Kindling Quotes

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.

Plutarch

Inspirational, Leadership, Education

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Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

William Butler Yeats

Inspirational, Motivational, Graduation

"Gov. Brown Uses State of the State Speech to Push Education Reforms" by Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, www.scpr.org. January 24, 2013.

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Within the heart of every person exists the flame of wisdom that transforms all suffering into kindling for the fire of creative energy.

Daisaku Ikeda

Heart, Fire, Flames

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There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled. There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. You feel it, don't you?

Rumi

Spiritual, Heart, Soul

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For the mind does not require filling like a bottle, but rather, like wood, it only requires kindling to create in it an impulse to think independently and an ardent desire for the truth.

Plutarch

Thinking, Technology, Mind

Plutarch (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Plutarch (Illustrated)”, p.1913, Delphi Classics

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I wonder if the sap is stirring yet,
If wintry birds are dreaming of a mate,
If frozen snowdrops feel as yet the sun
And crocus fires are kindling one by one:
Sing robin, sing:
I still am sore in doubt concerning Spring.

Christina Rossetti

Dream, Spring, Fire

Christina Rossetti (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Christina Rossetti (Illustrated)”, p.122, Delphi Classics

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Salvation and justice are not to be found in revolution, but in evolution through concord. Violence has ever achieved only destruction, not construction; the kindling of passions, not their pacification; the accumulation of hate and destruction, not the reconciliation of the contending parties; and it has reduced men and parties to the difficult task of building slowly after sad experience on the ruins of discord.

Pope Pius XII

Hate, Party, Passion

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For the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.

Plutarch

Inspirational, Mind, Needs

Plutarch (2006). “Essays”, p.70, Penguin UK

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But the day is spent;
And stars are kindling in the firmament,
To us how silent--though like ours, perchance,
Busy and full of life and circumstance.

Samuel Rogers

Stars, Busy, Silent

Samuel Rogers (1854). “The complete poetical works of Samuel Rogers: with a biographical sketch, and notes”, p.204

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A great song awakens something in your body / mind / spirit or history that you had forgotten about. It ignites some emotional kindling that you didn't even know you had stored. It awakens you to a possibility for the future - be it hope or excitement - that you never knew was possible.

Greta Salpeter

Song, Emotional, Mind

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I owe everything to the gift of Pentecost. For fifty days the facts of the Gospel were complete, but no conversions were recorded. Pentecost registered three thousand souls. It is by fire that a holy passion is kindled in the soul whereby we live the life of God. The soul's safety is in its heat. Truth without enthusiasm, morality without emotion, ritual without soul, make for a Church without power.

Samuel Chadwick

God, Christian, Truth

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Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam.

John Milton

Strong, Sleep, Eye

'Areopagitica' (1644) p. 34

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The focus of education should not be on suppressive information but on kindling the thirst for knowing.

Jaggi Vasudev

Love, Life, Knowing

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Godly enthusiasm is not a fire of our own kindling...If a man, however, has caught fire, let me not quench the Spirit by dampening the ardor of his pure devotion. Enthusiasm is not contrary to reason; it is reason - on fire.

Peter Marshall

Godly, Men, Fire

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If the Lord tarries, there may yet be a grass-roots awakening that will overflow all sectarian barriers. There are a host of good people... who long for a visitation from heaven in old-time power. The kindling wood is scattered all round in all the churches. May God help us to rake off the ashes, uncover the live coals and may He blow upon us with the breath of His Spirit!

Vance Havner

Blow, Roots, Long

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Money cannot buy the fuel of love but is excellent kindling.

W. H. Auden

Love, Fuel, Excellent

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I would not for my life destroy one star of human hope, but I want it so that when a poor woman rocks the cradle and sings a lullaby to the dimpled darling, she will not be compelled to believe that ninety-nine chances in a hundred she is raising kindling wood for hell.

Robert Green Ingersoll

Stars, Believe, Ninety Nine

Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.290, Library of Alexandria

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Her mighty lakes, like oceans of liquid silver; her mountains with their right aerial tints; her valleys, teeming with wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes; her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her brought deep rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies, kindling waves in the magic of the summer clouds and glorious sunshine;-no, never need an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery.

Washington Irving

Beautiful, Summer, Country

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Sometimes they rose up inside her, these moments of fierce happiness, kindling out of their own substance like a spark igniting a mound of grass. It was a joy to be alive, a strange and savage joy, and she stood there in the warmth and destruction of it knowing it could not last.

Kevin Brockmeier

Knowing, Rose, Joy

Kevin Brockmeier (2011). “The Illumination”, p.37, Random House

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Yesterday, two firefighters with the Florida Division of Forestry were killed while working on the Blue Ribbon Fire in Florida. On behalf of the 3,500 firefighters on the Wallow Fire and all of us in the firefighting community, our heartfelt condolences go out to their families and their co-workers. “If Prometheus was worthy of the wrath of heaven for kindling the first fire upon earth, how ought all the gods honor those who make it their professional business to put it out?

John Godfrey Saxe

Condolences, Fire, Florida

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That's where all of us are standing now, he thought. On the fat kindling of past sins.

Walter M. Miller, Jr.

Past, Sin, Fats

Walter M. Miller Jr (2014). “A Canticle For Leibowitz”, p.154, Hachette UK

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In Shakespeare one sentence begets the next naturally; the meaning is all inwoven. He goes on kindling like a meteor through the dark atmosphere.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Dark, Atmosphere, Goes On

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1930). “Coleridge's Shakespearean criticism”

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... a wild dissolving bliss
Over my frame he breathed, approaching near,
And bent his eyes of kindling tenderness
Near mine, and on my lips impressed a lingering kiss

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Eye, Kissing, Romantic Love

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1836). “The Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley: Comprising Queen Mab, The Revolt of Islam, The Cenci...”, p.85

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I used to get on a stove wood pile at 5-6 years old and I would have a piece of stove wood and kindling bark as a pick, and I was a star.

Jerry Reed

Stars, Years, Pieces

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And thou hast stolen a jewel, Death! Shall light thy dark up like a Star. A Beacon kindling from afar Our light of love and fainting faith.

Gerald Massey

Stars, Dark, Jewels

Gerald Massey (1861). “The Poetical Works of Gerald Massey”, p.14

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