Quotes about the sun
page 13

“A blossom full of promise is life's joy,
That never comes to fruit; hope, for a time,
Suns the young floweret in its gladsome light,
And it looks flourishing—a little while,
Tis past, we know not whither, but 'tis gone”

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

(19th January 1822) Poetic Sketches, No.2
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822

Life, Hope, Light, Time

“If only I knew the way to take the sun and moon and make tomorrow wait.”

Tarkan (1972) Turkish singer

If Only You Knew
Come Closer (2006)

Way, Waiting

“It seems to me that if a little flower could speak, it would tell simply what God has done for it without trying to hide its blessings. It would not say, under the pretext of a false humility, it is not beautiful and without perfume, that the sun has taken away its splendor and the storm has broken its stem when it knows that all this is untrue. The flower about to tell her story rejoices at having to publish the totally gratuitous gifts of Jesus. She knows that nothing in herself was capable of attracting the divine glances, and His mercy alone brought about everything that is good in her.”

Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–1897) French Discalced Carmelite nun

Source: Story of a Soul (1897), Ch. I: Alençon, 1873–1877. As translated by Fr. John Clarke (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, 1976), p. 15.

God, Beauty, Flowers, Falseness

“When this passing world is done,
When has sunk yon, glowing sun,
When we stand with Christ in glory,
Looking o'er life's f1nished story,
Then, Lord, shall I fully know —
Not till then — how much I owe.”

Robert Murray M'Cheyne (1813–1843) British writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 299.

Life, World, Christ

“I lay under the buckthorn tree. My soul was enchanted. I looked up through its leaves. The sun was coloring them a briljant yellow. They stood out from their delicate red stems, laughing at the sky.
And the sky was deep blue with one small cloud. And the blue was a glorious contrast to the yellow of the leaves. And the wind came and played with them, turning them over so that I could see their shiny upper surfaces. And the wind came down to me, too, bringing me armfuls of sweet fragrance.
The buckthorn was in blossom and that was the prettiest thing about it. Its scenty filled the soft air and covered me in a dream, tenderly, ans sang to my soul a tale of times before I ever was, and of times when I shall be no more..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

from her Journal, in Lilleon, June 1898; as quoted in Paula Modersohn-Becker – The Letters and Journals, ed: Günther Busch & Lotten von Reinken; (transl, A. Wensinger & C. Hoey; Taplinger); Publishing Company, New York, 1983, p. 105
1898

Dreams, Color, Soul, Tree

“i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

65
XAIPE (1950)

Love, Life, Birthday, Birth

“What the Divine wants is for man to embody Him here, in the individual and in the collectivity… to realise God in life. The old system of yoga could not harmonise or unify Spirit and life; it dismissed the world as Maya or a transient play of God. The result has been a diminution of life-power and the decline of India. The Gita says, utsideyur ime loka na kuryam karma cedaham ["These peoples would crumble to pieces if I did not do actions," 3.24]. Truly 'these peoples' of India have gone to ruin. What kind of spiritual perfection is it if a few Sannyasins, Bairagis and Saddhus attain realisation and liberation, if a few Bhaktas dance in a frenzy of love, god-intoxication and Ananda, and an entire race, devoid of life, devoid of intelligence, sinks to the depths of extreme tamas?… But now the time has come to take hold of the substance instead of extending the shadow. We have to awaken the true soul of India and in its image fashion all works…. I believe that the main cause of India's weakness is not subjection, nor poverty, nor a lack of spirituality or Dharma, but a diminution of thought-power, the spread of ignorance in the motherland of Knowledge. Everywhere I see an inability or unwillingness to think… incapacity of thought or 'thought-phobia'…. The mediaeval period was a night, a time of victory for the man of ignorance; the modern world is a time of victory for the man of knowledge. It is the one who can fathom and learn the truth of the world by thinking more, searching more, labouring more, who will gain more Shakti. Look at Europe, and you will see two things: a wide limitless sea of thought and the play of a huge and rapid, yet disciplined force. The whole Shakti of Europe lies there. It is by virtue of this Shakti that she has been able to swallow the world, like our Tapaswins of old, whose might held even the gods of the universe in awe, suspense and subjection. People say that Europe is rushing into the jaws of destruction. I do not think so. All these revolutions, all these upsettings are the initial stages of a new creation….. We, however, are not worshippers of Shakti; we are worshippers of the easy way…. Our civilisation has become ossified, our Dharma a bigotry of externals, our spirituality a faint glimmer of light or a momentary wave of intoxication. So long as this state of things lasts, any permanent resurgence of India is impossible…. We have abandoned the sadhana of Shakti and so the Shakti has abandoned us…. You say what is needed is emotional excitement, to fill the country with enthusiasm. We did all that in the political field during the Swadeshi period; but all we did now lies in the dust…. Therefore I no longer wish to make emotional excitement, feeling and mental enthusiasm the base. I want to make a vast and heroic equality the foundation of my yoga; in all the activities of the being, of the adhar [vessel] based on that equality, I want a complete, firm and unshakable Shakti; over that ocean of Shakti I want the vast radiation of the sun of Knowledge and in that luminous vastness an established ecstasy of infinite love and bliss and oneness. I do not want tens of thousands of disciples; it will be enough if I can get as instruments of God a hundred complete men free from petty egoism. I have no faith in the customary trade of guru. I do not want to be a guru. What I want is that a few, awakened at my touch or at that of another, will manifest from within their sleeping divinity and realise the divine life. It is such men who will raise this country.”

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

April, 1920, Letter to Barin Ghose, Sri Aurobindo's brother, Translated from Bengali
India's Rebirth

Love, Life, Men, God

“Although we may see 1,000 suns reflected in 1,000 pots of water, there is only one sun. When we see the consciousness within all of us as one and the same, we will be able to develop a mind that considers the needs of others before our own.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

Practice Spiritual Values & Save the World (2013)

Water

“Should any of my readers have failed to get useful cloud negatives, and are close upon giving up in despair, as I have known many to be, I would recommend them to forthwith take a slow plate, insert F 45 stop in the lens, and make a quick shutter exposure on some wellmarked sun -lit clouds. Then develop with a slightly diluted developer, and see what comes of it. Probably, if the clouds be heavy, they will be a little under-exposed. Then, from this as a basis it should not be difficult to get on the right road.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Clouds. Their use, and practical instructions as to how to photography them, p. 93

Despair

“Every genuine work of art has as much reason for being as the earth and the sun.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Art

Art

“On December 16th, 1961 the world turned upside down and inside out, and I was born screaming at America. It was the tail end of the American Dream. Just before we lost our innocence irrevocably when the TV eye brought the horror of our lives into our homes for all to see. I was told when I grew up I could be anything I wanted a fireman, a policeman, a doctor, even president it seemed, and for the first time in the history of mankind something new called an astronaut. But like many kids growing up on a steady diet of westerns I always wanted to be the cowboy hero that lone voice in the wilderness fighting corruption and evil wherever I found it, and standing for freedom, truth, and justice. And in my heart of hearts I still track the remnants of that dream wherever I go in my never ending ride into the setting sun.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Revelations (1993)

Truth, World, Justice, Dreams

“I'm happier than the morning sun,
And that's the way you said that it would be,
If I should ever bring you inside my life.”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

Happier Than The Morning Sun
Song lyrics, Music of My Mind (1972)

Life, Way

“I remember one vivid winter’s day at Versailles. Silence and calm reigned supreme,. Everything gazed at me with mysterious, questioning eyes. And then I realized that every corner of the palace, every column, every window possessed a spirit, an impenetrable soul. I looked around at the marble heroes, motionless in the lucid air, beneath the frozen rays of that winter sun which pours down on us 'without love', like perfect song.”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Ghiberti to Gainsborough, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 232
1908 - 1920, On Mystery and Creation, Paris 1913

Love, Soul, Question, Silence

“Whether we wake or we sleep,
Whether we carol or weep,
The Sun with his Planets in chime,
Marketh the going of Time.”

Edward FitzGerald (1809–1883) English poet and writer

Chronomoros. In Letters and Literary Remains of Edward FitzGerald (1889), pg. 461.

Sleep, Time

“See the sun set in the hand of the man.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, The Dreaming (1982)

“I’ve alway known that the quality of love was the mind, even though the body sometimes refuses this knowledge. The body lives for itself. It lives only to feed and wait for the night. It’s essentially nocturnal. But what of the mind which is born of the sun, William, and must spend thousands of hours of a lifetime awake and aware? Can you balance off the body, that pitiful, selfish thing of night against a whole lifetime of sun and intellect? I don’t know.”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine (1957), p. 151

Love, Knowledge, Waiting, Selfishness

“And now the story's just begun
A thousand years to stay;
We wake each morning with the sun
To live our dreams away…”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Islands (1987)

Dreams

“I have seen the mystics play there
Once or twice but I knew they had a reason
Enchantment plays it's cards all right
Hand in hand with the working of the seasons Legends can be now and forever
Teaching us to love for goodness sake
Legends can be now and forever
Loved by the sun, loved by the sun”

Jon Anderson (1944) English singer

Lyrics of " Loved by the Sun http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40eZABP5eJs", written for the "Unicorn Theme" by Tangerine Dream, on the soundtrack of the film Legend (1986).

Love, Season

“.. wherever you are, you find the sun, a blade of grass, the spirals of the dragonfly. Courage consists of staying at home, close to nature, which could not care less about our disasters. Each grain of dust contains the soul of something marvellous.”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

Miró admonished art-critic w:Georges Duthuit
1915 - 1940
Source: 'Où allez-vous Miró?' (Where do you go, Miró), Georges Duthuit in Cahiers d'Art 11, nos. 8-10, 1936

Art, Home, Soul, Courage

“In day from some titanic past it seems
As if a thread divine of memory runs;
Born ere the Mighty One began his dreams,
Or yet were stars and suns.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

"Day"
By Still Waters (1906)

Dreams, Star, Memory, Past

“As much as 70 percent of the sun's heat rays can be reflected from one's house by the installation of a white or light-colored roof.”

Ken Kern American writer

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

Color, Light, Housing

“The sun along the mountain bows,
the Yellow River seawards flows.
You will enjoy a grander sight
by climbing to a greater height.”

Wang Zhihuan (688–742) Chinese poet

"On the Stork Tower" (《登鹳雀楼》), trans. Yuanchong Xu

Mountain

“I believe in one secret and ineffable LORD; and in one Star in the Company of Stars of whose fire we are created, and to which we shall return; and in one Father of Life, Mystery of Mystery, in His name CHAOS, the sole viceregent of the Sun upon the Earth; and in one Air the nourisher of all that breathes.
And I believe in one Earth, the Mother of us all, and in one Womb wherein all men are begotten, and wherein they shall rest, Mystery of Mystery, in Her name BABALON.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

III Of the Ceremony of the Introit, including what is called the "Creed of the Gnostic Catholic Church" http://www.hermetic.com/egc/creed.html. Liber XV : The Gnostic Mass (1913)

Life, Men, Secret, Star

“There's a man who came to stay
The boy he replaced, disappeared without a trace.
Stole all my songs and my style away
No-one would say what they wanted to say
So he was king for a day.
If you sail into the sun
Beware the eyes of green
And if the whole world tells you 'you are the one'
I defy you not to believe them, my son…”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"The Man Who Came to Stay"
Lyrics and poetry

World, Boy

“Down there it's still Summer, I suppose, whereas our sun [in Switzerland] is already gilding the mountains and the larches are turning yellow, but the colours are wonderful, like old, dark red satin. Down here in the valley the huts stand out in the strongest Paris blue against the yellow fields. Here one really learns the values of the individual colours for the first time. And the harsh, monumental lines of the mountains.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

Letter to Nele van de Velde ((daughter of Henry van de Velde), from Frauenkirch, 13 October 1918; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 223-224
1916 - 1919

Mountain, Learning, Time, Summer

“He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.
If the sun and moon should doubt
They'd immediately go out.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: 1800s, Auguries of Innocence (1803), Line 107

“If you try to imagine, as nearly as you can, what an amount of misery, pain and suffering of every kind the sun shines upon in its course, you will admit that it would be much better if, on the earth as little as on the moon, the sun were able to call forth the phenomena of life; and if, here as there, the surface were still in a crystalline state.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

"On the Sufferings of the World"
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Studies in Pessimism

Life, Pain, Imagination, Suffering

“… what could have brought him to Dalton. There were no chalybeate-springs, warranted to cure every disease under the sun; no ruins in the neighbourhood, left expressly for antiquarians and pic-nic parties; no fine prospects, which, like music, people make it matter of conscience to admire; no celebrated person had ever been born or buried in its environs; there were no races, no assizes—in short, there was “no nothing."”

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

Part 1
Other Gift Books

People, Disease, Music, Spring

“Though I myself am an atheist, I openly profess religion in the sense just mentioned, that is, a nature religion. I hate the idealism that wrenches man out of nature; I am not ashamed of my dependency on nature; I openly confess that the workings of nature affect not only my surface, my skin, my body, but also my core, my innermost being, that the air I breathe in bright weather has a salutary effect not only on my lungs but also on my mind, that the light of the sun illumines not only my eyes but also my spirit and my heart. And I do not, like a Christian, believe that such dependency is contrary to my true being or hope to be delivered from it. I know further that I am a finite moral being, that I shall one day cease to be. But I find this very natural and am therefore perfectly reconciled to the thought.”

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) German philosopher and anthropologist

Lecture V, R. Manheim, trans. (1967), pp. 35-36 Lectures on the Essence of Religion http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/lectures/index.htm (1851)

Hate, Religion, Hope, Nature

“My wife, my child, my music, Nature and the sun; they are my happiness.”

Richard Strauss (1864–1949) German composer and orchestra director

written on the sketches for his Domestic Symphony. Charles Youmans, Mahler and Strauss in Dialogue, Indiana University press (2016), found on page 60.
Other sources

Music, Nature, Happiness

“Adela returned on luminous mornings, like Pomona from the fire of the enkindled day, tipping from her basket the colourful beauty of the sun: glistening wild cherries, full of water under their transparent skins, mysterious black cherries whose aroma surpassed that which would be realised in their taste, and apricots, in whose golden pulp lay the core of the long afternoons.”

Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) Polish novelist and painter

“August” http://www.schulzian.net/translation/shops/august1.htm His father, Adela (the domestic servant)

Beauty, Water

“The harbor and city.... were behind us [Klee's first glimpse of Tunis], slightly hidden. First, we passed down a long canal. On shore, very close, our first Arabs. The sun has a dark power. The colorful clarity on shore full of promise. Macke too feels it. We both know that we shall work well here.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Diary-note, 7 April 1914; as quoted by June Taboroff, on 'AramcoWorld', May, June 1991 http://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/199103/travels.in.tunisia.htm 1911 - 1914, Diary-notes from Tunisia' (1914)

Color, Feeling

“The problem you have put me will remain a problem till the globe of the world and the globe of the sun meet in their common center and the one consumes the other. This answer I have proposed, however, humanity will know and forget, know and forget, know and forget again. And that knowing and forgetting will approximate the peaks and depths of civilization as closely as the quotient of your tosses approximates that number which, rationally, we know is not there.”

Samuel R. Delany book Neveryóna

Source: Neveryóna (1983), Chapter 12, “Of Models, Monsters, Night, and the Numinous” (p. 358)

World, Problem, Forgetting

“There was no death row at Cold Mountain, only E Block, set apart from the other four and about a quarter their size, brick instead of wood, with a horrible bare metal roof that glared in the summer sun like a delirious eyeball.”

Stephen King book The Green Mile

The Green Mile (1996)

Death, Mountain, Summer

“Forth from his dark and lonely hiding place
(Portentous-sight!) the owlet Atheism,
Sailing an obscene wings athwart the noon,
Drops his blue-fringèd lids, and holds them close,
And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven,
Cries out, "Where is it?"”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

" Fears in Solitude http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/stc/Coleridge/poems/Fears_in_Solitude.html", l. 81 (1798)

“According to our belief, Japan was founded by the Sun Goddess Amaterasu Omikami, who is revered by the entire nation for her all-pervading virtue, and from whom our Imperial House is descended.”

Sadao Araki (1877–1966) Japanese general

Quoted in "Contemporary Japan" - Page 422 - by Nihon Gaiji Kyokai - 1932

Housing

“One sunny spring day I heard the music coming down Karl Johan [street] and it filled me with joy. The spring, the sun, the music, all blended together to make me shiver with pleasure. The music added colour to the colours. I painted the picture [his painting 'Music on Karl Johan'] allowing the colours to reverberate with the rhythm of the music. I painted the colours as I saw them at that moment.”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

Quote in 'Livsfrisen tilblivelse', Blomqvist, Oslo 1929, p. 12
1896 - 1930

Pleasure, Music, Spring, Joy

“Mr. Speaker, the activities of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church continue to cause distress for many of us. As you know, the House Subcommittee on International Organizations, chaired by my distinguished colleague, Donald Fraser, is investigating allegations of close ties between the Reverend Moon and some of his organizations and the South Korean government, including the KCIA. As a member of the subcommittee, I am, of course, disturbed over such allegations. My greatest concern, however, is for those young people who have been converted by these religious cults and for their parents, who have suffered the loss of their children. One of these parents, Mrs. Ida Watson Camburn of Sunnyvale, Calif., brought to my attention the testimony of John G. Clark, Jr., M. D., assistant professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, before a Vermont Senate committee, which was investigating religious cults. Dr. Clark's remarks, based on 2 ½ years of research, deal with the effects of some religious cults on the mental and physical health and welfare of their converts. I highly recommend his conclusions to my colleagues.”

Leo Ryan (1925–1978) American teacher and politician

Statement read into the United States Congressional Record (3 November 2007), "The Effects of Religious Cults on the Health and Welfare of Their Converts", United States Congressional Record, Vol. 123 Part 29, No. 181 Proceedings and Debates of 95th Congress (First Session).

Children, People, Health, School

“The pale stars are gone!
For the sun, their swift shepherd,
To their folds them compelling,
In the depths of the dawn,
Hastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and the flee
Beyond his blue dwelling,
As fawns flee the leopard.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Prometheus Unbound

Voice of Unseen Spirits, Act IV, l. 1
Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)

Star

“Nature chose for a tool, not the earthquake or lightning to rend and split asunder, not the stormy torrent or eroding rain, but the tender snow-flowers noiselessly falling through unnumbered centuries, the offspring of the sun and sea.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Source: 1890s, The Mountains of California (1894), chapter 1: The Sierra Nevada

Flowers, Nature, Sea

“What do we know? What do we really know? He licks his dried cracked lips. We know this apodictic rock beneath our feet. That dogmatic sun above our heads. The world of dreams, the agony of love and the foreknowledge of death. That is all we know. And all we need to know? Challenge that statement. I challenge that statement. With what? I don't know.”

Edward Abbey book The Monkey Wrench Gang

page 312
The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975)

Love, Death, World, Dreams

“Let’s see the very thing and nothing else.
Let’s see it with the hottest fire of sight.
Burn everything not part of it to ash.
Trace the gold sun about the whitened sky
Without evasion by a single metaphor.
Look at it in its essential barrenness
And say this, this is the centre that I seek.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"Credences of Summer"
Collected Poems (1954)

Parting

“You can be told 20 days in (a) row that you should be raped and sodomised and beaten and strung up and thrown out and taught a lesson, but if on the 21st day you turn around and make a joke about firing men into the sun using a cannon, you are a scold who hates men and is teaching her son that he's a rapist.”

Clementine Ford (writer) (1981) Australian feminist writer, broadcaster and public speaker

Clementine Ford: This is the personal price I pay for speaking out online http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/news-and-views/opinion/clementine-ford-this-is-the-personal-price-i-pay-for-speaking-out-online-20170713-gxaa6z.html, July 13 2017, in the Sydney Morning Herald 2017

Men, Hate

“Pleasant, berries in the time of harvest;
Also pleasant, wheat upon the stalk.
Pleasant the sun moving in the firmament;
Also pleasant the retaliators of outcries.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The Pleasant Things of Taliesin

Time

“Early one mornin' the sun was shinin',
I was layin' in bed
Wond'rin'if she'd changed at all
If her hair was still red.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), Tangled Up In Blue

Change

“What can I do with this memory?
Shake the bones out of it?
Defoliate the smile?
Stub out the chin with cigarettes?
Take the face of the man I love
and squeeze my foot into it,
when all the while my heart is making a museum?
I love you the way the oboe plays.
I love you the way skinny dipping makes my body feel.
I love you the way a ripe artichoke tastes.
Yet I fear you,
as one in the desert fears the sun.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

"Waking Alone" from The Divorce Papers
45 Mercy Street (1976)

Love, Fear, Smile, Way

“I TOOK THE PIECES YOU THREW AWAY AND
PUT THEM TOGATHER [sic] BY NIGHT AND DAY
WASHED BY RAIN DRIED BY SUN A MILLION PIECES ALL IN ONE”

Howard Finster (1916–2001) American artist

Text painted on a sign, formerly part of Finster's Paradise Gardens, which clearly references the artist's chosen materials for his work. The piece now resides in the permanent collection of the High Museum in Atlanta.

Night

“Off screen, I was friends with people I was nasty to in pictures. Judy Canova and I were friends. There’s a terrific line in ‘WAC From Walla Walla’ where she’s trying to pick out a shade of lipstick. I walk by and say ‘window shade.’ [Laughs] Judy played the star bit to the hilt! She had an entourage that followed her around. One woman held an umbrella over Judy’s head to keep the sun off her.”

June Vincent (1920–2008) actress

An Interview with June Vincent (1996)

People, Star

“In a jungle town
Where the sun beats down
To the rage of man and beast,
The English garb
Of the English sahib
Merely gets a bit more creased.
In Bangkok
At twelve'o'clock
They foam at the mouth and run,
But mad dogs and Englishmen
Go out in the midday sun.”

Noel Coward (1899–1973) English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer

Mad Dogs and Englishmen (1930)

Dogs, Rage, Madness

“The sun, as we have already said, is placed in the middle of our system, as a source of light and heat, to illuminate and vivify all the planets subordinate to it. Without his benign influence the earth would be a mere block, which in hardness would surpass marble and the most compact substances with which we are acquainted; no vegetation, no motion would be possible: in a word, it would be the abode of darkness, inactivity and death. The first rank therefore among inanimate beings cannot be refused to the sun; and if the error of addressing to a created object that adoration which is due to the Creator atone could admit of excuse, we might be tempted to excuse the homage paid to the sun by the ancient Persians, as is still the ease among the Guebres, their successors, and some savage tribes in America.”

Jacques Ozanam (1640–1718) French mathematician

Jacques Ozanam, Recreations in mathematics and natural philosophy : Volume 3 van Recreations in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. Published 1803. p. 140

Death, Error, Light

“This is the place' is what the divinely-inspired leader is reported to have said when Salt Lake Valley opened out before the slavering oxen with blood on their hooves and the men who had managed to cross the wilderness even though their children and sweethearts still tarried in the sand. Sometimes I have the feeling that I am dead and have come to the land of eternity. Of such a land it says in a hymn I once knew, that there stood a wondrous palace on pillars, inlaid with gold and brighter than the sun... When I now look back across the ocean to the land whence I came, I glimpse behind me a sparse and barren coast... There stands my family, and looks sorrowing out to sea.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Stone Stanford, Steinar
Paradísarheimt (Paradise Reclaimed) (1960)

Feeling, Dead, Men, Children

“Dry sun, dry wind;
Safe bind, safe find.”

Thomas Tusser (1524–1580) English poet

Washing, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Than catch and hold while I may, fast binde, fast finde", John Heywood, Proverbes, Part I, Chapter III; "Fast bind, fast find; A proverb never stale in thrifty mind", William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, act ii. sc. 5.

“Do parallel universes exist? We don't know, uhm parallel universes are losing favor to the multiverse we have some cogent theoretical expectations that our universe might be just one of many spawned from this, sort of, this hyper-dimensional medium which we'll call the multiverse there's no data to support it but we have good theoretical premise to think that it's there and we have philosophical precedent we used to think Earth was special and unique. It wasn't, we got 8.. 9.. 8 planet we thought the Sun was special it's one of a hundred billion suns, the galaxy's special, no there's a hundred billion galaxies we have one universe or do we? The track record said why should there only be one? be open to the possibility that you don't live in the majority [looking? ] universe that's out there Would a separate universe.. when you say "different universe" slightly different laws of physics which (that's what I'm asking) oh this is the fun part because if you find, if you manage to get a portal to another universe don't be the first one to volunteer to go through because your atoms are working in this universe if a slightly different law of physics.. you could implode, explode come out with three heads who knows?”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Neil deGrasse Tyson Stephen Colbert Interviews Neil deGrasse Tyson at Montclair Kimberley Academy - 2010-Jan-29 http://transcriptvids.com/v/YXh9RQCvxmg.html 2010s

Law, Support, Thinking, Universe

“I'm not saying the battle is won
But on Saturday night all those kids in the sun
Wrested technology's sword from the hands of the warlords
Ooh, the tide is turning
Ooh, the tide is turning.”

Roger Waters (1943) English songwriter, bassist, and lyricist of Pink Floyd

"The Tide Is Turning (After Live Aid)", on Radio K.A.O.S. (1987)

Night

“James Carville used to remind Clinton during the '92 campaign that "its the economy, stupid". I say that on the subject of Global Warming: "its the SUN, stupid".”

Anthony Watts (1958) American television meteorologist

It's the Sun, stupid http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/04/06/its-the-sun-stupid/, wattsupwiththat.com, April 6, 2007. 2007

Stupidity

“With that she went and fetched the box in which she kept her many drugs, healing or deadly, and putting it on her knees she wept. Tears ran unchecked in torrents down her cheeks and drenched her lap as she bemoaned her own sad destiny. She was determined now to take a poison from the box and swallow it; and in a moment she was fumbling with the fastening of the lid in her unhappy eagerness to reach the fatal drug. But suddenly she was overcome by the hateful thought of death, and for a long time she stayed her hand in silent horror. Visions of life and all its fascinating cares rose up before her. She thought of the pleasures that the living can enjoy. She thought of her happy playmates, as a young girl will. And now, setting its true value on all this, it seemed to her a sweeter thing to see the sun than it had ever been before. So, prompted by Hera, she changed her mind and put the box away.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea, Lines 802–818

Life, Death, Hate, Pleasure

“If so, her motion must be influenced by it; perhaps she is retained in her orbit thereby. However, though the power of gravity is not sensibly weakened in the little change of distance, at which we can place ourselves from the centre of the earth, yet it is very possible that, so high as the moon, this power may differ much in strength from what it is here. To make an estimate what might be the degree of this diminution, he considered with himself that, if the moon be retained in her orbit by the force of gravity, no doubt the primary planets are carried round the sun by the like power. And, by comparing the periods of the several planets with their distances from the sun, he found that if any power like gravity held them in their courses, its strength must decrease in the duplicate proportion of the increase of distance. This he concluded by supposing them to move in perfect circles concentrical to the sun, from which the orbits of the greatest part of them do not much differ. Supposing therefore the power of gravity, when extended to the moon, to decrease in the same manner, he computed whether that force would be sufficient to keep the moon in her orbit. In this computation, being absent from books, he took the common estimate, in use among geographers and our seamen before Norwood had measured the earth, that 60 English miles were contained in one degree of latitude on the surface of the earth. But as this is a very faulty supposition, each degree containing about 691/2 of our miles, his computation did not answer expectation; whence he concluded, that some other cause must at least join with the action of the power of gravity on the moon. On this account he laid aside, for that time, any farther thoughts upon this matter.”

Henry Pemberton (1694–1771) British doctor

Republished in: Stephen Peter Rigaud (1838) Historical Essay on the First Publication of Sir Newton's Principia http://books.google.com/books?id=uvMGAAAAcAAJ&pg=RA1-PA49. p. 50-51 Preface to View of Newton's Philosophy, (1728)

Books, Change, Time, Parting

“We Europeans have to toil to achieve it, at least as a transitional stage, for it is what we feed our dreams upon. These Orientals [from India] have it in their blood, perhaps because they spend their lives I the sun. We poor wretched Europeans must sacrifice body and soul for even a shadow of it… It is not a question of trying to reproduce objective features, only of good practice for the fingers and for the perceptive faculty, and that too is very useful. You must have read how Van Gogh was always getting his brother to send him drawings to copy. And how Rembrandt used to copy Indian an Italian pictures. Not of course, because they were short of material, but to get 'du corps'. So one should be always drawing… Oh, you'd love the Indians. The pure, Aryan Indians, not those one could see in Berlin, whose forms had become rigid and sterile through mingling with the Chinese.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

Letter to Nele van de Velde ((daughter of Henry van de Velde), from Frauenkirch, 1919/20; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 224-225
1916 - 1919

Love, Dreams, Soul, Question

“Little I ask, my wants are few;
I only wish a hut of stone,
(A very plain brown stone will do,)
That I may call my own;—
And close at hand is such a one,
In yonder street that fronts the sun.”

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

"Contentment".
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

“What the probe had found was a star with reasonable possibilities for encouraging life; a belt of debris, including particles, planetoids, irregular chunks somewhat under planet size with interesting implications for systemic formation, and a planetary companion with its own system of debris and moons…A planet desolate, baked, forbidding. It was no Eden, no second Earth, no better than what existed in the sun’s own system, and it was a far journey to have gone to find that out. The press grappled with questions it could not easily grasp itself, sought after something to give the viewers, lost interest quickly. If anything, there were questions raised about cost, vague and desperate comparisons offered to Columbus, and the press hared off quickly onto a political crisis in the Mediterranean, much more comprehensible and far bloodier.”

C. J. Cherryh book Downbelow Station

Book 1, Chapter 1 (pp. 7-8)
Downbelow Station (1981)

Life, Star, Question

“In rave cases, if the sun be behind the observer, the distant land may catch a powerful ray of sunlight, whilst the clouds overhanging it may remain in shadow, and hence light buildings, yellow cornfields, etc., may appear lighter than the distant clouds, but they at the same time gain in an appearance of nearness.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Perspective of clouds, p. 100

Light, Distant, Appearance, Time

“The spectacle of the sky overwhelms me. I'm overwhelmed when I see, in an immense sky, the crescent of the moon, or the sun. There, in my pictures, tiny forms in huge empty spaces. Empty spaces, empty horizons, empty plains - everything which is bare has always greatly impressed me.”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

from: English Wikipedia, Joan Miró, 1958, as quoted in Twentieth-Century Artists on Art, ed. Dore Ashton, 1986
1940 - 1960

“I’ve been walking my mind to an easy time,
My back turned towards the sun.
Lord knows the cold wind blows it’ll turn your head around.
Well, there’s hours of time on the telephone line,
To talk about things to come.
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.”

James Taylor (1948) American singer-songwriter and guitarist

"Fire and Rain"
Song lyrics, Sweet Baby James (1970)

Dreams, Time, Flying

“…Copernicus was condemned for suggesting that the sun… was the center of our universe… Giordano Bruno was persecuted, and… burned at the stake for arguing that space extended beyond our solar system…. William Harvey was condemned… for suggesting that the heart was the center of the body's circulatory system… Each ultimately was proven to be correct…. Today U. S. Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) are engaging in persecution of their own, attempting to silence dissenting voices”

David A. Ridenour

on climate change
David A. Ridenour, "Senators Try to Stifle the Global Warming Debate," Chicago Sun Times, November 16, 2006

Silence, Universe, Change, Heart

“Up climb’d the sweet pea,
The butterfly of flowers:—I love it not,
Though every hue—and it has many tints—
Are dyed as if the sunset evening clouds
Had fallen to the earth in sudden rain,
And left their colours : purple, delicate pink,
And snowy white, are on thy wing-like leaves;
But thou art all too forward in thy bloom;
Thy blossoms are the sun’s, and cling to all
That can support them into open day:
And then they die, leaving no root behind,
The hope and promise of another spring;
And no perfume, whose lingering gratitude
Remains round what upheld its summer’s life.”

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

The Last of the St. Aubyns
Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Love, Life, Hope, Art

“Each second, some 1014 neutrinos made in the Sun and about a thousand neutrinos made by cosmic rays in Earth's atmosphere pass through your body.”

Chris Quigg (1944) American physicist

[Cosmic neutrinos, arXiv preprint arXiv:0802.0013, 2008, https://arxiv.org/abs/0802.0013] p. 1.

“And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced
As though the sun took step of thee, yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,
Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!”

Hart Crane book The Bridge

The Bridge. In The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, by Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair (1988)

Freedom

“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.

Light

“Rows and flows of angel hair,
And ice cream castles in the air,
And feather canyons ev’rywhere,
I’ve looked at clouds that way.
But now they only block the sun,
They rain and snow on ev’ryone,
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way.”

Joni Mitchell (1943) Canadian musician

"Both Sides Now"
Songs

Angels, Way

“It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.
Before 1939, it was the accepted belief of scientists that it was theoretically possible to release atomic energy. But no one knew any practical method of doing it. By 1942, however, we knew that the Germans were working feverishly to find a way to add atomic energy to the other engines of war with which they hoped to enslave the world. But they failed. We may be grateful to Providence that the Germans got the V-1's and V-2's late and in limited quantities and even more grateful that they did not get the atomic bomb at all.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Announcing the Bombing of Hiroshima (1945)

War, World, Hope, Way

“Like prisoners escaped during night from their prison,
The waters fling gaily their spray to the sun;
Who can tell me from whence that glad river has risen?
Who can say whence it springs in its beauty?—not one.”

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

The Minstrel’s Monitor from Literary Souvenir, 1827
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Beauty, Spring, Water, Night

“Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

L 50
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook L (1793-1796)

Feeling

“From the pagans of the pre-Vedic period to the faithfuls of the post-Vedic era, only the Sun God hasn't lost its eminence in the daily lives of the human beings. Both the believers and the atheists hold it in reverence. Heliolatry has persisted from the prehistoric times.”

Surendra Pratap Singh (1948–1997) Indian journalist

Parrot Under the Pine Tree

God, Faith, Time

“Proposition 13. The straight line subtending the portion intercepted within the earth's shadow of the circumference of the circle in which the extremities of the diameter of the circle dividing the dark and the bright portions in the moon move is less than double of the diameter of the moon, but has to it a ratio greater than that which 88 has to 45; and it is less than 1/9th part of the diameter of the sun, but has to it a ratio greater than that which 22 has to 225. But it has to the straight line drawn from the centre of the sun at right angles to the axis and meeting the sides of the cone a ratio greater than that which 979 has to 10125.”

Aristarchus of Samos ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician

p, 125
On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and the Moon (c. 250 BC)

Parting

“Twas now the month in which the world began
(If March beheld the first created man):
And since the vernal equinox, the Sun,
In Aries, twelve degrees, or more, had run;
When casting up his eyes against the light,
Both month, and day, and hour, he measur'd right;
And told more truly than th' Ephemeris:
For Art may err, but Nature cannot miss.
Thus numbering times and seasons in his breast,
His second crowing the third hour confess'd.”

John Dryden book Fables, Ancient and Modern

The Cock and the Fox line 445 - 457.
Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700)

World, Art, Nature, Light

“The soul of a true christian, as I then wrote my meditations, appeared like such a little white flower as we see in the spring of the year; low and humble on the ground, opening its bosom to receive the pleasant beams of the sun’s glory; rejoicing, as it were, in a calm rapture; diffusing around a sweet fragrancy; standing peacefully and lovingly, in the midst of other flowers round about; all in like manner opening their bosoms to drink in the light of the sun.”

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

"Personal Narrative" (1739), from The Works of President Edwards (1830) Vol. I, edited by Sereno B. Dwight.

Soul, Spring, Flowers, Drink

“"There's nothing new under the sun": that's what you wrote, Ecclesiastes. But you yourself were born new under the sun. And the poem you created is also new under the sun, since no one wrote it down before you. And all your readers are also new under the sun, since those who lived before you couldn't read your poem. And that cypress under which you're sitting hasn't been growing since the dawn of time. It came into being by way of another cypress similar to yours, but not exactly the same.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

The Poet and the World (1996)

Way, Time, Reading

“The sun as it's halted
Miraculously exalted
Resumes its descent Incandescent.”

Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) French Symbolist poet

Hérodiade (1898)

“And in the morning when the sun rise.
Look in the water, see the blue sky.
As if heaven has been laid there at our feet.”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Sausalito
Conor Oberst (2008)

Water

“You know those guys that go to the strip club at the daytime? If you're at a strip club and the sun is out, you got some problems!”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

Never Scared (HBO, 2004)

Guy, Problem

“The energies of our system will decay; the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit and all his thoughts will perish.”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

The Foundations of Belief (1895).

Solitude

“But perhaps you may ask, whether Time was not before the World was created? And if Time does not flow in the Extramundane Space, where nothing is: A mere Vacuum? I answer, that since there was Space before the World was created, and that there now is an Extramundane, infinite Space, (where God is present)… Time existed before the World began, and does exist together with the World in the Extramundane Space, because 'tis possible that some Thing might have existed long before the World was made; and there may now be something in the Extramundane Space, capable of such a Continuance: Some Sun might have given Light long before; and at present this, or some other like it, may diffuse Light thro' Imaginary Spaces. Time therefore does not imply an actual Existence, but only the Capacity or Possibility of the Continuance of Existence; just as Space expresses the Capacity of a Magnitude contain'd in it.”

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) English Christian theologian, and mathematician

p, 125
Geometrical Lectures (1735)

God, World, Light, Time

“Oh! somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has "struck out."”

Ernest Thayer Casey at the Bat

Source: Casey at the Bat, Lines 49-52.

Men, Children, Light, Heart

“As I sit at my desk, I know where I am. I see before me a window; beyond that some trees; beyond that the red roofs of the campus of Stanford University; beyond them the trees and the roof tops which mark the town of Palo Alto; beyond them the bare golden hills of the Hamilton Range… beyond that other mountains, range upon range, until we come to the Rockies; beyond that the Great Plains and the Mississippi; beyond that the Alleghenies; beyond that the eastern seaboard; beyond that the Atlantic Ocean; beyond that is Europe; beyond that is Asia. I know, furthermore, that if I go far enough I will come back to where I am now. In other words, I have a picture of the earth as round. I visualize it as a globe. I am a little hazy on some of the details… I probably could not draw a very good map of Indonesia, but I have a fair idea where everything is located on the face of this globe. Looking further, I visualize the globe as a small speck circling around a bright star which is the sun, in the company of many other similar specks, the planets. Looking still further, I see our star the sun as a member of millions upon millions of others in the Galaxy. Looking still further, I visualize the Galaxy as one of millions upon millions of others in the universe.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society, 1956, p. 3 Introduction

Mountain, Star, Idea, Tree

“The spears of the bright sun, all brave with its conquest,
Did hover unearthly, in banners of fire.
I knelt in the garden, awash with the dawning,
And a voice came so brightly, I covered my eyes.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, Tender Prey (1988), New Morning

“Karna inclined his beautiful head and listened. She told him of a young woman who had been granted a boon. A secret mantra that she could use to choose a lover from among the gods. Of how, with the imprudence of youth, the woman decided to test it to see if it really worked. How she stood alone in an empty field, turned her face to the heavens and recited the mantra. The words had scarcely left her foolish lips, when Surya, the God of Day, appeared before her. The young woman, bewitched by the beauty of the shimmering young god, gave herself to him. Nine months later she bore him a son. The baby was born sheathed in light, with gold earrings in his ears and a gold breastplate on his chest, engraved with the emblem of the sun. The young mother loved her first-born son deeply, but she was unmarried and couldn't keep him. She put him in a reed basket and cast him away in a river. The child was found downriver by Adhiratha, a charioteer. And named Karna.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Kunti in p. 232.
The God of Small Things

Love, God, Secret, Youth

“But now the priests think only one thing. How to hold on to their power as long as mankind lasts—until the sun darkens and the earth freezes!”

Fritz Leiber book Gather, Darkness!

Source: Gather, Darkness! (1950), Chapter 1 (p. 15)

Thinking

“The best thing is to say good-bye, not without a certain regret on my part. One of these days. I will take you and scatter you in your territory, the rock-strewn slope where the sun is so hot. … There you will learn the hard struggle for life better than you would with me.”

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

In 'The Languedocian Scorpion'

Life, Learning, Parting

“Proposition 8. When the sun is totally eclipsed, the sun and the moon are then comprehended by one and the same cone which has its vertex at our eye.”

Aristarchus of Samos ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician

p, 125
On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and the Moon (c. 250 BC)

“We took a place in the sun
To see just what had become
The warm wind blows constantly…
Does the answer still blow:
Did you find your château
In that mediterranean fantasy?”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Islands (1987)

“I'm betting on the sun's increased activity in the last century, and that CO2 doesn't matter much because its effect is overwhelmed by everything else in our atmosphere that also acts as a greenhouse gas, mostly water vapor.”

Anthony Watts (1958) American television meteorologist

The Chico Beat http://www.norcalblogs.com/bullfight/2006/08/05/new-newspaper/, norcalblogs.com, August 5, 2006. 2006

Water

“If we are to end our wars, we have to dispense with a threatening, vengeful, bloodthirsty God. If we're to have any kind of world brotherhood, we have to dispense with a God who reserves his favors for a chosen few. Life is given to all. The sun shines freely on each of us. Would a God be less kindly? More than this, we must also dispense with our species God, and extend our ideas of divinity outward to the rest of nature which couches us and our religious theorizing with such a gracious and steady support.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto (1981), p. 63

Life, God, War, World

“322. Although the sun shine, leave not thy cloake at home.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Home

“To rotate on its own axis is not the one movement for the human soul. There is also its wheeling round the Sun of an inexhaustible illumination.”

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

Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)

Soul

“The life force that pulsates in the trees, plants, and animals is the same life force that pulsates within us. The same life energy that gives us the power to speak and to sing, is the power behind the song of the bird and the roar of the lion. The same consciousness that flows in and through every human being, lends its power to the movement of the wind, to the flow of the river, and to the light of the sun. How can there be any sense of difference once this subtle principle is understood? When we evaluate our growth and development in the light of this great Truth, we may wonder whether we human beings have really developed or grown at all. The progress that we see today is divided growth. Only some parts are growing—the world as a whole remains unhealthy. We cannot call this real progress.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

Unity is Peace (1995)

Life, Truth, World, Bird

“The mid-day sun is too much for most eyes; one is dazzled even with its reflection. Be careful that too broad and high an aim does not paralyze your effort and clog your springs of action.”

Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge

The Spirit of Liberty: Papers and Addresses (1952), p. 9.
Extra-judicial writings

Spring, Effort

“The Sun has come to represent enlightenment and salvation across many cultures. I think that if we remove such comforting concepts we are required to do more soul searching but eventually our eyes become accustomed to the dark and our lives become richer.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Soul, Search, Thinking

“In Phebus realm, in knowledge as in verse,
All things are clear, the sun of Phoebus clear,
Clear was his crystal, the Kastalian.
What you cannot clearly say, you don’t know:
To tongue of man his thought brings word:
What’s said obscurely is what’s thought obscurely.”

Esaias Tegnér (1782–1846) Swedish poet, professor and bishop

"Epilog vid Magisterpromotionen i Lund 1820".

Knowledge

“I have such a passion for painting! I am continually working at form. In actual drawing and in my head, and during my sleep. Sometimes I think I shall go mad, this painful, sensual pleasures tires and torments me so much. Everything else vanishes, time and space, and I think of nothing but how to paint the head of the resurrected Christ... Or how shall I paint Minkchen [his wife Minna] now, with her knees drawn up and her head leaning on her hand against the yellow wall with her rose, or the sparkling light in the dazzling whiteness of the anti-aircraft shell-bursts in the leaden, sun drenched sky…”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

letter to his first wife Minna, from the front, 11 May, 1915; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 213
1900s - 1920s

Pain, Pleasure, Thinking, Sleep

“The bases of music are rhythm and harmony. Rhythm is ordered recurrence in time… As the planets move around the sun, they repeat their orbits periodically; thus there is already a primitive kind of rhythm in their motion…. Harmony… can be considered a special kind of rhythm…. pure musical tones are produced when the vibrations are… periodic or… repeat themselves regularly in time. Two tones harmonize if their intervals of repetition are in rhythm—or, in mathematical language, if their periods are in proportion. Kepler… in the third book of Harmonice mundi… attempted to make other… related, connections between musical harmony and mathematical proportion.”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

Books, Music, Mathematics, Time

Quotes about the sun page 13

Quotes about the sun
page 13