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Quotes About Incense

Gradually our surroundings became more residential. We passed wide, open doorways. These I checked automatically, but they offered no danger, only miscellaneous domestic scenes: four elderly women absorbed in a game of mahjong; a group of boys surrounding a television; a family at the supper table. We passed an old shrine, its red paint peeling in the tropical moisture. Incense from the brazier within pervaded my senses with the recollected emotions of childhood.
~ Barry Eisler
We believe that the dead have power," May translated. The old man gestured toward the corner of his room, where framed black and white photos of an Asian man and woman stood between two sticks of incense in front of a red backdrop decorated with gold lettering.
~ Bentley Little
with the few small spots of light like golden stars in the night, the sweet stale scent of incense, and the warm smell of the burning wax. And she at rest within her own star.
~ Sigrid Undset
When religious ritual is not perfumed By the incense of burning flesh
~ Maya Angelou
The term incense now refers to any material used to produce a fragrant aroma when burned, but it originally referred specifically to gum resins exuded by Boswellia trees. As the word began to be used more generally, these gum resins became known as frankincense, meaning true (frank) incense.
~ Judika Illes
They receive their clients in a study purposely decked out with small statues of our Lady, the saints, candles, incense, soft light, and everything that serves to create a magical, esoterical atmosphere, so useful in subjugating the naive adventurers. ... They are swindlers who make money at the expense of poor simpletons who entrust themselves to them to resolve their problems.
~ Fr. Gabriele Amorth
Valetta, he said, thinking she still looked good, then abandoning his Spidey sense long enough to let her take him in her arms, the skin of her bare shoulder in a halter top cool against his shoulder, the lady most definitely giving off that heavy 1978 Spencer's smell of love candles and sandlewood incense but, laid over top of it, the stink of cigarette, the instant-potatoes smell you might find in the interior of a beat-to-shit Toronado. Damn.
~ Michael Chabon
Shrine after shrine has crumbled before our eyes; but one altar if forever preserved, that whereon we burn incense to the supreme idol,-ourselves.
~ Kakuzo Okakura
Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird, Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight, Lark without song, and messenger of dawn, Circling above the hamlets as thy nest; Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts; By night star-veiling, and by day Darkening the light and blotting out the sun; Go thou my incense upward from this hearth, And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame.
~ Henry David Thoreau
My first experience of doing martial arts was weird, real traditional, strange smell with incense burning. We did a lot of bowing, it was a lot of path of least resistance and go with the flow... Really good stuff for when you're at a young age.
~ Nick Diaz
Churches crack me up. They're like money, a conspiracy of faith. Like everyone agreed to believe that not only is there a God, but he comes down and checks on folks, so long as they hang in certain places, put up alters, burn lots of candles and incense, and perform sit-stand-kneel and other wacky rituals that'd make a coven of witches not look OCD.
~ Karen Marie Moning
As Caleb got caught up into his descriptions they turned more into a narrative as if they were right there in the tent watching it all. "Eleazer opens that curtain with trembling hands, protected by his incense, to stand before the ark of the covenant. The ark is about three and a half feet long by two feet wide and high, and made of acacia wood overlaid with finely crafted gold.
~ Brian Godawa
Inside was the holy place, a huge candelabra, some incense stands, and then the curtained Holy of Holies where the Ark of Covenant housed their god Yahweh. Or at least that is all Longinus had been told by his rabbi informant.
~ Brian Godawa
The air smelled exotically of old incense and Shan's skin prickled as if emanations from past conjourings still crackled in the folds of the universe.
~ Storm Constantine
It turns out that magical mice high on incense are really good at not being caught.
~ Naomi Novik
And the forest perfume — trees and earth — it's like incense in a shrine. You fall into a state of... prayer.
~ Keiichi Sigsawa
Suchness In the theosophy of light, The logical universal Ceases to be anything more Than the dead body of an angel. What is substance? Our substance Is whatever we feed our angel. The perfect incense for worship Is camphor, whose flames leave no ashes. from Love is an Art of Time (1974) in The Complete Poems of Kenneth Rexroth, 702
~ Kenneth Rexroth
No ashes are lighter than those of incense, and few things burn out sooner.
~ Walter Savage Landor
The holy and generous wish, that rises like incense from a pure heart towards heaven, often lavishes its sweet perfume on the blast of evil times.
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
Must look into the botanical background of substance known as hashish, I jotted in my journal, writing by the light of candles that grew incessantly jewel-like even as protean wafts of incense approached my snout like platters of ripe fruits borne on the back of Nubian pages.
~ Tom Robbins
Incense is prayer That drives no bargain. Child, learn from incense How best to pray.
~ Alfred Barrett
None of our bars smell like a bar at all - that's our number one rule - and we use certain scented candles and certain types of incense in order to give our bars a specific feel and ambiance.
~ Rande Gerber
SHE LET US INTO THE house, which had the subtle smell of old wood and old wool—as I used to imagine Victorian homes smelled in Victorian times, before I was recently alerted to the painful truth that actually, at least here in London, they stink of whale oil, patchouli (woven into shawls to keep worms from eating the fabric in transit), and backed-up sewers. I am now convinced everyone here goes to church for the incense.
~ Neal Stephenson
observe the cascades of light that spread through the darkness of a cathedral, stirring within themselves a multitude of monads, seeds, indissoluble natures, drops of incense that exploded spontaneously, primordial atoms engaged in combat, battles, skirmishes by squadrons, amid numberless conjunctions and separations—obvious proof of the composition of this universe of ours, made of nothing but prime bodies teeming in the void.
~ Umberto Eco