Candle Quotes & Sayings

How science dwindles, and how volumes swell,
How commentators each dark passage shun,
And hold their farthing candle to the sun! — Edward Young

Such dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on either hand, and here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a tomb. — Herman Melville

Consumed by the agony of remembrance The remembrance of night's festive company The one remaining candle flickers and dies. — Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib

He felt his smile slide away, melt, fold over and down on itself like a tallow skin, like the stuff of a fantastic candle burning too long and now collapsing and now blown out. — Ray Bradbury

The equivalent of the moth's light-compass reaction is the apparently irrational but useful habit of falling in love with one, and only one, member of the opposite sex. The misfiring by-product - equivalent to flying into the candle flame - is falling in love with Yahweh (or with the Virgin Mary, or with a wafer, or with Allah) and performing irrational acts motivated by such love. — Richard Dawkins

You don't have to be a wreck. You don't have to be sick. One's aim in life should be to die in good health. Just like a candle that burns out. — Jeanne Moreau

The earth will never be the same again
Rock, water, tree, iron, share this greif
As distant stars participate in the pain.
A candle snuffed, a falling star or leaf,
A dolphin death, O this particular loss
A Heaven-mourned; for if no angel cried
If this small one was tossed away as dross,
The very galaxies would have lied.
How shall we sing our love's song now
In this strange land where all are born to die?
Each tree and leaf and star show how
The universe is part of this one cry,
Every life is noted and is cherished,
and nothing loved is ever lost or perished. — Madeleine L'Engle

When a happy person comes into the room, it is as if another candle has been lit. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We were like two moths around a candle, I thought, circling closer and closer to the flame, waiting to see whose wings would catch fire first. — Tan Twan Eng

Writing in the dark is hard, but you have to light your own candle and do it anyway. — A.D. Posey

I've seen what comes next. Vigils. Concern is the new consumerism. A person's worth can be measured by the number and intensity of his concerns. Candles, lighting a candle, confers the kind of fulfillment that only empty ritual can bring. Empty ritual's important. It's coming back as a force in people's lives. Its role is being acknowledged. It's the keystone for tomorrow's dealings in an annexed and exploited world. And holding a candle, cradling a little flame with others holding their candle, cradling their little flame gives people the opportunity to experience something bigger than themselves without surrendering themselves to it. — Joy Williams

A wise man lights a candle while fools are busy cursing the darkness — Seth Czerepak

We light the candle and ask the Lord Jehovah to illuminate the week ahead. We sprinkle spices into the flame and remind ourselves that the Sabbath should remain a sweet scent in our lives, flavoring the days to come. — Janette Oke

Four wings, two hearts, but only one soul. They connect in the middle, but are separated by a thin line of ash. Its what brings them together, yet rips their feathers apart. They can never truly be together as light and dark. Unless one makes the ultimate sacrifice. Blows out their candle, and joins the other in the dark. Or if the other dares to fly across the line and steals the others light And force them to cross over the line and join the darkness of life. Im not gone, princess. I will come back for you until you give in. — Jessica Sorensen

Jesus is not a candle. A company in South Dakota is selling candles with the scent of Jesus. You light one and your friends says, Christ, what's that smell? — Bill Maher

In ancient Greece, they did it to pay tribute to the goddess Artemis. They made a round cake to represent the shape of the moon and added candles to represent the moonlight. Later, people believed that, when the candle was blown out, your wish would go to the gods to grant. Some people believe the smoke from the candles will chase away evil spirits for another year. There is tradition in everything, every event, every holiday, and this is one tradition I want to share with you and, someday, share with our children. — Aurora Rose Reynolds

Reputation is only a candle, of wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit. — James Russell Lowell

Heroes are people who face down their fears. It is that simple. A child afraid of the dark who one day blows out the candle; a women terrified of the pain of childbirth who says, 'It is time to become a mother'. Heroism does not always live on the battlefield. — David Gemmell

CANDLE WISDOM
If you knew
what you will know
when your candle
has burnt low,
it would greatly
ease your plight
while your candle
still burns bright. — Piet Hein

Some men give as little light in the world as a farthing tallow candle, and when they expire, leave as bad an odor behind them. — George D. Prentice

The simple yet holy atmosphere of the Chapel of the Holy Cross moves many to pray. Light a candle inside the chapel and offer the sincerest prayer in your heart. No matter where you choose to pray, the following will help you.
Presence:
Peace:
Alighment:
Sincerity:
Constancy:
Gratitude: — Ilchi Lee

One thing I've learnt recently is that blowing out someone else's candle doesn't make yours shine any brighter. — Zoe Sugg

To use it," she went on, "you just need to know how to find it. You need to gather it up and tell it what to do. It's just unstable energy. Magic always wants to be something different from what it already is. It wants to change. That's what makes it magic. And that's what makes lighting a candle the simplest bit of magic you can do. You just take the energy, and you tell it what to be. — Danielle Paige

His spirit is like a guttering candle — Geraldine Brooks

I love all of you - the good, the bad, the funny, the angry, the slightly insane. I even love it when you're jealous of someone who couldn't hold a candle to you. That's not going to change." "How — Lorna Seilstad

Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning. — William Arthur Ward

As I savored the meal, I struggled against the dark force that kept tugging at me, telling me I was never going to leave; adhering to my consciousness like sap, or tar, or glue; enveloping me in a sticky sickness that drained my vitality. I felt myself growing old as I sat there, the joints stiffening, the bones aching, the sense of identity melting away like a forgotten candle left to burn itself out. As I settled back into my cot for the evening hibernation, I understood I had been captured. I realized my spirit was ensnared. I knew what must be done. Whatever the cost, I told myself, I would be back on the road at dawn. — Steven Hubbell

Be able to blow out a dinner candle without sending wax flying across the table. — Marilyn Vos Savant

God has bestowed upon you intelligence and knowledge. Do not extinguish the lamp of Divine Grace and do not let the candle of wisdom die out in the darkness of lust and error. For a wise man approaches with his torch to light up the path of mankind. — Khalil Gibran

Like a candle in the wind, never knowing who to cling to until the rain set it. — Elton John

As a rope is to a mountaineer,
As a candle's flame is to the darkest of caves,
As a current is to a stream,
As a drizzle is to a desert,
As shelter is to the nomad,
As food is to the hungry,
As an oasis is to a weary traveler,
As freedom is to a prisoner,
As faith is to a theist,
Hope is to man. — Chirag Tulsiani

The sensory misers will inherit the earth, but first they will make it not worth living on. When you consider something like death, after which we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably won't matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly. — Diane Ackerman

Admire all the stars, but what you really must admire is your very own Sun, the cosmic candle of our beloved Earth! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The sharia is like a candle," said Shams of Tabriz. "It provides us with much valuable light. But let us not forget that a candle helps us to go from one place to another in the dark. If we forget where we are headed and instead concentrate on the candle, what good is it? — Elif Shafak

So here I sit in the early candle-light of old age-I and my book-casting backward glances over out travel'd road. — Walt Whitman

Innocence is a strange thing. For those who held it within them, the experienced people in the world flew to them like moths to a flame. Yet, instead of bursting into cinders, they smothered the flame and showed the candle just how dark the world could be. Once that innocence was lost, there was no turning back. No way back to the light of the normal world. It became an addiction. Pain, domination, submission, and degradation would be constant yearnings for the newly initiated." ~Lexie Syrah — Lexie Syrah

Pale as a candle flame in the dusk, tallow-pale, he stalked along, holding her hand, and Louie looked up and beyond him at the enfeebled stars. Thus, for many years, she had seen her father's head, a ghostly earth flame against the heavens, from her little height. Sam looked down on the moon of her face; the dayshine was enough still to light the eyeballs swimming up to him. — Christina Stead

Those candle flames were like the lives of men. So fragile. So deadly. Left alone, they lit and warmed. Let run rampant, they would destroy the very things they were meant to illuminate. Embryonic bonfires, each bearing a seed of destruction so potent it could tumble cities and dash kings to their knees. — Brandon Sanderson

You're gorgeous, you old hag, and if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of your life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the gift of confidence. Either that or a scented candle — David Nicholls

A Christmas candle is a lovely thing; It makes no noise at all, But softly gives itself away; While quite unselfish, it grows small. — Eva K. Logue

Elderly people are like plants. Whereas some go to seed, or to pot, others blossom in the most wonderful ways. I believe beauty competitions should be held only for people over seventy years of age. When we are young, we have the face and figure God gave us. We did nothing to earn our good looks. But as we get older, character becomes etched on our face. Beautiful old people are works of art. Like a white candle in a holy place, so it the beauty of an aged face. — James Simpson

I love the way you lit candles, with the insistence that I never look, just so I can open my eyes and find the light in the darkness. — R. YS Perez

As Michelangelo suggested, the greater danger is not that your hopes are too high and you fail to reach them; it's that they're too low and you do. Have within you an imaginary candle flame that burns brightly regardless of what goes before you. Let this inner flame represent for you the idea that you're capable of manifesting miracles in your life. In — Wayne W. Dyer

Behold a candle, how it gives its light. It weeps its life away drop by drop in order to give forth its flame of light. — Abdu'l- Baha

When love dies and marriage lies in ruins, the first casualty is honest memory, decent, impartial recall of the past. Too inconvenient, too damning of the present. It's the spectre of old happiness at the feast of failure and desolation. So, against that headwind of forgetfulness I want to place my little candle of truth and see how far it throws its light. — Ian McEwan

It is good to be helpful and kindly, but don't give yourself to be melted into candle grease for the benefit of the tallow trade. — George Eliot

Where others saw gloom, I saw light or lit a candle. — G.R. Gopinath

When I get up in the morning I go straight back to bed again. I feel best in the evening, the moment I dowse the candle, pull the eiderdown over my head. I raise myself up once more, look about the room with an indescribable peace of mind, and then it's goodnight, down under the eiderdown. — Soren Kierkegaard

If you were a blade of grass or a tiny flower
I will pitch my tent in your shadow.
Only your presence revives my withered heart.
You are the candle that lights the whole world
and I am an empty vessel for your light. — Rumi

Cinder stood, staring. All her senses were attuned to Wolf, focused on the energy and emotions that clouded around him. It was like watching a candle extinguish.
It was like watching him die — Marissa Meyer

It is better to burn the candle at both ends, and in the middle, too, than to put it away in the closet and let the mice eat it. — Henry Van Dyke

The capacity to see and - equally so - blindness are not divisible. The critical faculty of the human mind is one: To believe one can be seeing internally but blind as far as the outside world is concerned is like saying that the light of a candle gives light only in one direction and not in all. The light of the candle is reason's capacity for critical, penetrating, uncovering thought. — Erich Fromm

All the suffering and torment wrought at places of execution, in torture chambers, madhouses, operating theatres, under the arches of bridges in late autumn - all these are stubbornly imperishable, all these persist, are inaccessible but cling on, envious of everything that is, stuck in their own terrible reality. People would like to be allowed to forget much of it, their sleep gliding softly over these furrows in the brain, but dreams come and push sleep aside and fill the picture again. And so they wake up breathless, let the light of a candle dissolve the darkness as they drink the comforting half-light as if it was sugared water. But, alas, the edge on which this security is balancing is a narrow one. Given the slightest little turn and their gaze slips away from the familiar and the friendly, and the contours that had so recently been comforting take the sharp outlines of an abyss of horror. — Rainer Maria Rilke

You'll learn. It takes time to kill the flesh, honey. It's kind of like those candles your father used to put on Mitchell's cake
the ones that relight when you think they're out. You've got to keep huffing and puffing and maybe even use the help of water before it's over, but eventually it's over, and that candle can't be lit even if you try
-Mrs. Flannery — Heather Randall

If you devote yourself to God, then He in turn will continually stay with you, as an eternal candle flame stays with a wick, feeding off the overflow of wax; yet reshaping into something better. — Anthony Liccione

How beautiful to look at When my prayer Lights a candle of hope In my heart. — Sri Chinmoy

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends
It gives a lovely light! — Edna St. Vincent Millay

What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle. — Rumi

A candle cannot boast standing next to the sun. — Matshona Dhliwayo

A teacher is like the candle, which lights others in consuming itself. — Elizabeth George

On education - Every bit does some good. I'm lucky I know how to read. It's a candle in a dark room. What I don't know, I can find out for myself. It's easier to fool someone who can't figure things out on his own. — Nadia Hashimi

My life is now nothing more than a flickering candle. The wax is melting and the flame is a small, quivering spark. Soon it'll simply vanish, and I'll finally collapse into the black hole of eternal peace. — Margaret McHeyzer

I promise to keep her secure. Then I took two large wads a candle wax, kneaded them into earplugs, and stuff them into my ears. Annabeth nodded sarcastically, letting me know the air plugs are a real fashion statement. I made a face at her ... — Rick Riordan

That was fun to play. There were some nice special effects coupled with some really nice moments with child and wife. I also was able to age to about 100 years in 'Brief Candle.' — Richard Dean Anderson

It has been wisely said that you can take a child of God, put him in a dungeon with a Bible and a candle and lock him away, and he will know more about what's going on in today's world with the Word of God than all the pundits in Washington. — Adrian Rogers

He knew how she felt. It was the way he felt himself, sometimes, if he woke in the small hours, at three a.m., a time when the world seemed empty and stripped of comforting illusion. A time when you knew you were a mote, transient and fragile in a vast universe, a candle flame in an empty hall. — Terry Pratchett

But the wind does not stop for my thoughts. It whips across the flooded gravel pits drumming up waves on their waters that glint hard and metallic in the night, over the shingle, rustling the dead gorse and skeletal bugloss, running in rivulets through the parched grass - while I sit here in the dark holding a candle that throws my divided shadow across the room and gathers my thoughts to the flame like moths.
I have not moved for many hours. Years, a lifetime, eddy past: one, two, three: into the early hours, the clock chimes. The wind is singing now — Derek Jarman

Don't you see? Your mortal heart shines like a candle flame and I, like one of those hapless black moths you used to leave as an offering, am helpless before its lure. — Robin LaFevers

You can always meet stupid people in your life journey; you should treat them like the way candle treats darkness: Illuminate them! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The Reader may here observe the Force of Numbers, which can be successfully applied, even to those things, which one would imagine are subject to no Rules. There are very few things which we know, which are not capable of being reduc'd to a Mathematical Reasoning, and when they cannot, it's a sign our Knowledge of them is very small and confus'd; and where a mathematical reasoning can be had, it's as great folly to make use of any other, as to grope for a thing in the dark when you have a Candle standing by you. — John Arbuthnot

Quietly, he walked towards it with the matchbox in one hand, the candle in the other. — Markus Zusak

Nirvana is not the blowing out of the candle. It is the extinguishing of the flame because day is come. — Rabindranath Tagore

Life is no brief candle but a splendid torch made to burn ever more brightly. — Edward Dunlop

Don't be discouraged by your incapacity to dispel darkness from the world. Light your little candle and step forward. — Mata Amritanandamayi

A thousand candles can be lit from one candle, however the life of the original candle is not shortened in the least. — Dalai Lama

She wanted to be his candle, to light the darkness in his soul, to burn in the window and show him the way home. She wanted to be his rain, a sweet storm of the senses. She wanted to be his warmth, a solace for his soul. — Alison Kent

I'm gonna fall in love with you, Kelly said. His words hung in the darkness, bright as candle flames. — Cara McKenna

I hear he liked flowers pretty well."
"Yes," said Annie, "he said they were the friends who always came back and never disappointed him."
"Out, Brief Candle — Kurt Vonnegut

Martianus Capella strove to collect what he considered the highest accomplishments of his culture, the Seven Liberal Arts, and his collection - in weird poesical format - seemed a candle to many, during the Dark Ages. That story inspired Isaac Asimov, by the way, to write his famed Foundation sci-fi series. — David Brin

I lit a candle in a Catholic church for the first time that afternoon. Me, a Presbyterian. I lit a candle in the warm, dark, waxy-smelling air of Saint Adelbert's. I put it beside the one that Mrs. Baker lit. I don't know what she prayed for, but I prayed that no atomic bomb would ever drop on Camillo Junior High or the Quaker meetinghouse or the old jail or Temple Emmanuel or Hicks Park or Saint Paul's Episcopal School or Saint Adelbert's. I prayed for Lieutenant Baker, missing in action somewhere in the jungles of Vietnam near Khesanh. I prayed for Danny Hupfer, sweating it out in Hebrew school right then. I prayed for my sister, driving in a yellow bug toward California - or maybe she was there already, trying to find herself. And I hoped that it was okay to pray for a bunch of things with one candle. — Gary D. Schmidt

The Wanderer
What is she like?
I was told
she is a
melancholy soul.
She is like
the sun to the night;
a momentary gold.
A star when dimmed
by dawning light;
the flicker of
a candle blown.
A lonely kite
lost in flight
someone once
had flown. — Lang Leav

A man who is rolling in money do not work for cheeseparings and candle ends. — Anyaele Sam Chiyson

A teacher is like a candle that lights others by consuming itself. — Giovanni Ruffini

Now one day - and we know the day, August 1, 1774 - Priestley put calx of mercury underneath a glass. He focused the sun's hot rays on the calx with his new 12" diameter magnifying glass. It began to give off a gas. The calx of mercury changed back into mercury, and Priestley trapped the gas with his pneumatic trough. And then he sat and looked, and thought, and looked some more. He happened to have a lighted candle nearby. Without really thinking about it Priestley exposed the candle to the gas. The flame suddenly flared into brilliance! What was this wondrous gas? If — Benjamin Wiker

Ah, the Hand of Glory!" said Mr. Borgin, abandoning Mr. Malfoy's list and scurrying over to Draco. "Insert a candle and it gives light only to the holder! Best friend of thieves and plunderers! Your son has fine taste, sir." "I hope my son will amount to more than a thief or a plunderer, Borgin," said Mr. Malfoy coldly, and Mr. Borgin said quickly, "No offense, sir, no offense meant - " "Though if his grades don't pick up," said Mr. Malfoy, more coldly still, "that may indeed be all he is fit for - " "It's not my fault," retorted Draco. "The teachers all have favorites, that Hermione Granger - " "I would have thought you'd be ashamed that a girl of no wizard family beat you in every exam," snapped Mr. Malfoy. "Ha!" said Harry under his breath, pleased to see Draco looking both abashed and angry. — J.K. Rowling

Not every thought is a candle! Some thoughts can make the world darker! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

He had enlightened Marius by chance and without being aware of the fact, as does a candle which some one brings; he had been the candle and not the some one. — Victor Hugo

For the first time, there's no barrier between us and we make eye contact. All of a sudden, I feel like the character in Raiders of the Lost Ark - the one who watches in horror as the wispy, beautiful angels floating from the Ark of the Covenant morph into howling, homicidal demons. You know, right before he melts like a cheap candle. — Elle Lothlorien

I have not been part of an active counterculture movement, as it is not the approach that I have personally pursued to create a qualitatively beneficial and meaningful impact on society. Perhaps, my belief is along the old saying that 'it is always better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.' — Al Seckel

But to reject, marginalize, trivialize, or be suspicious of the sacraments (and quasi-sacramental acts such as lighting a candle, bowing, washing feet, raising hands in the air, crossing oneself and so forth) on the grounds that such things CAN be superstitious or idolatrous or that some people might suppose they are putting God in their debt, is like rejecting sexual relations in marriage on the grounds that it's the same act that in other circumstances constitutes immorality. — N. T. Wright

The candle burns not for us, but for all those whom we failed to rescue from prison, who were shot on the way to prison, who were tortured, who were kidnapped, who 'disappeared'. That's what the candle is for. — Peter Benenson

I don't want to be swallowed by the darkness. Nor do I want to be blinded by the beautiful facade. No, I want to be part of a people who see the darkness, know it's real, and then, then, then, light a candle anyway. And hold that candle up against the wind and pass along our light wherever it's needed from our own homes to the halls of legislation to the church pulpit to the kitchens of the world. — Sarah Bessey

Every moment age is creeping up stealthily,
but life, life is melting down
like a candle that is flickering around. — Suman Pokhrel

If there is any truth in the world, it lies when I'm with you, and if I find the courage to speak my truth to you one day, remind me to light a candle in thanksgiving at every altar in Rome. — Andre Aciman

Surely the game is hardly worth the candle. Why — Arthur Conan Doyle

My body is but wax and wick for flame. When the candle burns out, the light shines elsewhere. — Normandi Ellis

I am not yours, nor lost in you, not lost, although I long to be. Lost as a candle lit at noon, lost as a snowflake in the sea. You love me, and I find you still a spirit beautiful and bright, yet I am I, who long to be lost as a light is lost in light. — Sara Teasdale

I've been arguing on the side of a dirt road with a petulant singer who's wearing a guitar on his back. This entire scene is a mess, and maybe we're a mess, too. But it's still him and still me, and there's still that feeling of possibility - the one that sparks like a Roman candle inside me as his lips touch mine. And it's a start. — Emery Lord

You realize I had half my guard out searching for you?" Eddard Stark said when they were alone. "Septa Mordane is beside herself with fear. She's in the sept praying for your safe return. Arya, you know you are never to go beyond the castle gates without my leave."
"I didn't go out the gates," she blurted. "Well, I didn't mean to. I was down in the dungeons, only they turned into this tunnel. It was all dark, and I didn't have a torch or a candle to see by, so I had to follow. I couldn't go back the way I came on account of the monsters. Father, they were talking about killing you! Not the monsters, the two men. They didn't see me, I was being still as stone and quiet as a shadow, but I heard them. They said you had a book and a bastard and if one Hand could die, why not a second? Is that the book? Jon's the bastard, I bet. — George R R Martin