Through The Fire Quotes & Sayings

Listen to the earth, Feel the fire. Allow the power to flow through ye. — Jean M. Grant

From each one of them rose separate columns of smoke, meeting in a pall overhead, and through the smoke came stabbing flashes of fire as German shells burst with thudding shocks of sound. This was the front line of battle. — Philip Gibbs

Observing that, from this height, the city which had been so dark as he walked through it seemed to be on fire. — James Baldwin

I'd finally given her what she wanted,
the elixir of eternal youth, effected by the removal of her internal fire (the
catalyst of change) through the agency of death. — K.J. Parker

We tore each other's clothes off like they were on fire. She was gorgeous. Firm and strong and a shape like a dream. Skin like silk. She pulled me to the floor through bars of hot sunlight from the window. It was frantic. We were rolling and nothing could have stopped us. It was like the end of the world. We shuddered to a stop and lay gasping. We were bathed in sweat. Totally spent. — Lee Child

The moth unwitting rushes on the fire, Through ignorance the fish devours the bait, We men know well the foes that lie in wait, Yet cannot shun the meshes of desire. — Bhartrhari

I drove through the suburbs, where all the houses looked identical, one variation of another of the same thing. I said to myself, I'd rather fire myself from a cannon, pick up the shit of elephants and eat it, suffocate inside Houdini's water tank, lie beneath the running horses, or sodomise a big cat in a cage and pay the consequences than get trapped in these suburbs of cardboard, gossip, and conformity. — Rawi Hage

What!' you say, 'will not all the sufferings of Israel through all these centuries suffice? Is there a yet future baptism of fire, through which they must pass?' Yes, this is clear. — Dalton Lifsey

And if it is possible that creatures live underwater, could not creatures also live under the earth, nations of salamanders capable of arriving, through their tunnels, at the central fire that animates the planet? — Umberto Eco

Disgust rose in Samantha like vomit. She wanted to seize the over-warm cluttered room and mash it between her hands, until the royal china, and the gas fire, and the gilt-framed pictures of Miles broke into jagged pieces; then, with wizened and painted Maureen trapped and squalling inside the wreckage, she wanted to heave it, like a celestial shot-putter, away into the sunset. The crushed lounge and doomed crone inside it, soared in her imagination through the heavens, plunging into the limitless ocean, leaving Samantha alone in the endless stillness of the universe. — J.K. Rowling

And he absolutely had to find her at once to tell her that he adored her, but the large audience before him separated him from the door, and the notes reaching him through a succession of hands said that she was not available; that she was inaugurating a fire; that she had married an american businessman; that she had become a character in a novel; that she was dead. — Vladimir Nabokov

Through the darkness of future past, the magician longs to see, one chance out between two worlds, fire walk with me! — David Lynch

A ball of fire rolled through my stomach, catching on the wings of the butterflies darting around in there and setting them up in a blaze. I bristled as Carter's grin brushed mine, lips just barely touching.

Any closer and we'd be kissing for real, plunging straight off this knife edge we balanced on. — Apollo Blake

In the heroic effort of the handcart pioneers, we learn a great truth. All must pass through a refiner's fire, and the insignificant and unimportant in our lives can melt away like dross and make our faith bright, intact, and strong. There seems to be a full measure of anguish, sorrow, and often heartbreak for everyone, including those who earnestly seek to do right and be faithful. Yet this is part of the purging to become acquainted with God. — James E. Faust

Well, what shall I say; our inward thoughts, do they ever show outwardly? There may be a great fire in our soul, but no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a little bit of smoke coming through the chimney, and pass on their way. — Vincent Van Gogh

Second choice always comes as a result of being realistic and lowering your sights. If you want to go through life accepting second best, or worse still, third or fourth, then don't be surprised if you end up feeling unfulfilled with your lot. Set a goal that puts fire in your belly and keep striving until you reach it. Providing you want it badly enough, you will do whatever it takes. ~ "Once you say you're going to settle for second, that's what happens to you in life." - John F. Kennedy ~ — Jack The Crack

Another long pull of the sawteeth across the pink folds of his brain, and Teddy had to bite down against a scream and he heard Rachel's screams in there too with the fire and he saw her looking into his eyes and felt her breath on his lips and felt her face in his hands as his thumbs caressed her temples and that fucking saw went back and forth through his head - don'ttakethosefuckingpills — Dennis Lehane

Love wakes much and sleeps little and, in sleeping, does not sleep. It faints is not weary; it is restricted in its liberty and is great freedom. It sees reasons to fear and does not fear, but, like an ember or a spark of fire, flames always upward, by the fervor of its love, toward God, and through the special help of grace is delivered from all perils and dangers — Thomas A Kempis

Keep in mind that this appears in the same book of the Bible that approves the death sentence for a child who curses his parents, owners of oxen who injure someone through the owner's negligence, anybody who works or kindles a fire on Sunday, and anyone who has sex with an animal. — Jim Butcher

Mistress Eustacia sent me to have my bandage changed. He looked disgruntled. She adjusted the pot so that it wasn't directly over the fire then wiped her hands on her apron. He sat down impatiently on the bench against the wall. Annabel rummaged through the shelves until she found a container of honey and some bandages, smiling to herself at his reluctant compliance. Then — Melanie Dickerson

It was like an invisible fire that we could feel, that had been trying to pierce through our mutual darkness. It struck me that each of us is a darkness for the other. Three days or three years don't make a difference unless we can catch hold of a burning moment in the darkness, knowing full well that it won't last and after it is extinguished we will slide back into our own chilling solitude. — Nirmal Verma

Once again that mixture of fear and desire surges through my veins, the same kind of fire I imagine injected heroin must feel like - an agony so sweet you'd do anything for it. — Lilah Pace

Breaking up could sit in front of you for a while. It was a ring of fire you had to at last decide to run through. You finally got tired of standing there, looking at it, feeling the heat, tired enough to finally just let go. Getting burned at last seemed better than the waiting to get burned. — Deb Caletti

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

You, yesterday's boy,
to whom confusion came:
Listen, lest you forget who you are.
It was not pleasure you fell into. It was joy.
You were called to be bridegroom,
though the bride coming toward you is your shame.
What chose you is the great desire.
Now all flesh bares itself to you.
On pious images pale cheeks
blush with a strange fire.
Your senses uncoil like snakes
awakened by the beat of the tambourine.
Then suddenly you're left all alone
with your body that can't love you
and your will that can't save you.
But now, like a whispering in dark streets,
rumors of God run through your dark blood. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Get up, get out, get away from these liars
'Cause they don't get your soul or your fire
Take my hand, knot your fingers through mine
And we'll walk from this dark room for the last time — Snow Patrol

TO the garden, the world, anew ascending,
Potent mates, daughters, sons, preluding,
The love, the life of their bodies, meaning and being,
Curious, here behold my resurrection, after slumber;
The revolving cycles, in their wide sweep, have brought me again,
Amorous, mature - all beautiful to me - all wondrous;
My limbs, and the quivering fire that ever plays through them, for reasons, most wondrous;
Existing, I peer and penetrate still,
Content with the present - content with the past,
By my side, or back of me, Eve following,
Or in front, and I following her just the same. — Walt Whitman

It was the truest thing I knew, like the way the sun knew to rise in the morning, the way a rosebud knew to blossom in the spring. He was in my veins, in the innermost recesses of my heart and soul. I'd love him until I died - through death, even. Through fire, through hell. I'd love him through eternity. — Laurelin Paige

To picture Roosevelt as a man at this time in his life - he felt he was old. He was 53 years old, feeling lonely and irrelevant. And all of a sudden, he takes on this campaign, and it becomes a crusade for popular government. And he ultimately goes on fire in the campaign, but he discovers he's up against all the old machine tactics that he used to use himself, and he has to let the public get involved. And he energizes the public through the most extreme kind of rhetoric, which truly brings him into the streets and onto his side. — Geoffrey Cowan

His mind, grooved through the uncounted ages to ultimate despair, soared up insanely. His legs and arms glistened like tongues of living fire as they writhed and twisted in the light that blazed from the portholes. His mouth, a gash in his caricature of a human head, slavered a white frost that floated away in little frozen globules. — A.E. Van Vogt

Whoever's reading this out there - you deserve to have someone's hands be glued to you, for their eyes to be stuck on you. You deserve for their face to catch on fire when they look at you, for them to lay eyes on you and devote the rest of their day to you. Don't ever let yourself settle for anything less than magic from Dumbledore's freakin' wand. That feeling - you know, that crazy, irrational, my-brain-won't-work-without-you, I'd-make-you-eggs-every-morning-for-the-rest-of-my-life - that feeling is the most important thing you will ever find. No matter what happens in this life, that feeling - that love - will keep you warm, and carry you through. So find that magic feeling and never let anythng take it away from you. — Seth King

To wake up on a gloriously bright morning, in a tent pitched beneath spruce trees, and to look out lazily and sleepily for a moment from the open side of the tent, across the dead camp-fire of the night before, to the river, where the light of morning rests and perhaps some early-rising[240] native is gliding in his birch canoe; to go to the river and freshen one's self with the cold water, and yell exultingly to the gulls and hell-divers, in the very joy of living; or to wake at night, when you have rolled in your blankets in the frost-stricken dying grass without a tent, and to look up through the leaves above to the dark sky and the flashing stars, and hear far off the call of a night bird or the howl of a wolf: this is the poetry, the joy of a wild and roving existence, which cannot come too often — Josiah Edward Spurr

There is a man whose qualities can be savored by people who are getting old ... The painter qualities are carried to the highest point in his work: what he does is done - through and through; when he paints eyes, they are lit with the fire of life. — Eugene Delacroix

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

Religion consists much in holy affection; but those exercises of affection which are most distinguishing of true religion are these practical exercises. Friendship between earthly friends consists much in affection; but those strong exercises of affection that actually carry them through fire and water for each other are the highest evidences of true friendship. — Jonathan Edwards

The Lord came to send fire upon the earth (cf. Lk. 12:49), and through participation in this fire He makes divine not just the human substance which He assumed for our sake, but every person who is found worthy of communion with Him. — Gregory Palamas

The press really is not doing its job of holding the candidates' feet to the fire. The tough questions are not what are you in favor of, but how are you going to get it through Congress? — Michael Bloomberg

Beyond all the fires of love through which one passes there is the star of Duty, and happy the individual who can live in its serenity. — William John Locke

Through the same cold sunlight, colder as the day declines, and through the same sharp wind, sharper as the separate shadows of bare trees gloom together in the woods, and as the Ghost's Walk, touched at the western corner by a pile of fire in the sky, resigns itself to coming night, they drive into the park. — Charles Dickens

The life spills over, some days.
She cannot be at rest,
Wishes she could explode

Like that red tree -
The one that bursts into fire
All this week.

Senses her infinite smallness
But can't seize it,
Recognizes the folly of desire,

The folly of withdrawal -
Kicks at the curb, the pavement,
If only she could, at this moment,

When what she's doing is plodding
To the bus stop, to go to school,
Passing that fiery tree - if only she could

Be making love,
Be making a painting,
Be exploding, be speeding through the universe

Like a photon, like a shower
Of yellow flames -
She believes if she could only catch up

With the riding rhythm of things, of her own electrons,
Then she would be at rest -
If she could forget school,

Climb the tree,
Be the tree,
burn like that. — Alicia Suskin Ostriker

If you love the good thing vitally, enough to give up for it all that one must give up, then you must hate the cheap thing just as hard. I tell you, there is such a thing as creative hate!
A contempt that drives you through fire, makes you risk everything and lose everything, makes you a long sight better than you ever knew you could be. — Willa Cather

But the constant motion of the flames soon lulled him into a passive state where unrelated fragments of thoughts, sounds, images, and emotions drifted through him like snowflakes falling from a calm winter's sky. — Christopher Paolini

No matter how much individuals do through their own efforts, they cannot actively purify themselves enough to be disposed in the least degree for the divine union of the perfection of love. God must take over and purge them in that fire that is dark for them, as we will explain. — San Juan De La Cruz

I am the queen of spades, I am the wasp that stings, I am the dark serpent. I am the invulnerable animal who passes through fire and is not burned. — Elena Ferrante

By the light of the hominy fire Sixo straightens. He is through with his song. He laughs. A rippling sound like Sethe's sons
make when they tumble in hay or splash in rainwater. His feet are cooking; the cloth of his trousers smokes. He laughs.
Something is funny. Paul D guesses what it is when Sixo interrupts his laughter to call out, Seven-O! Seven-O! — Toni Morrison

I loved him, more than anything else in the world and that when he was away it was hard to breath and that I couldn't go through a single second without thinking about him. — Heather James

Cassia had a feeling Kane might not follow her instructions to the letter, but she never expected him to come barreling into the docking lot with Arabelle hoisted over one shoulder, shielding his head with his free arm and yelling like his pants were on fire. Behind him, Doran and Solara ran through the open doorway, each armed with a stolen pulse pistol and firing indiscriminately at someone out of view.
So much for smooth negotiating. — Melissa Landers

We cannot kindle when we will The fire which in the heart resides, The spirit bloweth and is still, In mystery our soul abides: But tasks in hours of insight will'd Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd. — Matthew Arnold

Let it come, let it come The time that we will love. So patient have I been That I've forgetten everything: Fear and suffering Have departed for the heavens, And an unholy thirst Darkens my veins. Let it come, let it come The time that we will love. Like the field Left to forgetfulness, Growing and flowering With incense and weeds, And the fierce buzzing Of dirty flies. Let it come, let it come The time that we will love. I loved the desert, burnt orchards, musty shops, tepid drinks. I dragged myself through stinking alleys, and with eyes closed I offered myself to the sun, the god of fire. — Arthur Rimbaud

Nowhere has God promised anyone, even His children, immunity from sorrow, suffering, and pain. This world is a "vale of tears," and disappointment and heartache are as inevitable as clouds and shadows. Suffering is often the crucible in which our faith is tested. Those who successfully come through the "furnace of affliction" are the ones who emerge "like gold tried in the fire. — Billy Graham

All the colors
Of the rainbow
Hidden 'neath my skin
Hearts have colors
Don't we all know?
Red runs through our veins
Feel the fire burning up
Inspire me with blood
Of blue and green
I have hope
Inside is not a heart
But a kaleidoscope — Sara Bareilles

Passed through fire and plunged through salt water and offered to the winds of the air; thus were names sealed to these chosen children. — Robin Hobb

Each restorational advancement of the Army of the Lord has established denominational forts that are given responsibility to maintain the purity and power of that truth ... New recruits are now being drafted and trained and older soldiers and generals are being put through intensified training for the next advancement of the Church Army. They are being purified by the Baptism of Fire ... Are you ready? Where do you start? What will you do? A new government must be established, a new way of life for those millions of people. You are now ready to rule and reign on your overcomer's throne! — Bill Hamon

Later that night, I sat in my room thinking of what I just went through. The four of us had burned the body in an old pit and covered the burned remains with a pile of leaves. Just standing there, watching the crackling fire burn and cripple the bones of this thing just reminded me of how real this all became. My mom was not too happy when I came home late and smelling like a crematorium. — Sara Massa

I spent the majority of time at school trying to break the rules. I would climb to the top of buildings; I even burned a building down once - not intentionally, just because I was interested in fire. I remember going through the rule book, ticking off the ones I had broken and looking for the ones I hadn't. — Simon McBurney

Crossing the Ring of Fire is..moving from the emotional shutdown of numbness through the flames of fear and entering into the healing arms of change. — David W. Earle

No way you're calling Ben. We already have a plan. Were going to his house, and I'm going to ring the doorbell with some fake lab work for Chemistry, and then Taylor is going to set off his car alarm while I year through his room looking for evidence."
"Wow. Great plan, Kate. Just out of curiosity, what exactly are you planning on doing when he comes back to his room to find you knee-deep in his secret Brotherhood bullshit?" Liam spat his words at me like nails.
"Oh, I'm sorry. Do you have a better idea? Ooh, I know. Maybe you could call you're brother and have him light his garage on fire or something. — Lisa Roecker

When does gold ore become gold? When it is put through a process of fire. So the human being during the training becomes as pure as gold through suffering. It is the burning away of the dross. Suffering has a great redeeming quality. As a drop of water failing on the desert sand is sucked up immediately, so we must become nothing and nowhere ... we must disappear. — Bhai Sahib Singh

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

It happened as it always did, swallowing her swiftly and completely. Intense. Painful. Quick, vivid colors spun beneath her eyelids. Sounds were sharp inside her skull. Fire shot up through her bones. She may have been screaming and she wouldn't have known. There was smoke in her nose, thick and black, and she couldn't breathe. It stung her eyes and licked at her skin. Wood and metal crashed down as skin blistered and popped and she knew this wasn't her, knew it was someone else, someone with a bigger body, bigger boots and darker jeans, and big ol' hands with scars on the fingers. Men's hands. Nails blunt and dirty with oil and grease and burning and- The cars were on fire. Paper burned and curled and rags ignited, the cement floor pockmarked by flash fires. Meat withered in her nose and she realized it was her. Him. Dancing embers blackened and burned bone. He screamed and she hoped she was not. He writhed and she really hoped she was not. He was dying, dead, and- — Angele Gougeon

And she could be depressed if she wanted to be, she could sit and watch Dogs with Jobs on the National Geographic Channel and eat her way through a packet of chocolate bourbon biscuits if she felt like it because nobody cared about her. In fact, she could sit there all day, from Barney and Friends to Porn Babes Laid Bare, with hours of the Landscape Channel in between, and eat the contents of an entire biscuit factory until she was an obese, earthbound balloon whose dead and bloated body would have to be hydraulically lifted from the house by a fire crew because nobody cared. — Kate Atkinson

Shaking's great. Shaking's one of the oldest practices known to man. Standing round a fire and connecting with the earth and moving energy through the body because it's where a lot of our stuff can get trapped. Yeah, I would recommend it. — Jerome Flynn

All to the north the rain had dragged black tendrils down from the thunderclouds like tracings of lampblack fallen in a beaker and in the night they could hear the drum of rain miles away on the prairie. They ascended through a rocky pass and lightning shaped out the distant
shivering mountains and lightning rang the stones about and tufts of blue fire clung to the horses like incandescent elementals that would not be driven off. Soft smelterlights advanced upon the metal of the harness, lights ran blue and liquid on the barrels of the guns. Mad jack-hares started and checked in the blue glare and high among those clanging crags jokin roehawks crouched in their feathers or cracked a yellow eye at the thunder underfoot. — Cormac McCarthy

Cursing themselves in ragged dreams
fire has singed the edges of,
they know a slow dying the fields have come to terms with.
Shimmering fans work against the heat
& smell of gunpowder, making money
float from hand to hand. The next moment
a rocket pushes a white fist
through night sky, & they scatter like birds
& fall into the shape their lives
have become. — Yusef Komunyakaa

Earth: the things that are solid, absorbed and still.
Water: the things that are fluid, changing and unpredictable.
Wind: the things that shift, evolve and challenge.
Fire: the things that damage, devastate and distroy.
The void: the things that are present through their absence — Elif Shafak

What the great mentor is always looking for is a person who is willing to tap his genius, to put it through the refiner's fire, to do the hard work to develop it. Indeed, mentoring is the medieval art of alchemy-turning plain old human steel into hearts and minds of gold. — Oliver DeMille

I was years older than you when I became an ambassador for the first time. Remember that, Tycho? How did we get through that assignment, anyway?"
"Pretty much, we opened fire on everyone who disagreed with us."
Wedge nodded and turned to his daughter. "When all else fails, just do that. — Aaron Allston

I got the Eye of the Tiger
The Fire
Dancing through the fire
Cause I am a Champion!
And your gonna hear me Roar
-Roar — Katy Perry

I feel more Irish than English. I feel freer than British, more visceral, with a love of language. Shot through with fire in some way. That's why I resist being appropriated as the current repository of Shakespeare on the planet. That would mean I'm part of the English cultural elite, and I am utterly ill-fitted to be. — Kenneth Branagh

19. Before the divine fire is introduced into the substance of the soul and united with it through perfect and complete purgation and purity, its flame, which is the Holy Spirit, wounds the soul by destroying and consuming the imperfections of its bad habits. And this is the work of the Holy Spirit, in which he disposes it for divine union and transformation in God through love. The very fire of love that afterward is united with the soul, glorifying it, is what previously assailed it by purging it, just as the fire that penetrates a log of wood is the same that first makes an assault on the wood, wounding it with the flame, drying it out, and stripping it of its unsightly qualities until it is so disposed that it can be penetrated and transformed into the fire. Spiritual writers call this activity the purgative way. — San Juan De La Cruz

If you weren't so sorely injured," she said evenly, "I would slap you." The laudanum was beginning to take affect, and Mr. Fairfax yawned expansively. "You've already set me on fire and then tried to beat me to death. A simple slap would probably be refreshing." Fury surged through Emma's system to snap in her eyes. "Don't worry, Mr. Fairfax. You'll be quite safe from me in the future." "That's comforting." Emma — Linda Lael Miller

Trying to attract another underserved audience group - females - brought Super Princess Peach, a game where Peach finally avoids being princess-napped. Bowser kidnaps Mario and Luigi instead, and it's up to her for once to save them. The second-wave feminism lasts as long as it takes Peach to acquire a magical talking parasol. Peach's powers manifest through her emotional states. When she is calm she can heal herself, when she is happy she can fly, when glum she can water plants with her tears, and when angry she literally catches on fire. Using emotions as part of basic game play is a daring concept, and feel free to sub in "insulting" or "outrageous" or "awesome" for "daring." The concept might have been taken more seriously if not for touches like the pink umbrella, and Peach having unlimited lives - core gamers hate being unable to die. — Jeff Ryan

I pushed her shiny blond hair away from her face and leaned down, our faces only inches apart. She inhaled softly, our lips so close I could feel her breath and the scent of her skin, like honeysuckle in springtime. She smelled like sweet tea and old books, like she had always been here.
I pulled my fingers through her hair and held it at the back of her neck. Her skin was soft and warm, like a Mortal girl's. There was no electric current, no shocks. We could kiss for as long as we wanted. If we had a fight, there wouldn't be a flood or a hurricane, or even a storm. I wouldn't find her on the ceiling of her bedroom. No windows would shatter. No exams would catch fire.
Liv held up her face to be kissed.
She wanted me. — Kami Garcia

For those of us with BPD, entering into a shared experience means passing through the ring of fire that leaves us feeling even more burned - and in this case branded with a label no one would ever choose to wear. — Kiera Van Gelder

Better to sink with tempests raging o'er
Masts all dismantled and hull gaping wide
Than rest and rot on some unclouded shore
The idle plaything of the listless tide.

Better the grime of battle on the brow,
With grim defeat to crush thy dying hand
Than through long years of peace to tyrant bow
Or dwell captive in a strangers land.

Better the castle with beleaguered gate,
By battle's lightning shivered in a day
Than peaceful walls in pomp of sullen state,
Through centuries sinking to a dull decay.

Better resolve to win thy heart's desire,
And striving bravely, die in the endeavor
Than have the embers of some smothered fire
Lie smouldering in thy saddened soul forever. — Sam Davis

But when you walk through yonder gate," Churchill said, pointing toward the Middle Tower at the end of the causeway, which was visible only as a crenellated cutout in the orange sky, "you'll find yourself in a London you no longer know. The changes wrought by the Fire were nothing. In that London, loyalty and allegiance are subtle and fluxional. 'Tis a chessboard with not only black and white pieces, but others as well, in diverse shades. You're a Bishop, and I'm a Knight, I can tell that much by our shapes, and the changes we have wrought on the board; but by fire-light 'Tis difficult to make out your true shade. — Neal Stephenson

The present life of man upon earth, O King, seems to me in comparison with that time which is unknown to us like the swift flight of a sparrow through the mead-hall where you sit at supper in winter, with your Ealdormen and thanes, while the fire blazes in the midst and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest, but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter to winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all. — Bede

And as he reached for William's leg, the way a small child will reach for its mother's, there welled up through a small hole in the bottom of Mercer's soul a relief surpassing any he'd ever known in waking life. — Garth Risk Hallberg

Diamonds are held under tons and tons of pressure, extremely high temperatures of fire and shuffled under shifting of tectonic plates, for a long, long time! Yet when they come out from there and are put on display for their beauty; does anybody stop to evaluate the diamond based upon all the shit it's been through and say "Remember that disgusting hole it used to be in? I bet it was hell in there!" No, people don't remember where a diamond has come from; they just see the beauty of it now. But it wouldn't have become so beautiful, you know, if not for all of that! So why should we look at other people, or at ourselves and evaluate them/ourselves based upon their/our pasts? Shouldn't we forget that? And only see the beauty that is in front of our eyes? Whatever it was, it made you beautiful! And that is what matters! — C. JoyBell C.

This was good, except that now I had two crazed, burning zombies standing between me and the exit, plus another one that wasn't on fire. I had not thought this plan through at all. — Amanda Hocking

He's on his knees.
I bite back the moan caught in my throat just before he lifts me up and carries me to the bed. He's on top of me in an instant, kissing me with a kind of intensity that makes me wonder why I haven't died or caught on fire or woken up from this dream yet. He's running his hands down my body only to bring them back up to my face and he kisses me once, twice, and his teeth catch my bottom lip for just a second and I'm clinging to him, wrapping my arms around his neck and running my hands through his hair and pulling him into me.
He tastes so sweet. So hot and so sweet and I keep trying to say his name but I can't even find the time to breathe, much less to say a single word. — Tahereh Mafi

Once I wrote 'Atmosphere,' I thought, 'This is my story; it's me and my life and what I've gone through to get to where I am.' I'm not the best singer, but still. All of my albums are personal, but putting myself out there and singing is one more thing that makes me vulnerable - one more thing that people can fire shots at. — Kaskade

Sooner or later, we all go through a crucible. I'm guessing your's was that island. Most believe there are two types of people who go into a crucible: the ones who grow stronger from the experience and survive it, and the ones who die. But there's a third type: the ones who learn to love the fire. They chose to stay in their crucible because it's easier to embrace the pain when it's all you know anymore, — Marc Guggenheim

Here I came to the very edge
where nothing at all needs saying,
everything is absorbed through weather and the sea,
and the moon swam back,
its rays all silvered,
and time and again the darkness would be broken
by the crash of a wave,
and every day on the balcony of the sea,
wings open, fire is born,
and everything is blue again like morning. — Pablo Neruda

For the burglar, every building is infinite, endlessly weaving back into itself through meshed gears made of fire escapes and secondary stairways, window frames and screened-in porches, pet doors and ventilation shafts, everything interpenetrating, everything mixed together in a fantastic knot. Rooms and halls coil together like dragons inside of dragons or snakes eating their own tails, rooms opening onto every other room in the city. For the burglar, doors are everywhere. Where we see locks and alarms, they see M. C. Escher. — Geoff Manaugh

Slowly the truth is loading
I'm weighted down with love
Snow lying deep and even
Strung out and dreaming of

Night falling on the city
Quite something to behold
Don't it just look so pretty
This disappearing world

We're threading hope like fire
Down through the desperate blood
Down through the trailing wire
Into the leafless wood

Night falling on the city
Quite something to behold
Don't it just look so pretty
This disappearing world
This disappearing world

I'll be sticking right there with it
I'll be by your side
Sailing like a silver bullet
Hit 'em 'tween the eyes
Through the smoke and rising water
Cross the great divide
Baby till it all feels right

Night falling on the city
Sparkling red and gold
Don't it just look so pretty
This disappearing world"~David Gray — David Gray

We do not abandon ship. I say, as corny as it may sound, through the strength and spirit and fire and dare and gamble of a few men in a few ways we can save the carcass of humanity from drowning. No light goes out until it goes out. Let's fight as men, not rats. Period. No further addition. — Charles Bukowski

We are the planet, fully as much as water, earth, fire and air are the planet, and if the planet survives, it will only be through heroism. Not occasional heroism, a remarkable instance of it here and there, but constant heroism, systematic heroism, heroism as governing principle. — Russell Banks

Kestrel took Arin's battered hand in hers, the rough heat of it, the fingernails still ringed with carbon from the smith's coal fire. His skin was raw-looking: scrubbed clean and scrubbed often. But the black grime was too ingrained.
She twined her fingers with his. Kestrel and Arin walked together through the passageway and the ghost of its old door, which her people had smashed through ten years before. — Marie Rutkoski

When you considered this world
people winched up and lowered down into the earth in steel cages and speed-fed through the tunnels, with doors cracking everywhere, and arctic winds mingling with dusty gaps of fire from the planet's core
it was hard to believe how delicate life was, how breakable things were. — Martin Amis

Feeling dead was better than when my heart hurt. Sometimes I thought it might burn through my ribs while I was asleep, and smolder in the sheets until the whole house caught fire. — Bryn Greenwood

So long as the people with the power - to hire and fire you, approve or deny your loan, or write up your speeding ticket - look at you through the lens of institutionalized racism, sexism, homophobia or any other -sim they've learned form stories, videos, media and other biased individuals, a single win means nothing. We cannot effect true change alone. — Kameron Hurley

You boys ain't but two weeks off the farm. Your mama probably gave you your last bath. You think you went through one battle and you're soldiers now? I saw that boy fight for his cause. I saw him sicken and almost die for it. He sang around that fire when he had nothing left to sing. He sang for us. that boy gave everything and then he up and left and I say God bless him. — Kathy Hepinstall

This isn't the hand of some swooning princess who sits tatting lace and waiting for some prince to save her. This is the hand of a woman who would climb a rope of her own hair to freedom, or kill a captor ogre in his sleep. And this is the hand of a woman who would have made it through the fire on her own if I hadn't been there. Singed perhaps, but safe. — Patrick Rothfuss

We passed through forests of
fire, forded rivers of light and forged dark seas and mountains of snow and ice.
Each crossing took us thousands of years, though it seemed no more than the
blink of an eye. — Orhan Pamuk

Are you conscious of a growing failure of your bodily powers? Do you expect to suffer long nights of languishing and days of pain? O be not sad! That bed may become a throne to you. You little know how every pang that shoots through your body may be a refining fire to consume your dross
a beam of glory to light up the secret parts of your soul. Are the eyes growing dim? Jesus will be your light. Do the ears fail you? Jesus' name will be your soul's best music, and His person your dear delight. Socrates used to say, "Philosophers can be happy without music;" and Christians can be happier than philosophers when all outward causes of rejoicing are withdrawn. In Thee, my God, my heart shall triumph, come what may of ills without! By thy power, O blessed Spirit, my heart shall be exceeding glad, though all things should fail me here below. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Our beliefs are rooted deep in our earth, no matter what you have done to it and how much of it you have paved over. And if you leave all that concrete unwatched for a year or two, our plants, the native Indian plants, will pierce that concrete and push up through it. — John Fire Lame Deer

I am fascinated by the fact that the stories show how a better life comes primarily through self-sacrifice. This is brought out unmistakably in the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. — A. Hussa

All human endeavor, all human civilization, is the act of solving collective action problems. Should we put out our own fires, or should we have a fire department? Should we build roads, or should we hack our way through the woods from one factory to another? — Nick Hanauer

Amedeo loved thick tomes, and in tackling them he felt the physical pleasure of undertaking a great task. Weighing them in his hand, thick, closely printed, squat, he would consider with some apprehension the number of pages, the length of the chapters, then venture into them, a bit reluctant at the beginning, without any desire to perform the initial chore of remembering the names, catching the drift of the story; then he would entrust himself to it, running along the lines, crossing the grid of the uniform page, and beyond the leaden print the flame and fire of battle appeared, the cannonball that, whistling through the sky, fell at the feet of Prince Andrei, and the shop filled with engravings and statues where Frederic Moreau, his heart in his mouth, was to meet the Arnoux family. Beyond the surface of the page you entered a world where life was more alive than here on this side ... — Italo Calvino