Here is my gift, not roses on your grave, not sticks of burning incense. You lived aloof, maintaining to the end your magnificent disdain. You drank wine, and told the wittiest jokes, and suffocated inside stifling walls. Alone you let the terrible stranger in, and stayed with her alone.
Now you're gone, and nobody says a word about your troubled and exalted life. Only my voice, like a flute, will mourn at your dumb funeral feast. Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I, I, sick with grief for the buried past, I, smoldering on a slow fire, having lost everything and forgotten all, would be fated to commemorate a man so full of strength and will and bright inventions, who only yesterday it seems, chatted with me, hiding the tremor of his mortal pain.
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And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven, and poured out drink offerings unto her, did we make her cakes to worship her, and pour out drink offerings unto her, without our men? / Then Jeremiah said unto all the people, to the men, and to the women, and to all the people which had given him that answer, saying, / The incense that ye burned in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, ye, and your fathers, your kings, and your princes, and the people of the land, did not the LORD remember them, and came it not into his mind? / So that the LORD could no longer bear, because of the evil of your doings, and because of the abominations which ye have committed; therefore is your land a desolation, and an astonishment, and a curse, without an inhabitant, as at this day.
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Good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke!
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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.
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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!
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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.
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Better do a good deed near at home than go far away to burn incense.
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Therefore they sacrifice unto their net, and burn incense unto their drag; because by them their portion is fat, and their meat plenteous.
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Luke 1:9:
He was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense.
(NIV)
As was the custom of the priesthood, it fell to him by lot to enter [the sanctuary of] the temple of the Lord and burn incense. [Exod. 30:7.](AMP)
According to the custom of the priest's office, his lot was to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord.
(KJV)
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Luke 1:10:
And when the time for the burning of incense came, all the assembled worshipers were praying outside.
(NIV)
And all the throng of people were praying outside [in the court] at the hour of incense [burning].
(AMP)
And the whole multitude of the people were praying without at the time of incense.
(KJV)
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You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.
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