flames

I couldn't believe I let him see me like this, unable to fend for myself. I fumed in disgust at my vulnerability. I didn't want Evan to think I needed protecting. I pulled back my torment and let the numb blanket envelop me, pushing away the stirred memories, the noise of the crowd, and the trembling that still lay beneath the surface. I stared at the flames licking at the darkness and everything was lost as I sank deeper into nothingness.

...He sat back on his heels and watched the stars one by one cut their way through onrushing darkness, till all was reversed, day was night, and the blackness glittered with all the desert's sands, each a tiny flame beyond the bounds of time.

I want your scent to intoxicate my passions to the point where lust is merely a word, dancing upon our flames of desire...

What are you doing?" Alain asked."Starting a fire, of course." Mari held up the thing in her hand. "It's a fire-starter. A really simple device. Haven't you ever seen one?"Alain shook his head. "Never. That thing seems very complicated. I do not understand how it can work." "How do you start fires?"That was a Guild secret. Or was it? The elders had told him that no Mechanic could understand how it worked. What would this Mechanic say if he told her? "I use my mind to channel power to create a place where it is hot, altering the nature of the illusion there," Alain explained, "and then use my mind to put that heat on what I want to burn.""Oh," Mechanic Mari said. "Is that actually how you visualize the process?""That is how it is done," Alain said."That's...interesting." She grinned. "So, instead of making fire by doing something complicated or hard to understand like striking a flint, you just alter the nature of reality. That is a lot simpler.

The last time she was up here, she had been... staring up at the sky and dreaming of stars. Now, she looked down and plotted flames.

Kill the blames and you will put your shames into blazing flames. Look for solutions, not problems!

You two would get on like a house on fire. Don't douse the flames before you've struck a match.

You kissed me that morning as if you__ never done it before and never would again and now I write another letter that I will never dare to send, collecting memories of loss like chains tight around my chest,and if you see a fire from the shore tonightit__ my chains going up in flames.

The blazing fire burns to light.

People who are unable to stand within the dark places of life, those who are always running towards their happy places, are the same things as candles without flames. There is no worth in a candle without a flame, and we only add the flame when there is darkness. Without darkness, there would be no need for warriors and angels. Warriors are not made because the whole world is happy and angels were not formed because there are no demons. Be of worth, have a flame.

Faith is the flame that eliminates fear, and faith is the emperor of dreams.

Sometimes what__ dead must be burned away to make room for new life. Sometimes you just have to step back and let the brittle bits ignite - but once those flames begin to dance their caustic dance, don__ you dare look the other way. Don__ close your eyes. Watch closely and let that image seer itself forever on your mind. Remember what it looked like in the midst of the soot, the smoke, and the haze. Remember, so you don__ repeat the same conditions that required such a blaze.

No matter the joy in heaven, its coldness will make you bask beside the flames of hell.

If there is still one hellish, truly accursed thing in our time, it is our artistic dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the stake, signaling through the flames.

They__ reached the point of no return, and she wanted to throw herself into the fire until the flames melted away the years of ice that claimed her.

Lovers dream of one more embrace.One more kiss.One act of love, no matter how small.For in loving, lover and belovedemptied themselves.Now, they look for their oasislike men engulfed in flames.Even filled to the brim, they will never satiate. For they continue to leak, thesecracked vessels.How else did love seep through?

Those candle flames were like the lives of men. So fragile. So deadly. Left alone, they lit and warmed. Let run rampant, they would destroy the very things they were meant to illuminate. Embryonic bonfires, each bearing a seed of destruction so potent it could tumble cities and dash kings to their knees.

If the Pentateuch be true, religious persecution is a duty. The dungeons of the Inquisition were temples, and the clank of every chain upon the limbs of heresy was music in the ear of God. If the Pentateuch was inspired, every heretic should be destroyed; and every man who advocates a fact inconsistent with the sacred book, should be consumed by sword and flame.In the Old Testament no one is told to reason with a heretic, and not one word is said about relying upon argument, upon education, nor upon intellectual development__othing except simple brute force. Is there to-day a christian who will say that four thousand years ago, it was the duty of a husband to kill his wife if she differed with him upon the subject of religion? Is there one who will now say that, under such circumstances, the wife ought to have been killed? Why should God be so jealous of the wooden idols of the heathen? Could he not compete with Baal? Was he envious of the success of the Egyptian magicians? Was it not possible for him to make such a convincing display of his power as to silence forever the voice of unbelief? Did this God have to resort to force to make converts? Was he so ignorant of the structure of the human mind as to believe all honest doubt a crime? If he wished to do away with the idolatry of the Canaanites, why did he not appear to them? Why did he not give them the tables of the law? Why did he only make known his will to a few wandering savages in the desert of Sinai? Will some theologian have the kindness to answer these questions? Will some minister, who now believes in religious liberty, and eloquently denounces the intolerance of Catholicism, explain these things; will he tell us why he worships an intolerant God? Is a god who will burn a soul forever in another world, better than a christian who burns the body for a few hours in this? Is there no intellectual liberty in heaven? Do the angels all discuss questions on the same side? Are all the investigators in perdition? Will the penitent thief, winged and crowned, laugh at the honest folks in hell? Will the agony of the damned increase or decrease the happiness of God? Will there be, in the universe, an eternal auto da fe?