These incense quotes will inspire you. Incense, a gum, spice, or other substance that is burned for the sweet smell it produces.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging incense quotes, incense sayings, and incense proverbs.
Best Incense Quotes
- “Light the incense! You have to burn to be fragrant.” ~ Rumi
- “Let your thoughts be psalms, your prayers incense, and your breath praise.” ~ Charles Spurgeon
- “At the end of our lives we hope we will look back and, like an incense stick completely burned away, will have poured forth all our fragrance into the world.” ~ Prem Prakash
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“Better do a good deed near at home than go far away to burn incense.” ~ Amelia Earhart
- “Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!” ~ Robert Browning
- “No ashes are lighter than those of incense, and few things burn out sooner.” ~ Walter Savage Landor
- “The groves were God’s first temples.” ~ William C. Bryant
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“Nothing is true but Love, nor aught of worth; Love is the incense which doth sweeten earth.” ~ Richard Chenevix Trench
- “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
- “I take a baths all the time. I’ll put on some music and burn some incense and just sit in the tub and think, Wow, life is great right now.” ~ Brian Austin Green
- “Orchidbreathing incense into butterfly’s wings” ~ Matsuo Basho
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“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
- “…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
- “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
- “You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.” ~ John Ruskin
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“One grain of incense with devotion offer’d
‘S beyond all perfumes of Sabaean spices.” ~ Philip Massinger
- “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
- “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
- “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
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“The praise of a fool is incense to the wisest of us . . .” ~ Benjamin Disraeli
- “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
- “How silent, how spacious, what room for all, yet without place to insert an atom–in graceful succession, in equal fullness, in balanced beauty, the dance of the hours goes forward still. Like an odor of incense, like a strain of music, like a sleep, it is inexact and boundless. It will not be dissected, nor unraveled, nor shown.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “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 wood smoke, 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 -
“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 testicle red, and I write.” ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky
- “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. Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings, while incense is ever flowing from the balsam bells and leaves. No wonder the hills and groves were God’s first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself.” ~ John Muir
- “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
- “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
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“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
- “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
- “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
- “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 -
“I sing the sweets I know, the charms I feel, my morning incense, and my evening meal, the sweets of hasty pudding.” ~ Joel Barlow
- “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 , Incense quotes prayer
- “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
- “Secrecy is as essential to intelligence as vestments and incense to a Mass or darkness to a spiritualist séance and must at all times be maintained, quite irrespective of whether or not it serves any purpose.” ~ Malcolm Muggeridge
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“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
- “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
- “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
- “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
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“So will I build my altar in the fields, And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be, And the sweet fragrance that the wildflower yields Shall be the incense I will yield to thee.” ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- “. . . 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
- “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
- “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
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“A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life.” ~ Norman Cousins
- “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
- “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 - “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
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“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
- “Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings.” ~ John Muir
- “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!” ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning
- “To be resigned when ills betide,
Patient when favours are deni’d,
And pleas’d with favours given, –
Dear Chloe, this is wisdom’s part;
This is that incense of the heart
Whose fragrance smells to heaven.” ~ Nathaniel Cotton -
“Incense. Books. Just weird.” ~ Shaquille O’Neal
- “No wonder the hills and groves were God’s first temples, and the more they are cut down and hewn into cathedrals and churches, the farther off and dimmer seems the Lord himself.” ~ John Muir
- “It took me some time to learn that although everyone secretly cherishes the ambition to be ‘put in a book,’ no one is ever satisfied with anything save incense, butter, and honey, unrelieved by salt or spice.” ~ Gertrude Atherton
- “When I’m off the road, my husband and I recharge our batteries. It’s a day of deep rest and connection with the spiritual, and that can be anything – going for a walk in nature, being in silence, burning incense.” ~ Alanis Morissette
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“The smell of roasting meat together with that of burning fruitwood and dried herbs, as voluptuous as incense in a church, is enough to turn anyone into a budding gastronome” ~ Claudia Roden
- “You need to turn your room into a place of power. It’s a good idea to have flowers around, candles, incense, you know, happy things. Make your room into a beautiful place and keep it impeccably clean.” ~ Frederick Lenz
- “Being a cult figure in one’s own lifetime I am afraid is not at all pleasant. However I do not find that it tends to puff one up: in my case at any rate it makes me feel extremely small and inadequate. But even the nose of a very modest idol cannot remain entirely untickled by the sweet smell of incense.” ~ J. R. R. Tolkien
- “As soon as I find myself in the presence of a rich man, I cannot help looking upon him as an exceptional and beautiful being, as a sort of marvellous divinity, and, in spite of myself, surmounting my will and my reason, I feel rising, from the depths of my being, toward this rich man, who is very often an imbecile, and sometimes a murderer, something like an incense of admiration. Is it not stupid? And why? Why?” ~ Octave Mirbeau
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“Father of rosy day, No more thy clouds of incense rise; But waking flow’rs, At morning hours, Give out their sweets to meet thee in the skies.” ~ Thomas Hood
- “The perfume of the flowers and of the bay tree are wafted on high, like incense. The birds sing sweet songs of praise to their Creator. In the tops of the trees, the soughing of the wind is like the hushed prayers of the multitude in some vast cathedral. Here the heart of man becomes impressionable.” ~ William Wendt
- “If you were to close your eyes and walk into a place of worship, the sounds and smells would alert you to where you were: ringing bells, incense, the rumble of a massive organ. Most brands are lacking these sensory stimuli.” ~ Martin Lindstrom
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“I feel like I’m being too Zen. I’m inhaling too much patchouli and incense. It’s embarrassing.” ~ Jimmy Fallon
- “My reality is that God speaks to you every day. There’s an inner voice, and when you hear it, you get a little tingle in your medulla oblongata at the back of your neck, a little shiver, and at two o’clock in the morning, everything’s really quiet and 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. It is just an inner voice, and you trust it. That voice will never take you to the desert.” ~ Carlos Santana
- “Candlesticks and incense not being portable into the maintop, the sailor perceives these decorations to be, on the whole, inessential to a maintop mass. Sails must be set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint’s day; and it is found that no harm comes of it. Absolution on a lee-shore must be had of the breakers, it appears, if at all; and they give plenary and brief without listening to confession.” ~ John Ruskin
