Candles
solid block of wax with embedded wick
Candles are a traditional method of providing illumination, now superseded for most purposes by electric lightbulbs.
And the life of the candle will not be shortened.
Happiness never decreases by being shared. ~ Gautama Buddha
Quotes
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Played in a box whose candle is the sun.
~ Edward Fitzgerald
~ Benjamin Franklin
~ Stephen Harper
It will not last the night;
But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends —
It gives a lovely light.
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
but life, life is melting down
like a candle that is flickering around.
~ Suman Pokhrel
When gold and silver becks me to come on.
~ William Shakespeare
- Alphabetized by author
- All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.
- Francis of Assisi, The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi
- Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle,
And the life of the candle will not be shortened.
Happiness never decreases by being shared.- Gautama Buddha (attributed), Sutta Nipata
- Some say, that Signor Bononcini,
Compared to Handel's a mere ninny;
Others aver, to him, that Handel
Is scarcely fit to hold a candle.
Strange! that such high dispute should be
'Twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee.- John Byrom, On the Feuds between Handel and Bononcini.
- They say rather than cursing the darkness, one should light a candle. They don't mention anything about cursing a lack of candles.
- George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? (2004)
- I wonder if that's the reason insects are so fond of flying into candles - because they want to turn into Snap-dragon-flies!
- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass (1871), Chapter 3.
- "If that there King was to wake," added Tweedledum, "you'd go out - bang! - just like a candle!"
- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, Chapter 4.
- The candles all grew up to the ceiling, looking something like a bed of rushes with fireworks at the top.
- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, Chapter 9.
- His intimate friends called him "Candle-ends"
- Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark (1874), Fit the First.
- No, not dead. But the candle in that great turnip has gone out.
- When someone said "One never hears of Baldwin nowadays - he might as well be dead".
- Winston Churchill, recorded in Harold Nicolson's diary for 17 August 1950.
- I am against an adjournment. The day of judgment is either approaching, or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause of an adjournment: if it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I wish therefore that candles may be brought.
- Abraham Davenport, in response to a call for adjourning the Connecticut State Council because of fears that New England's Dark Day might be a sign that the Last Judgment was approaching, as quoted by Timothy Dwight, in Connecticut Historical Collectons 2d ed (1836) compiled by John Warner Barber, p. 403.
- 'Tis nothing but a magic shadow-show,
Played in a box whose candle is the sun- Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1st ed, 1859), stanza 46.
- The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason: the morning daylight appears plainer when you put out your candle.
- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack (1758), Chapter "On Virtue, Vice, God, And Faith".
- I believe that it is better to light one candle than to promise a million light bulbs.
- Stephen Harper, as quoted in The New York Times (24 January 2006)
- Then, she lit up a candle and she showed me the way.
- Don Henley, "Hotel California" (1976), Hotel California, Asylum Records
- He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Isaac McPherson (13 August 1813) ME 13:333.
- And it seems to me you lived your life
Like a candle in the wind- Elton John, Candle in the Wind.
- It is burning a farthing candle at Dover, to shew light at Calais.
- Samuel Johnson, of Thomas Sheridan's influence on the English language; reported in Boswell's Life of Johnson (28 July 1763).
- We shall this day light such a candle by God's grace in England, as (I trust) shall never be put out.
- Hugh Latimer, just before his execution by burning; quoted by John Foxe, Actes and Monuments (1570) p. 1937.
- To light a candle is to cast a shadow.
- Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea (1968), Chapter 3.
- On the Coast of Coromandel
Where the early pumpkins blow,
In the middle of the woods
Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.
Two old chairs, and half a candle,
One old jug without a handle,
These were all his worldly goods- Edward Lear, The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò.
- My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends —
It gives a lovely light.- Edna St. Vincent Millay, "First Fig" from A Few Figs from Thistles (1920).
- This ambiance of candlelight reminds of nights that traveled its way, in entangled embrace of yours and mine.
- Suman Pokhrel, A Reminiscent Candlelight
- Every moment age is creeping up stealthily,
but life, life is melting down
like a candle that is flickering around.- Suman Pokhrel, A Birthday Greeting to Myself
- Death is shaping up slowly and quietly
but life, life is melting down
like a candle that is flickering all night.- Suman Pokhrel, A Birthday Greeting to Myself
- The light that shines at the wick of a tallow candle is made of fire and related to the light of sacred lamps.
- Grace Rhys, The Quest of the Ideal (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1913), p. 37.
- Bell, book and candle shall not drive me back,
When gold and silver becks me to come on.- William Shakespeare, King John, III, iii, line 12.
- Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.- William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, scene v.
- Thus hath the candle singed the moth.
- William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, II, ix, line 79.
- In winter I get up at night,
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer quite the other way
I have to go to bed by day.- Robert Louis Stevenson, In Winter I get up at Night.
- The candle by which she had been reading the book filled with trouble and deceit, sorrow and evil, flared up with a brighter light, illuminating for her everything that before had been enshrouded in darkness, flickered, grew dim, and went out forever.
- Leo Tolstoy trans. Rosemary Edmonds, Anna Karenina, part 7, chapter 31.
- A single candle can lit a thousand candles without losing anything. [...] Let us be like those shining candles [...] benefitting all sentient beings.
- Thích Nhật Từ, Inner Freedom: A Spiritual Journey for Prison Inmates (2008), ISBN 1741893909.
- Denunciatory rhetoric is so much easier and cheaper than good works, and proves a popular temptation. Yet it is far better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
- William Lonsdale Watkinson, "The Invincible Strategy" in The Supreme Conquest and Other Sermons (1907)
- "This well may be
The Day of Judgment which the world awaits;
But be it so or not, I only know
My present duty, and my Lord's command
To occupy till He come. So at the post
Where He hath set me in His providence,
I choose, for one, to meet Him face to face, —
No faithless servant frightened from my task,
But ready when the Lord of the harvest calls;
And therefore, with all reverence, I would say,
Let God do His work, we will see to ours.
Bring in the candles." And they brought them in.- John Greenleaf Whittier, quoting or paraphrasing Abraham Davenport in his poem "Abraham Davenport" (May 1866).
- How commentators each dark passage shun,
And hold their farthing candle to the sun- Edward Young, Love of Fame (1725-1728), Satire vii, Line 97.
