Quotes about light
page 23

“When the Father would give men the light of the knowledge of His glory, how does He proceed? To what does He turn men's gaze? Not to His mighty works; not to creative or providential wonders; not to geological or astronomical facts; not to the data on which Paley and Bell and other admirable writers build up their argument from design; not to the still greater wonder of mind, but to " the face of Jesus Christ," that face that was more marred than any man's; that endured the ruffian blows; down which the blood drops trickled; that looked down on a mocking crowd from an ignominious cross.”

John Hall (1829–1898) Presbyterian pastor from Northern Ireland in New York, died 1898

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 70.

Men, Knowledge, Christ

“When Shaw is read in the light of the existentialist thinkers, a new philosophical position arises from his works as a whole, a position of he himself was probably unconscious. It is this: that although the ultimate reality may be irrational, yet man's relation to it is not. Existentialism means the recognition that life is a tiny corner of casual order in a universe of chaos. All men are aware of that chaos; but some insulate themselves from it and refuse to face it. These are the Insiders, and they make up the overwhelming majority of the human race. The Outsider is the man who has faced chaos. If he is an abstract philosopher — like Hegel — he will try to demonstrate that chaos is not really chaos, but that underlying it is an order of which we are unaware. If he is an existentialist, he acknowledges that chaos is chaos, a denial of life — or rather, of the conditions under which life are possible. If there is nothing but life and chaos, then life is permanently helpless — as Sartre and Camus think it is. But if a rational relation can somehow exist between them, ultimate pessimism is avoided, as it must be avoided if the Outsider is to live at all. It is this contribution which makes Shaw the key figure of existentialist thought.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: Religion and the Rebel (1957), p. 289

Life, Men, Thinking, Reality

“Orbs are an extension of consciousness. When we are not in the physical form, we often travel in a light sphere. It’s way beyond the nuts and bolts to understand this kind of science. In the universe we live in, we can measure less than one percent [of existing reality], and physicists believe there’s another 99 percent out there we cannot measure. There are other planes, other dimensions, and the orbs are a byproduct of these planes and dimensions.”

James Gilliland (1952) American academic and author

James describing what Orbs are.
Source: Levin, Ken (February/March 2004). "Orbs Come Out to Play", UFO Magazine 19 (1): 39

Way, Travel, Understanding, Reality

“Ansara was sprinting up the tunnel, increasing the gap, but Moore was beginning to slow as he heard the thundering boots of men coming down the staircase behind them. He stopped, spun around, and dropped onto his belly as, lit by the flickering light from the tunnel entrance, a figure rushed forward, arm extended. For just a heartbeat Moore glimpsed his assailant's face: the cartel truck's driver.
Propped up on his elbows now, Moore fired once into the figure's chest, the round booting him sideways into the panels before he fell onto his back.
From behind him came two more men, the rest of the weapons-transfer crew, their Belgian-made cop-killer pistols flashing, the shots booming through the tunnel as one 5.7x28-millimeter round struck the pipe near Moore's elbow.”

Tom Clancy book Against All Enemies

With Peter Telep, Against All Enemies (2011), chapter 34
2010s

Men

“A Hebrew knelt in the dying light,
His eye was dim and cold,
The hairs on his brow were silver-white,
And his blood was thin and old.”

Thomas Kibble Hervey (1799–1859) British poet and critic

The Devil's Progress (1849)

“The moon draws back its waters from the shore.
By the lake's edge, I see a silver swan,
And she is what I would. In this light air,
Lost opposites bend down —
Sing of that nothing of which all is made,
Or listen into silence, like a god.”

Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) American poet

"The Swan," ll. 15-20
Words for the Wind (1958)

God, Silence, Water, Singing

“I was a looker someone who looked over at every car at every traffic light, hoping something would happen, and almost never finding anyone looking back- always everyone looking forward, and every time I felt stupid. Why should people look over at you? Why would they care?”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

You Shall Know Our Velocity! (2002)

People, Stupidity, Hope, Cars

“I remember I felt an extraordinary persuasion that I was being played with, that presently, when I was upon the very verge of safety, this mysterious death--as swift as the passage of light--would leap after me from the pit about the cylinder and strike me down.”

H. G. Wells book The War of the Worlds

Book I, Ch. 5: The Heat-Ray
The War of the Worlds (1898)

Death

“Most people have music in the center of their lives. I believe my work sheds light on how music affects us and why it is so influential.”

Susan McClary (1946) American musicologist

from http://web.archive.org/20030225083736/www.ucla.edu/spotlight/archive/html_2001_2002/fac0502_mcclalry.html

People, Music

“the protective, healing silence of forgiveness is just as much part of confession as its quality of judgment - stressed so much more. For in confession sin is not so much subjected to the light of the word, of judicial sentence, as received into the darkness of merciful, secret acceptance, sunk into divine oblivion.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Letters p. 361.

Secret, Forgiveness, Silence, Parting

“I am here the doctor [in his studio], bringing his morning visit. I feel them all [his watercolors] the pulse. One I say: Wait, I'll make you an ointment, so you will refresh completely. The other I say: Friend, you need air, and even more the light.”

Jan Hendrik Weissenbruch (1824–1903) Dutch painter of the Hague School (1824-1903)

version in original Dutch / citaat van J. H. Weissenbruch, in het Nederlands: ..ik ben hier [in zijn atelier] de dokter die zijn morgen-visite brengt. Ik voel ze allen [zijn aquarellen] de pols. Tegen den een zeg ik, wacht ik zal voor jou een zalfje maken, daar je helemaal van opknapt. Tegen den ander: Vrind, jij hebt lucht nodig, en nog meer licht.
Source: J. H. Weissenbruch', (n.d.), p. 50

Feeling, Waiting

“While he was climbing the litter-strewn steps his left ball gave a sharp twinge, on and off like a light-switch, then again after he had sat down. Nothing. Just one of the aches and pains that come and go. No significance.”

Kingsley Amis book The Old Devils

The Old Devils (1986)

Pain

“Sadly I see
the light fade on my palm:
a firefly.”

Mukai Kyorai (1651–1704) poet

Japanese Death Poems. Compiled by Yoel Hoffmann. ISBN 978-0-8048-3179-6. According to Hoffman after his sister's, Chine's, death.

“He gave me understanding of two parts. The one part is our Saviour and our salvation. This blessed part is open and clear and fair and light, and plenteous, — for all mankind that is of good will, and shall be, is comprehended in this part.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 30

Understanding, Parting

“Never in his life had Alessandro had to squint in starlight, but now the stars were so bright that at times he had to cover his eyes, and when they burned too brilliantly for keeping still, they sometimes shot across the sky in short bursts. Though these quiet illuminations vanished almost as soon as they had started, they lingered in the eye’s inexact memory of their luminescent paths. Perhaps had they been stronger and more constant, and hung in a dull white line, Alessandro’s heart would not have risen each time he saw them. They were less than little puffs of smoke, their tracks thinner than a hair, the bursts of light mainly a matter of memory.”

Mark Helprin (1947) US author, journalist, commentator

A Soldier of The Great War (1991)

Life, Star, Memory, Time

“Although all the qualities of mind may be united in a great genius, yet there are some which are special and peculiar to him; his views are unlimited; he always acts uniformly and with the same activity; he sees distant objects as if present; he comprehends and grasps the greatest, sees and notices the smallest matters; his thoughts are elevated, broad, just and intelligible. Nothing escapes his observation, and he often finds truth in spite of the obscurity that hides her from others. A lofty mind always thinks nobly, it easily creates vivid, agreeable, and natural fancies, places them in their best light, clothes them with all appropriate adornments, studies others' tastes, and clears away from its own thoughts all that is useless and disagreeable.”

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680) French author of maxims and memoirs

Reflections on Various Subjects (1665–1678), II. On Difference of Character

Truth, Intelligence, Nature, Thinking

“The throb of fifty or a hundred million steam horse-power, doubling every ten years, and already more despotic than all the horses that ever lived, and all the riders they ever carried, drowned rhyme and reason. No one was to blame, for all were equally servants of the power, and worked merely to increase it; but the conservative Christian anarchist saw light.”

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

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Horse

“{of Theatres} There, while weeping for sorrows which are not, laughing at the light jest or the ludicrous misadventure, how little is remembered of the want which makes fear the only bond that binds the living to life!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Life, Fear

“But I have to tell you what I saw... I had entered a dark room [in the city Tunis], lit by a small, elongated horizontal window,.. The light cut sharply.... and drew itself on the stone floor... There behind the table was sitting the Jewish scribe with his arms forward, leaning on the parchment. He turned his lordly head in my direction... It was a beautiful head, delicate and translucent pale as alabaster, large and small wrinkles were lining along the small eyes and around the big curved hawk nose. A black cap covered the white skull and a low white-yellow beard lay in large tufts over the written parchment... two crutches lay slantingly on the floor beside him. How much I desired to get my sketchbook out.... but in front of the staring gaze of the scribe, I didn't find the courage to carry out my intention.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van de tekst van Jozef Israëls, in het Nederlands): Maar ik moet u vertellen wat ik zag.. Ik was een donkere ruimte binnengetreden, verlicht door een klein langwerpig horizontaal liggend raampje,.. .Scherp sneed het licht.. ..en tekende zich af op de stenen vloer.. .Daar zat achter de tafel de joodse wetschrijver met zijn armen voorover op het perkament geleund en draaide zijn vorstelijk hoofd naar mij toe;. ..Het was een prachtig hoofd, fijn en doorschijnend bleek als albast, rimpels, grote en kleine, liepen langs de kleine ogen en om de grote gekromde haviksneus. Een zwart kapje bedekte de witte schedel en een lage witgele baard lag in grote vlokken over het beschreven perkament.. ..twee krukken lagen naast hem schuin op de grond. Hoe gaarne had ik mijn schetsboek voor de dag gehaald,. ..maar voor de starende blik van de wetschrijver durfde ik mijn voornemen niet ten uitvoer te brengen.
Quote of Israëls from his text Spanje, een reisverhaal, publisher, Martinus Nijhoff, De Haag, 1899, p. unknown
Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1871 - 1900

Beauty, Courage

“Nor, perchance,
If I were not thus taught, Should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou, my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! And this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 4.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

Love, Life, Men, Pleasure

“To his sight
The husk of natural objects opens quite
To the core; and every secret essence there
Reveals the elements of good and fair;
Making him see, where Learning hath no light.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

"The Poet," London Magazine (Oct 1821)

Secret, Nature, Learning

“So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore;
The glory from his gray hairs gone
For evermore!”

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery

Ichabod, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“There is not wind enough to twirl
The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
That dances as often as dance it can,
Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Christabel

Part I, l. 48
Christabel (written 1797–1801, published 1816)

Dance

“Someday beneath some hard
Capricious star —
Spreading its light a little
Over far,
We'll know you for the woman
That you are.”

Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) American Modernist writer, poet and artist

From Fifth Avenue Up
The Book of Repulsive Women (1915)

Star

“I photographed the ears. Something organic. Something from the inside out. Coming from the head. I did this ear series in New York ['Ohr' (Ear). c. 1980] and I asked people, women, on the street if I could photograph their ear. Not a single woman said no. Because I didn't ask for their face, but for something largely anonymous.... just women on the street... It only took a moment. The women always said, what, my ear? Sure! But I never offended anyone by examining them. It was just the ear. And everyone thought that was great. That was a nice experience. For me as a photographer, too. Of course, I did work with some light and hair shining in the sun... I tried to make the situation nice for the ear.”

Isa Genzken (1948) German sculptor

2001 - 2010, Isa Genzken in conversation with Wolfgang Tillmans' (2003)

Women, People, Sun

“I have made it a rule to adopt the method of ignorance in my investigations into instincts. I read very little. … I know nothing. So much the better : my queries will be all the freer, now in this direction, now in the opposite, according to the lights obtained.”

Jean Henri Fabre (1823–1915) French entomologist and author

In 'The Languedocian Scorpion'

Reading

“I ought to respect myself for my friends' sake, and my children's. It is time, at fifty-six, to begin, at least, to know oneself, — and I do know what I am not, and your regard for me has at least awakened me to believe in the possibility that I may yet make some impression with my "light" — my "dews" — my "breezes" — my bloom and freshness, — no one of which qualities has yet been perfected on the canvas of any painter in the world.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quote from John Constable's letter to C.R. Leslie (March 1833), from The Letters of John Constable, R.A. to C. R. Leslie, R.A. 1826-1837 (Constable & Co., 1931), p. 104
1830s

Children, World, Time, Perfection

“But tir'd at length poor Beauty slept,
And while she rested, wearied quite,
Indifference to the dear lamp crept,
And quench'd its warm, and splendid light.”

Eliza Acton (1799–1859) Poet, cook

Song (1826)

Beauty, Indifference

“The mysterious musicality, the organic intermarriage of its forms convex and concave, the high singing phrase of a straight line bordering a plane and its sudden dropping into a scarcely traceable curve, and feel deeply, sharply, the profound peace, the philosophy awakened by the even distribution of light and shade, wandering from one curved plane into a deep clarity of light, enriching a carefully carved stone plane. One will understand at once that those awakened sensation have nothing to do with anatomical considerations, exactitudes observed or not.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

n.p.
1960 - 1968, Plastic Language, Ossip Zadkine

Peace, Music, Feeling, Understanding

“I'm Bill Allred, Painter of Light.”

Bill Allred

Former Sign-off

“The world is a mirror of infinite beauty, yet no man sees it. It is a Temple of Majesty, yet no man regards it. It is a region of Light and Peace, did not man disquiet it. It is the Paradise of God.”

Thomas Traherne (1636–1674) English poet

First Century, sect. 31.
Centuries of Meditations

God, World, Peace, Beauty

“That damned rain had a personal grudge. It got no heavier but it never let up. Yet to east and west I saw light that indicated clear skies in those directions. The gods, if such existed, were laying on the misery especially for me.”

Glen Cook book Shadow Games

Source: Shadow Games (1989), Chapter 28, “Back to Scouting” (p. 148)

God, Personality

“I hid my love when young till I
Couldn't bear the buzzing of a fly;
I hid my love to my despite
Till I could not bear to look at light:
I dare not gaze upon her face
But left her memory in each place;
Where eer I saw a wild flower lie
I kissed and bade my love good bye.”

John Clare (1793–1864) English poet

"Secret Love"
Poems Chiefly from Manuscript

Love, Lie, Flowers, Kiss

“For there we loved, and where we love is home,
Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts,
Though o'er us shine the jasper-lighted dome
The chain may lengthen, but it never parts!”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

Homesick In Heamoney

Love, Home, Heart, Parting

“You still got that light in your eye,
And our day is comin’ by and by.
I’m travellin’ this long road here with you;
We still gotta long way, we still gotta long way to go.”

Gerry Rafferty (1947–2011) Scottish singer and songwriter

Days Gone By.
Song lyrics, Night Owl (1979)

Way

“As many colors of the rainbow are an outcome of one pure light, the many religions of the world are an expression of one divine source.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Pebbles of Wisdom

World, Religion, Color

“A bell was rung. All the passengers came on deck. Never shall I forget the scene we then witnessed. It was ten o'clock in the morning. The sky was overspread with thick dark clouds. It looked like a vast temple at night, as the fitful, lurid sun cast a yellowish tinge resembling the pale light of the tapers near a catafalque. The foaming waves opened like immense tombs that seemed avid to swallow their first victim. When all was ready a porthole was opened, and a plank painted black, six feet long and three broad, was suspended over the deep. The body of a child, wrapped in a winding sheet, was placed upon it, with a large stone attached to the feet. For a minute or two the captain read -- I do not know what prayer. Profound silence reigned. The father scarcely shed a tear. The mother seemed quite unmoved. At a word spoken by the captain, the plank was raised in the air, and the next instant the light corpse glided into the waters. I made the Sign of the Cross over it, but alas, I do not know whether the child was even baptized. The passengers withdrew, apparently untouched by the scene, and some even smiled. How impiety deadens the heart!”

Théodore Guérin (1798–1856) Catholic saint and nun from France

Third Journal of Travel (1844-1845)

Smile, Tear, Silence, Water

“Rules of simultaneous ensemble constraint can't be assumed a priori to be the kinds of rules or rest on the same foundations as rules for constraint on succession. They may well be similar, but they may well not be similar also. It seems to me that ensemble constraints must first be understood in their own terms, within musical cultures individually and comparitively, looking to what appear to be basic principles in each in light of the others, I would call such a study "comparative counterpoint.”

Harold Powers (1928–2007) American academic

Harold Powers, "Language Models and Musical Analysis", p.39.

Music, Study, Appearance, Success

“With a book and a steeple, with a bell and a key
they would bind it forever, but they can't," said he.
"Oh, the book it will perish and the steeple will fall,
but the light will be shining at the end of it all.”

Sydney Carter (1915–2004) British musician and poet

George Fox

Books

“Can Intelligence Survive? Looking at this nonclassical evolution of intelligence, one even begins to wonder whether it is such a small Law after all, even from the sun's point of view. Men create lakes and can level mountains; their atomic explosions have already shaken the whole earth's magnetic field; and they send out visible satellites and sensors that now range the solar system. Will the evolution of these powers of go on increasing? Or must it finally run down, was the sun does by the great Second Law?
f we think about this problem in the light of the physical and biological regularities of behavior that we now know, it seems to me that we are led to a further rather surprising conclusion: There is no thermodynamic reason why evolution should ever stop. What evolution leads to is the larger and larger control of environment by the organisms, first by genetic natural selection; then, with the growth of societies and language, by cultural natural selection; and finally by brains. And once we pass a certain threshold of brains and intelligence we begin to know how to insulate ourselves against all sorts of environmental changes.”

John R. Platt (1918–1992) American physicist

Cited in: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Vol. 24, Nr. 8 1968. p. 40
The step to man, 1966

Men, Law, Behavior, Mountain

“Perhaps there was too much of religion in one sense; the word is English, smacks too much of things external such as creeds, rites, an external piety; there is no one Indian equivalent. But if we give rather to religion the sense of the following of the spiritual impulse in its fullness and define spirituality as the attempt to know and live in the highest self, the divine, the all-embracing unity and to raise life in all its parts to the divinest possible values, then it is evident that there was not too much of religion, but rather too little of it — and in what there was, a too one-sided and therefore an insufficiently ample tendency. The right remedy is, not to belittle still farther the agelong ideal of India, but to return to its old amplitude and give it a still wider scope, to make in very truth all the life of the nation a religion in this high spiritual sense. This is the direction in which the philosophy, poetry, art of the West is, still more or less obscurely, but with an increasing light, beginning to turn, and even some faint glints of the truth are beginning now to fall across political and sociological ideals.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

The Renaissance in India (1918)

Life, Truth, Religion, Art

“Knights of the Rosy Cross, they bore
Its weight within the heart, but wore
Without, devotion's sign in glistening ruby bright;
The gall and vinegar they drank alone,
But to the world at large would only own
The wine of faith, sparkling with rosy light.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Life Without and Life Within (1859), Sub Rosa, Crux

World, Faith, Wine, Heart

“She may very well pass for forty three
In the dusk with the light behind her.”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

Trial by Jury (1875)

“Scarce had the morning starre hid from the light
Heavens crimson canopie with stars bespangled,
But I began to rue th' unhappy sight
Of that faire boy that had my hart intangled;
Cursing the time, the place, the sense, the sin;
I came, I saw, I viewd, I slipped in.

If it be sinne to love a sweet-fac'd boy,
Whose amber locks trust up in golden tramels
Dangle adowne his lovely cheekes with joy,
When pearle and flowers his faire haire enamels;
If it be sinne to love a lovely lad,
Oh then sinne I, for whom my soule is sad.”

Richard Barnfield (1574–1627) English poet

The Teares of an Affectionate Shepheard Sicke for Love, or the Complaint of Daphnis for the Love of Ganimede. The Affectionate Shepheard http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19902 (1594)

Love, Sadness, Soul, Star

“From toil he wins his spirits light,
From busy day the peaceful night;
Rich, from the very want of wealth,
In heaven's best treasures, peace and health.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

Source: Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=oopv (1754), Line 93

Health, Peace, Business, Night

“Winter lay among the Outer Hebrides. Day was a sullen glimmer between two darknesses, often smothered in snow. When it did not fling itself upon the rocks and burst in freezing spume, the North Atlantic rolled in heavy and gnawing. There was no real horizon; leaden waves met leaden sky and misty leaden light hid the seam.”

Poul Anderson book The Enemy Stars

Source: The Enemy Stars (1959), Chapter 2 (p. 8)

Winter

“Einstein had drawn attention to nonlocality in 1935 in an effort to show that quantum mechanics must be flawed. …Einstein proposed a thought experiment—now called the EPR experiment—involving two particles that spring from a common source and fly in opposite directions.
According to the standard model of quantum mechanics, neither particle has a definite position or momentum before it is measured; but by measuring the momentum of one particle, the physicist instantaneously forces the other particle to assume a fixed position… Deriding this effect as "spooky action at a distance," Einstein argued that it violated both common sense and his own theory of special relativity, which prohibits the propagation of effects faster than the speed of light; quantum mechanics must therefore be an incomplete theory. In 1980, however, a group of French physicists carried out a version of the EPR experiment and showed that it did indeed give rise to spooky action.”

John Horgan (journalist) (1953) American science journalist

The reason that the experiment does not violate special relativity is that one cannot exploit nonlocality to transmit information.
Source: The End of Science (1996), p. 83

Spring, Sense, Effort, Speed

“The Rigveda stated that the earth was a …globe suspended freely in space. The Vedic texts disclosed that the Sun held the earth and heavenly bodies in its orbit. The Shatapatha Brahmana, a treatise of untold antiquity, recognized and explained the fact that the earth was spherical.. Aryabhata explained the daily rising and setting of planets and stars in terms of the earth’s constant revolutionary motion. The Surya Siddhantha said that the earth, owing to its gravitational force draw all things to itself. In physics, the thinker Kanada, explained light and heat as different aspects of the same element, thus anticipating Clarke Maxwell's Electro-magnetic Theory, which unified different forms of radiant energy. Sankaracharya, in his Advaita thought expanded the concept of unity of matter and energy. Vacaspati recognized light as composed of minute particles emitted by substances, anticipating Newton’s Corpuscular Theory of Light and the later discovery of the Photon. In Botany, Sankara Mishra and Kanada have discussed the circulation of sap in the Plant and the Santiparva of Mahabharata has clearly stated that the plants develop on the strength of nutrients made through interaction of sunlight and materials obtained from the air and ground. Bhaskarcharya's concept of Differential Calculus preceded Newton by many centuries. His study of time identified Truti: The 3400th part of a second as the unit of time.”

Shankar Dayal Sharma (1918–1999) Indian politician

He has rightly brought out the rationality and application of Sanskrit literature in diverse fields Source: Aruna Goel Good Governance and Ancient Sanskrit Literature http://books.google.co.in/books?id=El_VADF13pUC&pg=PA16, Deep and Deep Publications, 1 January 2003, p. 16-17

Star, Study, Time, Sun

“Yo, if this piano's the cake then my words are the candles
Light it up, make a wish, and them angels will grant you”

Nas (1973) American rapper, record producer and entrepreneur

Project Windows
On Albums, Nastradamus (1999)

Angels

“I cannot refrain… from expressing my surprise that, according to the report in The Times there should be so much complaint about the difficulty of understanding the new theory. It is evident that Einstein's little book "About the Special and the General Theory of Relativity in Plain Terms," did not find its way into England during wartime. Any one reading it will, in my opinion, come to the conclusion that the basic ideas of the theory are really clear and simple; it is only to be regretted that it was impossible to avoid clothing them in pretty involved mathematical terms, but we must not worry about that. …
The Newtonian theory remains in its full value as the first great step, without which one cannot imagine the development of astronomy and without which the second step, that has now been made, would hardly have been possible. It remains, moreover, as the first, and in most cases, sufficient, approximation. It is true that, according to Einstein's theory, because it leaves us entirely free as to the way in which we wish to represent the phenomena, we can imagine an idea of the solar system in which the planets follow paths of peculiar form and the rays of light shine along sharply bent lines—think of a twisted and distorted planetarium—but in every case where we apply it to concrete questions we shall so arrange it that the planets describe almost exact ellipses and the rays of light almost straight lines.
It is not necessary to give up entirely even the ether. …according to the Einstein theory, gravitation itself does not spread instantaneously, but with a velocity that at the first estimate may be compared with that of light. …In my opinion it is not impossible that in the future this road, indeed abandoned at present, will once more be followed with good results, if only because it can lead to the thinking out of new experimental tests. Einstein's theory need not keep us from so doing; only the ideas about the ether must accord with it.”

Hendrik Lorentz (1853–1928) Dutch physicist

Theory of Relativity: A Concise Statement (1920)

Books, Way, Imagination, Mathematics

“Along the road your steps may stumble
Your thoughts may start to stray
But through it all a heart held humble
Levels and lights your way.”

Dan Fogelberg (1951–2007) singer-songwriter, musician

Along the Road.
Song lyrics, Phoenix (1979)

Way, Heart

“I was called up in 1942. Having been born in Berlin, schooled in Devon, London and Berkshire, and lived in Suffolk, I ended up in the Highland Light Infantry.”

Clement Freud (1924–2009) English broadcaster, writer, politician and chef

Some questions of interpretation

School

“Scott quoted a famous geneticist, who said, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution." I would like to drop one word, so that the quote is true. It should read, "Nothing in biology makes sense in the light of evolution." For example, evolution has no explanation as to why and how around 1.4 million species of animals evolved as male and female. No one even goes near explaining how and why each species managed to reproduce (during the millions of years the female was supposedly evolving to maturity) without the right reproductive machinery.”

Ray Comfort (1949) New Zealand-born Christian minister and evangelist

Referring to title of an essay by Theodosius Dobzhansky

Quotes, Sense, Reading, Animals

“A many-colored light flows from our sun;
Art, 'neath its beams a motley thread has spun;
The prison modifies the perfect day;
But thou hast known such mediums to shun,
And cast once more on life a pure white ray.
Absorbed in the creations of thy mind,
Forgetting daily self, my truest friend I find.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Life Without and Life Within (1859), Flaxman

Life, Art, Color, Sun

“I had to go to the Bauhaus to the basic course that was given by Itten. And I submitted to that although I was a little older than Itten. But I have not the best memories of my studies there. So when that course was over everyone had to exhibit his work and then it was decided whether or not one could continue. I was accepted to continue. But I wanted to go into a workshop and I wanted to make stained glass. That was my old dream. Glass pictures. But Itten thought I was not ready for that. Certainly to delay my study in glass, Itten said, 'Glass painting is a branch of wall painting and you should go first to our wall painting workshop,' And I said, 'That's nonsense. Wall painting has to do with reflected light and glass painting with direct light.' So I said 'Sorry, I'll do my own stuff on my own.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

I had no money. Just a Rucksack and a hammer. And I started these assemblages. That was in 1921, But in all books on assemblages these things are not mentioned.
Homage to the square' (1964), Oral history interview with Josef Albers' (1968)

Money, Books, Dreams, Study

“Every night, at exactly a quarter past three, something dreadful happens on the street outside our bedroom window. We peek through the curtains, yawning and shivering in the life-draining chill, and then we clamber back beneath the blankets without exchanging a word, to hug each other tightly and hope for sound sleep before it's time to rise.

Usually what we witness verges on the mundane. Drunken young men fighting, swaying about with outstretched knives, cursing incoherently. Robbery, bashings, rape. We wince to see such violence, but we can hardly be shocked or surprised any more, and we're never tempted to intervene: it's always far too cold, for a start! A single warm exhalation can coat the window pane with mist, transforming the most stomach-wrenching assault into a safely cryptic ballet for abstract blobs of light.

On some nights, though, when the shadows in the room are subtly wrong, when the familiar street looks like an abandoned film set, or a painting of itself perversely come to life, we are confronted by truly disturbing sights, oppressive apparitions which almost make us doubt we're awake, or, if awake, sane. I can't catalogue these visions, for most, mercifully, are blurred by morning, leaving only a vague uneasiness and a reluctance to be alone even in the brightest sunshine.”

Greg Egan (1961) Australian science fiction writer and former computer programmer

Scatter My Ashes http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/HORROR/SCATTER/Scatter.html, published in Interzone (Spring 1988) Fiction

Life, Men, Hope, Sleep

“Who is it who is responsible for the scheme of things whereby one man is engaged through life in grinding labour to win a bare and precarious subsistence for himself, and when, at the end of his days, he claims at the hands of the community he served a poor pension of eightpence a day, he can only get it through a revolution, and another man who does not toil receives every hour of the day, every hour of the night, whilst he slumbers, more than his poor neighbour receives in a whole year of toil? Where did the table of that law come from? Whose finger inscribed it? These are the questions that will be asked. The answers are charged with peril for the order of things the Peers represent; but they are fraught with rare and refreshing fruit for the parched lips of the multitude who have been treading the dusty road along which the people have marched through the dark ages which are now merging into the light.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Newcastle (9 October 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), pp. 174-175.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Life, People, Age, Law

“How great is your sin in rejecting Jesus Christ! You slight the glorious Person for whose coming God made such great preparation in such a series of wonderful providences from the beginning of the world, bringing to pass a thing before unknown, the union of the Divine nature with the human in one person. You have been guilty of slighting that great Saviour, who, after such preparation, actually accomplished the purchase of redemption, and who, after He had spent three or four and thirty years in poverty, labor, and contempt, in purchasing redemption, at last finished the purchase by closing His life under such extreme sufferings; and so by His death, and continuing for a time under the power of death, completed the whole. This is the Saviour you reject and despise. You make light of all the glory of His person, and of all the love of God the Father in sending Him into the world, and all His wonderful love appearing in the whole of His work.”

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) Christian preacher, philosopher, and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 492.

Love, Life, Death, God

“He who has envisioned evolution will approach it carefully, joyously brushing away the dust on the path. Most important, there will be no fear in him. And rejecting the unnecessary he will acquire simplicity. It is easy to understand that the realization of evolution is always beautiful.
Again they will ask: "Why at the beginning of the path is so much that is pleasant accorded and so much forgiven?" It is because in the beginning all fires are full blown and the called one walks as a torch. It is up to him to choose the quality of his fire. He who comprehends the discipline of spirit will understand the direction of the fire and will approach the cooperation for the General Good. The end of the path can be illumined by athousand fires of the General Good. These thousand fires will light the rainbow of the aura. Therefore, the discipline of spirit is wings!”

Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947) Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, enlightener, philosopher

Introduction
Leaves Of Morya's Garden (1924 - 1925), Book II : Illumination (1925)

Fear, Beauty, Understanding

“Plastic expression in architecture is inconceivable without colour. Colour and light complete one another. Without colour architecture is expressionless, blind... If the Functionalists wish to suppress colour completely, then this merely proves that they never understood the importance of colour as an ‘architectural’ element, as a means of plastic expression, no matter whether used with iron, glass, or concrete.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote in van Doesburg's his article: 'Space – time and colour', in 'De Stijl', Aubette Issue, series xv, 87-9, 1928, pp. 26–27
1926 – 1931

“A black hole is the ultimate manifestation of a region of strong gravity. The pull of gravity in a black hole is so strong that even light cannot escape from it and time stands still.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

Source: Jayant Narlikar Black Holes http://books.google.com/books?id=8qi55iSSeiwC, National Book Trust, India, 1 January 2006

Strong, Time

“Wherever there is greater joy, there is the direction of everyone’s activity, because the innermost of everyone is really the lighted lamp of Total Knowledge, total organising power of knowledge, it’s all bliss, it’s not necessary for the people to suffer.”

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1917–2008) Inventor of Transcendental Meditation, musician

Quoted from: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Main Message - from Victory Day, October 21, 2007 Maharishi Channel http://www.bienfaits-meditation.com/en/maharishi/videos/maharishi_main_message_2007

People, Knowledge, Suffering, Joy

“And its seeing is Unconditioned,
Being without manner,
And it is neither thus nor thus,
Neither here nor there;
For that which is Unconditioned hath enveloped all,
And the vision is made high and wide.
It knows not itself where That is which it sees;
and it cannot come thereto, for its seeing is in no wise,
and passes on, beyond, for ever, and without return.
That which it apprehends it cannot realise in full,
Nor wholly attain, for its apprehension is wayless,
and without manner,
And therefore it is apprehended of God in a higher way than it can apprehend Him.
Behold! such a following of the Way that is Wayless,
Is intermediary between contemplation
In images and similitudes of the intellect,
And unveiled contemplation
Beyond all images in the Light of God.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Twelve Beguines

God, Way

“She is watching her country lose its evoked master shape watching it lose
And gain get back its houses and peoples watching it bring up
Its local lights single homes lamps on barn roofs.”

James Dickey (1923–1997) American writer

Falling (l. 66–68).
The Whole Motion; Collected Poems, 1945-1992 (1992)

People, Home, Housing, Country

“I remember being awakened one morning by voices in the room where I slept. There was a whizzing sound which made itself heard between the voices now and then. It was the sound of spinning-wheels, and the voices were those of women spinning and carding wool. The dust of the room danced in a ray of sunshine which shone through the high narrow window that lighted the room..”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

Quote, c. 1870; as cited by Julia Cartwright in Jean Francois Millet, his Life and Letters, Swan Sonnenschein en Co, Lim. London / The Macmillian Company, New York; second edition, September 1902, p. 12
taken from Millet's youth-memories, he wrote down on request of his friend and later biographer Alfred Sensier, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Sensier]
1870 - 1875

Women, Dance

“.. The thought crossed my mind, how society today in its fall, at moments seen against the light of a renewal, stands out as a large, gloomy silhouette. Yes, for me, the drama of storm in nature, the drama of sorrow in life, is the most impressive.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from The Hague, The Netherlands, Summer 1883; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 319) p. 21 1880s, 1883

Life, Nature

“Apropos of the "The Lifted Veil," I think it will not be judicious to reprint it at present. I care for the idea which it embodies, and which justifies its painfulness. A motto which I wrote on it yesterday perhaps is a sufficient indication of that idea: —
"Give me no light, great heaven, but such as turns
To energy of human fellowship;
No powers save the growing heritage
That makes complete manhood."
But it will be well to put the story in harness with some other productions of mine, and not send it forth in its dismal loneliness. There are many things in it which I would willingly say over again, and I shall never put them in any other form. But we must wait a little. The question is not in the least one of money, but of care for the best effect of writing, which often depends on circumstances, much as pictures depend on light and juxtaposition.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Comments on The Lifted Veil with a motto for it used in the "Cabinet Edition" of her works (1878), in a letter to John Blackwood (28 February 1873), published in George Eliot's Life as Related in Her Letters and Journals (1885), Vol. 4

Money, Pain, Idea, Question

“We detect light and particles that have traveled billions of light years on their way across the universe to us. During the billions of years of travel, very small effects due to quantum gravity can be amplified to the point that we can detect them.”

Lee Smolin (1955) American cosmologist

"Loop Quantum Gravity," The New Humanists: Science at the Edge (2003)

Way, Travel, Universe

“shadows of night and reflections of light
shiver and quiver and churn,
for the searching of soul that never can hurt
is the fire that never can burn.”

David Gerrold book When HARLIE Was One

Section 2 (p. 5; typed by HARLIE in answer to the question [how do you feel, harlie?)]
When HARLIE Was One (1972)

Soul, Search, Hurt, Night

“I fervently wish no misery ever came near anyone; yet it is that alone that gives us an insight into the depths of our lives, does it not? In our moments of anguish, gates barred forever seem to open and let in many a flood of light.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

“Harry Dresden: The world is getting weirder. Darker every single day. Things are spinning around faster and faster, and threatening to go completely awry. Falcons and falconers. The center cannot hold. But in my corner of the country, I'm trying to nail things down. I don't want to live in Victor's jungle, even if it did eventually devour him. I don't want to live in a world where the strong rule and the weak cower. I'd rather make a place where things are a little quieter. Where trolls stay the hell under their bridges and where elves don't come swooping out to snatch children from their cradles. Where vampires respect the limits, and where the faeries mind their p's and q's. My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk. When things get strange, when what goes bump in the night flicks on the lights, when no one else can help you, give me a call. I'm in the book.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Storm Front (2000), Chapter 27, final lines of the book

Children, Books, World, Hell

“A light to guide, a rod
To check the erring, and reprove.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Stanza 1. Ode to Duty http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww271.html (1805)

“In the Book of Hermes, "Pimander," is enunciated in distinct and unequivocal sentences, the whole trinitarian dogma accepted by the Christians. "The light is me," says Pimander, the DIVINE THOUGHT. "I am the nous or intelligence, and I am thy god, and I am far older than the human principle which escapes from the shadow. I am the germ of thought, the resplendent WORD, the SON of GOD. Think that what thus sees and hears in thee, is the Verbum of the Master, it is the Thought, which is God the Father… The celestial ocean, the AETHER, which flows from east to west, is the Breath of the Father, the life-giving Principle, the HOLY GHOST!"”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

For they are not at all separated and their union is LIFE.
Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume II, Chapter I

Life, God, Books, Intelligence

“Take care for purity in the paint and not so stinky thick of grease, thin, thin, thin! And just on the light [parts in the painting] here and there a small push of thick [paint].... thick house-interiors are unpleasant - long drawing before you start and arrange pleasantly together all things before you start to paint - if the money does not bother you, it is always useful to visit Rott. [Rotterdam].”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek version in original Dutch (citaat van Jozef Israëls' brief, in het Nederlands): Zorg voor zuiverheid in de verf en niet zoo stinkerig dik van smeerderij, dun, dun, dun, en zo op het licht hier en daar een zetje dik[ke verf].. ..dikke binnenhuizen zijn onaangenaam - lang teekenen voor je begint en het prettig bij elkaar arrangeren voor gij aan het verwen gaat - als het geld u niet begroot, is het altijd nuttig om eens naar Rott. [Rotterdam!?] te gaan. Quote of a letter by Jozef Israels to painter David de la Mar, 1867; as cited in Mythen van het Atelier, ed. Mayken Jonkman & Eva Geudeker; d'jonge Hond, Zwolle/The Hague, 2010 – ISBN 9789089102065 ( source online http://delamar.bntours.nl/!mad1832-bronnen.html) Israels' painting technique did develop only rather slowly. In 1867 he still gave this rather traditional academic advice to the young painter nl:David de la Mar Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1840 - 1870

Money, Parting, Drawing, Painting

“My arrangement of my shelves may earn me a reputation for untidiness among the unthinking, but I am indifferent to these. From natural laziness – if you like – from sheer inability to discover any congruity between one book and another – I will not classify. There they are – as they come – as they go – in serried shelves – all happy with the fortuity of things – there are my books from the lowest shelf – to reach which the seeker must go (as he ought) on bended knees – to "the dust and silence of the upper shelf," as Lord Macaulay put it – there they are – awaiting the touch of the discerning hand and the light of the critical eye.
The Bankrupt Bookseller by Will Y. Darling, Robert Grant & Son Ltd, Edinburgh, 1947, p. 28.”

William Darling (politician) (1885–1962) Scottish politician

The Bankrupt Bookseller (1947)

Happiness, Books, Nature, Silence

“Satanism is not a white light religion; it is a religion of the flesh, the mundane, the carnal - all of which are ruled by Satan, the personification of the Left Hand Path.”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible (1969)

Religion