“Scribal culture and Gothic architecture were both concerned with light through, not light on.”

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 120

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Marshall McLuhan 416
Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor … 1911–1980

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“Scribal culture could have neither authors nor publics such as were created by typography.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 149

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“You must try first to rid your mind of the traditional idea that the gothic is an intentional expression of religious gloom. The necessity for light was the motive of the gothic architects. They needed light and always more light, until they sacrificed safety and common-sense in trying to get it. They converted their walls into windows, raised their vaults, diminished their piers, until their churches could no longer stand.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)
Context: If you are to get the full enjoyment of Chartres, you must, for the time, believe in Mary as Bernard and Adam did, and feel her presence as the architects did, in every stone they placed, and in every touch they chiseled. You must try first to rid your mind of the traditional idea that the gothic is an intentional expression of religious gloom. The necessity for light was the motive of the gothic architects. They needed light and always more light, until they sacrificed safety and common-sense in trying to get it. They converted their walls into windows, raised their vaults, diminished their piers, until their churches could no longer stand. You will see the limit at Beauvais; at Chartres we have not got so far, but even here in places where the Virgin wanted it — as above the high altar — the architect has taken all the light there was to take.

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“Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light.”

Le Corbusier (1887–1965) architect, designer, urbanist, and writer

Vers une architecture [Towards an Architecture] (1923)
Context: Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light. Our eyes are made to see forms in light; light and shade reveal these forms; cubes, cones, spheres, cylinders or pyramids are the great primary forms which light reveals to advantage; the image of these is distinct and tangible within us without ambiguity. It is for this reason that these are beautiful forms, the most beautiful forms. Everybody is agreed to that, the child, the savage and the metaphysician.

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“Concern with this world is darkness in the heart, but concern with the Hereafter is light in the heart.”

Uthman (574–656) Companion of Muhammad and third Rashidun Caliph

Al-Isti'ad li Yawm al-Mia'd, p. 9

“I come through the darkness to the ocean of light,
for the light is forever and the light it is free,
"And I walk in the glory of the light," said he.”

Sydney Carter (1915–2004) British musician and poet

George Fox
Context: There's an ocean of darkness and I drown in the night
till I come through the darkness to the ocean of light,
for the light is forever and the light it is free,
"And I walk in the glory of the light," said he.

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“For the spiritual power of a sacrament is like light in this way: it is both received pure by those to be enlightened, and if it passes through the impure it is not defiled.”
Spiritalis enim virtus Sacramenti ita est ut lux: et ab illuminandis pura excipitur, et si per immundos transeat, non inquinatur.

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

Tractates on the Gospel of John; tractate V on John 1:33, §15; translation by R. Willems
Compare:
The sun, too, shines into cesspools and is not polluted.
Diogenes Laërtius, Lib. vi. section 63
A very weighty argument is this — namely, that neither does the light which descends from thence, chiefly upon the world, mix itself with anything, nor admit of dirtiness or pollution, but remains entirely, and in all things that are, free from defilement, admixture, and suffering.
Julian, in Upon the Sovereign Sun http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/julian_apostate_1_sun.htm, (c. December 362), as translated by C. W. King in Julian the Emperor (1888) - Full text online http://www.archive.org/details/julianemperorco00juligoog
The sun, which passeth through pollutions and itself remains as pure as before.
Francis Bacon, Advancement of Learning, Book II (1605)

“The mind moved, not alone,
Through the clear air, in the silence.
Was it light?
Was it light within?
Was it light within light?
Stillness becoming alive,
Yet still?”

Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) American poet

The Lost Son, ll. 161 - 167
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)

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