These ashes quotes will inspire you. Ashes the powdery residue left after the burning of a substance or the remains of something destroyed; ruins.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging ashes quotes, ashes sayings, and ashes proverbs.
Famous Ashes Quotes
- “The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,
When the full river of feeling overflows;-
The happy days unclouded to their close;
The sudden joys that our of darkness start
As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart
Like swallows singing down each wind that blows!” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - “I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.” ~ Jack London
- “Our passions are the true phoenixes; when the old one is burnt out, a new one rises from its ashes.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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“A man from hell is not afraid of hot ashes.” ~ Dorothy Gilman
- “Like the phoenix, socialism is reborn from every pile of ashes left day in, day out, by burnt-out human dreams and charred hopes.” ~ Zygmunt Bauman
- “It’s no good going on living in the ashes of a dead happiness.” ~ Nevil Shute
- “I wish to be cremated. One tenth of my ashes shall be given to my agent, as written in our contract.” ~ Groucho Marx
- “When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood.” ~ Frank McCourt
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“Mr. Burns comes out and flips cigar ashes on his shoes, and makes up about 90 percent of what you hear.” ~ Bobby Darin
- “Hawaii is the best form of comfort for me. When I die, I want to be cremated, and I want half my ashes spread in the Pacific around the island, the rest on the property.” ~ Richard Pryor
- “Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.” ~ Leonard Cohen
- “Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave.” ~ Thomas Browne
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“Without peace, all other dreams vanish and are reduced to ashes.” ~ Jawaharlal Nehru
- “I find that I sent wolves not shepherds to govern Ireland, for they have left me nothing but ashes and carcasses to reign over!” ~ Elizabeth I
- “Leaders should lead as far as they can and then vanish. Their ashes should not choke the fire they have lit.” ~ H. G. Wells
- “It’s best to have failure happen early in life. It wakes up the Phoenix bird in you so you rise from the ashes.” ~ Anne Baxter
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“No ashes are lighter than those of incense, and few things burn out sooner.” ~ Walter Savage Landor
- “My youth passed at the time of the country’s reconstruction from the ruins and ashes of the war in which my nation never bowed to the enemy paying the highest price in the struggle.” ~ Lech Walesa
- “You can flush my ashes down the toilet, for all I care.” ~ Carolyn Heilbrun
- “We will all, someday, experience death, and become obsolete as a dead leaf falling from a tree, crushed by passersby to ashes underlying the earth.” ~ Elizabeth Kim
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“People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes.” ~ Abigail Van Buren
- “We’ve persevered because of a belief we share with the Iraqi people – a belief that out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born in this cradle of civilization. Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility. Now, it’s time to turn the page.” ~ Barack Obama
- “And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?” ~ Thomas B. Macaulay
- “That which you create in beauty and goodness and truth lives on for all time to come. Don’t spend your life accumulating material objects that will only turn to dust and ashes.” ~ Denis Waitley
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“Real victories are those that protect human life, not those that result from its destruction or emerge from its ashes.” ~ King Hussein I
- “Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and adventures are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgotten.” ~ Neil Gaiman
- “Everyone I have lost in the closing of a door the click of the lock is not forgotten, they do not die but remain within the soft edges of the earth, the ash of house fires and cancer in sin and forgiveness huddled under old blankets dreaming their way into my hands, my heart closing tight like fists. – “Indian Boy Love Song #1” ~ Sherman Alexie
- “You know Americans are obsessed with life and death and rebirth, that’s the American Cycle. You know, awakening, tragic, horrible death and then Phoenix rising from the ashes. That’s the American story, again and again.” ~ Billy Corgan
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“Take from the altars of the past the fire – not the ashes.” ~ Jean Jaures
- “I think it would be wrong to consider ‘Ashes and Fire’ a love album. The record is obsessed with time. I believe that there is a kinder view of the self on this record.” ~ Ryan Adams
- “A mother’s love is a blessing No matter where you roam. Keep her while you have her, You’ll miss her when she’s gone — Angela’s Ashes.” ~ Frank McCourt
- “Fighting fire with fire only gets you ashes!” ~ Abigail Van Buren
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“Dear friends of Haiti, we are indeed on the right track. Slowly but surely we are rising from the ashes.” ~ Laurent Lamothe
- “Given the scale of trauma caused by the genocide, Rwanda has indicated that however thin the hope of a community can be, a hero always emerges. Although no one can dare claim that it is now a perfect state, and that no more work is needed, Rwanda has risen from the ashes as a model or truth and reconciliation.” ~ Wole Soyinka
- “Metallica is like the phoenix rising from the ashes. We set everything on fire, and this is what has risen from it – ‘St. Anger’ being the fire and Death Magnetic being the phoenix.” ~ Kirk Hammett
- “To us, the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground.” ~ Chief Seattle
- “A normal way that the American free market system has worked is that we have a process of unwinding. It’s called bankruptcy. It doesn’t mean, necessarily, that the industry is eclipsed or that it’s gone. Often times, the phoenix rises out of the ashes.” ~ Michele Bachmann , Rise from the ashes quotes
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“In the midst of life we are in death, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection.” ~ Thomas Cranmer
- “At the age of 12 I won the school prize for Best English Essay. The prize was a copy of Somerset Maugham’s ‘Introduction To Modern English And American Literature.’ To this day I keep it on the shelf between my collection of Forester’s works and the little urn that contains my mother’s ashes.” ~ Wilbur Smith
- “I had been playing for a while, and I asked Louisville Slugger to send me a dozen flame treated bats. But when I got it, I realized they had sent me a box of ashes.” ~ Bob Uecker
- “My mom was a phoenix who always expected to rise again from the ashes of her latest disaster… She loved being Judy Garland.” ~ Lorna Luft
- “Of thousands of others, nearer the center of the explosion, there was no trace. They vanished. The theory in Hiroshima is that the atomic heat was so great that they burned instantly to ashes – except that there were no ashes.” ~ Wilfred Burchett
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“I speak of the old Japan because out of the ashes of the old Japan there has risen a new Japan.” ~ Shigeru Yoshida
- “I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, no just for tomorrow, but in the here and now. Keep moving and forget the post mortems; and remember, no one can get the jump on the future.” ~ Carl Sandburg
- “Fashion is like the ashes left behind by the uniquely shaped flames of the fire, the trace alone revealing that a fire actually took place.” ~ Paul de Man , Fire and ashes quotes
- “There is nothing more exciting in sport when the top two countries in the world are battling for the Ashes” ~ Ian Botham
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“The past is a bucket of ashes” ~ Carl Sandburg
- “The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live. My brothers are dead and my sister is dead and I wonder if they died for Ireland or for the Faith. Dad says they were too young to die for anything. Mam says it was disease and starvation and him never having a job. Dad says, Och, Angela, puts on his cap, and goes for a long walk.” ~ Frank McCourt
- “The master says it’s a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it’s a glorious thing to die for Ireland and I wonder if there’s anyone in the world who would like us to live.” ~ Frank McCourt
- “This is a valley of ashes–a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
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“The happy childhood is hardly worth your while.” ~ Frank McCourt
- “If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life.” ~ Charles Bukowski
- “The phoenix hope, can wing her way through the desert skies, and still defying fortune’s spite; revive from ashes and rise.” ~ Miguel de Cervantes
- “My husband wanted to be cremated. I told him I’d scatter his ashes at Neiman Marcus – that way, I’d visit him every day.” ~ Joan Rivers
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“Stock your mind. It is your house of treasure and no one in the world can interfere with it.” ~ Frank McCourt
- “Flowers are reincarnation. They come out of the earth of our ashes. Nothing else looks so soul-like.” ~ Francesca Lia Block
- “Lastly, the ashes left behind,
May daily show to move the mind,
That to ashes and dust return we must:
Then think, and drink tobacco.” ~ George Wither - “I dare to dream greatly; I dare to fail greatly. I dare to tolerate the ashes of my unfulfilled dreams, for I may dream again. I dare not tolerate the ashes of my unfulfilled life, for I may never live again.” ~ Philippos Syrigos
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“I’m like a phoenix. I rise from the ashes.” ~ Bess Myerson
- “For reasons of sentiment, I would like part of my ashes to be mixed up with Mama’s, and both her ashes and mine put side by side in the columbarium. We were joined in life and I would like our ashes to be joined after this life.” ~ Lee Kuan Yew
- “I want to love you simply, in words not spoken: tinder to the flame which transforms it to ash I want to love you simply, in signs not expressed: clouds to the rain which make them evanescent (Aku Ingin-I Want)” ~ Sapardi Djoko Damono
- “How can I appreciate light from an aging sun shining through new configurations neither pine nor ash? How can I extol the nurturing fragrances from the spires, the spicules of a landscape not yet formed or seeded?” ~ Pattiann Rogers
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“Glory arrives too late when it comes only to one’s ashes” ~ Marcus Aurelius
- “I don’t think we really measured the enormity of the whole occasion. I’m very, very surprised. We never expected it. When I set out in May we didn’t realize how big this was. Only now have we realized the importance of this. [on the 2005 Ashes win” ~ Duncan Fletcher
- “An innings of neurotic violence, of eccentric watchfulness, of brainless impetuosity and incontinent savagery – it was an extraordinary innings, a masterpiece and it secured the Ashes for England [on Pietersen’s Ashes-winning innings, 2005” ~ Simon Barnes
Ashes the remains of a human body after cremation.
