Incense Quotes

• Light the incense! You have to burn to be fragrant.

  Rumi

  Light

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• Let your thoughts be psalms, your prayers incense, and your breath praise.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Prayer, Psalms, Praise

  Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1885). “Sermons of Rev. C.H. Spurgeon of London ...”

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• At the end of our lives we hope we will look back and, like an incense stick completely burned away, will have poured forth all our fragrance into the world.

  Prem Prakash

  Looks, World, Sticks

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• Better do a good deed near at home than go far away to burn incense.

  Amelia Earhart

  Home, Reality, Chinese

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• Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!

  Robert Browning

  Strong, Catholicism, Thick

  'The Bishop Orders his Tomb' (1845) l. 80

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• No ashes are lighter than those of incense, and few things burn out sooner.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Ashes, Burn Out, Lighters

  Walter Savage Landor (1933). “Classical conversations: being imaginary conversations among Greek, Roman and Modern personages of classic consequence in the history of human culture”

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• The groves were God's first temples.

  William C. Bryant

  Nature, Tree, Firsts

  William Cullen Bryant, Thomas G. Voss (1975). “The Letters of William Cullen Bryant: 1865-1871”, p.49, Fordham Univ Press

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• Nothing is true but Love, nor aught of worth; Love is the incense which doth sweeten earth.

  Richard Chenevix Trench

  Love, Love Is, Earth

  Richard Chenevix Trench (1865). “Poems: Collected and Arranged Anew”, p.33

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• I do not feel like writing verses; but as I light my perfume burner with myrrh and jasmine incense, they suddenly burgeon from my heart, like flowers in a garden.

  Hafez

  Flower, Writing, Heart

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• I take a baths all the time. I'll put on some music and burn some incense and just sit in the tub and think, Wow, life is great right now.

  Brian Austin Green

  Thinking, Tubs, Wow

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• Orchidbreathing incense into butterfly's wings

  Matsuo Basho

  Butterfly, Wings

  c.1689 On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho, no.166 (translated by Lucien Stryk).

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• The green earth sends her incense up. From many a mountain shrine; From folded leaf and dewey cup She pours her sacred wine.

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  Wine, Mountain, Cups

  John Greenleaf Whittier, “The Worship Of Nature”

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• ...you meditate and you got the candles, you got the incense and you've been chanting, and all of a sudden you hear this voice: 'Write this down'

  Carlos Santana

  Writing, Voice, Satanic

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• I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet.

  John Keats

  Sweet, Flower, Feet

  'Ode to a Nightingale' (1820) st. 5

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• You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.

  John Ruskin

  Passion, Lightning, Might

  John Ruskin, John D. Rosenberg (1964). “The Genius of John Ruskin: Selections from His Writings”, p.312, University of Virginia Press

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• One grain of incense with devotion offer'd
  'S beyond all perfumes of Sabaean spices.

  Philip Massinger

  Spices, Devotion, Perfume

  Philip Massinger (1813). “The Plays”, p.365

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• I'm in awe of the universe, but I don't necessarily believe there's an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.

  David Bowie

  Religious, Buddhist, Powerful

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• It's important to read a book, but also to hold the book, to smell the book... it's perfume, it's incense, it's the dust of Egypt.

  Ray Bradbury

  Book, Egypt, Dust

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• The praise of a fool is incense to the wisest of us . . .

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Fool, Praise, Wisest

  Benjamin Disraeli (1833). “Vivian Grey”, p.205

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• In Nepal, the phenomenon is reversed. Time is a stick of incense that burns without being consumed. One day can seem like a week; a week, like months. Mornings stretch out and crack their spines with the yogic impassivity of house cats. Afternoons bulge with a succulent ripeness, like fat peaches. There is time enough to do everything - write a letter, eat breakfast, read the paper, visit a shrine or two, listen to the birds, bicycle downtown to change money, buy postcards, shop for Buddhas - and arrive home in time for lunch.

  Jeff Greenwald

  Morning, Cat, Home

  Jeff Greenwald (2014). “Shopping for Buddhas: An Adventure in Nepal”, p.16, Travelers' Tales

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• I like cinnamon rolls, but I don't always have time to make a pan. That's why I wish they would sell cinnamon roll incense. After all I'd rather light a stick and have my roommate wake up with false hopes.

  Mitch Hedberg

  Funny, Humor, Light

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• My writing routine is everyday I put a record on, the same one since 20 years. Then I burn a stick of incense, I put perfume here on the insides of my soles, I paint my left testicle red, and I write.

  Alejandro Jodorowsky

  Writing, Years, Everyday

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• How silent, how spacious, what room for all, yet without place to insert an atom--in graceful succession, in equal fullness, in balanced beauty, the dance of the hours goes forward still. Like an odor of incense, like a strain of music, like a sleep, it is inexact and boundless. It will not be dissected, nor unraveled, nor shown.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Time, Sleep, Rooms

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• I loved the quiet places in Kyoto, the places that held the world within a windless moment. Inside the temples, Nature held her breath. All longing was put to sleep in the stillness, and all was distilled into a clean simplicity.
  The smell of woodsmoke, the drift of incense; a procession of monks in black-and-gold robes, one of them giggling in a voice yet unbroken; a touch of autumn in the air, a sense of gathering rain.

  Pico Iyer

  Rain, Sleep, Autumn

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• A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God's first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself.

  John Muir

  Life, Song, Cutting

  John Muir (2011). “My First Summer in the Sierra: Illustrated Edition”, p.94, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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