A garland of quotations CXIV

Culled from the finest tertiary arsonists in literary history, and re-woven every Wednesday

Nay, Prometheus himself is the cause of man’s misery—Prometheus who cares for poor mortals! Instead of fire which is the beginning of all evil he ought rather to have stolen sweet nectar, which rejoices the heart of the gods, and given that to men, that he might have scattered the furrows of the world.
•Nonnos, Dionysiaca (C5).

The philosopher who would fain extinguish his passions resembles the chemist who would like to let his furnace go out.
•Nicholas Chamfort, Maxims, Thoughts, Characters and Anecdotes (1796).

STOP DROP
AND ROLL
WON’T WORK IN HELL
•sign outside Greater Deliverance Tabernacle Holiness Church, Memphis, TN (ca. 2006).

No.
I will not get you water for the simple reason that you are not on fire.
•Alex Robinson, Tricked (2005).

There is no Fire Department, for there is no need of one. It appears that only a few worlds in the universe use inflammable materials for structural purposes, and we are one of them.
•W.S. Harris, Life in a Thousand Worlds (1905).

As they were on their way from the lodgings to the sultan’s palace, Brother Yves caught sight of an old woman going across the street, with a bowl full of flaming coals in her right hand and a flask filled with water in her left. “What are you going to do with these?” he asked her. The old woman answered that with the fire she intended to burn up paradise and destroy it utterly, and with the water she would quench the fires of hell, so that it too would be gone for ever. “Why do you want to do that?” asked Brother Yves. “Because,” said she, “I don’t want anyone to do good in the hope of gaining paradise, or from fear of hell; but solely from the love of God.”
•Jean de Joinville, The Life of Saint Louis (1309).

The hottest water extinguishes fire.
•Johann Kaspar Lavater, Aphorisms on Man. Translated from the Original Manuscript of the Rev. John Caspar Lavater, Citizen of Zuric (1787).

Death! great proprietor of all! ’tis thine
To tread out empire, and to quench the stars.
The sun himself by thy permission shines;
And, one day, thou shalt pluck him from his sphere.
•Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742).

White as her hand fair Julia threw
    A ball of silver snow;
The frozen globe fir’d as it flew,
    My bosom felt it glow.

Strange pow’r of love! whose great command
    Can thus a snow-ball arm;
When sent, fair Julia, from thine hand,
    Ev’n ice itself can warm.

How should we then secure our hearts?
    Love’s pow’r we all must feel,
Who thus can, by strange magic arts,
    In ice his flames conceal.

’Tis thou alone, fair Julia, know,
    Canst quench my fierce desire;
But not with water, ice, or snow,
    But with an equal fire.
•Soame Jenyns, “The Snow-Ball” (1770).

He flees no fire
Who jumps over it.
•Hrólfs saga kraka (C14).

Sources: Nonnos: trans. W.H.D. Rouse (Loeb/Harvard UP, 1995); Chamfort: The Cynic's Breviary (Elkin Matthews, 1902); Greater Deliverance Tabernacle Holiness: in Steve and Pam Paulson, Church Signs Across America (Overlook, 2006); Joinville: trans. M.R.B. Shaw in Chronicles of the Crusades (Penguin, 1963); Jenyns: The Works of Soame Jenyns, Esq. (Cadell, 1790); Hrólfs: trans. Jesse L. Byock, The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki (Penguin, 1998); some of this material is copyrighted, and I plead only fair use.