night comes, do you accept the blackness of it, saying only: Well, it is so. I will turn and wait for morning? Or do you go on striving to light a candle against that dark however often the wind blows out the flame, however often the night returns?”

Tanith Lee book Volkhavaar

Source: Volkhavaar (1977), Chapter 11 (p. 102)

Failure , Light , Waiting , Night

“Consider how, even in the meanest sorts of Labour, the whole soul of a man is composed into a kind of real harmony, the instant he sets himself to work! Doubt, Desire, Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation, Despair itself, all these like helldogs lie beleaguering the soul of the poor dayworker, as of every man: but he bends himself with free valour against his task, and all these are stilled, all these shrink murmuring far off into their caves. The man is now a man. The blessed glow of Labour in him, is it not as purifying fire, wherein all poison is burnt up, and of sour smoke itself there is made bright blessed flame!”

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

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Lie , Soul , Despair

“For sorrow is our joy,
And joy our greatest sorrow.
Elissa dies tonight,
And Carthage flames tomorrow.”

Nahum Tate (1652–1715) Anglo-Irish poet and playwright

Dido and Aeneas (opera; music by Henry Purcell)

Joy

“Awakening hope has named the name
Of love, or blown its spark to flame.
Restlessness, but as the winds range
From leaf to leaf, from flower to flower;
Changefulness, but as rainbows change,
From colour'd sky to sunlit hour.
Ay, well indeed may minstrel sing,—
What have the heart and year like spring?”

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

Canto II
The Troubadour (1825)

Love , Hope , Spring , Flowers

“The love of man and woman is as fire
To warm, to light, but surely to consume
And self-consuming die…
But comrade-love is as a welding blast
Of candid flame and ardent temperature:
Glowing more fervent, it doth bind more fast;
And melting both but makes the union sure.
The dross alone is burnt—till at the last
The steel, if cold, is one and strong and pure.”

James Jeffrey Roche (1847–1908) American journalist

My Comrade, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Love , Light , Strong

“I, then inspired, the wondering world should see
Great Ammon's warlike son revived in thee;
Revived unenvious of the Muse's flame
That over the world resounds Pelides' name.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Fico que em todo o mundo de vós cante,
De sorte que Alexandro em vós se veja,
Sem à dita de Aquiles ter enveja.
Stanza 156, line 6–8 (tr. William Julius Mickle); hear the last lines https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHwqw1Fbcoc&feature=youtu.be&t=6m5s [in Portuguese]
Epic poetry, Os Lusíadas (1572), Canto X

World

“p>Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late
And studying all the summer night
Her matchless songs does meditate;Ye country comets, that portend
No war, nor prince's funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Than to presage the grasses's fall;Ye glow-worms whose officious flame
To wandering mowers shows the way,
That in the night have lost their aim
And after foolish fires do stray;Your courteous lights in vain you waste,
Since juliana here is come,
For she my mind hath so displaced
That I shall never find my home.”

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

The Mover to the Glow-worms

War , Way , Home , Study

“Such was Gods Poem, this Worlds new Essay;
So wild and rude in its first draught it lay;
Th' ungovern'd parts no Correspondence knew,
An artless war from thwarting Motions grew;
Till they to Number and fixt Rules were brought
By the eternal Minds Poetique Thought.
Water and Air he for the Tenor chose,
Earth made the Base, the Treble Flame arose,
To th' active Moon a quick brisk stroke he gave,
To Saturns string a touch more soft and grave.
The motions Strait, and Round, and Swift, and Slow,
And Short, and Long, were mixt and woven so,
Did in such artful Figures smoothly fall,
As made this decent measur'd Dance of All.”

Abraham Cowley (1618–1667) British writer

Book I, lines 451-464
Davideis (1656)

God , War , World , Art

“Hail! great incendiary poets, you Futurist friends!.. Hail! Paolo Buzzi, Federico de Maria, Enrico Cavacchioli, Corrado Govoni, Libero Altomare! Let's flee the city of Paralysis, devastate Gout, and lay the great military Railroad along the flanks of Gorisankar, summit of the world!
We left the city with firm and nimble strides, as if dancing in our desire to find everywhere obstacles to overcome. Around us, and within our hearts, the immense intoxication of the old European sun as it swayed between wine-colored clouds... That sun struck us in the face with its great torch of flaming purple, then flared out, vomiting itself into the infinite.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

1900's, Let's Murder the Moonlight!' (1909)
Source: Poggi, Christine, and Laura Wittman, eds. Futurism: An Anthology. Yale University Press, 2009. p. 54: Lead paragraph

World , Color , Wine , Sun

“One of the charms of Africa, is the long settled periods of pure unclouded sky, in which the sun rises and sets with no flaming splashes of vivid colours, but by gentle, imperceptible gradations of pure light, waning or waxing.”

Robert Erskine Childers (1870–1922) Irish nationalist and author

"In the Ranks of the C.I.V.", by Erskine Childers, Smith & Elder and Co. (London, 1901), p. 127.
Literary Years and War (1900-1918)

Light , Sun

“In the Bible Cain slew Abel and East of Eden he was cast.
You're born into this life paying for the sins of somebody else's past.
Daddy worked his whole life for nothing but the pain.
Now he walks these empty rooms looking for something to blame.
You inherit the sins, you inherit the flames.
Adam raised a Cain.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Adam Raised a Cain"
Song lyrics, Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)

Life , Pain , Past

“Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare;
And left the flushed print in a poppy there:
Like a yawn of fire from the grass it came,
And the fanning wind puffed it to flapping flame.”

Francis Thompson (1859–1907) British poet

The Poppy http://books.google.com/books?id=qM8VAAAAYAAJ&q="Summer+set+lip+to+earth's+bosom+bare+And+left+the+flushed+print+in+a+poppy+there+Like+a+yawn+of+fire+from+the+grass+it+came+And+the+fanning+wind+puffed+it+to+flapping+flame"&pg=PA6#v=onepage.

Grass , Summer

“Human beings are religious. We don't all have to be, any more than we all have to be musical, or athletic, or humorous; but as long as there are human beings, there will be religion to offer warmth to those who can believe its stories and its metaphysics, while those who can't will be left with a paler, colder flame.”

John Derbyshire (1945) writer

We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism (2009)

Religion , Music

“I'm a fire without a flame, desert with no rain…”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Heaven's Open (1991)

“An harmless flaming meteor shone for hair,
And fell adown his shoulders with loose care.”

Abraham Cowley (1618–1667) British writer

Book II, lines 801-802
Compare: "Loose his beard and hoary hair / Stream'd like a meteor to the troubled air", Thomas Gray, The Bard, i. 2
Davideis (1656)

“Hope is love's happiness, but not its life;—
How many hearts have nourished a vain flame
In silence and in secret, though they knew
They fed the scorching fire that would consume them!”

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

The Improvisatrice (1824)

Love , Life , Secret , Hope

“Prose will be used for the more objective branches of writing- novels, plays, essays.. Cadence will be used for personal, emotional, lyrical utterances in which the phrasing goes with a stronger beat and the words live together with an intense flame.”

F. S. Flint (1885–1960) English Imagist poet

Otherworld Cadences (1920)

Personality

“Who's that yonder all in flames?
Draggin' behind him a sack of chains
Who's that yonder all in flames?
Up jumped the Devil and staked his claim”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, Tender Prey (1988), Up Jumped the Devil

“Homer excels in Genius, Virgil in Judgment. Homer as conscious of his great Riches and Fullness entertains the Reader with great Splendor and Magnificent Profusion. Virgil's Dishes are well chosen, and tho not Rich and Numerous, yet serv'd up in great Order and Decency. Homer's Imagination is Strong, Vast and Boundless, an unexhausted Treasure of all kinds of Images; which made his Admirers and Commentators in all Ages affirm, that all sorts of Learning were to be found in his Poems. Virgil's Imagination is not so Capacious, tho' his Ideas are Clear, Noble, and of great Conformity to their Objects. Homer has more of the Poetical Inspiration. His Fire burns with extraordinary Heat and Vehemence, and often breaks out in Flashes, which Surprise, Dazle and Astonish the Reader: Virgil's is a clearer and a chaster Flame, which pleases and delights, but never blazes in that extraordinary and surprising manner. Methinks there is the same Difference between these two great Poets, as there is between their Heros. Homer's Hero, Achilles, is Vehement, Raging and Impetuous. He is always on Fire, and transported with an immoderate and resistless Fury, performs every where Miraculous Atchievements, and like a rapid Torrent overturns all things in his way. Æneas, the Hero of the Latine Poet, is a calm, Sedate Warriour. He do's not want Courage, neither has he any to spare: and the Poet might have allowed him a little more Fire, without overheating him. As for Invention, 'tis evident the Greek Poet has mightily the advantage. Nothing is more Rich and Fertile than Homer's Fancy. He is Full, Abundant, and Diffusive above all others. Virgil on the other hand is rather dry, than fruitful. 'Tis plain the Latin Poet in all his famous Æneis, has very little, if any Design of his own …”

Richard Blackmore (1654–1729) English poet and physician

Preface to King Arthur http://d.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/text/blackmore-king-arthur-I (1697)

Age , Way , Imagination , Idea

“Love without fear and trepidation is fire without flame and heat, day without sun, comb without honey, summer without flowers, winter without frost, sky without moon, a book without letters.”

Chrétien de Troyes Cligès

Amors sanz crieme et sans peor
Est feus sanz flame et sanz chalor,
Jorz sanz soloil, bresche sanz miel,
Estez sans flor, iverz sanz giel,
Ciaus sanz lune, livres sanz letre.
Cligès, line 3893.

Love , Books , Fear , Flowers

“Flame out the living words of the dead
Written-in-red.”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

"Written-In-Red" de Cleyre's last poem, dedicated "To Our Living Dead in Mexico's Struggle"; first lines.
Context: Written in red their protest stands,
For the Gods of the World to see;
On the dooming wall their bodiless hands
have blazoned "Upharsin," and flaring brands
Illumine the message: "Seize the lands!
Open the prisons and make men free!"
Flame out the living words of the dead
Written-in-red.

Dead

“Vital spark of heav'nly flame!
Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Stanza 1.
The Dying Christian to His Soul (1712)
Context: Vital spark of heav'nly flame!
Quit, oh quit, this mortal frame:
Trembling, hoping, ling'ring, flying,
Oh the pain, the bliss of dying!

“And now deep in his weary heart
Are sacred flames that whitely burn.
He has of Heaven's grace a part
Who loves, who is beloved in turn.”

Joyce Kilmer Trees and Other Poems

Trees and Other Poems (1914), Delicatessen
Context: For, once he thrilled with high romance
And tuned to love his eager voice.
Like any cavalier of France
He wooed the maiden of his choice.
And now deep in his weary heart
Are sacred flames that whitely burn.
He has of Heaven's grace a part
Who loves, who is beloved in turn.

Love , Heart , Parting

“And in her raiment's hem was traced in flame
WISDOM, a name to shake
All evil dreams of power — a sacred name.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson Lady Clara Vere de Vere

The Poet (1830)
Context: There was no blood upon her maiden robes
Sunn'd by those orient skies;
But round about the circles of the globes
Of her keen
And in her raiment's hem was traced in flame
WISDOM, a name to shake
All evil dreams of power — a sacred name.
And when she spake,
Her words did gather thunder as they ran,
And as the lightning to the thunder
Which follows it, riving the spirit of man,
Making earth wonder,
So was their meaning to her words. No sword
Of wrath her right arm whirl'd,
But one poor poet's scroll, and with his word
She shook the world.

Wisdom , Dreams , Evil

“He bears a sword of flame but not to harm
The wakened life that feels his quickening sway
And barnyard voices shrilling "It is day!"
Take by his grace a new and alien charm.”

Joyce Kilmer Trees and Other Poems

"Alarm Clocks"
Trees and Other Poems (1914)
Context: When Dawn strides out to wake a dewy farm
Across green fields and yellow hills of hay
The little twittering birds laugh in his way
And poise triumphant on his shining arm.
He bears a sword of flame but not to harm
The wakened life that feels his quickening sway
And barnyard voices shrilling "It is day!"
Take by his grace a new and alien charm. But in the city, like a wounded thing
That limps to cover from the angry chase,
He steals down streets where sickly arc-lights sing,
And wanly mock his young and shameful face;
And tiny gongs with cruel fervor ring
In many a high and dreary sleeping place.

Life , Feeling

“Flame unto flame shall flow and be
Within thy heart and mine as one.”

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

By Still Waters (1906)
Context: When the lips I breathed upon
Asked for such love as equals claim
I looked where all the stars were gone
Burned in the day's immortal flame.
"Come thou like yon great dawn to me
From darkness vanquished, battles done:
Flame unto flame shall flow and be
Within thy heart and mine as one.".

Heart

“We clothe ourselves in flame
And trade new myths for old.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

"We March Back to Olympus" in Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run Round in Robot Towns (1977), p. 11
Context: We clothe ourselves in flame
And trade new myths for old.
The Greek gods christen us
With ghosts of comet swords;
God smiles and names us thus: "
"Arise! Run! Fly, my Lords!"

Clothes

“In night's darkness I've seen
raining down on my head
pure flames, flashing rays
of beauty divine.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

I (Yo soy un hombre sincero) as translated by Esther Allen in José Martí : Selected Writings (2002), p. 273
Simple Verses (1891)
Context: I come from all places
and to all places I go:
I am art among the arts
and mountain among mountains. I know the strange names
of flowers and herbs
and of fatal deceptions
and magnificent griefs. In night's darkness I've seen
raining down on my head
pure flames, flashing rays
of beauty divine.

Beauty , Night

“Great poet, 'twas thy art
To know thyself, and in thyself to be
Whate'er Love, Hate, Ambition, Destiny,
Or the firm, fatal purpose of the Heart
Can make of Man. Yet thou wert still the same,
Serene of thought, unhurt by thy own flame.”

Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849) British poet, biographer, essayist, and teacher

"To Shakespeare"
Poems (1851)
Context: The soul of man is larger than the sky,
Deeper than ocean, or the abysmal dark
Of the unfathomed center. Like that ark,
Which in its sacred hold uplifted high,
O'er the drowned hills, the human family,
And stock reserved of every living kind,
So, in the compass of the single mind,
The seeds and pregnant forms in essence lie,
That make all worlds. Great poet, 'twas thy art
To know thyself, and in thyself to be
Whate'er Love, Hate, Ambition, Destiny,
Or the firm, fatal purpose of the Heart
Can make of Man. Yet thou wert still the same,
Serene of thought, unhurt by thy own flame.

Love , Hate , Art , Heart

“I can conceive no more tremendous tribute than this, to any faith, which made a flaming affirmation from the darkest beginnings, of what the latest enlightenment can only slowly discover in the end.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

The Superstition of Divorce (1920)
Context: I do not ask them to assume the worth of my creed or any creed; and I could wish they did not so often ask me to assume the worth of their worthless, poisonous plutocratic modern society. But if it could be shown, as I think it can, that a long historical view and a patient political experience can at last accumulate solid scientific evidence of the vital need of such a vow, then I can conceive no more tremendous tribute than this, to any faith, which made a flaming affirmation from the darkest beginnings, of what the latest enlightenment can only slowly discover in the end.

Faith

“The living force of his soul gained the day: on he passed far beyond the flaming walls of the world and traversed throughout in mind and spirit the immeasurable universe.”
Ergo vivida vis animi pervicit et extra processit longe flammantia moenia mundi atque omne immensum peragravit mente animoque.

Lucretius (-94–-55 BC) Roman poet and philosopher

Book I, lines 72–74 (tr. H. A. J. Munro); of Epicurus.
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)

World , Soul , Universe

“Along the melting shores of earth
An emerald flame there ran,
Forest and field grew bright, and mirth
Gladdened the flocks of man.”

Robert Williams Buchanan (1841–1901) Scottish poet, novelist and dramatist

Balder the Beautiful (1877)
Context: Along the melting shores of earth
An emerald flame there ran,
Forest and field grew bright, and mirth
Gladdened the flocks of man. Then glory grew on earth and heaven,
Full glory of full day!
Then the bright rainbow's colours seven
On every iceberg lay!In Balder's hand Christ placed His own,
And it was golden weather,
And on that berg as on a throne
The Brethren stood together!And countless voices far and wide
Sang sweet beneath the sky —
"All that is beautiful shall abide,
All that is base shall die.".

“Brother Francis visualized a Fallout as half-salamander, because, according to tradition, the thing was born in the Flame Deluge, and as half-incubus who despoiled virgins in their sleep, for, were not the monsters of the world still called "children of the Fallout"? That the demon was capable of inflicting all the woes which descended upon Job was recorded fact, if not an article of creed.”

Walter M. Miller, Jr. book A Canticle for Leibowitz

Ch 1
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Homo
Context: He had never seen a "Fallout," and he hoped he'd never see one. A consistent description of the monster had not survived, but Francis had heard the legends. He crossed himself and backed away from the hole. Tradition told that the Beatus Leibowitz himself had encountered a Fallout, and had been possessed by it for many months before the exorcism which accompanied his Baptism drove the fiend away.
Brother Francis visualized a Fallout as half-salamander, because, according to tradition, the thing was born in the Flame Deluge, and as half-incubus who despoiled virgins in their sleep, for, were not the monsters of the world still called "children of the Fallout"? That the demon was capable of inflicting all the woes which descended upon Job was recorded fact, if not an article of creed.

Children , World , Sleep

“The law of revolution is red, fiery, deadly; but this death means the birth of new life, a new star. And the law of entropy is cold, ice blue, like the icy interplanetary infinities. The flame turns from red to an even, warm pink, no longer deadly, but comfortable.”

Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884–1937) Russian author

On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)
Context: The law of revolution is red, fiery, deadly; but this death means the birth of new life, a new star. And the law of entropy is cold, ice blue, like the icy interplanetary infinities. The flame turns from red to an even, warm pink, no longer deadly, but comfortable. The sun ages into a planet, convenient for highways, stores, beds, prostitutes, prisons: this is the law. And if the planet is to be kindled into youth again, it must be set on fire, it must be thrown off the smooth highway of evolution: this is the law.
The flame will cool tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow (in the Book of Genesis days are equal to years, ages). But someone must see this already today, and speak heretically today about tomorrow. Heretics are the only (bitter) remedy against the entropy of human thought.

Life , Death , Law , Star

“I feel once more the scars of the old flame.”
Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae.

Virgil Aeneid

Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book IV, Line 23 (tr. C. Day Lewis); Dido acknowledging her love for Aeneas.

Feeling

“There is no country…where there are not somewhere lovers of freedom who look to this country to carry the torch and keep it burning bright until such time as they may again be able to light their extinguished torches at our flame. We owe it not only to our own people but to the world to preserve our soul for that.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at University of Durham to the Ashridge Fellowship, as quoted in The Times (3 December 1934); also in Christian Conservatives and the Totalitarian Challenge, 1933-40 by Philip Williamson, in The English Historical Review, Vol. 115, No. 462 (June 2000)
1934

People , World , Soul , Lovers

“Meditation is the emptying of the mind of the known. It cannot be done by thought or by the hidden prompting of thought, nor by desire in the form of prayer, nor through the self-effacing hypnotism of words, images, hopes, and vanities. All these have to come to an end, easily, without effort and choice, in the flame of awareness.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Source: 1970s, Meditations (1979), p. 105
Context: Meditation is the emptying of the mind of all thought, for thought and feeling dissipate energy. They are repetitive, producing mechanical activities which are a necessary part of existence. But they are only part, and thought and feeling cannot possibly enter into the immensity of life. Quite a different approach is necessary, not the path of habit, association and the known; there must be freedom from these. Meditation is the emptying of the mind of the known. It cannot be done by thought or by the hidden prompting of thought, nor by desire in the form of prayer, nor through the self-effacing hypnotism of words, images, hopes, and vanities. All these have to come to an end, easily, without effort and choice, in the flame of awareness.

Hope , Effort

“Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Prelude
Middlemarch (1871)
Context: Who that cares much to know the history of man, and how the mysterious mixture behaves under the varying experiments of Time, has not dwelt, at least briefly, on the life of Saint Theresa, has not smiled with some gentleness at the thought of the little girl walking forth one morning hand-in-hand with her still smaller brother, to go and seek martyrdom in the country of the Moors? Out they toddled from rugged Avila, wide-eyed and helpless-looking as two fawns, but with human hearts, already beating to a national idea; until domestic reality met them in the shape of uncles, and turned them back from their great resolve. That child-pilgrimage was a fit beginning. Theresa's passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order.

Life , Light , Despair

“A few years ago they would have burned me at the stake and I should have been compelled to look upon their hypocritical faces through flame and smoke. They cannot do it now or they would.”

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

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)
Context: I have been denounced by the religious press and by ministers in their pulpits as a demon, as an enemy of order, as a fiend, as an infamous man. Of this, however, I make no complaint. A few years ago they would have burned me at the stake and I should have been compelled to look upon their hypocritical faces through flame and smoke. They cannot do it now or they would.

“If it shall ever be so, still the great ideas which I have set forth, of man, of God, of religion, — they will endure, and one day will be "a flame in the heart of all mankind."”

Theodore Parker (1810–1860) abolitionist

Two Sermons (1853), Sermon II : Of the Position and Duty of a Minister.
Context: You and I may perish. Temptation which has been too strong for thousands of stronger men, may be too great for me; I may prove false to my own idea of religion and of duty; the gold of commerce may buy me, as it has bought richer men; the love of the praise of men may seduce me; or the fear of men may deter my coward voice, and I may be swept off in the earthquake, in the storm, or in the fire, and prove false to that still small voice. If it shall ever be so, still the great ideas which I have set forth, of man, of God, of religion, — they will endure, and one day will be "a flame in the heart of all mankind." To-day! why, my friends, eternity is all around to-day, and we can step but towards that. A truth of the mind, of the conscience, of the heart, of the soul, — it is the will of God; and the omnipotence of God is pledged for the achievement of that will. Eternity is the life-time of Truth.

God , Religion , Idea , Heart

“The flame-appointed pyre.”
Damnatus flammae torus.

Statius book Thebaid

Source: Thebaid, Book VI, Line 55 (tr. J. H. Mozley)

“Upon a darkened night the flame of love was burning in my breast
And by a lantern bright I fled my house while all in quiet rest.”

Loreena McKennitt (1957) Canadian musician and composer

The Mask and Mirror (1994), The Dark Night of The Soul
Context: Upon a darkened night the flame of love was burning in my breast
And by a lantern bright I fled my house while all in quiet rest.
Shrouded by the night and by the secret stair I quickly fled.
The veil concealed my eyes while all within lay quiet as the dead.

Love , Housing , Night

“Regretfully, however, I realize that the maps I made helped others, with more material aims, to visit and corrupt a people whose spirit once lit the desert like a flame.”

Wilfred Thesiger book Arabian Sands

Source: Arabian Sands (1959), p. 68.
Context: Yet I wondered fancifully if he had seen more clearly than they did, had sensed the threat which my presence implied – the approaching disintegration of his society and the destruction of his beliefs. Here especially it seemed that the evil that comes with sudden change would far outweigh the good. While I was with the Arabs I wished only to live as they lived and, now that I have left them, I would gladly think that nothing in their lives was altered by my coming. Regretfully, however, I realize that the maps I made helped others, with more material aims, to visit and corrupt a people whose spirit once lit the desert like a flame.

People , Help

“When the young die I am reminded of a strong flame extinguished by a torrent; but when old men die it is as if a fire had gone out without the use of force and of its own accord, after the fuel had been consumed”
Itaque adulescentes mihi mori sic videntur, ut cum aquae multitudine flammae vis opprimitur, senes autem sic, ut cum sua sponte nulla adhibita vi consumptus ignis exstinguitur; et quasi poma ex arboribus, cruda si sunt, vix evelluntur, si matura et cocta, decidunt, sic vitam adulescentibus vis aufert, senibus maturitas; quae quidem mihi tam iucunda est, ut, quo propius ad mortem accedam, quasi terram videre videar aliquandoque in portum ex longa navigatione esse venturus.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

section 71 http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2007.01.0039%3Asection%3D71
Cato Maior de Senectute – On Old Age (44 BC)
Context: When the young die I am reminded of a strong flame extinguished by a torrent; but when old men die it is as if a fire had gone out without the use of force and of its own accord, after the fuel had been consumed; and, just as apples when they are green are with difficulty plucked from the tree, but when ripe and mellow fall of themselves, so, with the young, death comes as a result of force, while with the old it is the result of ripeness. To me, indeed, the thought of this "ripeness" for death is so pleasant, that the nearer I approach death the more I feel like one who is in sight of land at last and is about to anchor in his home port after a long voyage.

Men , Strong

“On Palm Sunday, at Appomattox Court House, the spirit of feudalism, of aristocracy, of injustice in this country, surrendered, in the person of Robert E. Lee, the Virginian slave-holder, to the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and of equal rights, in the person of Ulysses S. Grant, the Illinois tanner. So closed this great campaign in the 'Good Fight of Liberty'. So the Army of the Potomac, often baffled, struck an immortal blow, and gave the right hand of heroic fellowship to their brethren of the West. So the silent captain, when all his lieutenants had secured their separate fame, put on the crown of victory and ended civil war. As fought the Lieutenant-General of the United States, so fight the United States themselves, in the 'Good Fight of Man'. With Grant's tenacity, his patience, his promptness, his tranquil faith, let us assault the new front of the old enemy. We, too, must push through the enemy's Wilderness, holding every point we gain. We, too, must charge at daybreak upon his Spottsylvania Heights. We, too, must flank his angry lines and push them steadily back. We, too, must fling ourselves against the baffling flames of Cold Harbor. We, too, outwitting him by night, must throw our whole force across swamp and river, and stand entrenched before his capital. And we, too, at last, on some soft, auspicious day of spring, loosening all our shining lines, and bursting with wild battle music and universal shout of victory over the last desperate defense, must occupy the very citadel of caste, force the old enemy to final and unconditional surrender, and bring Boston and Charleston to sing Te Deum together for the triumphant equal rights of man”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)
Context: Yes, yes, caste is a glacier, cold, towering, apparently as eternal as the sea itself. But at last that glittering mountain of ice touches the edge of the Gulf Stream. Down come pinnacle and peak, frosty spire and shining cliff. Like a living monster of shifting hues, a huge chameleon of the sea, the vast mass silently rolls and plunges and shrinks, and at last utterly disappears in that inexorable warmth of water. So with us the glacier has touched the Gulf Stream. On Palm Sunday, at Appomattox Court House, the spirit of feudalism, of aristocracy, of injustice in this country, surrendered, in the person of Robert E. Lee, the Virginian slave-holder, to the spirit of the Declaration of Independence and of equal rights, in the person of Ulysses S. Grant, the Illinois tanner. So closed this great campaign in the 'Good Fight of Liberty'. So the Army of the Potomac, often baffled, struck an immortal blow, and gave the right hand of heroic fellowship to their brethren of the West. So the silent captain, when all his lieutenants had secured their separate fame, put on the crown of victory and ended civil war. As fought the Lieutenant-General of the United States, so fight the United States themselves, in the 'Good Fight of Man'. With Grant's tenacity, his patience, his promptness, his tranquil faith, let us assault the new front of the old enemy. We, too, must push through the enemy's Wilderness, holding every point we gain. We, too, must charge at daybreak upon his Spottsylvania Heights. We, too, must flank his angry lines and push them steadily back. We, too, must fling ourselves against the baffling flames of Cold Harbor. We, too, outwitting him by night, must throw our whole force across swamp and river, and stand entrenched before his capital. And we, too, at last, on some soft, auspicious day of spring, loosening all our shining lines, and bursting with wild battle music and universal shout of victory over the last desperate defense, must occupy the very citadel of caste, force the old enemy to final and unconditional surrender, and bring Boston and Charleston to sing Te Deum together for the triumphant equal rights of man.

War , Faith , Music , Spring

“Ah, like a comet through flame she moves entranced
Wrapt in her music no bird song, no, nor bough
Breaking with honey buds, shall ever equal.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"The Express" (l. 25–27) in Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (1988) edited by Richard Ellmann and Robert O’Clair

“Let the mind become as a flame or a pool of still water.”

Peter J. Carroll (1953) British occultist

Source: Liber Null & Psychonaut (1987), p. 31
Context: As a great master once observed: "There are two methods of becoming god, the upright or the averse." Let the mind become as a flame or a pool of still water.

Water

“I do not regret the sufferings and peculiaties of my physical constitution. They have taught me, and continue to teach me, that which I think nothing else could have developed. It is a force and control put upon me by Providence which I must obey. And the effects of this continual disciple of facts are mighty. They tame the in the best sense of that word, and they fan into existence a pure, bright, holy, unselfish flame within that sheds cheerfulness and light on many.”

Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) English mathematician, considered the first computer programmer

In a letter to Andrew Crosse, as quoted in Eugen Kölbing's Englische Studien, Volume 19 https://archive.org/stream/englischestudien19leipuoft#page/158/mode/1up (1894), Leipzig; O.R. Reisland, "Byron's Daughter", p. 158.
Context: With all my wiry power and strength, I am prone at times to bodily sufferings, connected chiefly with the digestive organs, of no common degree or king. I do not regret the sufferings and peculiaties of my physical constitution. They have taught me, and continue to teach me, that which I think nothing else could have developed. It is a force and control put upon me by Providence which I must obey. And the effects of this continual disciple of facts are mighty. They tame the in the best sense of that word, and they fan into existence a pure, bright, holy, unselfish flame within that sheds cheerfulness and light on many.
— Ever yours truly. "A. A. Lovelace."

Thinking , Sense , Light , Suffering

“Bear it aloft, O roaring flame!
Skyward aloft, where all may see.”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

"Written-In-Red", last lines.
Context: Bear it aloft, O roaring flame!
Skyward aloft, where all may see.
Slaves of the World! Our cause is the same;
One is the immemorial shame;
One is the struggle, and in One name —
Manhood— we battle to set men free.
"Uncurse us the Land!" burn the words of the Dead,
Written-in-red.

“God by God flits past in thunder, till His glories turn to shades;
God to God bears wondering witness how His gospel flames and fades.”

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic

"The Altar of Righteousness" in Harper's Monthly (June 1904).
Context: God by God flits past in thunder, till His glories turn to shades;
God to God bears wondering witness how His gospel flames and fades.
More was each of these, yet they were, than man their servant seemed:
Dead are all of these, and man survives who made them while he dreamed.

God , Past

“In a violent flash of lightning I discern on the highest peak of power the final, the most fearful pair embracing:
Terror and Silence. And between them, a Flame.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: Joy! Joy! I did not know that all this world is so much part of me, that we are all one army, that windflowers and stars struggle to right and left of me and do not know me; but I turn to them and hail them.
The Universe is warm, beloved, familiar, and it smells like my own body. It is Love and War both, a raging restlessness, persistence and uncertainty.
Uncertainty and terror. In a violent flash of lightning I discern on the highest peak of power the final, the most fearful pair embracing:
Terror and Silence. And between them, a Flame.

Fear , Silence

“Spirit, like flame, like freedom, like creativeness, is opposed to any social stagnation or any lifeless tradition.”

Nikolai Berdyaev (1874–1948) Russian philosopher

Source: Spirit and Reality (1946), p. 52
Context: Spirit, like flame, like freedom, like creativeness, is opposed to any social stagnation or any lifeless tradition. In terms of Kantian philosophy — terms which I consider erroneous and confusing — spirit appears as a thing in itself and objectification as a phenomenon. Another and truer definition would be, spirit is freedom and objectification is nature (not in the romantic sense). Objectification has two aspects: on the one hand it denotes the fallen, divided and servile world, in which the existential subjects, the personalities, are materialized. On the other it comprehends the agency of the personal subject, of spirit tending to reinforce ties and communications in this fallen world. Hence objectification is related to the problem of culture, and in this consists the whole complexity of the problem.
In objectification there are no primal realities, but only symbols. The objective spirit is merely a symbolism of spirit. Spirit is realistic while cultural and social life are symbolical. In the object there is never any reality, but only the symbol of reality. The subject alone always has reality. Therefore in objectification and in its product, the objective spirit, there can be no sacred reality, but only its symbolism. In the objective history of the world nothing transpires but a conventional symbolism; the idea of sacredness is peculiar to the existential world, to existential subjects. The real depths of spirit are apprehensible only existentially in the personal experience of destiny, in its suffering, nostalgia, love, creation, freedom and death.

Freedom

“I said, the Great Man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame.”

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

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet
Context: To the Arab Nation it was as a birth from darkness into light; Arabia first became alive by means of it. A poor shepherd people, roaming unnoticed in its deserts since the creation of the world: a Hero-Prophet was sent down to them with a word they could believe: see, the unnoticed becomes world-notable, the small has grown world-great; within one century afterwards, Arabia is at Grenada on this hand, at Delhi on that;—glancing in valor and splendor and the light of genius, Arabia shines through long ages over a great section of the world. Belief is great, life-giving. The history of a Nation becomes fruitful, soul-elevating, great, so soon as it believes. These Arabs, the man Mahomet, and that one century,—is it not as if a spark had fallen, one spark, on a world of what seemed black unnoticeable sand; but lo, the sand proves explosive powder, blazes heaven-high from Delhi to Grenada! I said, the Great Man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame.

Men , Waiting

“Such souls are, in these days, getting somewhat out of humour with the world. Your very Byron, in these days, is at least driven mad; flatly refuses fealty to the world. The world with its injustices, its golden brutalities, and dull yellow guineas, is a disgust to such souls: the ray of Heaven that is in them does at least pre-doom them to be very miserable here. Yes:—and yet all misery is faculty misdirected, strength that has not yet found its way. The black whirlwind is mother of the lightning. No smoke, in any sense, but can become flame and radiance! Such soul, once graduated in Heaven's stern University, steps out superior to your guinea.”

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

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

World , Way , Soul , Sense

“I've always fought to purify wild flame to light,
and kindle whatever light I found to burst in flame.”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

Odysseus to Hades, Book XI, line 145
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)
Context: Monarch of earth, I shall confess my secret craft:
I've always fought to purify wild flame to light,
and kindle whatever light I found to burst in flame.

Light

“Tempter! should I escape thy flame,
Thou wilt have helped my soul from Death:”

Lionel Johnson (1867–1902) English poet

The Dark Angel (1895)
Context: p>I fight thee, in the Holy Name!
Yet, what thou dost, is what God saith:
Tempter! should I escape thy flame,
Thou wilt have helped my soul from Death:The second Death, that never dies,
That cannot die, when time is dead:
Live Death, wherein the lost soul cries,
Eternally uncomforted.</p

Death , Soul , Help

“The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Source: The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995), Ch. 2 : Science and Hope
Context: I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us-then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.

Light

“When Brother Francis had removed the last tray, he touched the papers reverently: only a handful of folded documents here, and yet a treasure; for they had escaped the angry flames of the Simplification, wherein even sacred writings had curled, blackened, and withered into smoke while ignorant mobs howled and hailed it a triumph.”

Walter M. Miller, Jr. book A Canticle for Leibowitz

Ch 2
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Homo
Context: When Brother Francis had removed the last tray, he touched the papers reverently: only a handful of folded documents here, and yet a treasure; for they had escaped the angry flames of the Simplification, wherein even sacred writings had curled, blackened, and withered into smoke while ignorant mobs howled and hailed it a triumph. He handled the papers as one might handle holy things, shielding them from the wind with his habit, for all were brittle and cracked from age. There was a sheaf of rough sketches and diagrams. There were hand-scribbled notes, two large folded papers, and a small book entitled Memo.

“But the princes, putting the words of their wise men to naught, thought each to himself: If I but strike quickly enough, and in secret, I shall destroy these others in their sleep, and there will be none to fight back; the earth shall be mine.
Such was the folly of princes, and there followed the Flame Deluge.”

Walter M. Miller, Jr. book A Canticle for Leibowitz

Ch 6
A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), Fiat Homo
Context: It was said that God, in order to test mankind which had become swelled with pride as in the time of Noah, had commanded the wise men of that age, among them the Blessed Leibowitz, to devise great engines of war such as had never before been upon the Earth, weapons of such might that they contained the very fires of Hell, and that God had suffered these magi to place the weapons in the hands of princes, and to say to each prince: "Only because the enemies have such a thing have we devised this for thee, in order that they may know that thou hast it also, and fear to strike. See to it, m'Lord, that thou fearest them as much as they shall now fear thee, that none may unleash this dread thing which we have wrought." But the princes, putting the words of their wise men to naught, thought each to himself: If I but strike quickly enough, and in secret, I shall destroy these others in their sleep, and there will be none to fight back; the earth shall be mine.
Such was the folly of princes, and there followed the Flame Deluge.

Men , Secret , Sleep , Fight

“Who brought this to pass?
Who has brought the flaming imperial anger?
Who has brought the army with drums and with kettle-drums?
Barbarous kings.
A gracious spring, turned to blood-ravenous autumn,
A turmoil of wars-men, spread over the middle kingdom,
Three hundred and sixty thousand,
And sorrow, sorrow like rain.”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) American Imagist poet and critic

'Lament of the Frontier Guard' (From Cathay, 1915)

Men , War , Spring , Autumn

“But he, though blind of sight,
Despised, and thought extinguished quite,
With inward eyes illuminated,
His fiery virtue roused
From under ashes into sudden flame,”

John Milton book Samson Agonistes

Source: Samson Agonistes (1671), Lines 1687-1692 & 1697-1707
Context: But he, though blind of sight,
Despised, and thought extinguished quite,
With inward eyes illuminated,
His fiery virtue roused
From under ashes into sudden flame,
[... ]
So Virtue, given for lost,
Depressed and overthrown, as seemed,
Like that self-begotten bird
In the Arabian woods embost,
That no second knows nor third,
And lay erewhile a holocaust,
From out her ashy womb now teemed,
Revives, reflourishes, then vigorous most
When most unactive deemed;
And, though her body die, her fame survives,
A secular bird, ages of lives.

Quotes about flame page 6

Quotes about flame
page 6