“Life is like a fire. Flames which the passer-by forgets. Ashes which the wind scatters. A man lived.”

“What is my true substance?What will remain of me after my death?Our life is as short as a raging fire:flames the passer-by soon forgets,ashes the wind blows away.A man's life.”

“For life is a fire burning along a piece of string--or is it a fuse to a powder keg which we call God?--and the string is what we don't know, our Ignorance, and the trail of ash, which, if a gust of wind does not come, keeps the structure of the string, is History, man's Knowledge, but it is dead, and when the fire has burned up all the string, then man's Knowledge will be equal to God's Knowledge and there won't be any fire, which is Life. Or if the string leads to a powder keg, then there will be a terrific blast of fire, and even the trail of ash will be blown completely away.”

“The flames sawed in the wind and the embers paled and deepened and paled and deepened like the bloodbeat of some living thing eviscerate upon the ground before them and they watched the fire which does contain within it something of men themselves inasmuch as they are less without it and are divided from their origins and are exiles. For each fire is all fires, and the first fire and the last ever to be.”

“Scatter the ashes of the past, happy in the wind. It is so healing, when you start again.”

“Treacherous ashes hideThe fires through which you stride”