Fire Within Quotes

1. "Others, I am not the first,Have willed more mischief than they durst:If in the breathless night I tooShiver now, 'tis nothing new.More than I, if truth were told,Have stood and sweated hot and cold,And through their veins in ice and fireFear contended with desire.Agued once like me were they,But I like them shall win my wayLastly to the bed of mouldWhere there's neither heat nor cold.But from my grave across my browPlays no wind of healing now,And fire and ice within me fightBeneath the suffocating night."
Author: A.E. Housman

2. "'Firewall' seems both scary and protective at the same time. And how often does that happen within one word besides 'military' and 'government?'"
Author: Adam McKay

3. "This time I saw. In a blue heaven was coiled an infinite snake of gold and green, with four eyes of fire, black fire and red, that darted rays in every direction; held within its coils was a great multitude of laughing children. And even as I looked, all this was blotted out. Crawling rivers of blood spread over the heaven, of blood purulent with nameless forms - mangy dogs with their bowels dragging behind them; creatures half elephant, half beetle; things that were but a ghastly bloodshot eye, set about with leathery tentacles; women whose skins heaved and bubbled like boiling sulphur, giving off clouds that condensed into a thousand other shapes, more hideous than their mother; these were the least of the denizens of these hateful rivers."
Author: Aleister Crowley

4. "She howl'd aloud, "I am on fire within.There comes no murmur of reply.What is it that will take away my sin,And save me lest I die?"
Author: Alfred Tennyson

5. "That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the débris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built."
Author: Bertrand Russell

6. "I was beauty and love long before I met you! Thank you for reminding me to no longer sell myself short or play small. My hurt is fuel to light the fire within that I need so I can pour all of my loving energy into who matters most.... ME! I don't know what lies ahead, but I know MY LOVE will FIX HATE!"
Author: Bindu

7. "We often hesitate to follow our intuition out of fear. Most usually, we are afraid of the changes in our own life that our actions will bring. Intuitive guidance, however, is all about change. It is energetic data ripe with the potential to influence the rest of the world. To fear change but to crave intuitive clarity is like fearing the cold, dark night while pouring water on the fire that lights your cave. An insight the size of a mustard seed is powerful enough to bring down a mountain-sized illusion that may be holding our lives together. Truth strikes without mercy. We fear our intuitions because we fear the transformational power within our revelations."
Author: Caroline Myss

8. "The next moment I was chained to my chair again,--the fires were lit, the bells rang out, the litanies were sung;--my feet were scorched to a cinder,--my muscles cracked, my blood and marrow hissed, my flesh consumed like shrinking leather,--the bones of my legs hung two black withering and moveless sticks in the ascending blaze;--it ascended, caught my hair,--I was crowned with fire,--my head was a ball of molten metal, my eyes flashed and melted in their sockets;--I opened my mouth, it drank fire,--I closed it, the fire was within,...and we burned, and burned! I was a cinder body and soul in my dream."
Author: Charles Robert Maturin

9. "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."
Author: Cormac McCarthy

10. "He watched the fire and if he saw portents there it was much the same to him. He would live to look upon the western sea and he was equal to whatever might follow for he was complete at every hour. Whether his history should run concomitant with men and nations, whether it should cease. He'd long forsworn all weighing of consequence and allowing as he did that men's destinies are given yet he usurped to contain within him all that he would ever be in the world and all that the world would be to him and be his charter written in the urstone itself he claimed agency and said so and he'd drive the remorseless sun on to its final endarkenment as if he'd ordered it all ages since, before there were paths anywhere, before there were men or suns to go upon them."
Author: Cormac McCarthy

11. "They lay listening. Can you do it? When the time comes? When the time comes there will be no time. Now is the time. Curse God and die. What if it doesn't fire? It has to fire. What if it doesn't fire? Could you crush that beloved skull with a rock? Is there such a being within you of which you know nothing? Can there be? Hold him in your arms. Just so. The soul is quick. Pull him toward you. Kiss him. Quickly."
Author: Cormac McCarthy

12. "Nothing goes so well with a hot fire and buttered crumpets as a wet day without and a good dose of comfortable horrors within. The heavier the lashing of the rain and the ghastlier the details, the better the flavour seems to be."
Author: Dorothy L. Sayers

13. "And yet in the end did we ever really give each other completely to the other? Do either of us even know how to really share ourselves? Imagine the house is on fire and I reach to save one thing - what is it? Do you know? Imagine that I am drowning and I reach within myself to save that one memory which is me - what is it? Do you know? What things would either of us reach for? Neither of us know. After all these years we just wouldn't know."
Author: Douglas Coupland

14. "Did you ever, when you were little, endure your parents' warnings, then wait for them to leave the room, pry loose protective covers and consider inserting some metal object into an electrical outlet? Did you wonder if for once you might light up the room? When you were big enough to cross the street on your own, did you ever wait for a signal, hear the frenzied approach of a fire truck and feel like stepping out in front of it? Did you wonder just how far that rocket ride might take you? When you were almost grown, did you ever sit in a bubble bath, perspiration pooling, notice a blow dryer plugged in within easy reach, and think about dropping it into the water? Did you wonder if the expected rush might somehow fail you? And now, do you ever dangle your toes over the precipice, dare the cliff to crumble, defy the frozen deity to suffer the sun, thaw feather and bone, take wing to fly you home?"
Author: Ellen Hopkins

15. "So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us."
Author: Gaston Bachelard

16. "I shall be found with 'Indians' engraved on my brain when I am dead. A fire has been kindled within me, which will never go out."
Author: Helen Hunt Jackson

17. "First, silence makes us pilgrims. Secondly, silence guards the fire within. Thirdly, silence teaches us to speak."
Author: Henri J.M. Nouwen

18. "Even Solomon, he says, "the man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead." Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gore is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar. (pg 465)"
Author: Herman Melville

19. "But I have so little of any of these things! You are wise and powerful. Will you not take the Ring?""No!" cried Gandalf, springing to his feet. "With that power I should have power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly." His eyes flashed and his face was lit as by a fire within. "Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. Do not tempt me! I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused. The wish to wield it would be too great for my strength. I shall have such need of it. Great perils lie before me."
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

20. "Perhaps our and Gaia's greatest error was the conscious abuse of fire. Cooking meat over a wood fire may have been acceptable, but the deliberate destruction of whole ecosystems by fire merely to drive out the animals within was surely our first great sin against the living Earth. It has haunted us ever since and combustion could now be our auto da fé, and the cause of our extinction."
Author: James E. Lovelock

21. "The Cold Within"Six humans trapped in happenstanceIn dark and bitter cold, Each one possessed a stick of wood, Or so the story's told.The first woman held hers backFor of the faces around the fire,She noticed one was black.The next man looking across the waySaw not one of his church,And couldn't bring himself to giveThe fire his stick of birch.The third one sat in tattered clothesHe gave his coat a hitch,Why should his log be put to use,To warm the idle rich?The rich man just sat back and thoughtOf the wealth he had in store,And how to keep what he had earned,From the lazy, shiftless poor.The black man's face bespoke revengeAs the fire passed from sight,For all he saw in his stick of woodWas a chance to spite the white.The last man of this forlorn groupDid naught except for gain,Giving only to those who gave,Was how he played the game.The logs held tight in death's still handsWas proof of human sin,They didn't die from the cold without,They died from the cold within."
Author: James Patrick Kinney

22. "We set this house on fire forgetting that we live within."
Author: Jim Harrison

23. "Time is the cog that turns the wheelWinter leaves scars that do not healSummer is a fire that burns insideKnowledge is a terrible burden to hideStrength and death go hand in handOne answer lies within the sandBut seek the answer all aloneLest the sand claim you as its own."
Author: Julie Kagawa

24. "He kissed her slowly, deeply, seized by a slew of contrasting emotions. It was wrong to kiss her, he registered faintly in the back of his mind, but it felt more right than anything else he had done since arriving in Alvair. A fire awakened somewhere within him as their lips met, the heat of it at odds with the chill of the Amulet clutched between their hands."
Author: Katie Lynn Johnson

25. "Nico then leaned into Katty, and kissed her. He kissed her with every ounce of Vampire strength, pressing his lips forward into hers, feeling her slight breath and her soft lips touch against his with the heat of a hot fire. He kissed her while holding her face close to his, his fingers spreading against the width of her delicate cheeks. Katty closed her eyes and took the kiss all in, feeling such a kiss make her feel so dizzy, so weak. So lightheaded. It was as if she was being kissed for the very first time. It was a kiss that took all her resistance away, all her fear, but gave her an existence that she never possibly knew. Within a few moments, Nico pulled away, unleashing the kiss from its endurance."
Author: Keira D. Skye

26. "A company can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on firewalls, intrusion detection systems and encryption and other security technologies, but if an attacker can call one trusted person within the company, and that person complies, and if the attacker gets in, then all that money spent on technology is essentially wasted."
Author: Kevin Mitnick

27. "I should add, however, that, particularly on the occasion of Samhain, bonfires were lit with the express intention of scaring away the demonic forces of winter, and we know that, at Bealltainn in Scotland, offerings of baked custard were made within the last hundred and seventy years to the eponymous spirits of wild animals which were particularly prone to prey upon the flocks - the eagle, the crow, and the fox, among others. Indeed, at these seasons all supernatural beings were held in peculiar dread. It seems by no means improbable that these circumstances reveal conditions arising out of a later solar pagan worship in respect of which the cult of fairy was relatively greatly more ancient, and perhaps held to be somewhat inimical."
Author: Lewis Spence

28. "Giving Birth by Marcus Amaker do you remember when the earth was just a baby, settling in its skin,safe in the arms of mother naturewith fire breathing from within.you were not shackled by timeand life roamed around your heartwith the weight of dinosaurs,leaving footprints in your lungs.and the first time you saw the sunyou could barely breathebecause the possibility of endless lightplanted a seedso you admire the strength of trees,who naturally grew into unwavering beauty, staring down the mouth oftime. do you remember being 11 years oldwhen your mother told you"birth is more painful than dying"and you burst with dreamswithout even trying, seeking light in your heart, where shadows now restcomfortably next to fear.but you come out of the woods clear,with nature's breathunder your tongue, and a weightless bliss, no longer scared of death."
Author: Marcus Amaker

29. "Eating fireis your ambition: to swallow the flame downtake it into your mouthand shoot it forth, a shout or an incandescenttongue, a wordexploding from you in gold, crimson,unrolling in a brilliant scrollTo be lit up from withinvein by veinTo be the sun"
Author: Margaret Atwood

30. "Inhale thy fill of lovesweet essence,My fire burns within thy presence"
Author: Michelle Geaney

31. "Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it's worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person's face as you pass 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. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It's okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise."
Author: Miranda July

32. "I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz or arrow of carnations that propagate fire: I love you as certain dark things are loved, secretly, between the shadow and the soul. I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom, and carries hidden within itself the light of those flowers, and thanks to your love, darkly in my body lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth. I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where, I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I know no other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you; so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close."
Author: Pablo Neruda

33. "He knew that his wings could ignite at any moment, but the closer he came to touching the fire, the more he sensed that he was fulfilling his destiny. As he put it in his journal that night: If I mean to save my life, then I have to come within an inch of destroying it."
Author: Paul Auster

34. "God hides the fires of hell within paradise."
Author: Paulo Coelho

35. "For our part, when we feel, we evaporate; ah, we breatheourselves out and away; with each new heartfirewe give off a fainter scent. True, someone may tell us:you're in my blood, this room, Spring itselfis filled with you . . . To what end? He can't hold us,we vanish within him and around him."
Author: Rainer Maria Rilke

36. "The fire you have within you is impossible to kill. The first breath you take when you're free of all this, it will come roaring back. That's what is so impossibly beautiful about you."
Author: Rebecca Yarros

37. "What happened to all the historical detritus in the world? Some of it made it into drawers of museums, okay, but what about all those old postcards, the photoplates, the maps on napkins, the private journals with little latches on them? Did they burn in house fires? Were they sold at yard sales for 75¢? Or did they all just crumble into themselves like everything else in this world, the secret little stories contained within their pages disappearing, disappearing, and now gone forever."
Author: Reif Larsen

38. "THIS TORTUREWhy should we tell you our love storieswhen you spill them together like blood in the dirt?Love is a pearl lost on the ocean floor,or a fire we can't see,but how does saying thatpush us through the top of the head intothe light above the head?Love is notan iron pot, so this boiling energywon't help.Soul, heart, self.Beyond and within thoseis one saying,How long before I'm free of this torture!"
Author: Rumi

39. "Tragedy happens - "tragic mistakes" happen - when men act according to their flawed natures, in fulfillment of their preordained destinies. The tragedy of the four killers of Amadou Diallo is that their deeds were made possible by their general preconceptions about black people and poor neighborhoods; by a theory of policing that encourages them to be rigid and punitive toward petty offenders; and by a social context in which the possession and use of firearms is so normative as to be almost beyond discussion. The tragedy of the street vendor Amadou Diallo is that he came as an innocent to the slaughter, made vulnerable by poverty and by the color of his skin. And the tragedy of America is that a nation which sees itself as leading the world toward a global future in which the American values of freedom and justice will be available for everyone fails so frequently and so badly to guarantee that freedom and that justice for so many people within its own frontiers."
Author: Salman Rushdie

40. "Weir heard something different in the sounds. Once, during a period of calm, he sat on the firestep waiting for Stephen to return from an inspection and listened to the music of the tins. The empty ones were sonorous, the fuller ones provided an ascending scale. Those filled to the brim produced only a fat percussive beat unless they overbalanced, when the cascade would give a loud variation. Within earshot there were scores of tins in different states of fullness and with varying resonance. Then he heard the wire moving in the wind. It set up a moaning background noise that would occasionally gust into prominence, then lapse again to mere accompaniment. He had to work hard to discern, or perhaps imagine, a melody in this tin music, but it was better in his ears than the awful sound of shellfire."
Author: Sebastian Faulks

41. "Don't push me, Savitar.(Apollymi)And don't push me. You may be a goddess by birth, but I'm a lot more than just a Chthonian and you know that. I survived a hell you can't even imagine and its fires forged a core of steel within me. You want to battle, pick up your sword. But remember the number of gods before you who sought to kill me and failed. (Savitar)"
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

42. "Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly."
Author: Stephen R. Covey

43. "Sometimes I close my eyes and paint these walls a different color. I imagine I'm wearing warm socks and sitting by a fire. I imagine someone's given me a book to read, a story to take me away form the torture of my own mind. I want to be someone else somewhere else with something else to fill my mind. I want to run, to feel the wind tug at my hair. I want to pretend that this is just a story within a story. That this cell is just a scene, that these hands don't belong to me, that this window leads to somewhere beautiful if only I could break it. I pretend this pillow is clean, I pretend this bed is soft. I pretend and pretend and pretend until the world becomes so breathtaking behind my eyelids that I can no longer contain it. But then my eyes fly open and I'm caught around the throat by a pair of hands that won't stop suffocating suffocating suffocating. My thoughts, I think, will soon be sound. My mind, I hope, will soon be found."
Author: Tahereh Mafi

44. "[Henry Cavendish] fixed the weight of the earth; he established the proportions of the constituents of the air; he occupied himself with the quantitative study of the laws of heat; and lastly, he demonstrated the nature of water and determined its volumetric composition. Earth, air, fire, and water—each and all came within the range of his observations."
Author: Thomas Edward Thorpe

45. "Ignite the fire within you and it will allow you to live your special dreams in life. You were born for it and your destiny. Now...live it!"
Author: Timothy Pina

46. "Love partakes of the soul itself. it is of the same nature. like it, it is a divine spark, like it, it is incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable, it is the point of fire which is within us, which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can limit and nothing can extinguish."
Author: Victor Hugo

47. "A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke"
Author: Vincent Van Gogh

48. "O YOU whom I often and silently come where you are, that I may be with you; As I walk by your side, or sit near, or remain in the same room with you, Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is playing within me. "
Author: Walt Whitman

49. "O you singer, solitary, singing by yourself—projecting me;O solitary me, listening—nevermore shall I cease perpetuating you;Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations,Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there, in the night,By the sea, under the yellow and sagging moon,The messenger there arous'd—the fire, the sweet hell within,The unknown want, the destiny of me."
Author: Walt Whitman

50. "I know love is begun by time,And that I see, in passages of proof,Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.There lives within the very flame of loveA kind of wick or snuff that will abate it.And nothing is at a like goodness still.For goodness, growing to a pleurisy,Dies in his own too-much. That we would do,We should do when we would, for this "would" changesAnd hath abatements and delays as manyAs there are tongues, are hands, are accidents.And then this "should" is like a spendthrift sighThat hurts by easing."
Author: William Shakespeare

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