Ashes Of The Phoenix Quotes

I would like to be the sea
I would like to break into millions of pieces
and I would like each piece
to be dispersed in the world,
so that I can live forever
without suffering as I suffer now.
Because everything you throw into the sea
sooner or later comes back to you. ~ Jane Fade Merrick

In the fall of 1989, I was writing 600-word columns at the 'Herald.' My heart always was in long-form narrative writing, though. It's what I cut my teeth on at the 'Boston Phoenix.' ~ Charlie Pierce

Even the pool of ink could be dried out and writing papers could be burnt to ashes forever but the spoken word will never die so as the editor. ~ Euginia Herlihy

Faint traces of other black churches are tucked away in handwritten ledgers at the state archives at Morrow; in the collections at the University of Georgia in Athens; even in the basement of the Forsyth courthouse, where a cardboard box atop a metal filing cabinet still holds deeds for the land on which black residents once founded Mt. Fair, Shakerag, and Stoney Point - about which nothing is known but names and approximate locations. All that can be said for certain is that, again and again in the fall of 1912, white men sloshed gasoline and kerosene onto the benches and wooden floors of such rooms, then backed out into the dark, tossing lit matches as they went. All over the county, beneath the ground on which black churches stood, the soil is rich with ashes. ~ Patrick Phillips

I built Rubicon from ashes,' said the other man. 'Ashes of war. I have worked hard to raise myself up from the poverty I was born into. Believe me when I tell you I have seen every kind of injustice, all across the heartland of my mother Africa. And now I have made billions of dollars from land and mining and technology. Now I can do something about it. As Lucy says, I am a very rich man.' He reached up to his neck and pulled out the silver chain between his fingers. 'I see you looking at this. Do you recognize it?'
Marc gave a slow nod. Now it was clear to him, he could see that the odd bit of discoloured metal was actually part of a weapon. It was the trigger from an AK-47 assault rifle. ~ James Swallow

When I was in first grade, everyone made fun of my name, of course. I think it's kind of a big name to hold up when you're nine years old. It seemed goofy. I used to tell people I wanted to change the world and they used to think, 'This kid's really weird'. ~ River Phoenix

A day will come when you think yourself safe and happy, and suddenly your joy will turn to ashes in your mouth, and you'll know the debt is paid. - Tyrion ~ George R R Martin

A poet is a dethroned king sitting among the ashes of his palace trying to fashion an image out of the ashes. ~ Kahlil Gibran

We are told of the time when, with the same beliefs, with the same institutions, all the world seemed happy: why complain of these beliefs; why banish these institutions? We are slow to admit that that happy age served the precise purpose of developing the principle of evil which lay dormant in society; we accuse men and gods, the powers of earth and the forces of Nature. Instead of seeking the cause of the evil in his mind and heart, man blames his masters, his rivals, his neighbors, and himself; nations arm themselves, and slay and exterminate each other, until equilibrium is restored by the vast depopulation, and peace again arises from the ashes of the combatants. So loath is humanity to touch the customs of its ancestors, and to change the laws framed by the founders of communities, and confirmed by the faithful observance of the ages. ~ Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Results are their own propaganda. The vast majority of the people are free, prosperous, and safe under the Phoenix Society's rule. They are happy. Why should they care if the likes of you are denied due process?
Imaginos ~ Matthew Graybosch

Both Moscow and [Kiev], the modern and the ancient capitals, were reduced to ashes [by the Tartars]; a temporary ruin, less fatal than the deep, and perhaps indelible, mark, which a servitude of two hundred years has imprinted on the character of the Russians. ~ Edward Gibbon

Then there was the gray of human habitation. The blue places were turning brown, the yellow places to dust, the green places to smoke and ashes. Each time one of the animals disappeared
they went by species or sometimes by organizations of species, interconnected
it was as though all mountains were gone, or all lakes. A certain form of the world. But in the gray that metastasized over continents and hemispheres few appeared to be deterred by this extinguishing or even to speak of it, no one outside fringe elements and elite groups, professors and hippies, small populations of little general importance. The quiet mass disappearance, the inversion of the Ark, was passing unnoticed. ~ Lydia Millet

Flowers are reincarnation. They come out of the earth of our ashes. Nothing else looks so soul-like. ~ Francesca Lia Block

Incontinent the void. The zenith. Evening again. When not night it will be evening. Death again of deathless day. On one hand embers. On the other ashes. Day without end won and lost. Unseen. ~ Samuel Beckett

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. ~ George R R Martin

The road to Manderley lay ahead. There was no moon. The sky above our heads was inky black. But the sky on the horizon was not dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea. ~ Daphne Du Maurier

I have observed private and proprietary colleges, like the University of Phoenix, and the market they serve. And I found it intriguing the way in which they are trying to deliver the product, with more accountability, for a price. ~ Roy Romer

A small portion of Mahatma Gandhi's ashes are enshrined at the Self Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine Temple in Pacific Palisades. They are the only portion of Gandhi's remains that are kept anywhere outside of India. ~ James Frey

Now this is really going to impress Valentine."
"I don't know," Clary said. "Other crack teams get bat boomerangs and wall-crawling powers; we get the Aquatruck."
"If you don't like it, Nephilim," came Magnus's voice, faintly, from the truck cab, "you're welcome to see if you can walk on the water. ~ Cassandra Clare

The Phoenix rises in the absence or need of witness. ~ Truth Devour

All dies! and not alone
The aspiring trees and men and grass;
The poets' forms of beauty pass,
And noblest deeds they are undone,
Even truth itself decays, and lo,
From truth's sad ashes pain and falsehood grow. ~ Herman Melville

Why, thou monkey,' said a harpooneer to one of these lads, 'we 've been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a whale yet. Whales are scarce as hen's teeth whenever thou art up here.' Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious revery is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space; like Cranmer's sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over. 10
There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shrie ~ Herman Melville

He that will do no good offices after a disappointment must stand still, and do just nothing at all. The plough goes on after a barren year; and while the ashes are yet warm, we raise a new house upon the ruins of a former. ~ Seneca The Younger

If I die tomorrow, Provincetown is where I'd want my ashes scattered. Who knows why we fall in love, with places or people, with objects or ideas? Thirty centuries of literature haven't begun to solve the mystery; nor have they in any way slaked our interest in it. Provincetown is a mysterious place, and those of us who love it tend to do so with a peculiar, inscrutable intensity. ~ Michael Cunningham

The prophecy, "The Revelation of Christ" is about mankind's journey into a darker reality and then our quest to create a light based reality. We can only create a light based reality when we have re-created our collective spirit to make it strong enough to hold light. ~ Phoenix

As I drew a still fresher soil about the rows with my hoe, I disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who in primeval years lived under these heavens, and their small implements of war and hunting were brought to the light of this modern day. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Allowing the pain of personal growth to be a crucible of your spirit-the alchemical grail through which the metal of your former self turns into gold-is one of the highest callings of life. Pain can burn you up and destroy you, or burn you up and redeem you. It can deliver you to an entrenched despair, or deliver you to your higher self. At midlife we decide, consciously or unconsciously, the path of the victim or the path of the phoenix when it is rising up at last. ~ Marianne Williamson

After the fierce midsummer all ablaze
Has burned itself to ashes, and expires
In the intensity of its own fires,
There come the mellow, mild, St. Martin days
Crowned with the calm of peace, but sad with haze.
So after Love has led us, till he tires
Of his own throes, and torments, and desires,
Comes large-eyed friendship: with a restful gaze,
He beckons us to follow, and across
Cool verdant vales we wander free from care.
Is it a touch of frost lies in the air?
Why are we haunted with a sense of loss?
We do not wish the pain back, or the heat;
And yet, and yet, these days are incomplete. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

We cannot look at Syria, and the evil that has arisen from the ashes of indecision, and think this is not the lowest point in the world's inability to protect and defend the innocent. ~ Angelina Jolie

How yet resolves the governor of the town?
This is the latest parle we will admit;
Therefore to our best mercy give yourselves;
Or like to men proud of destruction
Defy us to our worst: for, as I am a soldier,
A name that in my thoughts becomes me best,
If I begin the battery once again,
I will not leave the half-achieved Harfleur
Till in her ashes she lie buried.
The gates of mercy shall be all shut up,
And the flesh'd soldier, rough and hard of heart,
In liberty of bloody hand shall range
With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
Your fresh-fair virgins and your flowering infants.
What is it then to me, if impious war,
Array'd in flames like to the prince of fiends,
Do, with his smirch'd complexion, all fell feats
Enlink'd to waste and desolation?
What is't to me, when you yourselves are cause,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand
Of hot and forcing violation?
What rein can hold licentious wickedness
When down the hill he holds his fierce career?
We may as bootless spend our vain command
Upon the enraged soldiers in their spoil
As send precepts to the leviathan
To come ashore. Therefore, you men of Harfleur,
Take pity of your town and of your people,
Whiles yet my soldiers are in my command;
Whiles yet the cool and temperate wind of grace
O'erblows the filthy and contagious clouds
Of heady murder, spoil and villa ~ William Shakespeare

One of the great Confederate combat leaders, General John B. Gordon, had sat at his horse and spoken farewell to his men. Some he had seen weeping as they folded burnt and shot-pierced battle flags and laid them on the stacked arms of surrender. As he told his troops his own grief he tried to give them hope to rebuild out of the poverty and ashes to which many would return. Gordon would never forget a Kentucky father who lost two sons, one dying for the North, the other for the South. Over the two graves of his soldier boys the father set up a joint monument inscribed God knows which was right. ~ Carl Sandburg

'Ashes To Ashes' is a victim of its own success. We started lots of trends. I like to think we had something to do with bringing back the high waist. It's so much more flattering. ~ Keeley Hawes

Be my lover between two wars waged in the mirror, she said.
I don't want to return now to the fortress of my father's house.
Take me to your vineyard.
Let me meet your mother.
Perfume me with basil water.
Arrange me on silver dishes, comb me,
imprison me in your name,
let love kill me. ~ Mahmoud Darwish

I don't want to risk my personal sanity or happiness, or my family, or the love of my life. That's a mistake. And I think a lot of people make that mistake, they're always kind of, like, seeking out the next thing that's gonna happen. ~ Summer Phoenix

Observe, in short, how transient and trivial is all mortal life; yesterday a drop of semen, tomorrow a handful of spice or ashes. Spend, therefore, these fleeting moments of earth as Nature would have you spend them, and then go to your rest with a good grace, as an olive falls in its season, with a blessing for the earth. ~ Marcus Aurelius

All the blood spilled from her face, making the bruises grotesquely bright. "Oh God ... " She stumbled back, away from him, her hands flying to her mouth. "You killed him?" It was insulting and amusing that that was the first place her mind always seemed to go where Arlo and Killen were concerned. "And if I did?" He circled around her slowly, taking a sort of pleasure in her panic. She rounded on him. "Then you gave up a bit of your soul for someone who didn't deserve it. Yes, Arlo deserves to die. Yes, I imagined doing it myself a million times. But he has no right to taint any part of you with his ... his evil. ~ Airicka Phoenix

I have lost people, though.
It's strange when it happens. I don't actually lose them. Not in the way one loses one's parents, either as a small child, when you think you are holding your mother's hand in a crowd and then you look up, and it's not your mother ... or later. When you have to find the words to describe them at a funeral service or a memorial, or when you are scattering ashes on a garden of flowers or into the sea. ~ Neil Gaiman

Keep quiet. Don't panic. Never tell anyone the truth. She'd lived with their rules for twelve years, and for what? So that she might one day be so lucky as to be forgotten entirely. The memory of Minerva Lane - of who she'd been, what she'd done - felt like a hot coal covered in cold ashes. It smoldered on long after the fire had been doused. Sometimes, all that heat rose up in her until she felt the need to shriek like a teapot. Until she wanted to burn the mousy shreds of her tattered personality. It rose up in her now, that fiery rebellion. The part of her that was still Minerva - the part that hadn't been ground to smoothness - whispered temptation in her ear. You don't need to keep quiet. You need a strategy. ~ Courtney Milan

Somewhere, somehow, something arises out of the ashes of our losses to remind us that nothing ever ceases. Nothing ever vanishes. Nothing ever comes to nothing. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I should get rid of those boxes, full of all that junk. Burn them all – make a bonfire in the garden and burn the bloody lot of it. All the captured bits of me, the scraps and pictures and notes and letters, burn it all, burn the lot of it – every last trace of me. Every last bit of me – up in flames and gone for good. Forgotten and gone. Rid me of these memories... Yes, that's something to do this afternoon. Get out into the garden, and burn the past... To ashes with. ~ Jonny Glynn

When an emergency arose that necessiated Uncle Jay-Jay to shoe a horse himself, I always manipulated the bellows. He was always so exacting that I did it with great decorum, fearing his displeasure.

This case was different.

I worked the pole with such energy that it nearly blew the fire out of the pan, and sent ashes and sparks in a whirlwind around Harold.

"That the way to blow?" I asked demurely.
"Take things a little easier," He replied.

I took them so easily that the fire was on its last gasp and the shoe was almost cold when required.

"This won't do," Said Harry.

I recommenced with such force that he had to retreat.

"Steady! Steady!" He shouted.
"Sure, O'i can't plaze yez anyhows," I replied ~ Miles Franklin

Yet i say to you, do not rush to marriage for it is a deep and perfect thing. Test first, that you may be certain you are called to it by love, and not simply by pleasures of the flesh which will consume themselves and leave only ashes and misery ~ David Weber

The oak roars when a high wind wrestles with it; the beech shrieks; the elm sends forth a long, deep groan; the ash pours out moans of thrilling anguish. ~ Thomas Starr King

Child of shadows, once born of flesh
Un-winged, amidst fear and agony

'Fraid of the lurking and yet to come
Oblivious, to the code of chivalry.

Voids in his desire were unveiled, as
Love taught him; death with dignity.

In desire to be and in wanting to live
His wretched soul began to purge,

As he wept at the beauty of night
He commenced to sing his own dirge,

Then born again of fire; ascended,
Like Phoenix must burn to emerge. ~ Zubair Ahsan

And it shall come to pass that what man made shall be shattered, and the Shadow shall lie across the Pattern of Age, and the Dark One shall once more lay his hand upon the world of man. Women shall weep and men quail as the nations of the earth are rent like rotting cloth. Neither shall anything stand nor abide...
Yet one shall be born to face the Shadow, born once more as he was born before and shall be born again, time without end. The Dragon shall be Reborn, and there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth at his rebirth. In sackcloth and ashes shall he clothe the people, and he shall break the world again by his coming, tearing apart all ties that bind. Like the unfettered dawn shall he blind us, and burns us, yet shall the Dragon Reborn confront the Shadow at the Last battle, and his blood shall give us the Light. Let tears flow, O ye people of the world. Weep for your salvation.

-from The Karaethon Cycle: The Prophecies of the Dragon, as translated by Ellaine Marise'idin Alshinn, Chief Librarian at the Court of Arafel, in the Year of Grace 231 of the New Era, the Third Age ~ Robert Jordan