Pyre Quotes

There is something beyond the grave; death does not end all, and the pale ghost escapes from the vanquished pyre. ~ Propertius

Noah was a funeral pyre. He was burning. The flames rose to staggering heights and blazed in white, hot tongues. Jeremie had once told him a story of the burial rites of the Norse. They'd burn their dead, believing the high smoke carried their loved ones' souls to Valhalla.

Noah was beyond Valhalla. Beyond the creamy spaciousness above the clouds, beyond the limits of the very earth. He floated among the stars, joined them in holy communion, knew each one by name. Then they were within him, scores of them, bright and hot, turning his ribs into a furnace as they shifted and created constellations in his soul. And all the while, the summer sang in his lungs.

There was no space between him and Jeremie. Where one ended, the other began, and still Jeremie pulled him closer like the moon pulls the tide, gripping him tightly in the same way he'd gripped Noah's heart, had gripped his entire being. ~ Lily Velez

[He who can describe how his heart is ablaze is burning on a small pyre] ~ Petrarch, Sonnet 137
(from Montaigne, On sadness) ~ Francesco Petrarca

When this is done, Jerkface, I will hold your tarnished and melted pin up as my trophy as your smoldering ship marks your pyre, and the final resting place of your crushed and broken corpse!"
- Spensa, pg. 64 ~ Brandon Sanderson

We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependents, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant-descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. ~ Enoch Powell

Do you think he would have wanted you to commit suttee?"

"What is that?"

"A Hindu practice in which a widow is expected to throw herself on her husband's burning funeral pyre. Her suicide is considered as proof of her devotion to him."

"What if the wife dies first? Does the husband do the same thing?"

Shaw threw her a mildly taunting grin. "No, he re-marries."

"I should have known," Livia said. "Men always manage to arrange things for their own benefit. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I was cold and you were fire, and I never knew how the pyre could be burning on the edge of an ice field. ~ Meat Loaf

Folk take a battering but, they do; they get born and they get brought up and they get fuckt. That's the story; the cot to the fucking funeral pyre. ~ James Kelman

At morn we buried Melanippus; as the sun set the maiden Basilo died by her own hand, as she could not endure to lay her brother on the pyre and live; and the house beheld a two-fold woe, and all Cyrene bowed her head, to see the home of happy children made desolate. ~ Allimachus And Lycophron CXLII

Suddenly stopped myself, knowing, by an inverse logic familiar to superstitious people, that the very foretaste of sorrows to come presumed a degree of joy beforehand and would no doubt stand in the way of the very joy I was reluctant to consider for fear of forfeiting it. I felt no different than a castaway who, on glimpsing a sailboat from a high perch on his deserted island, omits to light a pyre because he's spied too many such ships before and doesn't want his hopes dashed again. But ~ Andre Aciman

Waiting for the end, boys, waiting for the end.
What is there to be or do?
What's become of me or you?
Are we kind or are we true?
Sitting two and two, boys, waiting for the end.

Shall I build a tower, boys, knowing it will rend
Crack upon the hour, boys, waiting for the end?
Shall I pluck a flower, boys, shall I save or spend?
All turns sour, boys, waiting for the end.

Shall I send a wire, boys? Where is there to send?
All are under fire, boys, waiting for the end.
Shall I turn a sire, boys? Shall I choose a friend?
The fat is in the pyre, boys, waiting for the end.

Shall I make it clear, boys, for all to apprehend,
Those that will not hear, boys, waiting for the end,
Knowing it is near, boys, trying to pretend,
Sitting in cold fear, boys, waiting for the end?

Shall we send a cable, boys, accurately penned,
Knowing we are able, boys, waiting for the end,
Via the Tower of Babel, boys? Christ will not ascend.
He's hiding in his stable, boys, waiting for the end.

Shall we blow a bubble, boys, glittering to distend,
Hiding from our trouble, boys, waiting for the end?
When you build on rubble, boys, Nature will append
Double and re-double, boys, waiting for the end.

Shall we make a tale, boys, that things are sure to mend,
Playing bluff and hale, boys, waiting for the end?
It will be b ~ William Empson

The funeral pyre technique was abandoned when it became apparent how great was the toll. There was not enough labor to do it nicely, so a man with a flame-thrower was sent down instead, and he cremated them where they lay. Burned alive, suffocated, crushed - men, women, and children indiscriminately killed. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

By the inquiry 'Who am I?'.
The thought 'who am I?' will destroy all other thoughts,
and like the stick used for stirring the burning pyre, it will itself in the end get destroyed. Then, there will arise Self-realization. ~ Ramana Maharshi

Casa Hatüey was named Hatüey because in Times Past it supposedly had been owned by a descendant of the priest who tried to baptize Hatüey right before the Spaniards burned him at the stake. (What Hatüey said on that pyre is a legend in itself: Are there white people in Heaven? Then I'd rather go to Hell.) History, however, has not been kind to Hatüey. Unless somethings changes ASAP he will go out like his camarada Crazy Horse. Coffled to a beer, in a country not his own. ~ Junot Diaz

If there are necessary sacrifices to be made for human progress, is it not essential to hold to the principle that those to be sacrificed must make the decision themselves? We can all decide to give up something of ours, but do we have the right to throw into the pyre the children of others, or even our own children, for a progress which is not nearly as clear or present as sickness or health, life or death? ~ Howard Zinn

I myself have seen this woman draw the stars from the sky; she diverts the course of a fast-flowing river with her incantations; her voice makes the earth gape, it lures the spirits from the tombs, send the bones tumbling from the dying pyre. At her behest, the sad clouds scatter; at her behest, snow falls from a summer's sky. ~ Tibullus

The moving light, rejoicing in its strength,
Sped from the pyre of pine, and urged its way,
In golden glory, like some strange new sun ... ~ Aeschylus

That was what had finally broken through her blindness. Her father had saved his people and destroyed himself. As strong as he looked, inside he was a ruin, or perhaps a funeral pyre, like the Cusp- only instead of melted bones of ijji, he was made up of the skeletons of babies and children, including, as he had always believed, his own child: her. This was his remorse. ~ Laini Taylor

Look at the reputation they gave him. [Giordano] Bruno without the pyre is a whiskey priest laying waste to the maids of Umbria. ~ Terence McKenna

Pauline Trio

One could sing October rain,
and one had a gift for plain
chant and prayer, a domain
unsettled by love or its
intimate other. What fits

with this theology no
one dares to say. These twins so
perfectly in tune must know
"the modesty of nature,"
the perfect art and texture

that sustains the other name.
Paris could not be the frame
for loyal Romans, their shame
worn upon their bodies light
as air, and nothing is quite

as endurable as death.
Those who have taken this path
move with an abiding breath.
Such a common dance this dense
intention of love's expense.

Keep this for that special hour
when the Roman drops his sour
gift for abandoned splendour;
et c'est la nuit, the footfall
that troubles that other Paul.


I have learned the felicity of fire,
how in its wake
something picks at buried seed.
Think this a most festive deed,
nature's mistake,
borrowed flare of a village dance, satire
of the sun's course, light you read
through waste, repair. Death had freed
that first opaque
habitation (what a widening gyre),
an aspen ache,
a lustrous scar that might lead
to a hidden grove, or breed
astonishment in its loss; all entire,
a shaping breath proposes its own pyre.

Solitude guides me
Jay Wright

Manticor in Arabia

(The manticors of the montaines
Mighte feed them on thy braines.--Skelton.)


Thick and scented daisies spread
Where with surface dull like lead
Arabian pools of slime invite
Manticors down from neighbouring height
To dip heads, to cool fiery blood
In oozy depths of sucking mud.
Sing then of ringstraked manticor,
Man-visaged tiger who of yore
Held whole Arabian waste in fee
With raging pride from sea to sea,
That every lesser tribe would fly
Those armed feet, that hooded eye;
Till preying on himself at last
Manticor dwindled, sank, was passed
By gryphon flocks he did disdain.
Ay, wyverns and rude dragons reign
In ancient keep of manticor
Agreed old foe can rise no more.
Only here from lakes of slime
Drinks manticor and bides due time:
Six times Fowl Phoenix in yon tree
Must mount his pyre and burn and be
Renewed again, till in such hour
As seventh Phoenix flames to power
And lifts young feathers, overnice
From scented pool of steamy spice
Shall manticor his sway restore
And rule Arabian plains once more. ~ Robert Graves

In my dream, I built a funeral pyre.
For myself, you understand.
I thought I had suffered enough. I thought this was the end of my body: fire
seemed the right end for hunger;
they were the same thing. ~ Louise Gluck

One day you will disappear on a funeral pyre - just into nothingness, as smoke. Don't get attached to anything. This attachment takes you away from your real being; you become focused on the thing to which you are attached. Your awareness gets lost in things, in money, in people, in power. And there are a thousand and one things, the whole thick jungle around you, to be lost in. Remember, non-attachment is the secret of finding yourself, then awareness can turn inwards because you don't have anything outside to catch hold of. It is free, and in this freedom you can know your self-nature. ~ Rajneesh

He whispered as he kissed down her neck. "I would love nothing more than to take you right here on the counter, Fire Angel, but if I'm late to meet with your grandmothers, they might just decide to throw my ass on a funeral pyre and I wouldn't be back for three days. ~ Brynn Myers

All the authorities, however, agree as to the following facts: - that until the third day after Hephaestion's death, Alexander neither tasted food nor paid any attention to his personal appearance, but lay on the ground either bewailing or silently mourning; that he also ordered a funeral pyre to be prepared for him in Babylon at the expense of 10,000 talents; some say at a still greater cost; that a decree was published throughout all the barbarian territory for the observance of a public mourning. Many of Alexander's Companions dedicated themselves and their arms to the dead Hephaestion in order to show their respect to him; and the first to begin the artifice was Eumenes, whom we a short time ago mentioned as having been at variance with him. This he did that Alexander might not think he was pleased at Hephaestion's death. Alexander did not appoint any one else to be commander of the Companion cavalry in the place of Hephaestion, so that the name of that general might not perish from the brigade; but that division of cavalry was still called Hephaestion's and the figure made from Hephaestion went in front of it. ~ Arrian

The empty court is locked up. If all the injustice it has committed and all the misery it has caused could only be locked up with it, and the whole burnt away in a great funeral pyre - why ~ Charles Dickens

Quite pure, quite free of future planning, I mounted
the tangled funeral pyre built for my suffering,
so sure of nothing more to buy for future needs,
while in my heart the stored reserves kept silent. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

The place was a funeral pyre for the young
who died before knowing the thirst of man
or woman. Furies with snakes in their hair
wept. Tantalus ate pears & sipped wine
in a dream, as the eyes of a vulture
poised over Tityus' liver. ~ Yusef Komunyakaa

If this was a sandalwood pyre she would have thrown herself in and this paper she'd become would have caught fire and she and him could sail away like two birds. ~ Janet Fitch

The time to hesitate is through no time to wallowin the mire Try now we can only lose and our love become a funeral pyre ~ Jim Morrison

Who destroys books? Cities, churches, dictators and fanatics. Their fingers itch to build a pyre and strike the match. On 10 May 1933, students gathered in Berlin to dance around a bonfire of 25,000 volumes of 'un-German' books. They burned, amongst many others, Bertolt Brecht, Otto Dix, Heinrich Heine, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce and H.G. Wells. They destroyed them because the contents were too dangerous. ~ Linda Grant

Lines that seemed unconnected gradually becomes part of a confession that had at its center rooms in the burning heat of August, where something has taken place, clearly sexual, but it is also the vacant streets of rural Texas, roads, forgotten friends, the slap of hands of rifle slings and forked pennants limp at parades. There are condoms, sun-faded cars, soiled menus with misspellings, a kind of pyre on which he had laid his life. That was why he seemed so pure – he had given all.

Everyone lies about their lives, but he had not lied about his.

He had made of it a noble lament, through it always running this thing you have had, that you will always have, but can never have. (There stood Erechteus, polished limbs and greaves....come to me, Hellas, I love for your touch.)

I had met him at a party and only managed to say, – I read your beautiful poem. ~ James Salter

Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm, Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form: Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame, And soars and shines, another and the same. ~ Erasmus Darwin

One Day:

One day, you will heal
One day, you will be grateful for the deepest cuts of pain
One day, you will glance at yourself
And see a stronger person through your reflection
One day, you will kiss away your hurt... gently, and with grace
Until then, use it all to propel you forward
Like a white-hot pyre through your star-spangled eyes
A fire to regenerate every shadowy cell
And open your heart to every experience
Knowing that one day
You will search your heart
And understand that love is the only thing to ever hold onto ~ Christine Evangelou

One day, I will wake up with a terrible longing for you. And in some corner of the world, your heart will skip several beats at the thought of my name. And you'll finally know what I meant when I said: When you stand near a burning pyre, the heat tends to rub off on you. ~ Ayushee Ghoshal

The Petriana's tribune dismounted a dozen paces short of the gate and stalked up to the palisade wall with a grim smile, squinting up at Scaurus and his officers and then glancing back at the men building the pyre on the plain below the fortress. He called up to them, shielding his eyes with a raised hand.
'Well now, colleague, I see you've accomplished your orders with the usual efficiency. Perhaps you ought to come down here and join me, though. I've something to tell you that will give you some pause for thought.'
Scaurus climbed down from the wall after instructing Julius to keep the men inside the Dinpaladyr at their tasks.
'You'd better come with me, Centurion Corvus, I suspect I'm going to need someone to take notes of whatever it is my brother tribune has to tell me. I may well be too busy banging my head on the palisade in frustration. ~ Anthony Riches

He began to stand, and saw Lyon stiffen, poised to do whatever he needed to do. He, like Lyon, could throw himself on a pyre, too. Because fire cleansed. She'd won, and he'd lost.

It had stopped mattering. Her happiness was indistinguishable from his own. No matter what became of him, he wanted her to know he loved her.

"You'd best get out of here, Redmond. Your secret is safe with me."

Lyon's eyes flared in wary surprise. He froze. And his smile, when it came, was slow, and crooked, and he looked very like Lavay when Lavay was being insufferably knowing.

"Ah. You do love her more than life. Splendid. And that, my dear Lord Flint, is what I came here today to discover."

Whatever he felt was between him and Violet. "Go before I change my mind, Redmond. ~ Julie Anne Long

He wanted to grind every Federation world into dust beneath his boot as his army blazed a trail of blood and corpses all the way to Seneca.

He wanted to storm their inner sanctum and fire a laser into the skull of their Field Marshal while their Chairman watched, then fire a laser into the skull of their Chairman.

He wanted to burn their bodies on a pyre and carry the ashes back to Deucali and spread them on his mother's consecrated grave. ~ G.S. Jennsen

Dying is easy. Anyone can throw themselves onto the pyre and rest a happy martyr. Enduring the suffering that comes with sacrifice is the real test. ~ Jay Kristoff

The dove descending breaks the air With flame of incandescent terror Of which the tongues declare The one discharge from sin and error. The only hope, or else despair Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre- To be redeemed from fire by fire. Who then devised the torment? Love. Love is the unfamiliar Name Behind the hands that wove The intolerable shirt of flame Which human power cannot remove. We only live, only suspire Consumed by either fire or fire. ~ T. S. Eliot

When you were far
I felt that you're a life giving boon
But only in the moments
You came nearby
That I understood
You are the funeral pyre ~ Jyoti Patel

Do you know what that is, Snow? A flaming pyre, set adrift in the sea. We could do yours in Blackpool, so all your chavvy Normal friends can come. ~ Rainbow Rowell

There was a damn silly bird called a Phoenix back before Christ: every few hundred years he built a pyre and burned himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. ~ Ray Bradbury

Definitions belong to the definer, not the defined, & I no longer wished to have my life & death foretold by others. I had endured too much to be reduced to an idea. Onto that pyre I threw so many, many words - that entire untrue literature of the past which had shackled & subjugated my as surely as the spiked iron collars & leg locks & jagged basils & balls & chains & headshaving - that had so long denied me my free voice & the stories I needed to tell. I no longer wished to read lies as to who & why I was. I knew who I was ~ Richard Flanagan

The tears stung my nose as the flames licked Mahyah's body then I froze as my eyes caught on something, lifted to the sky and my breath stuck in my throat as I heard gasps all around, felt the astonished shuffling of bodies and Diandra's hand came to mine and held tight. This was because, as the flames danced high, arching through the sky over the pyre, there was a brilliant, perfect rainbow. ~ Kristen Ashley

. . . nunc et in hora mortis nostrae,' he repeated yet again, and felt the lap of water on his foot. He looked up. The people had gone; the pyre was no more than a dark patch with the sea hissing in its embers; and he was alone. The tide was rising fast. ~ Patrick O'Brian

Not much different from the morgue. Smaller," she noted, scanning the steel worktables, the gullies on the sides, the hoses and tubes and tools. "I guess he got some of his knowledge of anatomy working here. Might have had some of his early practice sessions on corpses."
"Charming thought."
"Yeah, well, being as they were already dead - hopefully - it probably didn't upset them too much. Oh, and FYI? When my time comes, I don't want the preservatives and the stylist. You can just build a big fire, slide me in. Then you can throw yourself on the pyre to show your wild grief and constant devotion."
"I'll make a note of it. ~ J.D. Robb

The past plummeting towards me like a vulture-dropped hand to become what-purifies-and-sets-me-free, because now as I look up there is a feeling at the back of my head and after that there is only a tiny but infinite moment of utter clarity while I tumble forwards to prostrate myself before my parents' funeral pyre, a minuscule but endless instant of knowing, before I am stripped of past present memory time shame and love, a fleeting but also timeless explosion in which I bow my head yes I acquiesce yes in the necessity of the blow, and then I am empty and free, because all the Saleems go pouring out of me, from the baby who appeared in jumbo-sized front-page baby-snaps to the eighteen-year-old with his filthy dirty love, pouring out goes shame and guilt and wanting-to-please and needing-to-be-loved and determined-to-find-a-historical-role and growing-too-fast, I am free ~ Salman Rushdie

Lit, one of the dwarfs, walked in front of Thor to get a better view of the pyre, and Thor kicked him irritably into the middle of the flames, which made Thor feel slightly better and made all the dwarfs feel much worse. "I ~ Neil Gaiman

I am too old a soldier to believe that. Hoster will be chiding me about the Redwyne girl even as we light his funeral pyre, damn his bones. ~ George R R Martin

The platform or the altar of love may be analyzed and explained; it is constructed of virtue, beauty, and affection. Such is the pyre, such is the offering; but the ethereal spark must come from heaven, that lights the sacrifice. ~ Jane Porter

When Theolyn died, the humans had built an enormous pyre and placed his body at the center. How was [Veka] supposed to know humans cremated their dead instead of cooking them? She had figured it out quickly enough, but not before Jimar and his ilk had spotted her standing at the pyre, fork in hand. ~ Jim C. Hines

But sometimes words are the only hands
we have to touch a bruised memory
or cleanse a wound that never healed
or lift a body we carried for years
at last to the pyre of shared grief ~ Fred Dings

Why? Why do the fools fly?' said Denethor. 'Better to burn sooner than late, for burn we must. Go back to your bonfire! And I? I will go now to my pyre. To my pyre! No tomb for Denethor and Faramir. No tomb! No long slow sleep of death embalmed. We will burn like heathen kings before ever a ship sailed hither from the West. The West has failed. Go back and burn! ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

He looked at her face and hesitated. He looked up at the canyon walls. Here on the sandbar, it was eerily quiet except for the tinkle of water over the rocks. A large bird made lazy soaring circles way up in the sky, almost invisible due to the angle of the sun. God forgive me, he thought. Then he touched Ranjit's lighter to the small sheaf of dried grass and threw it on the pyre. He was surprised at the flash when it caught fire. It wouldn't be long, he thought. I will move on, but I will never forget this place.
(from The Sacrament of the Goddess) ~ Joe Niemczura

Lyon Redmond was either a man on a pilgrimage in search of salvation, or a man out to burn on the pyre of his own love for a woman.
Regardless, he still suffered. ~ Julie Anne Long

You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman... I have been traveling over the old world during the last few years and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn herself upon the funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion/ Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, 'Thus saith the Lord,' of course he can do it. So long as ministers stand up and tell us Christ is the head of the church, so is man the head of woman, how are we to break the chains which have held women down through the ages? You Christian women look at the Hindoo, the Turkish, the Mormon women, and wonder how they can be held in such bondage...

Now I ask you if our religion teaches the dignity of woman? It teaches us the abominable idea of the sixth century--Augustine's idea--that motherhood is a curse; that woman is the author of sin, and is most corrupt. Can we ever cultivate any proper sense of self-respect as long as women take such sentiments from the mouths of the priesthood? ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Snow and soot covered the ancient tree's broken branches and seared bark. It wasn't dead, not quite yet. Here and there tiny shoots of green struggled to emerge, but they weren't doing well. The end was near.
A shadow loomed, and a creature settled into the drifts, and old, wounded thing of the skies, as near death as the tree.
Pinions drooping, it laboriously began building a nest--a place of dying. Stick by stick, it pecked among the ruined wood on the ground, piling the bits higher until it was clear that it was not a nest at all.
It was a pyre.
The bloody, dying thing settled in atop the kindling, and crooned soft music unlike anything ever heard before. A glow began to build, surrounding the beast soon in a rich purple lambience. Blue flames burst forth.
And the tree seemed to respond. Aged, ruined branches curled forward toward the heat, like an old man warming his hands. Snow shivered and fell, the green patches grew and began to fill the air with the fragrance of renewal
It was not the creature on the pyre that was reborn, and even in sleep, that surprised Gordon. The great bird was consumed, leaving only bones.
But the tree blossomed, and from its flowering branches things uncurled and drifted off into the air.
He stared in wonderment when he saw that they were balloons, airplanes, and rocket ships. Dreams.
They floated away in all directions, and the air was filled with hope. ~ David Brin

I would prefer not to throw myself on a funeral pyre. Please come back to me. ~ Eloisa James

The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre -
To be redeemed from fire by fire. ~ T. S. Eliot

Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.[To Hindu priests complaining to him about the prohibition of Sati religious funeral practice of burning widows alive on her husband's funeral pyre.] ~ Charles James Napier

If I was born as a blackthorn tree, I'd wanna be felled by you, Held by you, Fuel the pyre of your enemies. ~ Hozier

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. ~ Courtney Cole

In innocence, she'll light the fire
And set ablaze the fun'ral pyre
And one shall rise and one shall fall,
By hand of she who'll lead them all.
Marked twice by beast in time of rage,
And born again as the Wolfsmage.
A house of magic be undone
By she who can remake the sun. ~ Cyrese Covelli

Three plagues, three contagions, threaten the world.
The first is the plague of nationalism.
The second is the plague of racism.
The third is the plague of religious fundamentalism.
All three share one trait, a common denominator--an aggressive, all-powerful, total irrationality. Anyone stricken with one of these plagues is beyond reason. In his head burns a sacred pyre that awaits its sacrificial victims. ~ Ryszard Kapuscinski