spark quotes

Rapt, twirling in thy hand a withered spray, And waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.

- Matthew Arnold
  Poems:  A New Edition,'The Scholar-Gipsy', l.119^20.

Thou waitest for the spark from heaven! and we, Light half-believers in our casual creeds† Who hesitate and falter life away, And lose tomorrow the ground won today Ah, do not we,Wanderer, await it too?

- Matthew Arnold
  Poems:  A New Edition,'The Scholar-Gipsy', l.171^4.

Gie me ae spark o' Nature's fire, That's a'the learning I desire.

- Robert Burns
  'Epistle to  J. Lapraik,  An Old Scotch Bard,1  April1785', stanza13.

Desire of power, on earth a vicious weed, Yet, sprung from high, is of celestial seed: In God 'tisglory; and when men aspire, 'Tis but a spark too much of heavenly fire.

-John Dryden
Absalom and  Achitophel, pt.1, l.305^9.

A cubic inch of some stars weighs a hundred tonsBlue tit, who could measure the power of your tiny spark of energy?

- Norman Alexander MacCaig
  'Blue Tit on a String of Peanuts'.

   A single sparkcan start a forest fire.Our forces, although small at present, will grow rapidly.

-Mao Zedong or MaoTse-tung
  Letter, 5  Jan.

This idea of weapons of mass extermination is utterly horrible, and is something that no one with a spark of humanity can tolerate. I will not pretend to obeya Government that is organizing a mass massacre of mankind.

- Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
  Speech urging civil disobedience in support of nuclear disarmament, Birmingham,15 Apr.

A single word even may be a spark of inextinguishable thought.

- Percy Bysshe Shelley
A Defence of Poetry.

The work of the individual still remains the spark that moves mankind ahead, even more than teamwork.

- Igor Ivan Sikorsky
Quoted in his NewYorkTimes obituary, 27 Oct1972.