"The Wife".
Source: The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon (1819–1820)
“No man is quite so much a hero in the dark as in broad daylight, in solitude as in society, in the gloom of the churchyard as in the blaze of the drawing-room. The season and the place may be such as to oppress the stoutest heart with a mysterious awe, which, if not fear, is near akin to it.”
"Scottish Song" (1826), p. 588.
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William H. Prescott 3
American historian and Hispanist 1796–1859Related quotes
James Thomson (B.V.)
(1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)
Part I
The City of Dreadful Night (1870–74)
“Peter Mandelson is the only man I know who can skulk in broad daylight.”
Simon Hoggart
(1946–2014) English journalist and broadcaster
Hoggart's Guardian column 11 Sep 2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/sep/11/politics.guardiancolumnists
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29, quoted from The Greeks by H. D. F. Kitto.
Context: "The hero of the Odyssey is a great fighter, a wily schemer, a ready speaker, a man of stout heart and broad wisdom who knows that he must endure without too much complaining what the gods send; and he can both build and sail a boat, drive a furrow as straight as anyone, beat a young braggart at throwing the discus, challenge the Pheacian youth at boxing, wrestling or running; flay, skin, cut up and cook an ox, and be moved to tears by a song. He is in fact an excellent all-rounder; he has surpassing aretê.
"Aretê implies a respect for the wholeness or oneness of life, and a consequent dislike of specialization. It implies a contempt for efficiency—or rather a much higher idea of efficiency, an efficiency which exists not in one department of life but in life itself."
“For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things that children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true. This terror, therefore, and darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of daylight, but by the aspect and law of nature.”
Nam veluti pueri trepidant atque omnia caecis
in tenebris metuunt, sic nos in luce timemus
interdum, nilo quae sunt metuenda magis quam
quae pueri in tenebris pavitant finguntque futura.
hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necessest
non radii solis neque lucida tela diei
discutiant sed naturae species ratioque.
Lucretius
(-94–-55 BC) Roman poet and philosopher
Book II, lines 55–61 (tr. Rouse)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)
“Broad daylight does not encourage the apprehension of horror.”
Guy De Maupassant
(1850–1893) French writer
“I determined to rule in broad daylight or not at all”
Alexander Mackenzie
(1822–1892) 2nd Prime Minister of Canada
letter a friend September 21, 1878 reflecting on his election loss Buckingham page 518
Preface
His Master's Voice (1968)
Context: Clarity of thought is a shining point in a vast expanse of unrelieved darkness. Genius is not so much a light as it is a constant awareness of the surrounding gloom, and its typical cowardice is to bathe in its own glow and avoid, as much as possible, looking out beyond its boundary. No matter how much genuine strength it may contain, there is also, inevitably, a considerable part that is only the pretense of that strength.