source: Walter Savage Landor (1933). “Classical conversations: being imaginary conversations among Greek, Roman and Modern personages of classic consequence in the history of human culture”

topic: Ashes, Incense, Burn Out, Lighters

Light the incense! You have to burn to be fragrant.

- Rumi

topic: Light, Incense

...you meditate and you got the candles, you got the incense and you've been chanting, and all of a sudden you hear this voice: 'Write this down'

- Carlos Santana

topic: Writing, Voice, Incense, Satanism

Let your thoughts be psalms, your prayers incense, and your breath praise.

- Charles Spurgeon

source: Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1885). “Sermons of Rev. C.H. Spurgeon of London ...”

topic: Psalms, Incense

Better do a good deed near at home than go far away to burn incense.

- Amelia Earhart

topic: Home, Reality, Deeds, Chinese Proverb, Incense

The groves were God's first temples.

- William C. Bryant

source: William Cullen Bryant, Thomas G. Voss (1975). “The Letters of William Cullen Bryant: 1865-1871”, p.49, Fordham Univ Press

topic: Nature, Tree, Firsts, Inspirational Tree, Arbor Day

Nothing is true but Love, nor aught of worth; Love is the incense which doth sweeten earth.

- Richard Chenevix Trench

source: Richard Chenevix Trench (1865). “Poems: Collected and Arranged Anew”, p.33

topic: Love, Love Is, Earth, Incense

I do not feel like writing verses; but as I light my perfume burner with myrrh and jasmine incense, they suddenly burgeon from my heart, like flowers in a garden.

- Hafez

topic: Flower, Writing, Heart, Jasmine, Incense

The green earth sends her incense up. From many a mountain shrine; From folded leaf and dewey cup She pours her sacred wine.

- John Greenleaf Whittier

source: John Greenleaf Whittier, “The Worship Of Nature”

topic: Wine, Mountain, Cups, Incense

I'm in awe of the universe, but I don't necessarily believe there's an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.

- David Bowie

source: "Interview with Congressman-Elect Tim Scott". Interview with John King, www.realclearpolitics.com. November 5, 2010.

topic: Religious, Buddhist, Powerful, Religious Rituals, Incense

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet.

- John Keats

topic: Sweet, Flower, Feet, Incense

I sing the sweets I know, the charms I feel, my morning incense, and my evening meal, the sweets of hasty pudding.

- Joel Barlow

source: 1796 'The Hasty-Pudding', canto1

topic: Sweet, Morning, Meals, Palate, Incense

In Nepal, the phenomenon is reversed. Time is a stick of incense that burns without being consumed. One day can seem like a week; a week, like months. Mornings stretch out and crack their spines with the yogic impassivity of house cats. Afternoons bulge with a succulent ripeness, like fat peaches. There is time enough to do everything - write a letter, eat breakfast, read the paper, visit a shrine or two, listen to the birds, bicycle downtown to change money, buy postcards, shop for Buddhas - and arrive home in time for lunch.

- Jeff Greenwald

source: Jeff Greenwald (2014). “Shopping for Buddhas: An Adventure in Nepal”, p.16, Travelers' Tales

topic: Morning, Cat, Home, Consumed, Nepal

I like cinnamon rolls, but I don't always have time to make a pan. That's why I wish they would sell cinnamon roll incense. After all I'd rather light a stick and have my roommate wake up with false hopes.

- Mitch Hedberg

topic: Funny, Humor, Light, False Hope, Cinnamon

It is by far the most elegant worship, hardly excepting the Greek mythology. What with incense, pictures, statues, altars, shrines, relics, and the real presence, confession, absolution, - there is something sensible to grasp at. Besides, it leaves no possibility of doubt; for those who swallow their Deity, really and truly, in transubstantiation, can hardly find any thing else otherwise than easy of digestion.

- Lord Byron

topic: Real, Greek, Doubt, Absolution, Incense

All philanthropy ... is only a savory fumigation burning at the mouth of a sewer. This incense offering makes the air more endurable to passers-by, but it does not hinder the infection in the sewer from spreading.

- Ellen Key

topic: Air, Offering, Doe, Savory, Infection

Men professing godliness offer their bodies upon Satan's altar, and burn the incense of tobacco to his satanic majesty. Does this statement seem severe? The offering must be presented to some deity. Since God is pure and holy, and will accept nothing defiling in its character, He refuses this expensive, filthy, and unholy sacrifice; therefore we conclude that Satan is the one who claims the honor.

- Ellen G. White

source: Ellen G. White (2000). “Steps to Christ for a Joy-Filled Life”

topic: Character, Sacrifice, Men, Incense, Godliness

I loved every second of Catholic church. I loved the sickly sweet rotting-pomegranate smells of the incense. I loved the overwrought altar, the birdbath of holy water, the votive candles; I loved that there was a poor box, the stations of the cross rendered in stained glass on the windows.

- Anne Lamott

topic: Sweet, Smell, Glasses, Stained Glass Windows, Holy Water

Not on morality, but on cookery, let us build our stronghold: there brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and live at ease on the fat things he has provided for his elect!

- Thomas Carlyle

source: Thomas Carlyle (1871). “The Collected Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.99

topic: Sweet, Cooking, Devil, Strongholds, Frying Pans

As God is propitiated by the blood of a hundred bulls, so also is he by the smallest offering of incense. [Lat., Sed tamen ut fuso taurorum sanguine centum, Sic capitur minimo thuris honore deux.]

- Ovid

topic: God, Blood, Offering, Sanguine, Red Bull

No erudition, no purity of diction, no width of mental outlook, no flowers of eloquence, no grace of person can atone for lack of fire. Prayer ascends by fire. Flame gives prayer access as well as wings, acceptance as well as energy. There is no incense without fire; no prayer without flame.

- Edward McKendree Bounds

source: Edward McKendree Bounds (1976). “The necessity of prayer”, Baker Pub Group

topic: Prayer, Flower, Acceptance, Width, Erudition

Where shall we get religion? Beneath the open sky, the sphere of crystal silence surcharged with deity.. The midnight earth sends incense up, sweet with the breath of prayer -- Go out beneath the naked night and get religion there.

- Sam Walter Foss

topic: Sweet, Prayer, Night, Incense

To play the piano is to consort with nature. Every mollusk, galaxy, vapor or viper as well the sweet incense of love's distraction, is within the hands and grasp of the pianist.

- Russell Sherman

topic: Sweet, Hands, Play, Vipers, Mollusks

Secrecy is as essential to intelligence as vestments and incense to a Mass or darkness to a spiritualist sÃ©ance and must at all times be maintained, quite irrespective of whether or not it serves any purpose.

- Malcolm Muggeridge

topic: Darkness, Essentials, Purpose, Espionage, Incense

I loved the quiet places in Kyoto, the places that held the world within a windless moment. Inside the temples, Nature held her breath. All longing was put to sleep in the stillness, and all was distilled into a clean simplicity. The smell of woodsmoke, the drift of incense; a procession of monks in black-and-gold robes, one of them giggling in a voice yet unbroken; a touch of autumn in the air, a sense of gathering rain.

- Pico Iyer

topic: Rain, Sleep, Autumn, Quiet Place, Procession

Moved by their selfish desires, people seek after fame and glory. But when they have acquired it, they are already stricken in years. If you hanker after worldly fame and practise not the Way, your labors are wrongfully applied and your energy is wasted. It is like unto burning an incense stick. However much its pleasing odor be admired, the fire that consumes is steadily burning up the stick.

- Gautama Buddha

topic: Selfish, Fire, Years, Practise, Incense

When the mind is possessed of reality, it feels tranquil and joyous even without music or song, and it produces a pure fragrance even without incense or tea.

- Zicheng Hong

topic: Music, Song, Reality, Incense

A few minutes ago every tree was excited, bowing to the roaring storm, waving, swirling, tossing their branches in glorious enthusiasm like worship. But though to the outer ear these trees are now silent, their songs never cease.

- John Muir

topic: Song, Tree, Storm, Inspirational Tree, Olive Trees

It's important to read a book, but also to hold the book, to smell the book... it's perfume, it's incense, it's the dust of Egypt...

- Ray Bradbury

topic: Book, Dust, Smell, Incense

My writing routine is everyday I put a record on, the same one since 20 years. Then I burn a stick of incense, I put perfume here on the insides of my soles, I paint my left ***** red, and I write.

- Alejandro Jodorowsky

topic: Writing, Years, Everyday, Testicles, Incense

So will I build my altar in the fields, And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be, And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields Shall be the incense I will yield to thee.

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

topic: Sweet, Flower, Blue, Incense

In the fall of 1988, I worshipped God in a Buddhist temple. As the smell of incense filled the air, I knelt before three images of the Buddha, feeling that the smoke could carry my prayers heavenward. It was for me a holy moment for I was certain that I was kneeling on holy ground....I will not make any further attempt to convert the Buddhist, the Jew, the Hindu or the Moslem. I am content to learn from them and to walk with them side by side toward the God who lives, I believe, beyond the images that bind and blind us.

- John Shelby Spong

topic: Buddhist, Prayer, Believe, Incense, Holy Ground

. . . the fools of this world prefer to look for sages far away. They don't believe that the wisdom of their own mind is the sage . . . the sutras say, "Mind is the teaching." But people of no understanding don't believe in their own mind or that by understanding this teaching they can become a sage. They prefer to look for distant knowledge and long for things in space, buddha-images, light, incense, and colors. They fall prey to falsehood and lose their minds to insanity.

- Bodhidharma

topic: Believe, Fall, Teaching, Incense

Oh! none are so absorb'd, as not to feel Sweet thoughts like music coming o'er the mind: When prayer, the purest incense of a soul, Hath risen to the throne of heaven, the heart Is mellow'd, and the shadows that becloud Our state of darken'd being, glide away;...

- Robert Montgomery

source: Robert Montgomery (1829). “A universal prayer ; Death ; A vision of heaven ; and A vision of hell”, p.144

topic: Sweet, Prayer, Heart, Sweet Thoughts, Incense

I plant rosemary all over the garden, so pleasant is it to know that at every few steps one may draw the kindly branchlets through one's hand, and have the enjoyment of their incomparable incense; and I grow it against walls, so that the sun may draw out its inexhaustible sweetness to greet me as I pass.

- Gertrude Jekyll

source: Gertrude Jekyll (2011). “Home and Garden: Notes and Thoughts, Practical and Critical, of a Worker in Both”, p.184, Cambridge University Press

topic: Wall, Garden, Hands, Rosemary, Incense

A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life.

- Norman Cousins

topic: Book, Reading, Ideas, Modifying, Library Books

Almighty Framer of the Skies!O let our pure devotion rise,Like Incense in thy Sight!Wrapt in impenetrable Shade,The Texture of our Souls were made,Till thy Command gave Light.

- Thomas Chatterton

source: Thomas Chatterton, Charles Bonnycastle Willcox (1842). “The Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton: Acknowledged poems. Chatterton's will. Miscellaneous prose works”, p.324

topic: Light, Sight, Sky, Incense

Those magicians who object to the use of blood, have endeavored to replace it with incense. But, the bloody sacrifice, though more dangerous, is more efficacious. And for nearly all purposes, human sacrifice is the best.

- Aleister Crowley

source: Aleister Crowley (1991). “Magick: In Theory and Practice”, Book Sales

topic: Sacrifice, Blood, Purpose, Incense

Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings.

- John Muir

topic: Cells, Music And Life, Fiber, Inspirational Tree, Olive Trees

Love lieth deep; Love dwells not in lip-depths; Love laps his wings on either side the heart Absorbing all the incense of sweet thoughts, So that they pass not to the shrine of sound.

- Alfred Lord Tennyson

topic: Sweet, Heart, Deep Love, Sweet Thoughts, Love Lies

The Holy Night We sate among the stalls at Bethlehem; The dumb kine from their fodder turning them, Softened their horned faces To almost human gazes Toward the newly Born: The simple shepherds from the star-lit brooks Brought visionary looks, As yet in their astonied hearing rung The strange sweet angel-tongue: The magi of the East, in sandals worn, Knelt reverent, sweeping round, With long pale beards, their gifts upon the ground, The incense, myrrh, and gold These baby hands were impotent to hold: So let all earthlies and celestials wait Upon thy royal state. Sleep, sleep, my kingly One!