Ashes Quotes - Page 13

• Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men, women, and infants, with which the Bible is filled; and the bloody persecutions, and tortures unto death, and religiosu wars, that since that time have laid Europe in blood and ashes; whence arose they, but from this impious thing called religion, and this monstrous belief that God has spoken to man?

  Thomas Paine

  War, Men, Blood

  Thomas Paine (1824). “The Theological Works of Thomas Paine”, p.151

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• Out of the ashes of the music business, comes the rebirth of the musician business.

  John Perry Barlow

  Art, Musician, Rebirth

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• When passion is mutual, there is always the danger of the fire burning to ashes.

  Beryl Bainbridge

  Passion, Fire, Burning

  Beryl Bainbridge (2010). “Master Georgie”, p.81, Hachette UK

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• I think character never changes; the Acorn becomes an Oak, which is very little like an Acorn to be sure, but it never becomes an Ash.

  Hester Lynch Piozzi

  Character, Thinking, Littles

  Hester Lynch Piozzi, Edward Alan Bloom, Lillian D. Bloom (1991). “The Piozzi Letters: 1792-1798”, Univ of Delaware Pr

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• Though jealousy be produced by love, as ashes are by fire, yet jealousy extinguishes love as ashes smother the flame.

  Marguerite de Navarre

  Jealousy, Fire, Flames

  "L'Heptaméron" by Marguerite of Navarre, Fifth Day, Novel XLVIII (trans. W. K. Kelly), 1558.

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• the whole flavor and quality of the American representative government turns to ashes on the tongue, if one regards that government as simply an inferior and rather second-rate sort of corporation.

  Margaret Halsey

  Government, Quality, Flavor

  Margaret Halsey (1952). “The Folks at Home”

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• All analyses end badly. Each 'termination' leaves the participants with the taste of ashes in their mouths; each is absurd; each is a small, pointless death. Psychoanalysis cannot tolerate happy endings; it casts them off the way the body's immunological system casts off transplanted organs.

  Janet Malcolm

  Analysis, Mouths, Body

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• The night ... it is filled with bestial watchmen, trammeling the extremities and the interstices of the timeless city, portents fallen, constellated deities plummeting in ash and smoke, roaming the apocryphal cities, the cities of speculation and reconstituted disorder, of insemination and incipience, swept round with the dark.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Dark, Night, Cities

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• Scarlett, from the ashes of the war-ravaged land at Tara, remembering what she was taught by her father in happier times: "As God is my witness, as God is my witness, they're not going to lick me! I'm going to live through this, and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again - no, nor any of my folks! If I have to lie, steal, cheat, or kill! As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again."

  Vivien Leigh

  Cheating, Father, War

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• Ah me! what wonder-working, occult science Can from the ashes in our hearts once more The rose of youth restore? What craft of alchemy can bid defiance To time and change, and for a single hour Renew this phantom-flower?

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Flower, Heart, Rose

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (185?). “The Poetical Works of Henry W. Longfellow”, p.503

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• In Paul Friedrich's book Proto-Indo-European Trees he identifies the "semantic primitives" of the Indo-European tribe of languages through a group of words that have not changed much through twelve thousand years - and those are tree names: especially birch, willow, adler, elm, ash, apple and beech (bher, wyt, alysos, ulmo, os, abul, bhago). Seed syllables, bija, of the life of the west.

  Gary Snyder

  Book, Years, Names

  Gary Snyder (2010). “The Practice of the Wild”, p.71, Counterpoint Press

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• I don't want to have a gravestone. I want to have all my friends burn me and then snort the ashes. I think that's the only way to go out.

  Marilyn Manson

  Thinking, Want, Way

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• The warriors that fought for their country, and bled, Have sunk to their rest; the damp earth is their bed; No stone tells the place where their ashes repose, Nor points out the spot from the graves of their foes. They died in their glory, surrounded by fame, And Victory's loud trump their death did proclaim; They are dead; but they live in each Patriot's breast, And their names are engraven on honor's bright crest.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Country, Warrior, Names

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Horace Elisha Scudder (1922). “The Complete Poetical Works of Longfellow”

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• Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.

  Gustav Mahler

  Fire, History, Worship

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• Better to be always in a minority of one with God - branded as madman, incendiary, fanatic, heretic, infidel - frowned upon by "the powers that be," and mobbed by the populace - or consigned ignominiously to the gallows, like him whose "soul is marching on," though his "body lies mouldering in the grave," or burnt to ashes at the stake like Wickliffe, or nailed to the cross like him who "gave himself for the world," - in defence of the RIGHT, than like Herod, having the shouts of a multitude crying, "It is the voice of a god, and not of a man!"

  William Lloyd Garrison

  Lying, Men, Voice

  "Valedictory". The last issue of "The Liberator" newspaper, fair-use.org. January 01, 1866.

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• Time burns but leaves no ashes.

  Elsa Triolet

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• Clay can be a metaphor for many things. I made it a metaphor for flesh and earth, and these are two kinds of generic givens of life, if you look at it poetically, biblically, the idea of the life of beings, of man, being transitory, the earth abides-ashes to ashes, dust to dust-man returns to earth, grows out of earth like a flower, wilts, goes back to the earth... We are frail, transitory creatures with aspirations of immortality, conscious of our inevitable death, and we have to deal with it somehow.

  Stephen De Staebler

  Flower, Men, Dust

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• We stink more of the world than we stink of sack cloth and ashes. A lot of contemporary churches today would feel more at home in a movie house rather than in a house of prayer, more afraid of holy living than of sinning, know more about money than magnifying Christ in our bodies. It is so compromised that holiness and living a sin-free life is heresy to the modern church. The modern church is, quite simply, just the world with a Christian T-shirt on!

  Nicky Cruz

  Christian, Prayer, Home

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• Her heart of compressed ash, which had resisted the most telling blows of daily reality without strain, fell apart with the first waves of nostalgia.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Heart, Blow, Reality

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• I wander though China. Without ever having boarded a plane. My travels take place here in the Tokoyo subways, in the backseat of a taxi... all of a sudden this city will start to go. In a flash, the buildings will crumble. Over the Tokyo streets will fall my China, like ash, leaching into everything it touches. Slowly, gradually, until nothing remains. No, this isn't a place for me.

  Haruki Murakami

  Fall, Cities, Subway

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• For Humanity sweeps onward: where today the martyr stands, On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands; Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn, While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn.

  James Russell Lowell

  Yesterday, Hands, Humanity

  James Russell Lowell (2016). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)”, p.190, Delphi Classics

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• A strong reputation is like a good bonfire. When you have one kindled it's easy to keep the flame burning, even if someone comes along and tries to piss on it. But if you fall asleep and neglect it...You'll wake up with ashes.

  Zachary Taylor

  Strong, Fall, Character

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• Apocalypse has come and gone. We're just grubbing in the ashes.

  Samuel R. Delany

  Gone, Apocalypse

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• Much can they praise the trees so straight and high, The sailing pine,the cedar proud and tall, The vine-prop elm, the poplar never dry, The builder oak, sole king of forests all, The aspin good for staves, the cypress funeral, The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors And poets sage, the fir that weepest still, The yew obedient to the bender's will, The birch for shafts, the sallow for the mill, The myrrh sweet-bleeding in the bitter wound, The warlike beech, the ash for nothing ill, The fruitful olive, and the platane round, The carver holm, the maple seldom inward sound.

  Edmund Spenser

  Sweet, Kings, Funeral

  1590 The Faerie Queen, bk.1, canto 1, stanzas 8-9. plantan=plane tree; holme=holly.

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• the most common type of pessimism is neither philosophical nor religious: it is the pessimism of thwarted desire. ... It is the cynical sneer of the man who, seeking roses, finds only ashes.

  Georgia Harkness

  Religious, Philosophical, Men

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