Fire Chief Quotes & Sayings

If my house is on fire, I don't need the fire chief telling me I should not have built the house out of wood. I need somebody to put the fire out. — Bob Riley

Making Saudi Arabia a world judge on women's rights and religious freedom would be like naming a pyromaniac as the town fire chief. — Hillel Neuer

After the trial, I watched as another female pathologist collected maggots from a spinal column found in the desert. There was a decomposed head, too, and before leaving work she planned to simmer it and study the exposed cranium for contusions. I was asked to pass this information along to the chief medical examiner, and, looking back, I perhaps should have chosen my words more carefully. 'Fire up the kettle,' I told him. 'Ol'-fashioned skull boil at five p.m. — David Sedaris

The beauty of the trees, the softness of the air, the fragrance of the grass, they speak to me. The summit of the mountain, the thunder of the sky, the rhythm of the sea, speaks to me. The faintness of the stars, the freshness of the morning, the dewdrop on the flower, speaks to me. The strength of the fire, the taste of the salmon, the trail of the sun, and the life that never goes away, they speak to me. And my heart soars. — Chief Dan George

With his ship faced with the danger of sinking, the Richard's chief gunner screamed to the Serapis, "Quarter! quarter! for God's sake!" Jones hurled a pistol at the man, felling him. But the cry had been heard by Pearson, the Serapis' commander, who called, "Do you ask for quarter?" Through the clash of battle, gunshot and crackle of fire the famous reply came faintly back to him: "I have not yet begun to fight!" Making good his boast, Jones sprang to a 9-pounder whose gun crew were killed or wounded, loaded and fired it himself, aiming at the Serapis' mainmast, then loaded and fired again. As the mast toppled, Pearson, surrounded by dead, with rigging on fire, hauled down his red ensign in token of surrender. Escorted to Richard's quarterdeck, he handed over his sword to Jones just as the Serapis' mainmast crashed over the side and its sail, nevermore to carry the wind, collapsed in a dying billow into the sea. — Barbara W. Tuchman

FIRE CHIEF: Life is very simple, really. [To the Smiths:] Go on and kiss each other. — Eugene Ionesco

Cassava No man had touched her, but a boy-child grew in the belly of the chief's daughter. They called him Mani. A few days after birth he was already running and talking. From the forest's farthest corners people came to meet the prodigious Mani. Mani caught no disease, but on reaching the age of one, he said, "I'm going to die," and he died. A little time passed, and on Mani's grave sprouted a plant never before seen, which the mother watered every morning. The plant grew, flowered, and gave fruit. The birds that picked at it flew strangely, fluttering in mad spirals and singing like crazy. One day the ground where Mani lay split open. The chief thrust his hand in and pulled out a big, fleshy root. He grated it with a stone, made a dough, wrung it out, and with the warmth of the fire cooked bread for everyone. They called the root mani oca, "house of Mani," and manioc is its name in the Amazon basin and other places. (174) — Eduardo Galeano

You have the chief spark of your health's fire, for you have true knowledge of the hand that guides the universe. — Boethius

If a friend is the one who summons us to our best, then is not Jesus Christ our best friend, and should we not think of the Communion as one of His chief appeals to us to be our best? The Lord's Supper looks not back to our past with a critical eye, but to our future, with a hopeful one. The Master appeals from what we have been to what we may be. He bids us come, not because we are better than we have been, but because He wants us to be. To stay away because our hearts are cold is to refuse to go to the fire till we are warm. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

There is no way of influencing men so powerfully as by means of the women. These should therefore be our chief study; we should insinuate ourselves into their good opinion, give them hints of emancipation from the tyranny of public opinion, and of standing up for themselves; it will be an immense relief to their enslaved minds to be freed from any one bond of restraint, and it will fire them the more, and cause them to work for us with zeal, without knowing that they do so; for they will only be indulging their own desire of personal admiration. — Adam Weishaupt

OK, they fire the puck from the blue line. Chief usually yelling 'block the shot' at the defensemen. They doesn't have the goalie gear, but they have to block the shot. So who is more crazy, me or the defensemen? Who is more weird? — Ilya Bryzgalov

Stella, the only planet of my light,
Light of my life, and life of my desire,
Chief good, whereto my hope doth only aspire,
World of my wealth, and heav'n of my delight:
Why dost thou spend the treasure of thy sprite,
With voice more fit to wed Amphion's lyre,
Seeking to quench in me the noble fire
Fed by thy worth, and kindled by thy sight?
And all in vain, for while thy breath most sweet,
With choicest words, thy words with reasons rare,
Thy reasons firmly set on Virtue's feet,
Labor to kill in me this killing care:
Oh, think I then, what paradise of joy
It is, so fair a Virtue to enjoy. — Philip Sidney

The amateur study of philosophy is like taking a few laps with a NASCAR driver. You're not qualified to do it on your own, you have no business behind the wheel, but for a few laps or paragraphs, you're right in there with 'em, and when it's all over, you've learned something. Or, as my local fire chief once said, you've simply exasperated the situation. — Michael Perry

He asked me, "what were the usual causes or motives that made one country go to war with another?" I answered "they were innumerable; but I should only mention a few of the chief. Sometimes the ambition of princes, who never think they have land or people enough to govern; sometimes the corruption of ministers, who engage their master in a war, in order to stifle or divert the clamour of the subjects against their evil administration. Difference in opinions has cost many millions of lives: for instance, whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain berry be blood or wine; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or throw it into the fire: what is the best colour for a coat, whether black, white, red, or gray: and whether it should be long or short, narrow or wide, dirty or clean; with many more. Neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long a continuance, especially if it be in things indifferent. — Jonathan Swift

SHE TOLD THE TRUSTEES, who had surely vacationed in the Caribbean, about the Carib Indian chief who was about to be burned at the stake by Spaniards. His crime was his failure to see the beauty of his people's becoming slaves in their own country.
This chief was offered a cross to kiss before a professional soldier or maybe a priest set fire to the kindling and logs piled up above his kneecaps. He asked why he should kiss it, and he was told that the kiss would get him into Paradise, where he would meet God and so on.
He asked if there were more people like the Spaniards up there.
He was told that of course there were.
In that case, he said, he would leave the cross unkissed. He said he didn't want to go to yet another place where people were so cruel. — Kurt Vonnegut

Doom. Doom. You sound like a funeral bell tolling,' said Grandfather. 'Talk like that is worse than swearing. I won't wash out your mouth with soap, however. A thimbleful of dandelion wine is indicated. Here, now, swig it down What's it taste like?'
'I'm a fire-eater! Whoosh!'
'Now upstairs, run three times around the block, do five somersets, six pushups, climb two trees, and you'll be concertmaster instead of chief mourner. Get!'
On his way, running, Douglas thought, 'Four pushups, one tree and two somersets will do it — Ray Bradbury

March 4 CHARITY is being rescued by the LORD I love you just as the Father loves me. ~ John 15:9 Someone asked an old chief "Why're you always talking about Jesus?" The chief didn't say anything. Instead, he collected some dry grass and twigs and put them into a circle. Next he caught a caterpillar, feeding on a nearby clump of weeds. He placed it inside the circle. Then, he took a match and set fire to the dry grass and the twigs. As the fire blazed up, the caterpillar began to search for an escape. At this point the old chief extended his finger to the caterpillar. Instantly, it climbed on to it. He said, "That's what Jesus did for me. I was like the caterpillar, without hope. Then Jesus rescued me. How can I not talk about my Savior's love and mercy?" ~ Mark Link, S.J. How grateful are you for what Jesus did for us? How do you show it concretely? It wasn't the nails that held Jesus on the cross but his love for us. ~ Author unknown — Scott Hahn

In recent years, anyone in the government, certainly anyone in the FBI or the CIA, or recently, in again, Clint's film, In the Line of Fire, the main bad guy is the chief advisor to the president. — Charlton Heston

My father is a fire chief and was a fire fighter when I was growing up and I always looked up to him. So, I found out about 911 dispatchers, not something I had ever thought about, and put in for it. — Cameron West

A cigarette is a roll of paper, tobacco, and drugs, with a small fire on one end and a large fool at the other. Some of its chief benefits are cancer of the lips and stomach, softening of the brain, funeral procesions, and families shrouded in gloom and grief. Although a great many people know this, they still smoke in order to appear sophisticated. — Ann Landers

I think it rather fine, this necessity for the tense bracing of the will before anything worth doing can be done. I rather like it myself. I feel it is to be the chief thing that differentiates me from the cat by the fire. — Arnold Bennett

Frankenswine:

Like an old crazy quilt, I'm pieces and parts from nine different bodies and five different hearts. My brain is a poet's, my snout's from a thief, my hooves all belonged to the old fire chief, I'm slogging thru swamps and mist covered bogs, hunted by farmers with torches and dogs. Thru mountains and towns, over oceans and snow, I've landed here on this arctic ice floe. So I sit here alone at the world frozen end, just looking for someone whom I can call friend. — Doug Cushman

McChrystal's defenders at the Pentagon were making the case Tuesday that the president and his men - (the McChrystal snipers spared Hillary) - must put aside their hurt feelings about being painted as weak sisters. Obama should not fire the serially insubordinate general, they reasoned, because that would undermine the mission in Afghanistan, and if that happens, then Obama would be further weakened.
So the commander in chief can be bad-mouthed as weak by the military but then he can't punish the military because that would make him weak? It's the same sort of pass-the-Advil vicious circle reasoning the military always uses. — Maureen Dowd