"Vesalius in Zante (1564)", in North American Review (November 1902), p. 631
Variant: There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that receives it.
“There are two ways of spreading light.. to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
“that books were mirrors, reflective in sometimes unpredictable ways.”
Source: I Know This Much Is True
“Light propagates and spreads not only directly, through refraction, and reflection, but also by a fourth mode, diffraction.”
Lumen propagatur seu diffunditur non solum Directe, Refracte, ac Reflexe, sed etiam alio quodam quarto modo, Diffracte.
Physico-mathesis de lumine, coloribus, et iride, aliisque adnexis libri duo: opus posthumum, published in Bologna (1665), http://books.google.com/books?id=FzYVAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0#PPP27,M1 Proposition I.
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 115.
“(Windows work two ways, mirrors one way.)
You never walk through mirrors or swim through windows.”
The Lords and the New Creatures: Poems (1969), The Lords: Notes on Vision
VI, 4
The Persian Bayán
Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 649
“It is not necessary to light a candle to the sun.”
Source: Discourses Concerning Government (1689), Ch. 2, Sect. 18; comparable to: "Like his that lights a candle to the sun", John Fletcher, Letter to Sir Walter Aston; "And hold their farthing candle to the sun", Edward Young, Satire vii. line 56.
