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Quotations about Fire
For campfire quotes, see CAMPING.
How can a person be attached to a house that has no centre of attraction, no soul in it, in the visible form a glowing fire, and a warm chimney, like the heart in the body? ~Charles Dudley Warner, Backlog Studies, 1873
Wax-lights, though we are accustomed to overlook the fact, and rank them with ordinary commonplaces, are true fairy tapers, — a white metamorphosis from the flowers, crowned with the most intangible of all visible mysteries — fire. ~Leigh Hunt, "Wax and Honey," 1850
What a good word is "flame," expressing the form and soul of fire, lambent with forked tongue!... To have our eyes ache once more with smoke! What a peculiar, perhaps indescribable color has this flame! — a reddish or lurid yellow, not so splendid or full of light as of life and heat... Fire is the most tolerable third party. ~Henry David Thoreau, journal, 1853
To poke a wood fire is more solid enjoyment than almost anything else in the world. ~Charles Dudley Warner, Backlog Studies, 1873
I burned great heaps of old letters, and other papers... The world has no more such, and now they are all dust and ashes. What a trustful guardian of secret matters is fire! What should we do without fire and death? ~Nathaniel Hawthorne
Our fire paints the dark with jumping gold... ~James Oppenheim, The Pioneers, 1910
Fire and pride cannot be hid. ~Proverb
The animals do not use fire; man does. At first there was a pile of cold fat pine roots on the icy rock. A match was rubbed, fire elicited, and now this fire is the most emphatic and significant fact hereabouts. Fire slumbers never far off, and the friction of a match can awaken it. ~Henry David Thoreau, journal, 1853
Man is the animal that has made friends with the fire. ~Henry Van Dyke, "The Open Fire," Fisherman's Luck and Some Other Uncertain Things, 1899
But there is one thing lacking in various animal dwellings, — a fireplace. Man is the only creature that dares to light a fire and to live with it. The reason? Because he alone has learned how to put it out. ~Henry Van Dyke, "The Open Fire," Fisherman's Luck and Some Other Uncertain Things, 1899
A wood fire on the hearth is a kindler of the domestic virtues. It brings in cheerfulness, and a family centre, and, besides, it is artistic. I should like to know if an artist could ever represent on canvas a happy family gathered round a hole in the floor called a register. ~Charles Dudley Warner, Backlog Studies, 1873
Fire and water are good servants but bad masters. ~Proverb
It is with our passions, as it is with fire and water; they are good servants, but bad masters. ~Roger L'Estrange, Aesop's Fables, 1692
Fire is the best of servants; but what a master! ~Thomas Carlyle, "Abbot Samson," Past and Present, 1843
Olive-wood fires are good because they catch quickly, but they are just like colts, prancing around elegantly without thinking of work. The frisky flame reared against the cauldron. ~Jean Giono (1895–1970), Regain, 1930, translated from the French by Henri Fluchè and Geoffrey Myers, Harvest, 1939
When the fire is made, you want to sit in front of it and grow genial in its effulgence. I have never been upon a throne... but I have no idea that it compares, for pleasantness, with a seat before a wood fire. A whole leisure day before you, a good novel in hand, and the backlog only just beginning to kindle, with uncounted hours of comfort in it, — has life anything more delicious? ~Charles Dudley Warner, Backlog Studies, 1873
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. ~Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven"
In the circle of the hearth everything is good, but reminiscences are best of all. I sometimes think all life is valuable merely as an opportunity to accumulate reminiscences, and I am sure that the precious horde can be seen to best advantage by firelight. Then is the time for the miser to spread out his treasure and admire it. ~Elisabeth Woodbridge, "In the Firelight," 1909
Fire is love and water sorrow. ~Proverb
Fire and gunpowder do not sleep together. ~Proverb
More wood was put on, and the flame danced in a hundred fantastic shapes. ~Charles Dudley Warner, Backlog Studies, 1873
In the making of fires there is as much difference as in the building of houses. Everything depends upon the purpose that you have in view. There is the camp-fire, and the cooking-fire, and the smudge-fire, and the little friendship-fire... Each of these has its own proper style of architecture, and to mix them is false art and poor economy. ~Henry Van Dyke, "The Open Fire: The Camp-Fire," Fisherman's Luck and Some Other Uncertain Things, 1899
You should plan a fire as you do a dinner party, and your wood, like your people, should be selected and arranged with due regard to age, temperament, and individual eccentricity. ~Elisabeth Woodbridge, "In the Firelight," 1909
O Fire! that burns at the Heart of things
Where seraph to angel sings,—
Whose golden voices resound afar
From sphere to sphere and from star to star—
I would feel the brush of your burnished wings,
That brand with the deathless scar.
~Harriet L. Childe-Pemberton, Nenuphar: The
When the fire on the hearth has blazed up and then settled into steady radiance, talk begins. There is no place like the chimney-corner for confidences; for picking up the clews of an old friendship; for taking note where one's self has drifted... The best talk is that which escapes up the open chimney and cannot be repeated. ~Charles Dudley Warner, Backlog Studies, 1873
But before a fire all things are possible, even silence. Chance acquaintances and intimate friends fall alike under its spell, talk is absolutely spontaneous, it flows rapidly or slowly, or dies away altogether. What need for talk when the fire is saying it all — now flaring up in a blaze to interpret our rarest enthusiasms, now popping and snapping with wit or fury, now burning with the even heat of steady, rational life, now settling into a contemplative glow of meditation. ~Elisabeth Woodbridge, "In the Firelight," 1909
Since the house is on fire let us warm ourselves. ~Proverb
Where love begins, there dread thy first desire;
A spark neglected makes a mighty fire.
~Robert Herrick
Your own property is concerned when your neighbor's house is on fire. ~Horace
When thy next Neighbour's house is all on fire,
'Tis thy concern to make his flames expire;
For fire will gather strength if let alone,
And with thy neighbour's house burn down thine own.
~Horace, rendered in English and paraphrased by several persons, London, 1680
If it was difficult to read the eleven commandments by the light of a pine-knot, it was not difficult to get the sweet spirit of them from the countenance of the serene mother knitting in the chimney-corner. ~Charles Dudley Warner, Backlog Studies, 1873
Absence diminishes small loves and moderate passions, and it increases great ones — as the wind blows out candles but adds fury to fire. ~François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
Didst thou but know the inly touch of love,
Thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow
As seek to quench the fire of love with words.
~William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, 1594 [II, 7, Julia]
Fire in the heart sends smoke into the head. ~Proverb
Here's to Love, the only fire against which there is no insurance. ~Toasts and After-Dinner Speeches, edited by William Young Stafford, 1903
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