Burning Down Quotes

• Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.

  Harry Emerson Fosdick

  Inspirational, Funny, Sad

  "As I See Religion". Book by Harry Emerson Fosdick, 1932.

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• We have to be faster in calming down a resentment than putting out a fire, because the consequences of the first are infinitely more dangerous than the results of the last; fire ends burning down some houses at the most, while the resentment can cause cruel wars, with the ruin and total destruction of nations.

  Heraclitus

  War, Fire, House

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• Hating someone is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat. Invest your energy into something more worthwhile.

  Perrie Edwards

  Hate, House, Energy

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• But how did you come burning down like a wild needle, knowing just where my heart was?

  Mary Oliver

  Heart, Knowing, Needles

  Mary Oliver (1998). “West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems”, p.48, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them.

  Wafa Sultan

  Yield, People, Church

  "For muslim who says violence destroys islam, violent threats". www.nytimes.com. March 13, 2016.

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• Every time an old person dies, it's like a library burning down.

  Alex Haley

  Library, Persons, Dies

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• His master’s pain was his pain. And it hurt him more for his master to be sick than for him to be sick himself. When the house started burning down, that type of Negro would fight harder to put the master’s house out than the master himself would. But then you had another Negro out in the field. The house Negro was in the minority. The masses—the field Negroes were the masses. They were in the majority. When the master got sick, they prayed that he’d die. If his house caught on fire, they'd pray for a wind to come along and fan the breeze.

  Malcolm X

  Hurt, Pain, Fighting

  Malcolm X (1989). “Malcolm X: The Last Speeches”, Pathfinder Press

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• I mean, I'd like to see (Mitt Romney's) house burn, one of his millions of houses burning down. It would be kind of cool - the Mormon fire patrol.

  Joy Behar

  Mean, Fire, House

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• When your house is burning down, you don't worry about the remodeling.

  Arianna Huffington

  Worry, House, Remodeling

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• Our house is burning down and we are blind to it. The earth and humankind are in danger and we are all responsible. It is time to open our eyes. Alarms are sounding across all continents. We cannot say we did not know! Climate warming is still reversible. Heavy would be the responsibility of those who refuse to fight it.

  Jacques Chirac

  Eye, Responsibility, Fighting

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• Is it eradicating evil? Or are we like children, left alone in the house at night, who light candle after candle to keep away the darkness. We don't see that the darkness has a purpose — though we may not understand it — and so, in our terror, we end up burning down the house!

  Margaret Weis

  Children, Night, Light

  Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman (2011). “Time of the Twins: Legends, Volume One”, p.451, Wizards of the Coast

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• As a citizen I felt appalled that we WENT TO WAR over faulty information - that felt false or at least "stretched" from the first time they started to push the idea that Iraq and 9/11 were connected, though they didn't seem to be and there was no logical reason for thinking they were. It's like your neighbors the Smiths burned your house down, and then the next day you retaliated by burning down the Jones' house.

  Christopher Durang

  War, Thinking, Ideas

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• Every Victim requires a Persecutor. But the Persecutor isn't always necessarily a person. The Persecutor could also be a condition or a circumstance. A persecuting condition might be a disease or a heart attack, or an injury. A persecuting circumstance could be a natural disaster, like a hurricane or an earthquake or a house burning down.

  David Emerald Womeldorff

  Heart, Earthquakes, House

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• Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead," The Misfit continued, "and He shouldn't have done it. He shown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness," he said and his voice had become almost a snarl.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Jesus, Voice, House

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• An indigenous culture with sufficient territory, and bilingual and intercultural education, is in a better position to maintain and cultivate its mythology and shamanism. Conversely, the confiscation of their lands and imposition of foreign education, which turns their young people into amnesiacs, threatens the survival not only of these people, but of an entire way of knowing. It is as if one were burning down the oldest universities in the world and their libraries, one after another — thereby sacrificing the knowledge of the world's future generations.

  Jeremy Narby

  Sacrifice, Land, Knowing

  Jeremy Narby (1999). “The Cosmic Serpent”, p.119, Penguin

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• What's burning down is a re-creation of a period revival house patterned after a copy of a copy of a copy of a mock Tudor big manor house. It's a hundred generations removed from anything original, but the truth is aren't we all?

  Chuck Palahniuk

  House, Tudors, Generations

  "Invisible Monsters". Book by Chuck Palahniuk, September, 1999.

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• Given the choice of apathy or someone liberating mink, burning down a research torture-laboratory, or killing a vivisectionist or other DIRECT murderer of animals, I will choose the aforesaid actions over apathy any day of the week.-

  Gary Yourofsky

  Animal, Choices, Apathy

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• I was sorry to see the News of the World go down, I think it was a great campaigning newspaper. Who can forget the News of the World's high profile campaign against child sex offenders which led to News of the World readers burning down the home of a paediatrician, throwing rocks at a pedalo, stamping on a centipede.

  Stewart Lee

  Sex, Children, Sorry

  "Carpet Remnant World". Comedy, 2012.

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• Country manners. Even if somebody phones up to tell you your house is burning down, they ask first how you are.

  Alice Munro

  Country, Phones, House

  Alice Munro (2015). “A Wilderness Station: Selected Stories, 1968-1994”, p.359, Vintage

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• If I lived through the next day or so, I needed to start keeping track of where these jokers liked to get their bloodthirsty freak on. It might give me an edge someday. Or at least a list of places that could use a nice burning down. I hadn't burned down a building in ages.

  Jim Butcher

  Nice, Next Day, Track

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• I've had a million setbacks along the way--from kiln fires burning down buildings to shipping disasters--that should have put me out of business, or at least left me lying in the fetal position on my bed for a few days. Luckily, though, I've never for one second thought that I had any other option than to just keep going.

  Jonathan Adler

  Perseverance, Lying, Should Have

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• The business aspects of the Fourth of July is not perfect as it stands. See what it costs us every year with loss of life, the crippling of thousands with its fireworks, and the burning down of property. It is not only sacred to patriotism and universal freedom, but to the surgeon, the undertaker, the insurance offices - and they are working it for all it is worth.

  Mark Twain

  4th Of July, Loss, Years

  Mark Twain (2016). “Mark Twain's Speeches”, p.263, Xist Publishing

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• I'm trying to keep my own house from burning down. I can't worry about someone else's house.

  Bill Parcells

  Motivational, Sports, Worry

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• Once a man offered me his heart and I said no. Not because I didn’t love him. Not because he was a beast or white — I couldn’t love him. Do you understand? In bed while we slept, our bodies inches apart, the dark between our flesh a wick. It was burning down. And he couldn’t feel it.

  Eduardo C. Corral

  Heart, Dark, Men

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• The Fire Department has traditionally considered architecture a priority only when it’s burning down.

  Justin Davidson

  Fire, Priorities, Architecture

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