Billy Graham, as quoted in The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Book of Revelation (2001) by Stan Campbell and James S. Bell, p. 54
Misattributed
“It is not necessary to light a candle to the sun.”
Algernon Sidney (1623–1683) British politician and political theorist
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.
Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator
Source: The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995), Ch. 2 : Science and Hope
Context: I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudo-science and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us-then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls. The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.
“To enlarge or illustrate this power and effect of love is to set a candle in the sun.”
Robert Burton book The Anatomy of Melancholy
Section 2, member 1, subsection 2.
The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III
“One may tolerate a world of demons for the sake of an angel.”
Madame de Pompadour (1721–1764) chief mistress of Louis XV of France
Said while the French financial system was on the verge of collapse, as quoted in Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898) by E. Cobham Brewer. Brewer states that this was sometimes attributed to the Austrian statesman Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, but that he was probably simply quoting Madame de Pompadour.
Nas (1973) American rapper, record producer and entrepreneur
Project Windows
On Albums, Nastradamus (1999)
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.
George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian
Books, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? (2004)
“All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.”
Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) Catholic saint and founder of the Franciscan Order
“I am called
The richest monarch in the Christian world;
The sun in my dominion never sets.”
Act I, sc. vi
Don Carlos (1787)
Cristoforo Colombo (1451–1506) Explorer, navigator, and colonizer
27 November 1492
Journal of the First Voyage
