“The mere shadow of a mighty name he stood.”
Book I, line 135 (tr. J. D. Duff); of Pompey the Great.
Pharsalia
Original
Stat magni nominis umbra.
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Marcus Annaeus Lucanus 58
Roman poet 39–65Related quotes
“The great hulking eminence of the stone-age mound stood out as an ominous dark shadow.”
Source: The Bone House (2011), p. 162
“He that works and does some Poem, not he that merely says one, is worthy of the name of Poet.”
Introduction to Cromwell's Letters and Speeches (1845).
1840s
Final stanza of manuscript notes for "God Blessed America" which later became "This Land Is Your Land" (23 February 1940)
“Shadow is not the absence of light, merely the obstruction of the luminous rays by an opaque body.”
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), III Six books on Light and Shade
Context: Shadow is not the absence of light, merely the obstruction of the luminous rays by an opaque body. Shadow is of the nature of darkness. Light is of the nature of a luminous body; one conceals and the other reveals. They are always associated and inseparable from all objects. But shadow is a more powerful agent than light, for it can impede and entirely deprive bodies of their light, while light can never entirely expel shadow from a body, that is from an opaque body.
Source: The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849), Chapter III: The Lamp of Power, section 13.