The Ashes Quotes

It was just me and him, there in that place where tragedy had happened, where I thought my life had ended. But somehow, he made it seem like a home again.
Somehow, he gave it back to me. ~ T.J. Klune

Since its founding, Detroit has been a place of perpetual flames. Three times the city has suffered race riots and three times the city has burned to the ground. The city's flag acknowledges as much. Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus: We hope for better things; it shall rise from the ashes. ~ Charlie LeDuff

That's the thing about true love. It can rise from the ashes because at its source, it's indestructible. Layers can be stripped away and lost, but if you're lucky enough to find them again and put them back together, the end result is stronger than ever. ~ Penelope Ward

Ritual of the Ashes," the Occitan prayer of the dead, which ~ Nina George

I were missing - " "He'd burn the whole world down till he could dig you out of the ashes. ~ Cassandra Clare

In the ashes on the hearth Saigyo traced and retraced the word, "pity." He had yet to learn to accept life with all its good and evils, to love life in all its manifestations by becoming one with nature. And for this he had abandoned home, wife, and child in that city of conflict. He had fled to save his own life, not for any grandiose dream of redeeming mankind; neither had he taken vows with the thoughts of chanting sutras to Buddha; nor did he aspire to brocaded ranks of the high prelates. Only by surrendering to nature could he best cherish his own life, learn how man should live, and therein find peace. And if any priest accused him of taking the vows out of self-love, not to purify the world and bring salvation to men, Saigyo was ready to admit that these charges were true and that he deserved to be reviled and spat upon as a false priest. Yet, if driven to answer for himself, he was prepared to declare that he who had not learned to love his own life could not love mankind, and that what he sought now was to love that life which was his. Gifts he had none to preach salvation or the precepts of Buddha; all that he asked was to be left to exist as humbly as the butterflies and the birds. ~ Eiji Yoshikawa

If I had my way," Dionysus said, "I would cause your molecules to erupt in flames. We'd sweep up the ashes and be done with a lot of trouble. But Chiron seems to feel this would be against my mission at this cursed camp: to keep you little brats safe from harm."
"Spontaneous combustion is a form of harm, Mr. D," Chiron put in.
"Nonsense," Dionysus said. "Boy wouldn't feel a thing. Nevertheless, I've agreed to restrain myself. I'm thinking of turning you into a dolphin instead, sending you back to your father. ~ Rick Riordan

From the strong tides a sailor will be known,
from the ashes a fire will be known,
a crownless prince i am
will one day be a King ~ Premjit Lourembam

I like filmmakers that try to touch upon the metaphysical, the things that are behind all this, that you can't actually physically interact with, but are somehow intuitively there. Maybe you can see the ashes of that fire or the echoes of something happening on a domain not-here, whether that be coincidence, whether that be familiarity with somebody who's a stranger. ~ Mike Cahill

Tied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly firm and unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in the ashes of ruin; untottering Ahab stood forth in the clearness of the morn; lifting his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl's forehead of heaven. Oh, ~ Herman Melville

Burn 'em to ashes, then burn the ashes. ~ Ray Bradbury

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

You're a phoenix, Zane. Rising from the ashes. And all I do is make you burn. ~ Abigail Roux

This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. ~ Jacob Bronowski

I unbuttoned my white shirt and reknotted it under by breasts. I felt like one of those circus 'quick change' acts – ta-dah, no more Wimpy Wendy, now we have Slinky Phee rising from the ashes. ~ Joss Stirling

Some things are too terrible to grasp at once. Other things - naked, sputtering, indelible in their horror - are too terrible to really grasp ever at all.It is only later, in solitude, in memory that the realization dawns: when the ashes are cold; when the mourners have departed; when one looks around and finds oneself - quite to one's surprise - in an entirely different world. ~ Donna Tartt

You Republicans are the arsonists who burned down our national home. Now you have the nerve to criticize the 'architect' America just hired - President Obama - to rebuild from the ashes. ~ Frank Schaeffer

There is nothing more agreeable than having a place where one can throw on the floor as many cigar butts as one pleases without the subconscious fear of a maid who is waiting like a sentinel to place an ashtray where the ashes are going to fall. ~ Fidel Castro

His soul was set in flames, and he scorched anyone who stood too close. She stepped closer, unafraid of the ashes they were destined to become. ~ Brittainy C. Cherry

Books can be burned," croaked Black.
"They have a way of rising from the ashes," said Andreus. ~ James Thurber

No, he would never know his father, who would continue to sleep over there, his face for ever lost in the ashes. There was a mystery about that man, a mystery he had wanted to penetrate. But after all there was only the mystery of poverty that creates beings without names and without a past, that sends them into the vast throng of the nameless dead who made the world while they themselves were destroyed for ever. For it was just that that his father had in common with the men of the Labrador. The Mahon people of the Sahel, the Alsatians on the high plateaus, with this immense island between sand and sea, which the enormous silence was now beginning to envelop: the silence of anonymity; it enveloped blood and courage and work and instinct, it was at once cruel and compassionate. And he who had wanted to escape from the country without name, from the crowd and from a family without a name, but in whom something had gone on craving darkness and anonymity - he too was a member of the tribe, marching blindly into the night near the old doctor who was panting at his right, listening to the gusts of music coming from the square, seeing once more the hard inscrutable faces of the Arabs around the bandstands, Veillard's laughter and his stubborn face - also seeing with a sweetness and a sorrow that wrung his heart the deathly look on his mother's face at the time of the bombing - wandering though the night of the years in the land of oblivion where each one is the first man, where he ~ Albert Camus

All I could think about as I stood there was that sometimes life gave you a tragedy that burned everything you knew to the ground and changed you completely. But somehow, if you really wanted to, you could learn how to hold your breath as you made your way through the smoke left in its wake and you could keep going. And sometimes, sometimes, you could grow something beautiful from the ashes that were left behind. If you were lucky. ~ Mariana Zapata

Conditioned to ecstasy, the poet is like a gorgeous unknown bird mired in the ashes of thought. If he succeeds in freeing himself, it is to make a sacrificial flight to the sun. His dreams of a regenerate world are but the reverberations of his own fevered pulse beats. He imagines the world will follow him, but in the blue he finds himself alone. Alone but surrounded by his creations; sustained, therefore, to meet the supreme sacrifice. The impossible has been achieved; the duologue of author with Author is consummated. And now forever through the ages the song expands, warming all hearts, penetrating all minds. At the periphery the world is dying away; at the center it glows like a live coal. In the great solar heart of the universe the golden birds are gathered in unison. There it is forever dawn, forever peace, harmony and communion. Man does not look to the sun in vain; he demands light and warmth not for the corpse which he will one day discard but for his inner being. His greatest desire is to burn with ecstasy, to commerge his little flame with the central fire of the universe. If he accords the angels wings so that they may come to him with messages of peace, harmony and radiance from worlds beyond, it is only to nourish his own dreams of flight, to sustain his own belief that he will one day reach beyond himself, and on wings of gold. One creation matches another; in essence they are all alike. The brotherhood of man consists not in thinking alike, nor in acting alik ~ Henry Miller

back in the middle ages
they burned unruly women at the stake
and out of the ashes of their bones and flesh
rose the Enlightenment and Reason fresh
and the white men declared
there's no such thing as witches
they're just crazy psycho-bitches
but we certainly can't let them run free
lock 'em up and throw away the key
yeah they said: lock 'em up and throw away the key

cause there's nothing scarier than a woman mad and/or
aware of her own magic
tragic how much violence is done
in the name of science
to ensure our silence

in Victorian times they located suffering in our uterus
in the blood in the soft internal organs
took our pain our righteous rage
they called it 'hysteria'
and then Dr. Freud ignored women's horror stories
herstories of abuse and rape and
took a justified hatred of the penis and called it
envy (he sold more books that way) ~ Leah Harris

Worrying about the past is tending the ashes instead of the fire. ~ A.R. Simmons

The biggest problem is the funerals that don't exist. People call the funeral home, they pick up the body, they mail the ashes to you, no grief, no happiness, no remembrance, no nothing. That happens more often than it doesn't in the United States. ~ Caitlin Doughty

There was something unusual about him, or something behind him. It might be that he was bookish - never came to see you without taking up the book on the table (he was now reading, with his bootlaces trailing on the floor); or that he was a gentleman, which showed itself in the way he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and in his manners of course to women. ~ Virginia Woolf

In the Empire, the Scholars are not allowed to read and, like so many bullies and power-seekers who hide behind ideologies to justify the terrible things they do, their oppressors wear masks. 'An Ember in the Ashes' suggests that such masks (literal or figurative) don't work. Not forever, anyway. Masks only cover faces. It's actions that show who we are. ~ Chelsey Philpot

Tecumseh, a Shawnee chief and noted orator, tried to unite the Indians against the white invasion: The way, and the only way, to check and to stop this evil, is for all the Redmen to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was at first and should be yet; for it was never divided, but belongs to all for the use of each. That no part has a right to sell, even to each other, much less to strangers - those who want all and will not do with less. Angered when fellow Indians were induced to cede a great tract of land to the United States government, Tecumseh organized in 1811 an Indian gathering of five thousand, on the bank of the Tallapoosa River in Alabama, and told them: Let the white race perish. They seize your land; they corrupt your women, they trample on the ashes of your dead! Back whence they came, upon a trail of blood, they must be driven. ~ Howard Zinn

And you," Ty continued, his voice breaking. "You're a
phoenix, Zane. Rising from the ashes. And all I do is make
you burn."
Zane's throat was too tight to swallow past, and his next
breath came out a choked sob. He had never imagined that
was how Ty saw him, and hearing it now made him want to
take back every harsh word they'd ever shared, every thrust
and parry of their relationship. ~ Abigail Roux

The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead and remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. ~ Jeffrey R. Holland

Cut this tree I'm living in down. Hollow its trunk out.
Make me all over again, with what you scooped out of its insides.
Slide the new me back inside the old trunk.
Burn me. Burn the tree. Spread the ashes, for luck, where you want next year's crops to grow.
Birth me and the tree
Next summer's sun
Midwinter guarantee ~ Ali Smith

The captains of England and Australia can barely exchange pleasantries these days without a body-language expert immediately declaiming on the angle of their handshakes. ~ Lawrence Booth

With his back to us, Sean tugs the halter from the mare's head. She kicks out, but he steps out of the way as if it were nothing at all. With a shake of her mane, she leaps mightily into the water. For a moment she struggles over the waves, and then she is swimming. Just a wild black horse in a deep blue sea full of the ashes of other dead boys. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

I hope only that you have been able to find a little gold in the ashes. ~ Lowell Blair

Now when the flowers are in full bloom,
It is the ashes from the past that hidden loom. ~ Selina A. Mahmood

Tell me about the hands that broke you like tree branches. Tell me about the heart that made you a home, the barren soul that used your dry bones like kindling in the middle of winter. Tell me about the house fire, the ashes which you rose from. Tell me about your resurrection - but don't you dare tell me that you are not strong enough this time, don't you dare tell me that you cannot
rise again,
and again,
and again. ~ Bianca Sparacino

In the ashes of adversity, lies opportunity. ~ S.L. Coelho

Gravitational systems are the ashes of prior electrical systems. ~ Hannes Alfven

She knew she'd wounded him when he'd least expected it, and her satisfaction lasted until the door had closed behind him. Once he was gone, it ebbed away along with her anger, leaving her with naught but the ashes and embers of a dying hearth fire. ~ Sharon Kay Penman

Creatures of the Darkness
BY VICKI JORDAN

It was world of vampires and demons, where innocence
was rare and so were the living. It was a world of darkness,
where light had been outlawed and nightfall had swallowed
us whole.

An epic war had been fought, and the creatures of the dark
had finally prevailed over the promoters of the light. Finally,
for the first time in existence, the people of the shadows could
come out and freely walk among one another in the rays of the
dying sun, which had once been used to shun them away.

A little girl, a child of the light, had survived the battle and
crawled out from under the ashes of the destruction. She looked
around at her altered world in dismay and confronted a vampire
about the changes, of which she did not approve.

"Why did you turn my world into a world of night, and make
wrong into a new form of right? How could you make all the light
disappear, and with it everyone I once loved so dear? Why are the
shadows now the new sun, and why is everything lost what you have
won?"
The vampire looked down at the little girl with amusement
and delight.

"Because, little girl, this is the real world you see, where there's no
light to shine on false identities. We didn't destroy the world just to scare;
we simply uncovered what was already there. What has come out was all the
~ Chris Colfer

In her heart and soul she set fire to all things that held her back and from the ashes she stepped into who she always was. ~ Atticus Poetry

When surrounded by the ashes of all that I once cherished, despite my best efforts I can find no room to be thankful. But standing there amidst endless ash I must remember that although the ashes surround me, God surrounds the ashes. And once that realization settles upon me, I am what I thought I could never be ... I am thankful for ashes. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Stand in the ashes of a trillion dead souls, and then ask the ghosts if honor matters ~ Javik

Mary bring out your umbrella -
The sun shines down on this fine, fine day
But the ashes raining down forever
Are going to turn your hair to gray.
Mary keep your oars a-steady
Sail away on the rising flood
Keep your candle at the ready
Red tides can't be told from blood.
- "Miss Mary" (a common child's clapping game, dating from the time of the blitz), from Pattycake and Beyond: A History of Play ~ Lauren Oliver

The Phoenix burns and rebirths from the ashes in the absence of need for witness, acceptance, understanding or belief. ~ Truth Devour

Perhaps true faith can only be born from the ashes of our own personal hell. ~ Robert Palasciano

THE TREE OF LIFE

The sun is rising,
And the ether dance at the first sight of his light,
As he ascends like a phoenix from the ashes of morality,
His luminous rays form the magnificent tree of life.
He springs up from the east,
Spreading his long arms like branches,
Over the horizons of milky meadows and open seas,
Extending his wings to embrace all living things.
He walks on water and grazes through fields,
Pouring his butter like honey to feed the Earth.
Towering over all of creation,
He who is the lamp of the universe,
The power source of all life.
And in his truth and light,
Everything becomes aroused
Like a flower,
And everything is given
Sight. ~ Suzy Kassem

I am the dust and the ashes of the temple of the Holy Ghost, and what marble is so precious? But I am more than dust and ashes: I am my best part, I am my soul. ~ John Donne

When Scalia dissents, he pours gasoline on the majority, lights a match, and stomps on the ashes. ~ Irin Carmon

This devastation is a crossroads with a choice; to remain in the ashes or to forge ahead unburdened. Here is the chance to mold into a new nakedness, strengthened by the legacy of resilience to climb over the debris toward a different life. ~ Michele Harper

One more item slipped out of the bag. It was the metal identification tag from Maureen's cremation, the one I had burned with her just a few weeks before. These tags say with the body through the whole cremation, and leave stuck in with the ashes, which is how sacks of cremated remains found in old storage lockers and attics can still be identified years later. The tag I found was identical (except for the ID number) to the one I was putting in with Matthew now. I imagined his hands sinking into the grey mulch of Maureen's bones and finding the tag. I imagined him pulling the tag out and brushing the dusty metal against his cheek. It was a bizarre honor to have been a part of their last private moment together, the last act of their love story.
I cried (sobbed, if we're being honest) standing over Matthew's body, moments before it was loaded into the chamber. Even if all we love will die, I still ached for a love like theirs, to be adored so completely. Had not Disney guaranteed all of us such an ending? ~ Caitlin Doughty

Jonnie Goodboy Tyler. Conqueror of Psychlos.' Brown Limper spat on the bill.
He suddenly seized the bill and tore it frantically into little pieces.
Then he threw the pieces around with angry gestures.
After that he gathered them all up again and, with a set, malevolent expression on his face, burned them.
Then he pulverized the ashes with his fist. But somebody came in soon after and said with a delighted smile, "Have you seen the new bank note?" And waved one!
Brown Limper rushed out of the room and found a place to vomit. ~ L. Ron Hubbard

I guess we speak pretty loosely, don't we, about looking forward to the Ashes and all that - and we are, but it's not with both eyes. We've got one eye on that and one eye on what we need to get in place to make sure we're the best team we can be for November. ~ Ricky Ponting

What a couple. I'm consumed into ashes. And he's always raking up the ashes and setting them on fire again. ~ Agnes Smedley

Fawkes is a phoenix, Harry. Phoenixes burst into flame when it is time for them to die and are reborn from the ashes. ~ J.K. Rowling

It feels like Shiva destroyed my universes of possibility, like He's dancing on the ashes of my snatched away dreams. ~ Padma Venkatraman

He'd burn the whole world down til he could dig out you of the ashes. ~ Cassandra Clare

It may be said with rough accuracy that there are three stages in the life of a strong people. First, it is a small power, and fights small powers. Then it is a great power, and fights great powers. Then it is a great power, and fights small powers, but pretends that they are great powers, in order to rekindle the ashes of its ancient emotion and vanity. After that, the next step is to become a small power itself. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I'd argue, in fact, that the rise of the so-called Islamic State under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi does somewhat vindicate Osama bin Laden's strategy and his belief that making the West intervention-weary through war would lead to a power vacuum in the Middle East and that the West would abandon its support for Arab despots, which would lead to the crumbling of despotic regimes. From the ashes of that would rise an Islamic State. Bin Laden said this eleven years ago, and it's uncanny how the Arab uprisings have turned out. ~ Maajid Nawaz

Popular music is slowly being laid to rest in every conceivable way ... the ashes are already about us if we could but notice them. ~ Steven Morrissey

He lay listening to the water drip in the woods. Bedrock, this. The cold and the silence. The ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void. Carried forth and scattered and carried forth again. Everything uncoupled from its shoring. Unsupported in the ashen air. Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief. If only my heart were stone. ~ Cormac McCarthy

There is much to justify Turkey's reverence for Ataturk. He is the force that allowed Turkey to rise from the ashes of defeat and emerge as a vibrant new nation. ~ Stephen Kinzer

History is going somewhere. And we know full well that He who does all things well will bring beauty from the ashes of world chaos. A new world is being born. A new social order will emerge when Christ comes back. A fabulous future is on the way. ~ Billy Graham

My paintings are only the ashes of my art ~ Yves Klein

She told me she'd be a phoenix." The image of the mythical creature rising from the ashes glitters in my mind. "They don't really exist." "She said that depends on whether or not there's someone who can see them. ~ Jodi Picoult

What do you do when you have a demon staring down an angel while the ashes of dead minions blew between them? You get out of the way, of course. ~ Jeaniene Frost

He felt his heart was going to explode, his body burned while his mind tried to reconstitute the ashes of who he once had been. ~ Jorge Silva Rodighiero

When there was a summer of bad bush fires, all that was left of the house was the brick recess that had held the stove and open fire. Lush rains followed, and with the earth nourished by the ashes, a pine near the front, surviving the holocaust, gave birth to a grove of deep green trees, turning the old tumbledown house into an oasis, causing the travelers to exclaim at the beauty and watch with excitement for the village coming up, perhaps as a peaceful and pretty as the trees. ~ Olga Masters

We American's are the example of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. We vote Republican; again buying the line that they are deficit hawks and, when in power, they both feast on our blood and treasure and stuff their coffers with sweat literally from our brows.

Again, fed up, we elect Democrats and they repair what the Republicans purposely and yet strategically managed to do. Then, like a Phoenix rising from the ashes with renewed youth, the Republican deficit hawks emerge; spoon feeding us the same old bullshit until we bend to their will. We, in turn, vote them to power and, yet again, the ravenous lot feeds.

This year...this era, however, they're governing like Kamikaze pilots, not giving one bit of damn about either public opinion nor their place in government. I believe that they see the writing on the wall and, with much fervor, are seeking to grab everything they can get their greedy little hands on.

Will we ever get off this hamster wheel, my fellow Americans? ~ A.K. Kuykendall

Oh you the creator, you the destroyer, you who sustain and make an end,
Who in sunlight dance among the birds and the children at their play,
Who at midnight dance among corpses in the burning grounds,
You Shiva, you dark and terrible Bhairava,
You Suchness and Illusion, the Void and All Things,
You are the lord of life, and therefore I have brought you flowers;
You are the lord of death, and therefore I have brought you my heart
This heart that is now your burning ground.
Ignorance there and self shall be consumed with fire.
That you may dance, Bhairava, among the ashes.
That you may dance, Lord Shiva, in a place of flowers,
And I dance with you. ~ Aldous Huxley

It's best to have failure happen early in life. It wakes up the Phoenix bird in you so you rise from the ashes. ~ Anne Baxter

A time will come, when fields will be manured with a solution of glass (silicate of potash), with the ashes of burnt straw, and with the salts of phosphoric acid, prepared in chemical manufactories, exactly as at present medicines are given for fever and goitre. ~ Justus Von Liebig

Belief is all-important in what we do.

You believe, it burns, flickers and dies. The ashes mix with the soil and we call them memories. ~ Kieron Gillen

Letter 4

As I lay dreaming, Montezuma introduced himself and put his hand on my shoulder. The palm of the Aztec king felt like ancient papyrus.
When I looked up at him, I saw that his nose was chipped like that of a sphinx. His arms were like long ivory ropes that frayed into hands.
He led me down to the river, where we sat together and shared the river's silence. Then he spoke:
„Allow me to tell you my story. It may help you understand your own.
At dusk, in the year of one thousand rivers, the Spanish explorer Cortés arrived at the gates of my city. I welcomed him with open arms.
I showed Cortés hundreds of aviaries that had built in the city, and finally I took him to the most aviary of sighs. These birds carried only love letters.
Cortes laughed and said that all the bird songs made him feel like a virgin bride who is drunk with faith as she walks down the aisle of the church. On her wedding night, she undresses for her husband and he takes her in his arms. She believes everything is possible.
When Cortés stared straight into my eyes and said 'It is a night that is always colored in blood'." He paused for a long time before he spoke. Then he said, „Cortés returned with a small army of soldiers on horseback. When they ransacked the city, I was Cortes's own hand that lit the torch that set fire to the aviary of sighs.
The fires raged. The birds painted the blue sky black with the ashes of their wings. The gardens were redde ~ Gregory Colbert

I call myself a nationalist, but my nationalism is as broad as the universe. It includes in its sweep all the nations of the earth. My nationalism includes the well-being of the whole world. I do not want my India to rise on the ashes of other nations. I do not want India to exploit a single human being. I want India to be strong in order that she can infect the other nations also with her strength. Not so with a single nation in Europe today; they do not give strength to the others. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

And then you snatched me from the ashes and stirred my dreams back to life. ~ Paula Quinn

I am sick of the dern box! I have not only stepped out of the hateful piece of cardboard, I have burned it and scattered the ashes over my past. ~ Tanya R. Simon

The ashes of the past drift away on the winds of the future. ~ Ryan Mark, Author ~ Ryan Mark

Carter once told me that we shouldn't fear putting the past behind us. He said that God is about doing new things - creating beauty out of the ashes of despair and defeat. ~ Tracie Peterson

Given the scale of trauma caused by the genocide, Rwanda has indicated that however thin the hope of a community can be, a hero always emerges. Although no one can dare claim that it is now a perfect state, and that no more work is needed, Rwanda has risen from the ashes as a model or truth and reconciliation. ~ Wole Soyinka

Then out spake brave Horatius, The Captain of the Gate: To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, And the temples of his gods, ~ Thomas Babington Macaulay

Quietly they moved down the calm and sacred river that had come down to earth so that its waters might flow over the ashes of those long dead, and that would continue to flow long after the human race had, through hatred and knowledge, burned itself out. ~ Vikram Seth

The bodies were cremated in twenty minutes. Each crematorium worked with fifteen ovens, and there were four crematoriums. This meant that several thousand people could be cremated in a single day. Thus for weeks and months - even years - several thousand people passed each day through the gas chambers and from there to the incineration ovens. Nothing but a pile of ashes remained in the crematory ovens. Trucks took the ashes to the Vistula, a mile away, and dumped them into the raging waters of the river. After so much suffering and horror there was still no peace, even for the dead. ~ Miklos Nyiszli

It's not how we crash and burn, but how we rise up again from the ashes that make us who we are. ~ Brian Weimer

In treading upon the ashes of dead men in Italy, Egypt - on the banks of the Bosphorus, one almost despairs to think how idle are the dreams and toils of this life, and were it not for the intellectual pleasure of knowing and learning, one would almost be damaged by travel in these historic lands. ~ William T. Sherman

The mystery lies in the here and now. The mystery is: What is one to do with oneself? As you get older you begin to realize the trick time is playing, and that unless you do something about it, the passage of time is nothing but the encroachment of the horrible banality of the past on the pure future. The past devours the future like a tape recorder, converting pure possibility into banality. The present is the tape head, the mouth of time. Then where is the mystery and why bother kicking through the ashes? Because there is a clue in the past. ~ Walker Percy

Whether for good or for bad, the Iran that ultimately rises out of the ashes of last summer's uprising will be unlike the Iran we know today, and for that we can thank the Green Movement, not another round of useless sanctions. ~ Reza Aslan

If my soul was filled with anything, then it was dust and the ashes of possibilities. ~ Sally Gardner

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

The archaeologists who will come and blow away the ashes from our house will unearth only the metal parts of the sophisticated furnishings, and it will take them some time to reconstruct their original beauty; they will find very few objects and almost no embellishments, not even in Emanuele's room, which from year to year is being emptied of toys and colors, because everything that's important to him is now found in the circuits of a tablet. I wonder what would suggest to them that a couple and then a family had lived in those rooms and that they were happy together, at least for long stretches of time. ~ Paolo Giordano

The fire which seems extinguished often slumbers beneath the ashes. ~ Pierre Corneille

Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn 'em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That's our official slogan. ~ Ray Bradbury

He woke before dawn and watched the gray day break. Slow and half opaque. He rose while the boy slept and pulled on his shoes and wrapped in his blanket he walked out through the trees. He descended into a gryke in the stone and there he crouched coughing and he coughed for a long time. Then he just knelt in the ashes. He raised his face to the paling day. Are you there? he whispered. Will I see you at the last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God, he whispered. Oh God. ~ Cormac McCarthy

The world tried to crush you, and you refused to be shattered. You've recovered from every setback a stronger person, rising form the ashes only to astonish everyone around you. And you will continue to surprise and confuse those who underestimate you. It is an inevitability. A forgone conclusion. But you should know now that being a leader is a thankless occupation. Few will ever be grateful for what you do or for the changes you implement. Their memories will be short, convenient. Your every success will be scruntinized. Your accomplishments will be brushed aside, breeding only greater expectations from those around you. Your power will push you further away from your friends. You will be made to feel lonely. Lost. You will long for validation from those you once admired, agonizing between pleasing old friends and doing what is right. But you must never, ever let the idiots into your head. They will only lead you astray. ~ Tahereh Mafi

I'm scarred, inside and out, but I'm also stronger. I've learned how to be a warrior. I've learned that hope rises out of the ashes if I let it. ~ C.J. Redwine

The wet air was as cold as the ashes of love. ~ Raymond Chandler

My fairytale was full of witches, pixies, pirates, dementors, princesses, clowns, true love, betrayal, battles and kings. Yet, I stood on the edge of never and with the bravery of a queen I could see across forever ... and I whisphered to the wind, "Morals of great stories didn't live in kindness. They bloomed from the ashes of who you were to where you were meant to be." ~ Shannon L. Alder

When I look up into the night sky, I remember that I'm nothing but the ashes of long-dead stars. A human being is a collection of atoms that comes together into an ordered pattern for a brief period of time and then falls apart again. I find comfort in my smallness. ~ Krystal Sutherland

He didn't know what the feeling was, but it was like a Phoenix rising from the ashes of his almost-dead soul. How dramatic. Take that, Shakespeare. ~ Carly Fall