Torch
A torch is a fire source, usually a rod-shaped piece of wood with a soaked in pitch and/or some other flammable material wrapped around one end. Torches were often supported in sconces by brackets high up on walls, to throw light over corridors in stone structures such as castles or crypts. This traditional use of the word lives on in the Olympic Torch, procession torches and the like.
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Famous quotes containing the word torch:
“Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.”
—Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)
“They shall beget and rear children, handing on the torch of life from one generation to another.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“I do not know if you remember the tale of the girl who saves the ship under mutiny by sitting on the powder barrel with her lighted torch ... and all the time knowing that it is empty? This has seemed to me a charming image of the women of my time. There they were, keeping the world in order ... by sitting on the mystery of life, and knowing themselves that there was no mystery.”
—Isak Dinesen [Karen Blixen] (1885–1962)