Each book starts from ashes.
Harry," she said quietly, "I know you must be angry. " I burn things to ash and smash holes in buildings when I'm angry," I said. "I'm a couple of steps past that point right now.
Is it any wonder, since, when near the fire, I was melted and burned, if now that it's extinguished outside me, it besets and consumes me inside, and bit by bit reduces me to ashes?
[Michael Hastings] has composed a dirge to incompatibility, which, because it raises expectations only to defeat them, leaves a taste of exhumed ashes.
What a heap of ash most political careers amount to, when one really stops to consider them!
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.
To the ashes of the dead glory comes too late.
Gold once out of the earth is no more due unto it; what was unreasonably committed to the ground, is reasonably resumed from it; let monuments and rich fabricks, not riches, adorn men's ashes.
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
Then they set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other's world entire.
I shall show the cinders of my spirits Through the ashes of my chance.
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.
Books are not life, only its ashes.
No act of virtue can be great if it is not followed by advantage for others. So, no matter how much time you spend fasting, no matter how much you sleep on a hard floor and eat ashes and sigh continually, if you do no good to others, you do nothing great.
The temple of fame stands upon the grave: the flame that burns upon its altars is kindled from the ashes of great men.
I long for the day that "Roe v. Wade" is sent to the ash heap of history.
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. We are nothing, but dust and to dust we shall return. Amen.
But man is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing Nativities and Deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting Ceremonies of Bravery, in the infamy of his nature. Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us.
St. Ash – who knew? (Gallagher)
you must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame; how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?