Ground And Fire Quotes & Sayings

He's just very deceiving. He just covers a lot of ground with ease. I got to the three-eighths pole, and I even got a little concerned because he was so relaxed. I wasn't sure if he was going to fire, but I didn't want to test him that early. As soon as I got to the top of the stretch I shook him up and got an immediate response. In the stretch, once I knew he wasn't going to get beat, I put my hands down and he eased himself up. He's a real smart horse and he's got a great attitude. — Ramon A. Dominguez

In pain with you, and yet I could not go. I stayed since nothing better came along. I loved you by default or just for show, My life a whistled flat unechoed song. I groped for notches in our dun abyss, And looked for more in lonely only less. I shunned the path adorned with signs to bliss, And stood the loyal ground of wait or guess. It took the tender you to shift the scene, Bold arsonist beneath our tinder stage! I then in friendly fire to earth careen And from our props and ashes disengage. I begged you long with such a silent ache In fear of, wish for mercy for my sake. What Love Feels Like — David Richo

I had two dreams about him after he died. I dont remember the first one all that well but it was about meetin him in town somewheres and he give me some money and I think I lost it. But the second one it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin through the mountains of a night. Goin through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin. Never said nothin. He just rode on past and he had this blanket wrapped around him and he had his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up. — Cormac McCarthy

She lost her grip and plummeted into the grass, landing on the ground so hard she was jarred all over. Before she could recover, she felt Ash's hands on her, urgent and ungentle, rolling her back and forth on the grass until her nose was as full of the smell of wet grass as of smoke.

She sat up spluttering.

"I'm so sorry, you were on fire," Ash blurted.

"Obviously, I didn't think you were rolling me around on the grass for fun," said Kami. "Um. Or something that sounds less saucy than that, sorry. — Sarah Rees Brennan

Shadow and dust shall be reclaimed, earth sealing the tomb from which you came. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, warrior return, breathe your last. Air, earth, fire, water, hear my voice, obey my order, thrice around your grave do bound, evil sink into the ground. I now invoke the law of three, this is my will, so mote it be. — Christine Feehan

15"Therefore watch yourselves very carefully. Since you saw no form on the day that the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, 16beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves, in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, 17the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies in the air, 18the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth. 19And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the LORD your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. — Anonymous

I thought that ground fire couldn't reach the zeppelins," I said. "I thought that guns on the ground didn't have the range."
"Eleanore. Do you imagine for one particle of one second that he was thinking clearly enough to fathom that?"
"He was thinking clearly enough to fathom all of this," I retorted, my hand flung out to encompass the roof. Blood stained my palm. "Clearly enough to have men haul all these crates into the castle in broad daylight all week long, so that everyone could see them and wonder what was actually inside! — Shana Abe

People who live on solid ground, underneath safe skies, know nothing of this; they are like the English POWs in Dresden who continued to pour tea and dress for dinner, even as the alarms went off, even as the city became a towering ball of fire. Born of a green and pleasant land, a temperate land, the English have a basic inability to conceive — Zadie Smith

There's hidden sweeteness in the stomach's emptiness.
We are lutes, no more no less. If the soundbox is stuffed full of anything, no music.
If the brain and the belly are burning clean
with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire.
The fog clears, and new energy makes you
run up the steps in front of you.
Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry.
Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen.
When you're full of food and drink, an ugly metal statue sits where your spirit should. When you fast,
good habits gather like friends who want to help.
Fasting is Solomon's ring. Don't give it to some illusion and lose your power,
but even if you have, if you've lost all will and control, they come back when you fast, like soldiers appearing out of the ground, pennants flying above them.
A table descends to your tents, Jesus' table.
Expect to see it, when you fast, this table spread with other food, better than the broth of cabbages. — Rumi

Let the sky lead me, the land ground me, the fire cleanse me, and the water feed me. — Emily R. King

When you kiss me, Gwyneth, I feel I'm losing touch with the ground. I don't know how you do it or where you learnt the trick of it. If it was from a film, well, we just have to go and see it together." He stopped for a moment. "What I really want to say is, when you kiss me, all I want is to feel you and hold you in my arms. Hell, I'm so in love with you that it feels like someone had emptied a can of gasoline somewhere inside me and set fire to it! But right now, we can't ... we have to keep a cool head. Or one of us, anyway." The look he gave me finally put an end to my doubts. "Gwenny, all this terrifies me. Without you, there'd be no sense in my life anymore ... I'd want to die if anything happened to you. — Kerstin Gier

My cape caught fire. I dived to the sand and rolled on the ground to snuff the flames. So much for my grand entrance. — Maria V. Snyder

Brake." The frontend dipped into a rut and the force tossed me close to the ceiling. "For God's sake, flip-flop, flip-flop."
The pickup cut ruts in the wet ground, spun halfway around on the grass before coming to a halt.
Somehow I'd wound up with my ass on the floorboard again and my legs on the seat. I glared at Morgan. The flush in his cheeks glowed against his pale skin.
He swallowed several times. "Well, at least it went better than last time."
"Jesus, how could that have been better? You almost killed us."
"I didn't catch the truck on fire." He fluttered his hand next to his temple. "Or drive into the pond. — Adrienne Wilder

Blue Eyes pulled his sword back and tried another lunge. I pushed the weapon toward the ground, but again he flicked his wrist. A line of fire blazed on my right arm. Wonderful. Matching cuts.
He paused with his sword held in midair. My blood stained the tip.
I glanced past him. Didn't anyone hear the fight? Should I scream?
"Submit? You will have so many cuts on your arms and legs, you will faint from lack of blood."
"No. — Maria V. Snyder

Out here, the deadly shit seeking your blood and meat is not confined to snakes and bears and weather. Other forces resent your presence too. Ghosts of long-gone wolves and buffalo and Indians and pioneers, dead in the service of implacable history. If you stop and camp early, while it's still early, while it's still daylight
claim your space, plant your flag, build your fire
you push them back into the past. But alone in the dark, the minute you sit your ass down they circle close around. Lie on the ground, and the cold seeps up as they try to equalize your temperature with theirs. Get quiet, and you hear the voices. A few words in English, but mostly in other languages. The ones that came before the Indians. Words the long-gone animals thought to one another. Words flowing against you. Wishing you ill. Yet, somehow, all gentle as an outbreath. — Charles Frazier

There are a lot of people that have marginal powers, like a guy who levitates a little bit off the ground, or someone who can breathe a little bit of fire, or someone that can freeze a little bit of something, if it's really close to him, you say, "Well, what do you do with that? How is that useful?" There is so much of it around you and you're seeing it, it becomes the important thing in society. — Sharlto Copley

THE DEATH OF SALADIN
You left ground and sky weeping, mind
and soul full of grief. No one can
take your place in existence or in
absence. Both mourn, the angels, the
prophets, and this sadness I feel has
taken from me the taste of language,
so that I can't say the flavor of my
being apart. The roof of the kingdom
within has collapsed! When I say the
word YOU, I mean a hundred universes.
Pouring grief water, or secret dripping in the heart, eyes in the head or eyes
of the soul, I saw yesterday that all these flow out to find you when you're
not here. That bright fire bird Saladin
went like an arrow, and now the bow
trembles and sobs. If you know how to
weep for human beings, weep for Saladin. — Rumi

Sam Cleary reached the two old men fighting on the ground and used the fire extinguisher for the first time, bringing it down two-handed to hit Charlie Manx in the face. He would use it for the second time on Tom Priest, not thirty seconds later, by which time Tom was well dead.
Not to mention well done. — Joe Hill

Warriors! and where are warriors found, If not on martial Britain's ground? And who, when waked with note of fire, Love more than they the British lyre? — Walter Scott

[On the volcano.] And many a fire there burns beneath the ground. — Empedocles

She tried to hurt Fitz!" He turned to Gabriel and Dick. "That'll get her mad. "
Gabriel rolled his eyes. "She's been framed for murder twice over, shot in the back, her arms were set on fire, and her parents are being held hostage. You think tampered dog water is what's going to make her angry?"
"You tried to hurt my dog!" I wheezed as I lurched toward a grinning Missy.
"Oh, big deal, " Missy huffed. "It's the ugliest dog I've ever seen. "
"You tried to hurt my dog, " I said again.
"I would have been doing you a favor. " Missy sneered.
"Nobody. Screws. With. My. Dog. " I growled, punctuating each word with a punch to Missy's face. I gave an upper cut to the chin that sent her flying back into a pile on the ground.
Zeb grinned at Dick and Gabriel. "Told you. — Molly Harper

Our car would've burned up too, but Michael, who is only twelve, got in it and backed it away. I climbed in with him and noticed some of my school books in the car, so I took them out and threw them in the fire. I figured it would save me from doing a lot of homework, but unfortunately under the headline in the paper the next day that said HARPER'S MALT SHOP BURNS TO THE GROUND IN TRAGIC FIRE it also said that seen throwing her school books into the fire was little Daisy Fay Harper. Rat's foot! No wonder Hollywood stars hate reporters, and after all that some busybody do-gooder has already bought me a new set of books. — Fannie Flagg

How long he stood he did not know, but there was a foolish and yet delicious sense of knowing himself as an animal come from the forest, drawn by the fire. He was a thing of brush and liquid eye, of fur and muzzle and hoof, he was a thing of horn and blood that would smell like autumn if you bled it out on the ground. He stood a long time, listening to the warm crackle of the flames. — Ray Bradbury

All the Spirits of the Winter Realm, that just a moment earlier hustled around the Shifters as small balls of fire, were now in their ghostly forms, gray and transparent. Their ethereal bodies stretched parallel to the ground, huge eyes wide open, their wispy, long hair streaming in the air behind them — A.O. Peart

Once in camp I put a log on a fire and it was full of ants. As it commenced to burn, the ants swarmed out and went first toward the center where the fire was; then turned back and ran toward the end. When there were enough on the end they fell off into the fire. Some got out, their bodies burnt and flattened, and went off not knowing where they were going. But most of them went toward the fire and then back toward the end and swarmed on the cool end and finally fell off into the fire. I remember thinking at the time that it was the end of the world and a splendid chance to be a messiah and lift the log off the fire and throw it out where the ants could get off onto the ground. But I did not do anything but throw a tin cup of water on the log, so that I would have the cup empty to put whiskey in before I added water to it. I think the cup of water on the burning log only steamed the ants. — Ernest Hemingway,

It was not death, for I stood up,
And all the dead lie down;
It was not night, for all the bells
Put out their tongues, for noon.

It was not frost, for on my flesh
I felt siroccos crawl,
Nor fire, for just my marble feet
Could keep a chancel cool.

And yet it tasted like them all;
The figures I have seen
Set orderly, for burial,
Reminded me of mine,

As if my life were shaven
And fitted to a frame,
And could not breathe without a key;
And I was like midnight, some,

When everything that ticked has stopped,
And space stares, all around,
Or grisly frosts, first autumn morns,
Repeal the beating ground.

But most like chaos,--stopless, cool,
Without a chance or spar,--
Or even a report of land
To justify despair. — Emily Dickinson

All I could feel was the pulse of our heartbeats where we joined, throbbing and pounding through every fibre in my body. We rocked back and forth, always kissing. And on the cold, cold ground by the flickering warmth of the fire, we made love. The way he held me, the way he looked at me, it was the closest to heaven I'd ever get without dyin'. — N.R. Walker

Our DNA does not fade like an ancient parchment; it does not rust in the ground like the sword of a warrior long dead. It is not eroded by wind or rain, nor reduced to ruin by fire and earthquake. It is the traveller from an ancient land who lives within us all. — Bryan Sykes

When you live on Cold Mountain long enough the autumns pass quickly When you live alone you have no worries When you leave the doors open no one bothers you The bubbling stream runs forever In the cave a clay pot boils over a fire on the ground A wandering breeze stirs the fragrant pines When hungry I eat one simple meal And lean against the rock in complete harmony — Hanshan

Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person's face as you pass them on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. — Miranda July

Absorbing the rest of her shadow into his, he knuckled the wall on either side of her head, trapping her in the cage of his arms, but not touching. The cool, sweaty bricks ground into his skin. She shivered and flattened her hands as if clinging to the wall for protection. Fire flared low in his gut, spurring him on. — Kendall Grey

They believed the devil would rise from here," she said. "I'm serious. They thought he would come up through the cracks in the ground, that there would be an earthquake and he would rise. Dust. Fire. The end of the world. They calculated the day and built churches to protect themselves. — Richard House

The unnatural beast plummeted to the ground, vainly attempting to keep his entrails in and put out the fire that covered him. Morfyd spewed another spell at the retreating form and Hefaidd-Hen burst into pieces.
Fearghus glanced at his sister. "That was a bit much, don't you think?"
She gave an innocent shrug. "I like to be certain. — G.A. Aiken

The digging continues ... Ground Zero it looks more and more like a construction site. Too much of the horror is gone. No fire. No smoke ... What was war becomes peace, becomes peaceful. But in the coil of my testicles there's an angry residue and in places I can't even name, places inside my throat and behind my chest, I'm sad, and sometimes worse than sad, less than sad, a cavity of empty. — Adam Berlin

Desolate city. Snow on the streets. Fire in the sky.
It could have been one of a hundred wars.
But there-
The place on the street where the snow had melted. The dark crater in the sea of white.Daniel sank to his knees and reached for the ring of black ash stained on the ground.He closed his eyes.And he remembered the precise way she had died in his arms.
Moscow.1941.
So this was what she was doing-tunneling into her past lives. Hoping to understand.
The thing was,there was no rhyme or reason to her deaths.More than anyone, Daniel knew that.
But there were certain lifetimes when he'd tried to shed some light for her,hoping it would change things. Sometimes he'd hoped to keep her alive longer,though that never really worked. Sometimes-like this time during the siege of Moscow-he'd chosen to send her on her way more quickly.To spare her.So that his kiss could be the last thing she felt in that lifetime. — Lauren Kate

Earth and sky, rock and wind, bear witness!
By the power of the Swift Sure Hand, I claim this ground and sain it with a name: Bwgan Bwlch!

Power of fire I have over it,
Power of wind I have over it,
Power of thunder I have over it,
Power of wrath I have over it,
Power of heavens I have over it,
Power of earth I have over it,
Power of worlds I have over it!

As tramples the swan upon the lake,
As tramples the horse upon the plain,
As tramples the ox upon the meadow,
As tramples the boar upon the track,
As tramples the forest host of heart and hind,
As tramples all quick things upon the earth,
I do trample and subdue it,
And drive all evil from it!

In the name of the Secret One,
In the name of the Living One,
In the name of the All-Encircling One,
In the name of the One True Word, it is Bwgan Bwlch,
Let it so remain as long as men survive
To breath the name. — Stephen R. Lawhead

The last time I was at a supernatural shindig, I got poisoned and then everything there tried to kill me. So I burned the whole place to the ground. — Jim Butcher

What is wrong with you?" Radu sounded on the verge of tears. "Why do you have to destroy everything good we have here?"
"Because," Lada said, voice flat with the sudden wave of exhaustion pulling her heavily to the ground. "We have nothing. Can you not see that?"
"We have Mehmed!"
Lada looked up. The stars were static, still and cold in the night, all the fire gone from the sky. "It is not enough," she said. — Kiersten White

But first, I want the pleasure of telling you that you are fired. I fire you. I fire you and all your relatives. I fire your ancestors and your descendants. I fire the very air you breathe and the ground you walk upon. — Z.A. Maxfield

Will you stop eating it," I growled.
"No," Andrea said. She was sitting on the ground and chewing on some unidentifiable chunk of bull flesh.
"It's a piece of meat from something a djinn summoned."
"You don't know that."
"Who else would send a bull made of fire to my house after I helped kill a djinn-possessed giant? Stop eating. It might have been a person," I told her.
"I don't care."
"Andrea! You don't know what this will do to the baby!"
"It will make it nice and strong. — Ilona Andrews

Then I felt something inside me break and music began to pour out into the quiet. My fingers danced; intricate and quick they spun something gossamer and tremulous into the circle of light our fire had made. The music moved like a spiderweb stirred by a gentle breath, it changed like a leaf twisting as it falls to the ground, and it felt like three years Waterside in Tarbean, with a hollowness inside you and hands that ached from the bitter cold. — Patrick Rothfuss

See them little scales there, how they're closed up tight like window shutters? Underneath 'em are the seeds - flat little things, flimsy as a baby's figernails - with a point at one end. If a fire comes along, the heat is gonna cause those scales to peel back and drop their seeds, while the ground is still scorching hot. Then that tiny seed is gonna burrow in and take root. I was nine years old the summer Freeda and Winnalee Malone rushed across our lives like red-hot flames, peeling back the shutters that sat over our hearts and our minds, setting free our sweetest dreams and our worst nightmares. — Sandra Kring

For the Greeks, values existed a priori and marked out the exact limits of every action. Modern philosophy places its values at the completion of action. They are not, but they become, and we shall know them completely only at the end of history. When they disappear, limits vanish as well, and since ideas differ as to what these values will be, since there is no struggle which, unhindered by these same values, does not extend indefinitely, we are now witnessing the Messianic forces confronting one another, their clamors merging in the shock of empires. Excess is a fire, according to Heraclitus. The fire is gaining ground; Nietzsche has been overtaken. It is no longer with hammer blows but with cannon shots that Europe philosophizes. — Albert Camus

The Wolf snarled, tensing his muscles, as if he wished he could climb the tree after the feline. "One day I will catch you on the ground, cat," he said through bared teeth. "And you won't even know I'm there until I tear your head off." "You have been saying that since before humans had fire, dog," Grimalkin replied, completely undisturbed. "You'll have to forgive me if I don't hold my breath."
- The Big Bad Wolf and Grimalkin — Julie Kagawa

Anna had read books about people in the cities going camping. They would leave their comfortable homes and beds and deliberately sleep in tents, on the ground, then cook their food outside over an open fire instead of in a well-stocked kitchen. She couldn't imagine something so ridiculous. — Gail Sattler

The exhausted earth groaned and quivered under the monotonous glare of the sun. Spirals of heat rose from the ground as if from molten lava. A panting lizard crawled painfully over the fevered rock in search of a shady crevice. Cattle and dogs cringed under the scanty shade of the trees and waited for the rain to deliver them from the heat and thirst. Instead the heat grew more intense and oppressive each day, singeing and stifling all living things with an invisible sheet of fire, which only the rain could put out.

The drought had persisted for over a month. — S. Rajaratnam

I believed, from the solitary and thoughtful way in which my mother murmured her song, that she was alone. And I went softly into the room. She was sitting by the fire, suckling an infant, whose tiny hand she held against her neck. Her eyes were looking down upon its face, and she sat singing to it. I was so far right, that she had no other companion.
I spoke to her, and she started, and cried out. But seeing me, she called me her dear Davy, her own boy! and coming half across the room to meet me, kneeled down upon the ground and kissed me, and laid my head down on her bosom near the little creature that was nestling there, and put its hand up to my lips.
I wish I had died. I wish I had died then, with that feeling in my Heart! I should have been more fit for Heaven than I ever have been since. — Charles Dickens

He remembered that in the art books he had leafed through at Leader's, many paintings depicted death. A severed head on a platter. A battle, and the ground strewn with bodies. Swords and spears and fire; and nails being pounded into the tender flesh of a man's hands. Painters had preserved such pain through beauty. — Lois Lowry

In late 1915 there appeared on the Western Front a German flier named Manfred von Richthofen, known as the Red Baron, after his royal title and a penchant for painting his squadron's Fokker triwing fighters red. He was a natural born killer who shot down more than eighty enemy aircraft before himself being fatally brought down by ground fire — Winston Groom

Deep under ground, materials dark and crude, Of spiritous and fierie spume, till toucht With Heav'ns ray, and temperd they shoot forth So beauteous, op'ning to the ambient light. These in thir dark Nativitie the Deep Shall yeild us, pregnant with infernal flame, Which into hallow Engins long and round Thick-rammd, at th' other bore with touch of fire Dilated and infuriate shall send forth From far with thundring noise among our foes Such implements of mischief as shall dash To pieces, and orewhelm whatever stands Adverse, that they shall fear we have disarmd The Thunderer of his only dreaded bolt. — John Milton

A vine from one tree shot out, tripping Blaise. He and Merewyn rolled to the ground. Varian stood between them and the trees, which shot blast after blast at him. He deflected them, but even so the heat from the fire was scorching.
'Go, Blaise,' he said. 'Get Merewyn out of here.'
Blaise nodded before he crawled to Merewyn under the barrage.
'Hold!'
The blast stopped as the three of them froze into place.
Again the woman appeared in the fire to stare at them maliciously. 'What is it you do?'
'I'm crawling,' Blaise answered. — Kinley MacGregor

Yes, things catch fire," Shawn ground out as he switched the safety off and cocked the gun threateningly, letting it dig even further into Brandt's cheek. "But hotel rooms do not just catch fire! Automobiles do not just catch fire! And my favorite pair of sweatpants do not just catch fire! — Abigail Roux

There is no virtue in concealment. When the earth is rendered chaos, regulations of speech and propriety are rendered impotent, just as city may become desolate, and street, battle ground, and flesh may become fire. — M T Anderson

God gets us through stuff. Through the Red Sea onto dry ground (Ex. 14:22), through the wilderness (Deut. 29:5), through the valley of the shadow of death (Ps. 23:4), and through the deep sea (Ps. 77:19). Through is a favorite word of God's: When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, Nor shall the flame scorch you. (Isa. 43:2)1 — Max Lucado

I'm an organism of the earth, a Taurus. I was never born of air, of water, or of fire. I'm a creature of gravity and I could feel the ground whisper. The same thing happens to me in old hotels when I'm staying on the twenty-second floor. I open a window and want to fling myself out. — Sue Grafton

This is the spot where I will lie
When life has had enough of me,
These are the grasses that will blow
Above me like a living sea.
These gay old lilies will not shrink
To draw their life from death of mine,
And I will give my body's fire
To make blue flowers on this vine.
"O Soul," I said, "have you no tears?
Was not the body dear to you?"
I heard my soul say carelessly,
"The myrtle flowers will grow more blue. — Sara Teasdale

Standing in the ring of fire, the eye of the storm, the vortex of pain and pressure is simultaneously the most vulnerable and most powerful place to be. Here we embody paradox. We stand our ground and surrender completely. Here we know the full power of the Feminine. — Lucy H. Pearce

Clove!" Cato's voice is much nearer now. I can tell by the pain in it that he sees her on the ground.
"You better run now, Fire Girl," says Thresh.
I don't need to be told twice. I flip over and my feet dig into the hard-packed earth as I run away from Thresh and Clove and the sound of Cato's voice. Only when I reach the woods do I turn back for an instant. Thresh and both large backpacks are vanishing over the edge of the plain into the area I've never seen. Cato kneels beside Clove, spear in hand, begging her to stay with him. In a moment, he will realize it's futile, she can't be saved. — Suzanne Collins

Let's be Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus's children, Scout and Jem, carefully watch their father's behavior as the house next door to theirs burns to the ground. As the fire creeps closer and closer to the Finches' home, Atticus appears so calm that Scout and Jem finally decide that "it ain't time to worry yet." We need to be Atticus. Hands in our pockets. Calm. Believing. So that our children will look at us and even with a fire raging in front of them, they'll say, "Huh. Guess it's not time to worry yet. — Glennon Doyle Melton

At the round earth's imagined corners blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go ;
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
All whom war, dea[r]th, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you, whose eyes
Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space ;
For, if above all these my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace,
When we are there. Here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent, for that's as good
As if Thou hadst seal'd my pardon with Thy blood.
— John Donne

When the longhorns could be gathered up and driven, it was theorized that the heat from the herd's mass attracted lightning. (Such was the radiant heat from a large herd that a cowboy's face would be blistered on whichever side of the herd he'd ridden by the day's end.) Their great horns also seemed to attract electricity, so that lightning and ground-electricity would bounce around from horn to horn throughout the herd - a phantasmagoric burning blue circuitry. The cracking of the cowboy's whips and the twitching of the cattle's tails also emitted sparkling snakes of fire. — Rick Bass

You dont get your black ass away from this fire I'll kill you graveyard dead. He looked to where Glanton sat. Glanton watched him. He put the pipe in his mouth and rose and took up the apishamore and folded it over his arm. Is that your final say? Final as the judgement of God. The black looked once more across the flames at Glanton and then he moved away in the dark. The white man uncocked the revolver and placed it on the ground before him. Two of the others came back to the fire and stood uneasily. Jackson sat with his legs crossed. One hand lay in his lap and the other was outstretched on his knee holding a slender black cigarillo. The nearest man to him was Tobin and when the black stepped out of the darkness bearing the bowieknife in both hands like some instrument of ceremony Tobin started to rise. The white man looked up drunkenly and the black stepped forward and with a single stroke swapt off his head. — Cormac McCarthy

Oh you the creator, you the destroyer, you who sustain and make an end,
Who in sunlight dance among the birds and the children at their play,
Who at midnight dance among corpses in the burning grounds,
You Shiva, you dark and terrible Bhairava,
You Suchness and Illusion, the Void and All Things,
You are the lord of life, and therefore I have brought you flowers;
You are the lord of death, and therefore I have brought you my heart
This heart that is now your burning ground.
Ignorance there and self shall be consumed with fire.
That you may dance, Bhairava, among the ashes.
That you may dance, Lord Shiva, in a place of flowers,
And I dance with you. — Aldous Huxley

Keep quiet. Don't panic. Never tell anyone the truth. She'd lived with their rules for twelve years, and for what? So that she might one day be so lucky as to be forgotten entirely. The memory of Minerva Lane - of who she'd been, what she'd done - felt like a hot coal covered in cold ashes. It smoldered on long after the fire had been doused. Sometimes, all that heat rose up in her until she felt the need to shriek like a teapot. Until she wanted to burn the mousy shreds of her tattered personality. It rose up in her now, that fiery rebellion. The part of her that was still Minerva - the part that hadn't been ground to smoothness - whispered temptation in her ear. You don't need to keep quiet. You need a strategy. — Courtney Milan

I have seen him set fire to his wigwam and smooth over the graves of his fathers ... clap his hand in silence over his mouth, and take the last look over his fair hunting ground, and turn his face in sadness to the setting sun. — George Catlin

More than the choking heat, more than the blinding flames that rise up into the night sky, more than the endlessly leaping colours that change shape with every moment, more than all of these is the transforming power of fire. Fire takes solid wooden beams and reduces them to charcoal. It licks at everything with a scarlet tongue and leaves it black. It spreads like the folds of a golden robe over human bodies and what is left is gray and chalky: ash, blown up and up by every breath of wind only to fall like dust on the ground. When it is burning most fiercely, it seems that it might go on forever and devour everything in its path. It does not cower and withdraw in front of princes. Palace and hovel alike are good fuel and nothing more. It is unstoppable. And when it has moved, what remains is desolation. — Adele Geras

Here is the soundless cypress on the lawn:
It listens, listens. Taller trees beyond
Listen. The moon at the unruffled pond
Stares. And you sing, you sing.
That star-enchanted song falls through the air
From lawn to lawn down terraces of sound,
Darts in white arrows on the shadowed ground;
And all the night you sing.
My dreams are flowers to which you are a bee
As all night long I listen, and my brain
Receives your song, then loses it again
In moonlight on the lawn.
Now is your voice a marble high and white,
Then like a mist on fields of paradise,
Now is a raging fire, then is like ice,
Then breaks, and it is dawn. — Harold Monro

The mountain is awake, with utterance
Of flame and burning rock and thunderous sound-
Abode of the ancestral spirits who dance
In blissful fire! Tremors run through the ground
And through men's hearts. The people stand dismayed
By prophecies as mantic ghosts invade
With alien voice the soothsayers in their trance. — James McAuley

He looked, and with a sort of awareness and surprise that made me fire the second arrow. Just in case - just in case that intelligence was of the immortal, wicked sort. He didn't try to dodge the arrow as it went clean through his wide yellow eye. He collapsed to the ground. Color — Sarah J. Maas

The day she realised, it was not about the world but was all about her, she grew the wings. The day she understood she was not answerable to any of them who always blamed and pointed her, she had the fire blazing in her eyes. She raised and soared towards the sky. The whole world looked at her in awe and wished if only they could be her. She was not confined to be on the ground anymore. She had the wings of fire and she left a trail everywhere she went, for other to follow. — Akshay Vasu

Social paralysis is strong and stands firmly in the way of change on the ground level. As allies, we have to prepare ourselves to step into the fire when necessary, even - and especially - when said fire is merely a still-lit cigarette tossed carelessly onto the street. — Jack Antonoff

Late one day James and I watch the sun fly across the sky like a basketball on fire until it falls down completely and lands in Benjamin Lake with a splash and shakes the ground and even wakes up Lester FallsApart who thought it was his father come back to slap his face again. — Sherman Alexie

It's been a long, hard day, and bit by bit you have been transformed into a single, vertical, barely ambulatory ache. All that awaits you now is another long, lonely night on the hard, cold ground. "What am I doing out here?" you ask yourself. "I must be mad!" Indeed, you are mad. Otherwise right now you could be warm and cozy and stretched out in front of your beloved TV, munching popcorn and swigging down ice-cold brew, just like a civilized person. "Oh well," you sigh to yourself. "I'd better stop and get a fire going. — Patrick F. McManus

Walk with the dreamers, the believers, the courageous, the cheerful, the planners, the doers, the successful people with their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground. Let their spirit ignite a fire within you to leave this world better than when you found it ... — Wilferd Peterson

No! Kell shouted, reaching toward his brother, uselessly, desperately, but as his hand brushed the nearest person, the darkness leaped like fire from his fingers to the man's chest. He shuddered, and then collapsed, crumbling to ash as his body struck the street stones. Before he hit the ground, the people on either side of him began to fall as well, death rippling in a wave through the crowd, silently consuming everyone. Beyond them, the buildings began to crumble too, and the bridges, and the palace, until Kell was standing alone in an empty world. And then in the silence, he heard a sound: not a sob, or a scream, but a laugh. And it took him a moment to recognize the voice.
It was his. — Victoria Schwab

I looked through the Gideon Bible in my motel room for tales of great destruction. The sun was risen upon the Earth when Lot entered into Zo-ar, I read. Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of Heaven; and He overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.
So it goes.
Those were vile people in both those cities, as is well known. The World was better off without them.
And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.
So she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes. — Kurt Vonnegut

The flames sawed in the wind and the embers paled and deepened and paled and deepened like the bloodbeat of some living thing eviscerate upon the ground before them and they watched the fire which does contain within it something of men themselves inasmuch as they are less without it and are divided from their origins and are exiles. For each fire is all fires, and the first fire and the last ever to be. — Cormac McCarthy

A plane flies overhead and inside it is a writer who has spent most of his life as a law clerk, even though he's always known deep down that he's a writer. For the first time, he's worked out what he wants to write, what the truth really is. He begs a napkin and a pen off the air hostess and he writes down the most beautiful sentence ever written, as the engine catches fire outside and the plane starts its plummet to the ground. It doesn't matter to him. It's the only sentence he's ever written and it is the last and no part of him cares. The sentence falls through the air with singed, black edges and comes to rest in a tree, in a park, miles away. One day, around ten years from now, an old widow of an astronaut will find it when a strong breeze finally blows it from its hiding place. She will read it and she will weep. — Pleasefindthis

When it comes to wildlife, no state is deadlier than Florida. Let me count the ways: fire ants, mosquitoes, alligators, eastern diamondback rattlers, black bears, panthers, coral snakes, bull sharks, jellyfish, black widow spiders, water moccasins, wasps, crocodiles, pygmy rattlers, brown recluse spiders, wild boar, copperheads, scorpions, Burmese pythons. And ticks. No state has more attacks from fire ants, sharks, or snakes. Let's not forget Mother Nature, who is equally aggressive. Florida is the lightning capital of the United States, attracting by far the most strikes to ground, injuries (more than two thousand since 1959) and fatalities (nearly five hundred since 1959). About seven people die each year from lightning in the Sunshine State, accounting for about 15 percent of the total number of U.S. fatalities each year. — Joe Gisondi

When the children of Israel left Egypt, they were guided by the pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night. For them, this did not seem to be a problem. For me, it was an enormous problem. The pillar of cloud was a fog, perplexing and impossible. I didn't understand the ground rules. The daily world was a world of Strange Notions, without form, and therefore void. I comforted myself as best I could by always rearranging their version of the facts — Jeanette Winterson

Where the Flame was burning

By the long grey road
there is ash after a fire gone out
and signs of departure
in dust and heat.

That is all.
But the flame that burned
in the circle of the travellers
whirled only before the eye
in unextinguished longing.

They were travelling for a dream
and could give all,
and must go on in their searchings
and their unease,
and the bonfire burned on
in every edge of sight,
whilst new searchers dug in the ashes
and in the ground under the ashes,
and it is dream
that is happiness
for those journeying. — Tarjei Vesaas

We'll always need energy. We need to communicate, too, but we're not stuck with hand gestures and smoke signals. There are better ways to power our future than by digging fossil fuel from the ground and setting it on fire. — Frances Beinecke

In the draws the smoke coming off the ground like mist and the thin black trees burning on the slopes like heathen candles. — Cormac McCarthy

In the blood of scales and days of kings,
Will come a boy to save us all.
Let us pray to the gods above, our voices large and small.
For all we fear in the shadows, will be destroyed with light.
Talonsphere will rise from the ground, and bring fire to the night. — Peter Koevari

But for today, my friends, we have the Sword and the Promise," Creedus said. With the fire again rising, he bent low to the ground and grabbed the sword that had been lying at his feet. As he pulled it slowly from its scabbard, it sang softly. With a light all of its own, an emblem at the base of the blade shone most brilliantly of all: Amilum. — Jaffrey Clark

You're welcome to join us again sometime," Bella said....
"Right. Well, I don't know." Sam looked at the ground. scuffing one boot in the dirt. "I'm usually not very good company."
"I'm hanging out with a teenager and a temperamental cat." Bella said with a small smile. "The bar is set very low around here. — Deborah Blake

A crease of disquiet snakes across his brow. 'Your father plays with fire to gather them together like that. They are too clever. They form alliances. They develop - ambitions.'
He looks so solemn I wish to soothe his fears. 'You worry too much, I am sure,' I say lightly. 'After all, they are still rooted in the ground, are they not? They cannot pull themselves up and march around wrecking havoc, like an invading army.'
'Maybe,' he says, though he sounds unsure. 'I have never met their like before; that is all. It disturbs me.' He gestures around. 'And not only me. The forests, the fields, the moss that grows on the rocks - none of them are happy about that garden. Nature would have kept those plants safely apart, scattered over the continents, separated by oceans. But your father has summoned them from the corners of the earth and locked them together, side by side, hidden behind walls, where they can grow in secret. It is wrong, Jessamine - I fear it is dangerous - — Maryrose Wood

Daniel suffered through the flames. He lifted his arms towards the sky. He lifted his face. He closed his eyes. "Lord! Lord! I am thine!" His lips mouthed the words, until the gums melted out of his face, and the lips disappeared. And even then, though his body was a flame, his hands stayed lifted until the skin dripped down into the fire and his bones shrank to the ground. — Willowy Whisper

He felt his hunger no longer as a pain but as a tide. He felt it rising in himself through time and darkness, rising through the centuries, and he knew that it rose in a line of men whose lives were chosen to sustain it, who would wander in the world, strangers from that violent country where the silence is never broken except to shout the truth. He felt it building from the blood of Abel to his own, rising and spreading in the night, a red-gold tree of fire ascended as if it would consume the darkness in one tremendous burst of flame. The boy's breath went out to meet it. He knew that this was the fire that had encircled Daniel, that had raised Elijah from the earth, that had spoken to Moses and would in the instant speak to him. He threw himself to the ground and with his face against the dirt of the grave, he heard the command. GO WARN THE CHILDREN OF GOD OF THE TERRIBLE SPEED OF MERCY. The words were as silent as seed opening one at a time in his blood. — Flannery O'Connor

If Bedlam gates had been flung open wide, there would not have issued forth such maniacs as the frenzy of that night had made. There were men there, who danced and trampled on the beds of flowers as though they trod down human enemies; and wrenched them from the stalks, like savages who twisted human necks. There were men who cast their lighted torches in the air, and suffered them to fall upon their heads and faces, blistering the skin with deep unseemly burns. There were men who rushed up to the fire, and paddled in it with their hands as if in water; and others who were restrained by force from plunging in, to gratify their deadly longing. On the skull of one drunken lad - not twenty, by his looks - who lay upon the ground with a bottle to his mouth, the lead from the roof came streaming down in a shower of liquid fire, white hot; melting his head like wax. — Charles Dickens

Nothing in this world is hidden forever. The gold which has lain for centuries unsuspected in the ground, reveals itself one day on the surface. Sand turns traitor, and betrays the footstep that has passed over it; water gives back to the tell-tale surface the body that has been drowned. Fire itself leaves the confession, in ashes, of the substance consumed in it. Hate breaks its prison-secrecy in the thoughts, through the doorway of the eyes; and Love finds the Judas who betrays it by a kiss. Look where we will, the inevitable law of revelation is one of the laws of nature: the lasting preservation of a secret is a miracle which the world has never yet seen. — Wilkie Collins

There was a black marine called Philly Dog who'd been a gang lord in Philadelphia and who was looking forward to some street fighting after six months in the jungle, he could so the kickers what he could do with some city ground. (In Hue he turned out to be incredibly valuable. I saw him pouring out about a hundred rounds of .30-caliber fire into a breach in the wall, laughing, 'You got to bring some to get some'; he seemed to be about the only man in Delta Company who hadn't been hurt yet.) — Michael Herr

They ate and moved on, leaving the fire on the ground behind them, and as they rode up into the mountains this fire seemed to become altered of its location, now here, now there, drawing away, or shifting unaccountably along the flank of their movement. Like some ignis fatuus belated upon the road behind them which all could see and of which none spoke. For this will to deceive that is in things luminous may manifest itself likewise in retrospect and so by sleight of some fixed part of a journey already accomplished may also post men to fraudulent destinies. As — Cormac McCarthy

Toward the small pond that he had seen before. The walls of fire ended there. An instant later the remains of the cottage exploded. He ducked and rolled again from the concussive force, almost pitching into the right side of the wall of fire. He rose and redoubled his efforts, thinking that he would reach the water. Water was a great antidote to fire. But as he neared the edge of the pond, something struck him. No scum. No algae on the surface although the ground around was full of it. What could kill green scum? And why was he being forced to run right toward the one thing that could possibly save him? Robie tossed his gun over the top of the wall of flames, pulled off his jacket, covered his head and hands with it, and threw himself through the wall of flames on the left side. — David Baldacci

Description which is given by the prophet Isaiah of the king of Babylon, when he went down to hell, and all the kings whom he had destroyed, and whose countries he had ravaged, were lying on their beds of fire; and as they saw their great conqueror enter, instead of trembling, they hissed out, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us? How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

No one likes sarcasm, Miss Cain. I've merely delayed my exit to promise you something. You took my straight razor, li'l darlin'. That I view as an unforgivable offense. So when the time comes, when you have served your purpose, I swear to you I'm gonna kill you for free." And with that, Billy-Ray Sanguine disappeared into the ground. Then he popped his head back up. "Or at least half price." And he was gone again. — Derek Landy

We collide like two forceful storm clouds creating a thunderhead, with violence and darkness, and bright flashes of angry electricity that will raze the land to the ground. But when the fire dies out, the land will be reborn. — Erica Chilson

No guinea of earned money should go to rebuilding the college on the old plan just as certainly none could be spent upon building a college upon a new plan: therefore the guinea should be earmarked "Rags. Petrol. Matches." And this note should be attached to it. "Take this guinea and with it burn the college to the ground. Set fire to the old hypocrisies. Let the light of the burning building scare the nightingales and incarnadine the willows. And let the daughters of educated men dance round the fire and heap armful upon armful of dead leaves upon the flames. And let their mothers lean from the upper windows and cry, "Let it blaze! Let it blaze! For we have done with this 'education! — Virginia Woolf

High buildings fall, black oceans rise, and coins sink in height
Where weapons smash in every grace, with every black and white
The east drops, the west too, children die and so do old
With every sin, and every crime, people drop by their gold

The ground wrecks to chunks where people tend to fall
And gardens turn dumps but the tiny bird's soul
Fire, Wind, Water and Sun, all kill a birth
It just goes on to be the Last day on earth — Yehya El Kouzi

A long suburb of red brick houses -some with patches of garden-ground, where coal-dust and factory smoke darkened the shrinking leaves, and coarse rank flowers, and where the struggling vegetation sickened and sank under the hot breath of kiln and furnace.
On mounds of ashes by the wayside, sheltered only by a few rough boards, or rotten pent-house roofs, strange engines spun and writhed like tortured creatures; clanking their iron chains, shrieking in their rapid whirl from time to time as though in torment unendurable, and making the ground tremble with their agonies.
Dismantled houses here and there appeared, tottering to the earth, propped up by fragments of others that had fallen down, unroofed, windowless, blackened, desolate, but yet inhabited. Men, women, children, wan in their looks and ragged in attire, tended the engines, fed their tributary fire, begged upon the road, or scowled half-naked from the doorless houses. — Charles Dickens