Inspirational Flame Quotes

Sometimes our light goes out, but is blown again into instant flame by an encounter with another human being.

They say a good love is one that sits you down, gives you a drink of water, and pats you on top of the head. But I say a good love is one that casts you into the wind, sets you ablaze, makes you burn through the skies and ignite the night like a phoenix; the kind that cuts you loose like a wildfire and you can't stop running simply because you keep on burning everything that you touch! I say that's a good love; one that burns and flies, and you run with it!

In our world," said Eustace, "a star is a huge ball of flaming gas." Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.

We hunt the flame, the light in the darkness, the good this world deserves.

Give me the Love that leads the way The Faith that nothing can dismay The Hope no disappointments tire The Passion that'll burn like fire Let me not sink to be a clod Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God

For some people, “the point of no return” begins at the very moment their souls become aware of each others’ existence.

The firmest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity, as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame

You must understand: they fear you. There is nothing scarier in their minds than a girl who knows the power of her flames.

Do not let those who cannot see the truth tell you who you are. You are the flame that cannot be put out. You are the star that cannot be lost. You are who you have always been, and that is enough and more than enough. Anyone who looks at you and sees darkness is blind.

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

It's easy to be a naive idealist. It's easy to be a cynical realist. It's quite another thing to have no illusions and still hold the inner flame.

The only power any man has over you is the power you give him.

Never give up. It's like breathing—once you quit, your flame dies letting total darkness extinguish every last gasp of hope. You can't do that. You must continue taking in even the shallowest of breaths, continue putting forth even the smallest of efforts to sustain your dreams. Don't ever, ever, ever give up.

Together, we will raise the dunes from the earth, and rain death from the sky. Together, we are capable of anything.

People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite... Man's goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never extinguished.

Sometimes a flame must level a forest to ash before new growth can begin.

If you want me obedient, prince, kill me and carry my corpse.

She was broken from moment to moment, watching her world collide she felt lost inside herself. She fell apart for a passion that flamed beneath her. She waited and died a hundred times, it dripped from her pores. The moment she let go, she soared over the stillness like the star she was born to be.

We're going to explore the outside world someday, right? Far beyond these walls, there's flaming water, land made of ice, and fields of sand spread wide. It's the world my parents wanted to go to.

Even the smallest shift in perspective can bring about the greatest healing.

Better to have flamed in the darkness, to have inspired others, to have lived, than to have sat in the darkness, cursing the people who borrowed, but did not return, your candle.

Islam and Christianity promise eternal paradise to the faithful. And that is a powerful opiate, certainly, the hope of a better life to come. But there's a Sufi story that challenges the notion that people believe only because they need an opiate. Rabe'a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seem running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, 'I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven of fear of hell, but because He is God.

You have to appreciate where you have come from to know who you are in the present and whom you would like to be in the future.

One tiny flame could make so many other flames; one tiny flame could set afire a whole world.

Together let us hold the intention that all aspects of this living planet come together in love, acceptance, and celebration of both our diversities and commonalities. Let us possess the common purpose that we heal from our hearts into compassion and forgiveness for ourselves. Together let us own the belief that we will no longer unite with blame and judgement, but come to accept that we all carry the same wounds. In acknowledging this, the hope is for the whole planet in its jubilant diversity to be healed from any and all woundings so that we come together on equal footing, living in peace and joy and setting the tone for a future of harmony within and on this planet. Peace to all and healing to all.

In the end, you feel that your much-vaunted, inexhaustible fantasy is growing tired, debilitated, exhausted, because you're bound to grow out of your old ideals; they're smashed to splinters and turn to dust, and if you have no other life, you have no choice but to keep rebuilding your dreams from the splinters and dust. But the heart longs for something different! And it is vain to dig in the ashes of your old fancies, trying to find even a tiny spark to fan into a new flame that will warm the chilled heart and bring back to life everything that can send the blood rushing wildly through the body, fill the eyes with tears--everything that can delude you so well!

I am a little man and this is a little town, but there must be a spark in little men that can burst into flame.

Words are foolish. Promises are useless. Anyone can say anything to get what it is they desire. Believe in actions and actions alone.

Always worth it to have tried, even if you fail, even if you fall like a meteor forever. Better to have flamed in the darkness, to have inspired others, to have lived, than to have sat in the darkness, cursing the people who borrowed, but did not return, your candle.

Quick now, here, now, always- A condition of complete simplicity (Costing not less than everything) And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well When the tongues of flame are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire And the fire and the rose are one.

For Reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and Passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction.

Before you came, things were as they should be: the sky was the dead-end of sight, the road was just a road, wine merely wine. Now everything is like my heart, a color at the edge of blood: the grey of your absence, the color of poison, of thorns, the gold when we meet, the season ablaze, the yellow of autumn, the red of flowers, of flames, and the black when you cover the earth with the coal of dead fires. And the sky, the road, the glass of wine? The sky is a shirt wet with tears, the road a vein about to break, and the glass of wine a mirror in which the sky, the road, the world keep changing. Don’t leave now that you’re here— Stay. So the world may become like itself again: so the sky may be the sky, the road a road, and the glass of wine not a mirror, just a glass of wine.

Let us each take up our flaming torches and mount as the blazing fireballs of light that we are and let's burn the skies and leave it with deep scars and let them be our signatures upon eternity as we go forth!

Please do not break your heart over the withering of a dream you once held, that never became yours! After all, the shattered dream could have very well been a nightmare and not a dream at all, you wouldn't really know because you didn't have it yet! Let the sparks fade, let the flame dim and die, you'll never know it wasn't poison.

Power, true power, comes from the belief in true things, and the willingness to stand behind that belief, even if the universe itself conspires to thwart your plans. Chaos may settle; flames may die; worlds may rise and fall. But true things will remain so, and will never fail to guide you to your goals.

Whatever you are physically, male or female, strong or weak, ill or healthy – all those things matter less than what your heart contains. If you have the soul of a warrior, you are a warrior. Whatever the color, the shape, the design of the shade that conceals it, the flame inside the lamp remains the same. You are that flame.

Some women are built by the fire. Yet, there are some that are the FIRE!

That's the key isn't it? To know the darkness will always remain, but how you choose to face it, handle it...that's the important part. To not let it consume. To focus upon the good, the things that fill you with wonder." She gestured to the stars zooming past. "The struggle with that darkness is worth it, just to see such things.

I deny being a slave to any one thing. In any situation we can choose who we are and choose who we want to be.

If movements were a spark every dancer would desire to light up in flames.

Loving you feels like my commitment to eternity a long time ago

All of our days are numbered; we cannot afford to be idle. To act on a bad idea is better than to not act at all because the worth of the idea never becomes apparent until you do it. Sometimes this idea can be the smallest thing in the world, a little flame that you hunch over and cup with your hand and pray will not be extinguished by all the storm that howls about it. If you can hold on to that flame great things can be constructed around it that are massive and powerful and world changing – all held up by the tinniest of ideas.

Travelling to past lives is like making a hole in the floor and letting the flames of the fire in the apartment below scorch and burn the present

You may kill a fire. And everything you know falls to dust and ash. Yet the remarkable treasure in this seemingly hopeless pile, is hidden deep within. The burning embers incarnate the perpetual desire to go from spark to flame.

Find the light that makes your lantern shine," she used to say. "Hold on to it, even when the dark surrounds you. Not even the strongest wind will blow out the flame

But I still don't know how to fix myself." "There's nothing broken to be fixed," he said fiercely. " You are helping yourself. Healing the parts of you that hurt too much - and perhaps hurt others, too.

I wrote her story because she wanted to live forever and I loved her far more with every word, too much! Even in death her life sought out beauty, for her moments were consumed with love and I could never write such a story without her stars flaming in my heart.

I remember Icarus. He flew too close to the sun. In the stories, though, it’s worth it. Always worth it to have tried, even if you fail, even if you fall like a meteor forever. Better to have flamed in the darkness, to have inspired others, to have lived, than to have sat in the darkness, cursing the people who borrowed, but did not return, your candle.

Want the change. Be inspired by the flame where everything shines as it disappears. The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much as the curve of the body as it turns away. What locks itself in sameness has congealed. Is it safer to be gray and numb? What turns hard becomes rigid and is easily shattered. Pour yourself like a fountain. Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins. Every happiness is the child of a separation it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming a laurel, dares you to become the wind. - Sonnets To Orpheus, Part Two, XII

Love, they said, burns you and builds you. But with you, there’s no ash. Just light.

How I learned that in each of us there burns a flame of independence that must never be allowed to go out. That as long as it exists within us we cannot be destroyed.

I've seen what you can do when you are willing to fight for the people you love. Why not apply that same bravery and loyalty to yourself? Don't say you don't deserve it. [...] Everyone deserves happiness. The road there isn't easy. It is long, and hard, and often traveled utterly blind. But you keep going. [...] Because you know the destination will be worthwile.

With right fashion, every female would be a flame.

Love is the opposite of fear and it lights the flames of a million hearts.

Let's burn our masks at midnight and as flickering flames ascend, under the witness of star-clouds, let us vow to reclaim our true selves. Done with hiding and weary of lying, we'll reconcile without and within. Then, like naked squint-eyed newborns, we'll greet the glorious birth of dawn; blinking at the blazing, wondrous colors we somehow failed to notice before.

Some people have inspired whole countries to great deeds because of the power of their vision. And so could he. Not because he dreams about marching hordes, or world domination, or an empire of a thousand years. Just because he thinks that everyone’s really decent underneath and would get along just fine if only they made the effort, and he believes that so strongly it burns like a flame which is bigger than he is. He’s got a dream and we’re all part of it, so that it shapes the world around him. And the weird thing is that no one wants to disappoint him. It’d be like kicking the biggest puppy in the universe. It’s a kind of magic.

Have the courage to rise from the challenges of life like a phoenix from the flames or you'll get lost in the ashes of despair, pain, and regret.

I acknowledge these thoughts and I am letting them go.

Think of all the women you can help by being you.

Fashion doesn't make you perfect, but it makes you pretty.

It's time to shop high heels if your fiance kisses you on the forehead.

People who are unable to stand within the dark places of life, those who are always running towards their happy places, are the same things as candles without flames. There is no worth in a candle without a flame, and we only add the flame when there is darkness. Without darkness, there would be no need for warriors and angels. Warriors are not made because the whole world is happy and angels were not formed because there are no demons. Be of worth, have a flame.

They say a man's inspiration is visual, but for a woman, it's the narrative. Abandon both the narrative and the visual. Close your eyes, measure your breath. Dead weight is sloughed off, dust swept away, forms dissolve into one atmosphere. The rib cage opens, the lungs fill, the breast rises. Waves sweep up the body on their swell, rocking it rhythmically. Feet planted, the back arches, the pelvis reaches forward. Oxygen kindles a flame, sprawling through the belly, and gathering in a warm blaze. The hand reaches to meet the sensation. Calligraphy spills from the inkwell. Open your eyes, sharpen your focus, and exclaim: There are no separations.

I have always been a lone wolf and in the real sense of the word (people say it all the time but it's usually not true.) I feel like I watch people and I wonder why they do things. Especially when it comes to love and relationships: most of the time I am thinking "Why are they together when they are not meant to be together?" but then I realize that they don't know that they're not meant to be together; it's just me who knows things like that! And I don't see any importance in all the other reasons why people usually want to be together— because it looks good, because it's convenient, because it's a fun game to play... the only reason to be with someone is if you are meant for someone. You're a wolf and they're a wolf too and you look at each other and you say "You're my family, you're my home." Well, that's how I think.

When we get married, we promise a person the rest of our lives, "Til death do us part". But what if in another life we promised someone forever? What if ten lifetimes ago we promised someone lifetime after lifetime after lifetime? Think about it. Maybe that's why marriages fail when they do fail. Because maybe promises are never really broken.

She was never crazy, she just didn't let her heart settle in a cage. She was born wild.. and sometimes we need people like her. For it's the horrors in her heart which cause the flames in ours. And she was always willing to burn for everything she has ever loved.

Be real, rare, refreshing you! Fan the flames of self love and ignite your light!

Where I am at, is not actually where I am at. Where I am at is merely a point on the path to where I am going.

It's not whether your love is temporary or has infinity. It's about the feeling of infinity when you're in love.

Perhaps there really is a good that exists; for a century of darkness to be eschewed by a single flame; for a decade of evil done to the heart to be undone by simple and unplanned acts of kindness! There must be a goodness, after all! But we don't find it when we're looking for it; not in church, not in a cathedral, not even in our own homes! We find it when we've fallen down so hard, are downtrodden so low; and there is one true friend who picks us up; or one random person who takes us in! And we realize goodness was never in the places we thought it was! It was all along in the most humble of places: bound up in the heart of a true friend.

Harrier says the Wild Magic is as annoying as a goat. And the only other Wildmage either of us has ever met kept hitting him with a wooden spoon. Wildmages aren't like, oh - like Kellen and Idalia and Vestakia the Redeemed in The Book of the Light. They're people.' [Tiercel Rolfort]

When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee." [Isaiah 43:2]

The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.

As a child, I thought that war and peace were opposites. Yet I lived in peace when Vietnam was in flames and I didn't experience war until Vietnam had laid down its weapons. I believe that war and peace are actually friends, who mock us.

If you hold a candle close to you, its flame rises. And if you hold it away from you, its flame shrinks. The same way you hold a candle close to you, keep all your plans, aspirations, projects, and dreams close to you too. Do not share your plans or goals until you complete them, because as you hold your candle away from you, your goals will shrink in the eyes of others. Envy, jealousy, and resentment will put out your flame before it grows.

Im happy to sit and be an ear to listen when the world gets wild but Id much prefer to watch the ways your eyes in sparkle in the midst of convincing me why you love the things you do. It gives me hope that someone else out there feels everything with this much depth and has the willingness to create a beautiful life from it.

When the flames of life are gnawing away at your butt, run faster, quicker, and harder than you've ever run before, because I guarantee it that life will condition you, harder than any trainer ever will. When you state to yourself with the utter most believe, “I will achieve this,” than you are on the path, and this is when life throws obstacles left, right, straight on and which other way, but keep going. Because you will make it

Like a pair of old slippers, I feel comfort and warmth as I slip into you. No, that is too crude. Like the match to the wick, I ignite when we touch. My counterpart and life's purpose. Yes, as though I've known you my whole life. Every scar, every failure has become an affirmation of what should be: You. Yes, as though I've loved you my whole life.

you’re such a pretty girl” they say but they don’t see the way she recoils back from the world as if it’s coming for her like fire, as if it burns and it does it burns like a flame that no one can see so white hot and intense that it rivals the sun it melts her skin and eats away at her flesh until she is nothing nothing but a skeleton that no one can call a girl

We are Trailblazers! Our Shero’s used their brains to spark the flame. We, as women, have to learn we cannot always do everything alone; coming together as one produces greatness as we lay the foundation together. All women are Trailblazers who’ve put in the work, and as we all know, nothing comes easy. Therefore, the time and hard work we’ve invested is ours that we earned; because it most definitely wasn’t given. Trailblazers, we must own our lives, filter out what doesn’t serve us, and stand firm for what we believe in. Our voices are beautiful and powerful!

They told me that nothing was a sin, just a poor life choice. Poor impulse control. That nothing is evil. Any concept of right versus wrong, according to them, is merely a cultural construct relative to one specific time and place. They said that if anything should force us to modify our personal behavior it should be our allegiance to a social contract, not some vague, externally imposed threat of flaming punishment.

A fulfilling long-term relationship is not accomplished by just finding the one. It is rather a co-operation between two passionate and highly motivated partners working together, figuring out every single situation holding hands. If there is trust at the root of the relationship, if the partners make an effort to keep it interesting, if difficulties are handled tactfully and if you can appreciate every single deed of your partner no matter how insignificant it is, the flames of love would never burn out and your love can truly live happily ever after.

When I observe Gram, I see how fragile the notion of tradition can be. If I take my eyes off the way she kneads her Easter bread, or if I fail to study the way she sews a seam in suede, or if I lose the mental image I have of her when she negotiates a better deal with a button salesman, somehow, the very essence of her will be lost. When she goes, the responsibility for carrying on will fall to me. My mother says I’m the keeper of the flame, because I work here, and because I choose to live here. A flame is a very fragile thing, too, and there are times when I wonder if I’m the on who can keep it going.

The Moth and Its Beloved Ask the moth the beauty of the candle And it will burn without a confession There is a secret to its longing For it feels no fear or hesitation The moth is too much in love with the flame Yet it does not appear under the sun For the moon’s light is far too feeble, and It gave up on its pursuit of the sun Just a sight of a candle is enough To remind it of its real beloved So it settles for that candle in reach, Revels in its heat, and asks to be burned

You had a beautiful friendship. Maybe more than a friendship. And I envy you. In my place, most parents would hope the whole thing goes away, or pray that their sons land on their feet soon enough. But I am not such a parent. In your place, if there is a pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don't snuff it out, don't be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we'd want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste.

Uninvited, the thought of you stayed too late in my head, so I went to bed, dreaming you hard, hard, woke with your name, like tears, soft, salt, on my lips, the sound of its bright syllables like a charm, like a spell. Falling in love is glamorous hell; the crouched, parched heart like a tiger ready to kill; a flame's fierce licks under the skin. Into my life, larger than life, beautiful, you strolled in. I hid in my ordinary days, in the long grass of routine, in my camouflage rooms. You sprawled in my gaze, staring back from anyone's face, from the shape of a cloud, from the pining, earth-struck moon which gapes at me as I open the bedroom door. The curtains stir. There you are on the bed, like a gift, like a touchable dream. "You

Love is not a forest fire that burns intensely, hotly and out of control for a brief moment until, its expendable fuel spent, it sputters, seeking in vain for something else to consume, to sustain itself before, finally, it dies: cold, black ash the only evidence of its passing. Love is, instead, a campfire: it provides ample heat and comfort to the twosome who sit before it, and although its flames may at times wane, a well-tended campfire’s embers can be nurtured and fanned until the flames once again dance brightly and cheerfully, providing comfort to the couple who cherish the gentle warmth it ministers.

When we think of the past we tend to assume that people were simpler in their functions, and shaped by forces that were primary and irreducible. We take for granted that our forbears were imbued with a deeper purity of purpose than we possess nowadays, and a more singular set of mind, believing, for example, that early scientists pursued their ends with unbroken „dedication“ and that artists worked in the flame of some perpetual „inspiration“. But none of this is true. Those who went before us were every bit as wayward and unaccountable and unsteady in their longings as people are today. The least breeze, whether it be sexual or psychological – or even a real breeze, carrying with it the refreshment of oxygene and energy – has the power to turn us from our path.

Sometimes what’s dead must be burned away to make room for new life. Sometimes you just have to step back and let the brittle bits ignite - but once those flames begin to dance their caustic dance, don’t you dare look the other way. Don’t close your eyes. Watch closely and let that image seer itself forever on your mind. Remember what it looked like in the midst of the soot, the smoke, and the haze. Remember, so you don’t repeat the same conditions that required such a blaze.

After a thousand years pass, it builds its own funeral pyre, lining it with cinnamon, myrrh and cassia. Climbing to a rest on the very top, it examines the world all throughout the night with the ability to see true good and evil. When the sun rises the next morning, with great sorrow for all that it sees, it sings a haunting song. As it sings, the heat of the sun ignites the expensive spices and the Phoenix dies in the flames. But the Phoenix is not remarkable for its feathers or flames. It is most revered for its ability to climb from its own funeral pyre, from the very ashes of its old charred body, as a brand new life ready to live again once more. Life after life, it goes through this cycle. It absorbs human sorrow, only to rise from death to do it all again. It never wearies, it never tires. It never questions its fate. Some say that the Phoenix is real, that it exists somewhere out there in the mountains of Arabia, elusive and mysterious. Others say that the Phoenix is only a wish made by desperate humans to believe in the continuance of life. But I know a secret. We are the Phoenix.

The old adage that people only want what they can’t have or what they can’t tame— is totally primitive. A being of higher origins will know instinctively that life on earth is a series of chances, moments and concepts. That’s really all that you have. So when you find one of these things and it makes you burn, or it makes you feel peace inside, or it makes you look forwards and backwards and here all at the same time— that’s when you know to hold onto it. And you hold onto it with every fiber of your being. Because it’s in the holding on of these chances and moments and concepts that life is lived. Every other kind of living is only in vitro. I don’t care what psychologists say today about how the human mind works. Because one day they will reach this pinnacle and they will see what I see and they will look upon the old ways as primitive. As long and gone. We do not wish to have what we can’t have. We wish to burn in whatever flame we have stepped into.

Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility. Life, as it is, does not frighten me, since I have made my peace with the universe as I find it, and bow to its laws. The ever-sleepless sea in its bed, crying out “how long?” to Time; million-formed and never motionless flame; the contemplation of these two aspects alone, affords me sufficient food for ten spans of my expected lifetime. It seems to me that organized creeds are collections of words around a wish. I feel no need for such. However, I would not, by word or deed, attempt to deprive another of the consolation it affords. It is simply not for me. Somebody else may have my rapturous glance at the archangels. The springing of the yellow line of morning out of the misty deep of dawn, is glory enough for me. I know that nothing is destructible; things merely change forms. When the consciousness we know as life ceases, I know that I shall still be part and parcel of the world. I was a part before the sun rolled into shape and burst forth in the glory of change. I was, when the earth was hurled out from its fiery rim. I shall return with the earth to Father Sun, and still exist in substance when the sun has lost its fire, and disintegrated into infinity to perhaps become a part of the whirling rubble of space. Why fear? The stuff of my being is matter, ever changing, ever moving, but never lost; so what need of denominations and creeds to deny myself the comfort of all my fellow men? The wide belt of the universe has no need for finger-rings. I am one with the infinite and need no other assurance.

On this material plane, each living being is like a street lantern lamp with a dirty lampshade. The inside flame burns evenly and is of the same quality as all the rest—hence all of us are equal in the absolute sense, the essence, in the quality of our energy. However, some of the lamps are “turned down” and having less light in them, burn fainter, (the beings have a less defined individuality, are less in tune with the universal All which is the same as the Will)—hence all of us are unequal in a relative sense, some of us being more aware (human beings), and others being less aware (animal beings), with small wills and small flames. The lampshades of all are stained with the clutter of the material reality or the physical world. As a result, it is difficult for the light of each lamp to shine through to the outside and it is also difficult to see what is on the other side of the lampshade that represents the external world (a great thick muddy ocean of fog), and hence to “feel” a connection with the other lantern lamps (other beings). The lampshade is the physical body immersed in the ocean of the material world, and the limiting host of senses that it comes with. The dirt of the lampshade results from the cluttering bulk of life experience accumulated without a specific goal or purpose. The dirtier the lampshade, the less connection each soul has to the rest of the universe—and this includes its sense of connection to other beings, its sense of dual presence in the material world and the metaphysical world, and the thin connection line to the wick of fuel or the flow of electricity that resides beyond the material plane and is the universal energy. To remain “lit” each lantern lamp must tap into the universal Source of energy. If the link is weak, depression and-or illness sets in. If the link is strong, life persists. This metaphor to me best illustrates the universe.

Because...” he used to cradle his daughter in his arms every morning and often they would exchange soft nuances “...if you can dream it, if you can see it in your visions at night, if you can feel it in your soul, it’s yours! And it never really belonged to anyone else, in the first place! It was always yours!” Viera returned her scroll to the drawer and closed it, she kissed the compass around her neck and climbed into her bed under the warm quilts, the candle flame crackled and the memories of her father’s arms around her embraced her there in bed and his deep, hoarse voice resounded in her ears; “... and if you chance upon a treasure that is yours and it happens to be in the possession of someone else, it’s not very wrong to take what is yours, to take what you dreamed, what you saw in your visions at night, what you felt visit you in your spirit! Sure, it’s not lawful, but aye aye my little one, listen to me when I tell you that the best things in life are not under the laws of any sort! For which law created love? Which law created courage? The best things, the real things, are the things that are not measured by any man’s laws! Fear is the only thing that any law has ever created! And what kind of pirates would we all be if we were afraid of any of our fears, even a little!

A thought expressed is a falsehood." In poetry what is not said and yet gleams through the beauty of the symbol, works more powerfully on the heart than that which is expressed in words. Symbolism makes the very style, the very artistic substance of poetry inspired, transparent, illuminated throughout like the delicate walls of an alabaster amphora in which a flame is ignited. Characters can also serve as symbols. Sancho Panza and Faust, Don Quixote and Hamlet, Don Juan and Falstaff, according to the words of Goethe, are "schwankende Gestalten." Apparitions which haunt mankind, sometimes repeatedly from age to age, accompany mankind from generation to generation. It is impossible to communicate in any words whatsoever the idea of such symbolic characters, for words only define and restrict thought, but symbols express the unrestricted aspect of truth. Moreover we cannot be satisfied with a vulgar, photographic exactness of experimental photoqraphv. We demand and have premonition of, according to the allusions of Flaubert, Maupassant, Turgenev, Ibsen, new and as yet undisclosed worlds of impressionability. This thirst for the unexperienced, in pursuit of elusive nuances, of the dark and unconscious in our sensibility, is the characteristic feature of the coming ideal poetry. Earlier Baudelaire and Edgar Allan Poe said that the beautiful must somewhat amaze, must seem unexpected and extraordinary. French critics more or less successfully named this feature - impressionism. Such are the three major elements of the new art: a mystical content, symbols, and the expansion of artistic impressionability. No positivistic conclusions, no utilitarian computation, but only a creative faith in something infinite and immortal can ignite the soul of man, create heroes, martyrs and prophets... People have need of faith, they need inspiration, they crave a holy madness in their heroes and martyrs. ("On The Reasons For The Decline And On The New Tendencies In Contemporary Literature")

Billy tries to imagine the vast systems that support these athletes. They are among the best-cared for creatures in the history of the planet, beneficiaries of the best nutrition, the latest technologies, the finest medical care, they live at the very pinnacle of American innovation and abundance, which inspires an extraordinary thought - send them to fight the war! Send them just as they are this moment, well rested, suited up, psyched for brutal combat, send the entire NFL! Attack with all our bears and raiders, our ferocious redskins, our jets, eagles, falcons, chiefs, patriots, cowboys - how could a bunch of skinny hajjis in man-skits and sandals stand a chance against these all-Americans? Resistance is futile, oh Arab foes. Surrender now and save yourself a world of hurt, for our mighty football players cannot be stopped, they are so huge, so strong, so fearsomely ripped that mere bombs and bullets bounce off their bones of steel. Submit, lest our awesome NFL show you straight to the flaming gates of hell!

I think that a lot of the time, people are generous towards those whom they pity; but only find fault in those whom they see as better than themselves. There is a fake kind of goodness; and that is the goodness that is only good towards other people that make the givers feel better about themselves. Would you be good to someone you think is so much better than you are? Or who has so much more than you have? Or is your goodness only reserved for those who make you feel like a god because you give to them? Too often, there are shining, beautiful people, who suffer so much in this world, because there would be so many others willing to snuff out their flames! Goodness of a person is not measured by sympathy or compassion; rather, goodness is measured by empathy. Empathy goes beyond all the physical things you see with your two eyes. It’s easy to be good to those you pity; much harder to be good to those whom you envy!

To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought. Let us begin with that which is without - our physical life. Fix upon it in one of its more exquisite intervals, the moment, for instance, of delicious recoil from the flood of water in summer heat. What is the whole physical life in that moment but a combination of natural elements to which science gives their names? But these elements, phosphorus and lime and delicate fibres, are present not in the human body alone: we detect them in places most remote from it. Our physical life is a perpetual motion of them - the passage of the blood, the wasting and repairing of the lenses of the eye, the modification of the tissues of the brain by every ray of light and sound - processes which science reduces to simpler and more elementary forces. Like the elements of which we are composed, the action of these forces extends beyond us; it rusts iron and ripens corn. Far out on every side of us those elements are broadcast, driven by many forces; and birth and gesture and death and the springing of violets from the grave are but a few out of ten thousand resultant combinations. That clear, perpetual outline of face and limb is but an image of ours, under which we group them - a design in a web, the actual threads of which pass out beyond it. This at least of flame-like our life has, that it is but the concurrence, renewed from moment to moment, of forces parting sooner or later on their ways.

Exoneration of Jesus Christ If Christ was in fact God, he knew all the future. Before Him like a panorama moved the history yet to be. He knew how his words would be interpreted. He knew what crimes, what horrors, what infamies, would be committed in his name. He knew that the hungry flames of persecution would climb around the limbs of countless martyrs. He knew that thousands and thousands of brave men and women would languish in dungeons in darkness, filled with pain. He knew that his church would invent and use instruments of torture; that his followers would appeal to whip and fagot, to chain and rack. He saw the horizon of the future lurid with the flames of the auto da fe. He knew what creeds would spring like poisonous fungi from every text. He saw the ignorant sects waging war against each other. He saw thousands of men, under the orders of priests, building prisons for their fellow-men. He saw thousands of scaffolds dripping with the best and bravest blood. He saw his followers using the instruments of pain. He heard the groans—saw the faces white with agony. He heard the shrieks and sobs and cries of all the moaning, martyred multitudes. He knew that commentaries would be written on his words with swords, to be read by the light of fagots. He knew that the Inquisition would be born of the teachings attributed to him. He saw the interpolations and falsehoods that hypocrisy would write and tell. He saw all wars that would be waged, and-he knew that above these fields of death, these dungeons, these rackings, these burnings, these executions, for a thousand years would float the dripping banner of the cross. He knew that hypocrisy would be robed and crowned—that cruelty and credulity would rule the world; knew that liberty would perish from the earth; knew that popes and kings in his name would enslave the souls and bodies of men; knew that they would persecute and destroy the discoverers, thinkers and inventors; knew that his church would extinguish reason’s holy light and leave the world without a star. He saw his disciples extinguishing the eyes of men, flaying them alive, cutting out their tongues, searching for all the nerves of pain. He knew that in his name his followers would trade in human flesh; that cradles would be robbed and women’s breasts unbabed for gold. And yet he died with voiceless lips. Why did he fail to speak? Why did he not tell his disciples, and through them the world: “You shall not burn, imprison and torture in my name. You shall not persecute your fellow-men.” Why did he not plainly say: “I am the Son of God,” or, “I am God”? Why did he not explain the Trinity? Why did he not tell the mode of baptism that was pleasing to him? Why did he not write a creed? Why did he not break the chains of slaves? Why did he not say that the Old Testament was or was not the inspired word of God? Why did he not write the New Testament himself? Why did he leave his words to ignorance, hypocrisy and chance? Why did he not say something positive, definite and satisfactory about another world? Why did he not turn the tear-stained hope of heaven into the glad knowledge of another life? Why did he not tell us something of the rights of man, of the liberty of hand and brain? Why did he go dumbly to his death, leaving the world to misery and to doubt? I will tell you why. He was a man, and did not know.

She dances, She dances around the burning flames with passion, Under the same dull stars, Under the same hell with crimson embers crashing, Under the same silver chains that wires, All her beauty and who she is inside, She's left with the loneliness of human existence, She's left questioning how she's survived, She's left with this awakening of brutal resilience, Her true beauty that she denies, As much she's like to deny it, As much as it continues to shine, That she doesn't even have to admit, Because we all know it's true, Her glory and success, After all she's been through, Her triumph and madness, AND YET, SHE STANDS. Broken legs- but she's still standing, Still dancing in this void, You must wonder how she's still dancing, You must wonder how she's not destroyed, She doesn't even begin to drown within the flames, But little do you realize, Within these chains, She weeps and she cries, But she still goes on, And just you thought you could stop her? You thought you'd be the one? Well, let me tell you, because you thought wrong. Nothing will ever silence her, Because I KNOW, I know that she is admiringly strong, Her undeniable beauty, The triumph of her song, She's shining bright like a ruby, Reflecting in the golden sand, She's shining brighter like no other, She's far more than human or man, AND YET, SHE STANDS. She continues to dance with free-spirit, Even though she's locked in these chains, Though she never desired to change it, Even throughout the agonizing pain, Throughout all the distress, Anxiety, depression, tears and sorrow, She still dances so beautify in her dress, She looks forward to tomorrow, Not because of a fresh start but a new page, A new day full of opportunities, Despite being trapped in her cage, She still smiles after being beaten so brutally, A smile that could brighten anyone's day, She's so much more than anyone could ask for, She's so much more than I could ever say, She's a girl absolutely everyone should adore, She never gets in the way, Even after her hearts been broken, Even after the way she has been treated, After all these severe emotions, After all all the blood she's bled, AND YET, SHE STANDS. Even if sometimes she wonders why she's still here, She wonders why she's not dead, But there's this one thing that had been here throughout every tear, Throughout the blazing fire leaving her cheeks cherry red, Everyday this thing has given her a place to exist, This thing, person, these people, Like warm sunlight it had so softly kissed, The apples of her cheeks, Even when she's feeling feeble, Always there at her worst and at her best Because of you and all the other people, She has this thing deep inside her chest, That she will cherish forever, Even once you're gone, Because today she smiles like no other, Even when the sun sets at dawn, Because today is the day, She just wants you to remember, In dark and stormy weather, It gets better. And after what she's been through she knows, Throughout the highs and the lows, Because of you and all others, After crossing the seas, She has come to understand, You have formed this key, This key to free her from this land, This endless gorge that swallowed her, Her and other men, She had never knew, nor had she planned, That because of you, She's free. AND YET, THIS VERY DAY, SHE DANCES. EVEN IN THE RAIN.