Weekend Words: Fire
Today is the 91st birthday of James Baldwin (1924-1987), whose enduring works include Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953); Notes of a Native Son (1955); Giovanni's Room (1956); and The Fire Next Time (1963).
Today is the 91st birthday of James Baldwin (1924–1987), whose enduring works include Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953); Notes of a Native Son (1955); Giovanni’s Room (1956); and The Fire Next Time (1963).
For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
—Frederick Douglass
Heat cannot be separated from fire, or beauty from the eternal.
—Dante Alighieri
I only believe in fire. Life. Fire. Being myself on fire I set others on fire. Never death. Fire and life. Les Jeux.
—Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin
And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire.
—Acts of the Apostles, 2:2, KJV
There would be recesses in my mind which would be only mine, to which he never came, and sentiments growing there fresh and sheltered which his austerity could never blight, nor his measured warrior-march trample down: but as his wife–at his side always, and always constrained, and always checked — forced to keep the fire of my nature continually low, to compel it to burn inwardly and never utter a cry, though the imprisoned flame consumed vital after vital — this would be unendurable.
—Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
The fire was furry as a bear.
—Edith Sitwell, “Facade: Dark Song”
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
—Robert Frost, “Fire and Ice”
Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.
—Henry Miller
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
—T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”
A being afire with life cannot foresee death; in fact, by each of his deeds he denies that death exists.
—Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian
Fires can’t be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.
—James Baldwin
