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.
“Scribal culture and Gothic architecture were both concerned with light through, not light on.”
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. 120
“The darker the subject, the more light you must try to shed on the matter. And vice versa.”
Alan Ayckbourn (1939) English playwright
The Crafty Art of Playwriting (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003) p. 3.
Edwin H. Land (1909–1991) American scientist and inventor
As quoted in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 146, no. 1, (March 2002), p. 115
Context: If you sense a deep human need, then you go back to all the basic science. If there is some missing, then you try to do more basic science and applied science until you get it. So you make the system to fulfill that need, rather than starting the other way around, where you have something and wonder what to do with it.
Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832–1902) American Presbyterian preacher, clergyman and reformer during the mid-to late 19th century.
Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832-1902), The Pathway of Life, New York: The Christian Herald, 1894 p 254.
The Pathway of Life, New York: The Christian Herald, 1894
“The window-lights, myriads and myriads,
Bloom from the walls like climbing flowers.”
Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet
"Evening: New York"
Flame and Shadow (1920)
Robert Murray M'Cheyne (1813–1843) British writer
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 39.
Rufus M. Jones (1863–1948) American writer
Social Law in the Spiritual World (1904)
Context: No person can ever hope to gain an adequate idea of the religious movement which has been called by the name of Quakerism until he has discovered what is meant by the "Inner Light." It is the root principle of an important historic faith, and it deserves a careful examination.
The term "Inner Light" is older than Quakerism, and the idea which is thus named was not new when George Fox began to preach it. But this idea received a meaning and an emphasis from the Quakers which make it their own peculiar principle and their distinct contribution to religious thought.
