Light Quotes - 6
 
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More Light Quotes
They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.
Samuel Beckett— 1955 Waiting for Godot, act 2.
If men could learn from history, what lessons it might teach us! But passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern, which shines only on the waves behind us!
Samuel Taylor Coleridge— 1831Table Talk (published1835), entry for18 Dec.
The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.
— Joseph Campbell, in The Power of Myth (1988), Ch. 2 : The Journey Inward
There are two kinds of light — the glow that illumines, and the glare that obscures.
— James Thurber, in Lanterns and Lances? (1963).
Some authors regard morality in the same light as we regard modern architecture. Convenience is the first thing to be looked for.
vauvenargues, luc de clapiers, marquis de— p.166. (Reflections and Maxims (1746))
A University should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning.
— 1873 Speech, House of Commons,11 Mar.
Philosophy! In whose light, like that in Milton's hell, only serves to make the shadows visible.
Ge rard de pseudonym of Ge rard Labrunie Nerval— 1852 Fragments,'Paradoxe et ve rite ' .
I shall remember while the light lives yet And in the night time I shall not forget.
algernon charles swinburne— 1866 Poems and Ballads,'Erotion'.
Degrade first the arts if you'd mankind degrade,Hire idiots to paint with cold light and hot shade.
william blake— Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses, title page (c. 1798–1809)
My soul is full of whispered song,—My blindness is my sight;The shadows that I feared so longAre full of life and light.
alice cary— "Dying Hymn", in Ballads, Lyrics, and Hymns (1866) p. 326.
But I shall let the little I have learnt go forth into the day in order that someone better than I may guess the truth, and in his work may prove and rebuke my error. At this I shall rejoice that I was yet a means whereby this truth has come to light.
albrecht dürer— The opening quotation of Introduction, Conjectures and refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge by Karl Popper (1963)
People have passed through a very dark tunnel at the end of which there was a light of freedom. Unexpectedly they passed through the prison gates and found themselves in a square. They are now free and they don't know where to go.
václav havel— Address at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; quoted in The Independent, London (22 March 1990)
Whence are thy beams, O sun! thy everlasting light? Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty; the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western wave; but thou thyself movest alone.
james macpherson— "Carthon", p. 163.
Yes; as the music changes,Like a prismatic glass,It takes the light and rangesThrough all the moods that pass;Dissects the common carnivalOf passions and regrets,And gives the world a glimpse of allThe colours it forgets.
Alfred Noyes— The Barrel Organ
It is time that we labored for the happiness of the people. Legislators who are to bring light and order into the world must pursue their course with inexorable tread, fearless and unswerving as the sun.
louis antoine de saint-just— Travaillons enfin pour le bonheur du peuple, et que les legislateurs qui doivent éclairer le monde prennent leur course d'un pied hardi, comme le soleil.
— Speech to the National Convention (December 27, 1792). [Source: Oeuvres Complètes de Saint-Just, Vol. 1 (2 vols., Paris, 1908), p. 383]
The light that never was, on sea or land, The consecration, and the poet's dream.
william wordsworth— Elegiac Stanzas. Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm, st. 4 (1805).
To all, to each, a fair good-night, and pleasing dreams, and slumbers light.
walter scott— Walter Scott, Marmion, L'Envoy, To the Reader.
I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
wendell berry— "The Peace of Wild Things" in Green River Review, No. 1 (1968)
The darkest night that ever fell upon the earth never hid the light , never put out the stars . It only made the stars more keenly, kindly glancing, as if in protest against the darkness .
george eliot— As quoted in Golden Gleams of Thought from the Words of Leading Orators, Divines, Philosophers, Statesmen and Poets (1881) by S. Pollock Linn; also in Still Waters (1913)
The history of the past fifty years, and longer, indicates that a diversified holding of representative common stocks will prove more profitable over a stretch of years than a bond portfolio, with one important provisio that the shares must be purchased at reasonable market levels, that is, levels that are reasonable in the light of fairly well-defined standards derived from past experience.
benjamin graham— Chapter I, What the Intelligent Investor Can Accomplish, p. 7
She stood breast-high amid the corn Clasped by the golden light of morn, Like the sweetheart of the sun, Who many a glowing kiss had won.
thomas hood— Ruth; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies.
john keats— "To Autumn", st. 3.
Alas! it is not till time, with reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the Book of Human Life to light the fires of passion with from day to day, that man begins to see that the leaves which remain are few in number.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow— Hyperion, book iv. Chap. viii.
I keep the subject constantly before me, and wait 'till the first dawnings open slowly, by little and little, into a full and clear light .
isaac newton— Reply upon being asked how he made his discoveries, as quoted in "Biographia Britannica: Or the Lives of the Most Eminent Persons who Have Flourished in Great Britain from the Earliest Ages Down to the Present Times, Volume 5 ", by W. Innys, (1760), p. 3241.
To view an object in the proper light we must stand away from it. The study of the classical literatures gives the aloofness which cultivates insight. In learning to live with peoples and civilizations that have long ceased to be alive, we gain a vantage point, acquire an enlargement and elevation of thought, which enable us to study with a more impartial and liberal mind the condition of the society around us.
john lancaster spalding— p. 106 (Aphorisms and Reflections (1901))
Wealth brings a heavy purse; poverty, a light spirit.
leo tolstoy— p. 88 (Path of Life (1909))
It was possible at last to hear the silence to appreciate that there was a silence, deep and potent, out there beyond the pretension of the light.
robert charles wilson— Chapter 23 (p. 272)
My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends It gives a lovely light.
— Edna St. Vincent Millay, "First Fig" from A Few Figs from Thistles (1920).
The light upon her face Shines from the windows of another world. Saints only have such faces.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Michael Angelo, Part II. 6.
