Quotes about the sun (2388 quotes, page 17)

“Many humans look at nature from an aesthetic perspective and think in terms of biodiversity and the health of ecosystems, but forget that the animals that inhabit these ecosystems are individuals and have their own needs. Disease, starvation, predation, ostracism, and sexual frustration are endemic in so-called healthy ecosystems. The great taboo in the animal rights movement is that most suffering is due to natural causes. Any proposal for remedying this situation is bound to sound utopian, but my dream is that one day the sun will rise on Earth and all sentient creatures will greet the new day with joy.”

Nick Bostrom (1973) Swedish philosopher

Albert, a fictional dog in Golden https://nickbostrom.com/fable/retriever.html (2004)

Health , Disease , Dreams , Nature

“She stood breast-high amid the corn
Clasped by the golden light of morn,
Like the sweetheart of the sun,
Who many a glowing kiss had won.”

Thomas Hood Ruth

Ruth; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
20th century

Kiss , Light

“Sun-swept beaches with a light wind blowing
From the immense blue circle of the sea,
And the soft thunder where long waves whiten —
These were the same for Sappho as for me. Two thousand years — much has gone by forever,
Change takes the gods and ships and speech of men —
But here on the beaches that time passes over
The heart aches now as then.”

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet

"The Unchanging"
Flame and Shadow (1920)

Men , God , Light , Change

“Kill if you must, but never hate:
Man is but grass and hate is blight,
The sun will scorch you soon or late,
Die wholesome then, since you must fight.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Hate Not, Fear Not".
Country Sentiment (1920)

Hate , Grass , Fight

“All Kings, and all their favorites,
All glory of honors, beauties, wits
The sun itself, which makes times, as they pass,
Is elder by a year, now, than it was
When thou and I first one another saw:
All other things, to their destruction draw,
Only our love hath no decay;
This, no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday,
Running, it never runs from us away,
But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

The Anniversary, stanza 1

Love , Beauty , Time , Drawing

“Call the sun in the dead of the night
And the sun gonna rise in the sky
Touch a man who can't walk upright
And that lame man, he gonna fly.
And I fly, yeah, And I fly.”

Neil Diamond (1941) American singer-songwriter

Holly Holy
Song lyrics, Touching You (1969)

Flying , Night , Dead

“It is not yet the Millennium. We have not yet reached these pure heights of civilization, the ascent to which is the Good Fight. But are we no nearer the summit because we do not stand upon it? Has the Good Fight gained nothing by the war? If you sail from Boston to Calcutta, when you are off Madagascar you are not yet in India, but you have rounded the Cape of Good Hope, you are not yet in India, but at least you are outside Boston Light. I do not say the country is yet beyond Boston Light, but if not, it is only because Boston Light is the sun of liberty that shines all over the world.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

War , World , Hope , Light

“She had never known before how much the country meant to her. The chirping of the insects in the long grass had been like the sweetest music. She had felt as if her heart were hiding down there, somewhere, with the quail and the plover and all the little wild things that crooned or buzzed in the sun. Under the long shaggy ridges, she felt the future stirring.”

Willa Cather book O Pioneers!

Part I, Ch. 5
O Pioneers! (1913)

Music , Grass , Future , Heart

“Thus for each blunt-faced ignorant one
The great grey rigid uniform combined
Safety with virtue of the sun.
Thus concepts linked like chainmail in the mind.”

Thom Gunn (1929–2004) English poet

Considering the Snail (l. 5-10)
Collected Poems by Thom Gunn (1994)

“My first protocol on rooting in sports is that you should stick with the teams that you grew up with. I know we're a transient society, but that's just it: Continuing to cheer for your original hometown teams is one way of displaying the old-fashioned value of allegiance.
If you grew up in Cleveland, say, and moved somewhere Sun Belt-ish, I know how hard it is, but the measure of whether you are a good person is that you must remain loyal to the Browns and Indians and that team that LeBron James left behind.
That's what's left of roots in America. You must root where your roots were laid down.”

Frank Deford (1938–2017) American sportswriter

It's Good To Root, Root, Root For The Home Team, 2012-10-10, Deford, Frank, 2012-10-10, Morning Edition, National Public Radio http://www.npr.org/2012/10/10/162566872/why-you-should-root-root-root-for-the-home-team,

Way , Fashion , Sport , Personality

“There were no clouds, the sun was going down in a limpid, gold-washed sky. Just as the lower edge of the red disk rested on the high fields against the horizon, a great black figure suddenly appeared on the face of the sun. We sprang to our feet, straining our eyes toward it. In a moment we realized what it was. On some upland farm, a plough had been left standing in the field. The sun was sinking just behind it. Magnified across the distance by the horizontal light, it stood out against the sun, was exactly contained within the circle of the disk; the handles, the tongue, the share — black against the molten red. There it was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun.”

Willa Cather book My Ántonia

Book II, Ch. 14
My Antonia (1918)

Light , Appearance

“Cease, Man, to mourn, to weep, to wail; enjoy thy shining hour of sun;
We dance along Death's icy brink, but is the dance less full of fun?”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

Death , Dance

“O fair, false city, thou gay and gilded harlot!
Wo for thy wanton heart, wo for thy wicked hardness!
Wo unto thee, that the lightsomeness of life, beneath Italian suns,
Should meet the solemnity of death, in a sepulchre so foul and fearful!”

Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–1889) English writer and poet

Of Death.
Proverbial Philosophy (1838-1849)

Life , Death , Fear , Heart

“My mother and I have this really strangely close relationship. No other relationship can come close to it. It's frightening. Even when I'm in a relationship with a man, I compare it to my relationship with my mother. She is a friend, but she is still a mother, and everything a mother needs to be, she is. She is really observing and caring and doesn't want anything but giving because it's her joy. Even when I can't bear anybody, not even myself, she 's like the sun coming up to me. She dedicated all her life to me. Sometimes I feel that she gave her life to me and now it's my job to maybe take her somewhere. But what is it she doesn't know? She knows things I couldn't begin to know. Yet she is so fresh with ideas which I already take for granted. She sometimes wakes me up and says, 'Don't you see?”

Nastassja Kinski (1961) German actress

and she makes me see and feel things again. Nobody, not my father, not anybody, has done that for me, except movies.
As quoted in Denise Worrell (1989), Icons: Intimate Portraits.

Life , Feeling , Idea , Joy

“Who drives the horses of the sun
Shall lord it but a day;
Better the lowly deed were done,
And kept the humble way.”

John Vance Cheney (1848–1922) American writer

The Happiest Heart

Way , Horse

“Gazing into the golden rage of the sun shreds vision into scraps of light and darkness. A white sun is congealed from patches of light, floating ephemerally at the edge of blindness. This is the illuminating sun, giving what we can keep, the sun whose outpourings are acquired by the body as nutrition, and by the eye as (assimilable) sensation. (…) Mixed with this nourishing radiance, as its very heart, is the other sun, the deeper one, dark and contagious, provoking a howl from Bataille: ‘the sun is black’. From this second sun—the sun of malediction—we receive not illumination but disease, for whatever it squanders on us we are fated to squander in turn.”

Nick Land (1962) British philosopher

Source: The Thirst for Annihilation: Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihilism (1992), Chapter 2: "The curse of the sun", p. 20

Fate , Disease , Light , Rage

“White sail upon the ocean verge,
Just crimsoned by the setting sun,
Thou hast thy port beyond the surge,
Thy happy homeward course to run
And winged hope, with heart of fire,
To gain the bliss of thy desire.”

William Winter (1836–1917) American writer

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

Hope , Heart , Happiness

“We rub the darkness from our eyes,
And face our thousand devious secret mornings...
And do not see how the pale mist, slowly ascending,
Shaped by the sun, shines like a white-robed dreamer
Compassionate over our towers bending.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Secret

“Then through the pallid rift that seemed at first
Hardly enough for a trickle from the suns,
Outpoured the revelation and the flame.
The brief perpetual sign recurred above.
A glamour from unreached transcendences
Iridescent with the glory of the Unseen,
A message from the unknown immortal Light
Ablaze upon creation's quivering edge,
Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues
And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours.”

Sri Aurobindo book Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol

Savitri (1918-1950), Book One : The Book Of Beginnings

Light

“The proud daughter of that monarch to whom when it grows dark [elsewhere] the sun never sets.”

Giovanni Battista Guarini book Il pastor fido

Altera figlia
Di quel monarca a cui
Nè anco, quando annotta, il Sol tramonta.
Il pastor fido (1590). On the marriage of the Duke of Savoy with Catherine of Austria.

Daughters

“For every serious attempt to achieve integration of house to site you will find a thousand houses peppering the landscape and clearly demonstrating the builder's total disregard for even the most basic considerations of sun, wind, and view.”

Ken Kern American writer

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

Housing

“There's a new sun rising
From a lost horizon
And the heat that it brings
Melts away all the things
That has made me stand still
Been a long time coming
So tired of running
I believe there's a reason
I came through the season again
It's my resurrection.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Resurrection
Resurrection (2014)

Time , Season

“The sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West.”

Sidney Lanier (1842–1881) American musician, poet

"The Marshes of Glynn" (1878).
Poetry

Waiting

“The sun never sets on the immense empire of Charles V.”

Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet

Life of Napoleon (February, 1807).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Variant: The sun never sets on the immense empire of Charles V.

“Nothing Like the Sun and the Enderby books prove that Burgess is as clever as he seems. His utopian satires, of which 1985 is yet another, mainly just seem clever. At a generous estimate there are half a dozen ideas in each of them.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Anthony Burgess in 1978'
Essays and reviews, From the Land of Shadows (1982)

Books , Idea

“I have sometimes come upon the Iguana, the big lizard, as they were sunning themselves upon a flat stone in a river-bed. They are not pretty in shape, but nothing can be imagined more beautiful than their colouring. They shine like a heap of precious stones or like a pane cut out of an old church window. When, as you approach, they swish away, there is a flash of azure, green and purple over the stones, the color seems to be standing behind them in the air, like a comet's luminous tail.
Once I shot an Iguana. I thought that I should be able to make some pretty things from his skin. A strange thing happened then, that I have never afterwards forgotten. As I went up to him, where he was lying dead upon his stone, and actually while I was walking the few steps, he faded and grew pale, all colour died out of him as in one long sigh, and by the time that I touched him he was grey and dull like a lump of concrete. It was the live impetuous blood pulsating within the animal, which had radiated out all that glow and splendor. Now that the flame was put out, and the soul had flown, the Iguana was as dead as a sandbag.”

Karen Blixen book Out of Africa

Out of Africa (1937)

Beauty , Color , Soul , Imagination

“An ideal objectivist society with a limited government is superior to an anarcho-capitalist society in precisely the same way that an ideal socialist society is superior to a capitalist society. Socialism does better with perfect people than anarcho-capitalism with imperfect. And it is better to wear a bikini with the sun shining than a raincoat when it is raining. That is no argument against carrying an umbrella.”

David D. Friedman book The Machinery of Freedom

Source: The Machinery of Freedom, 1973, p.134

People , Way , Perfection

“Now with the big bang there is only one event that happened. So like the sun you can’t say that there are other big bangs going on that are what ours was like. The second problem is that at the big bang mathematics and physics break down. So there is no way of mathematically describing it. That is not a satisfactorily scientific approach, to ascribe something to speculations which you cannot justify using mathematics and physics.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

Jayant Narlikar's Cosmology

Way , Mathematics , Problem

“There is a word
Which bears a sword
Can pierce an armed man.
It hurls its barbed syllables,—
At once is mute again.
But where it fell
The saved will tell
On patriotic day,
Some epauletted brother
Gave his breath away.Wherever runs the breathless sun,
Wherever roams the day,
There is its noiseless onset,
There is its victory!
Behold the keenest marksman!
The most accomplished shot!
Time’s sublimest target
Is a soul “forgot”!”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Love, p. 170
Collected Poems (1993)

Soul , Time , Victory

“There seemed no face within the cowl, only a black emptiness, and the notion sprang irresistibly to Dietrich’s mind that this was Death, now these dozen years overdue, treading a weary mountain trail in search of him. Then a flash of white showed within the shadow and Dietrich realized that it was only the angle of the sun that had made that hood seem so empty.”

Michael Flynn book Eifelheim

Source: Eifelheim (2006), Chapter XVIII (p. 323)

Death , Search , Mountain

“Nicias, do you think you can erase with good deeds the wrongs you committed against your mother? What good deed will ever reach her? Her soul is a scorching noon time, without a single breath of a breeze, nothing moves, nothing changes, nothing lives there; a great emaciated sun, an immobile sun eternally consumes her.”

Jean Paul Sartre The Flies

King Aegistheus, Act 2
The Flies (1943)

Soul , Thinking , Change , Time

“The snow lay deep upon road and fields, for the April sun was powerless to send warmth through the gray clouds, and the heavy spring rains were yet to come.”

Louis Hémon book Maria Chapdelaine

Source: Maria Chapdelaine (1913), Ch. 1, p. 4

Spring

“Thinking of the sun causes quick
beating of my heart —
snowy weather comes on the wind
lightly drifting.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Thinking Of The Sun (1911)

Thinking , Heart , Weather

“The Sultan summoned the most religiously disposed of his followers, and ordered them to attack the enemy immediately. Many infidels were consequently slain or taken prisoners in this sudden attack, and the Musulmans paid no regard to the booty till they had satiated themselves with the slaughter of the infidels and worshippers of the sun and fire. The friends of Allah searched the bodies of the slain for three whole days, in order to obtain booty… The booty amounted in gold and silver, rubies and pearls, nearly to three thousand thousand dirhams, and the number of prisoners may be conceived from the fact, that each was sold for from two to ten dirhams. These were afterwards taken to Ghazna, and merchants came from distant cities to purchase them, so that the countries of Mawarau-n nahr, Irak and Khurasan were filled with them, and the fair and the dark, the rich and the poor, were commingled in one common slavery.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Siraswa, town near Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh. Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 49-50
Quotes from Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi

Search , Distant , Country

“Press on! there's no such word as fail!
Press nobly on! the goal is near,—
Ascend the mountain! breast the gale!
Look upward, onward,—never fear!
Why shouldst thou faint? Heaven smiles above,
Though storm and vapor intervene;
That sun shines on, whose name is Love,
Serenely o'er Life's shadow'd scene.”

Park Benjamin, Sr. (1809–1864) American journalist

Press On.

Love , Life , Fear , Smile

“I am delighted, one more time, by the daring of my species and the audacity of our flying machines. There is poetry and music in our technology, a beauty as touching as that of eagle, moss campion, raven or yonder limestone boulder shining under the Arctic sun.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

"Gather at the River", page 164
Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside (1984)

Beauty , Music , Time , Flying

“The Sun shineth as well on the good as the bad: God from on high beholdeth all the workers of iniquity, as well as the upright of heart.”

Thomas Nashe (1567–1601) English Elizabethan pamphleteer and poet

Christ's Tears over Jerusalem 1593.

God , Heart

“A tree is beautiful, but what’s more, it has a right to life; like water, the sun and the stars, it is essential. Life on earth is inconceivable without trees. Forests create climate, climate influences peoples’ character, and so on and so forth. There can be neither civilization nor happiness if forests crash down under the axe, if the climate is harsh and severe, if people are also harsh and severe…. What a terrible future!”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (October 18, 1888)
Letters

Life , People , Beauty , Star

“I always look at everything with the eyes of a child. I feel enthusiastic for things today fort he same reasons as I was enthusiastic about them as a child... I remember one summer morning when I was twelve years old [1888], I was with my father. We were following a road which crossed the plain from Rueil to Croissy. The whole plain was a solid field of corn and the ears stood higher than my head. I still retain today the impression of the vast expanse, spangled with flowers and filled with the drone of insects. Often, later on, I have tried to recapture, to fix firmly in my mind once again, the impression of that world around me, of the sun which burns my face and hands... Every time a see a field of corn I an reminded of that morning.”

Maurice de Vlaminck (1876–1958) French painter

Source: Quotes dated, Dangerous Corner', 1929, p. 18-19

World , Feeling , Flowers , Time

“A rope; a prayer; and an oak-tree near,
And a score of hands to swing him clear.
A grim, black thing for the setting sun
And the moon and the stars to gaze upon.”

Madison Cawein (1865–1914) poet from Louisville, Kentucky

The Man Hunt.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

Star , Tree

“Consider one of the standard "laments" or "stories of wonder" in conventional tales of natural history: the mayfly that lives but a single day (a sadness even recorded in the technical name for this biological group - Ephemoptera). Yes, the adult fly may enjoy only a moment in the sun, but we should honor the entire life cycle and recognize that the larvae, or juvenile stages, live and develop for months. Larvae are not mere preparations for a brief adulthood. We might better read the entire life cycle as a division of labor, with larvae as feeding and growing stages, and the adult as a short-lived reproductive machine. In this sense, we could well view the adult fly's day as the larva's clever and transient device for making a new generation of truly fundamental feeders.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

Triumph of the Root-Heads, p. 356
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Life , Sadness , History , Nature

“This is zero hour and there's no way back
Can you feel that power in its arms you're wrapped
All through the night-time
Till the sun comes in?
Now Heaven's Open
Fly right in!”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Heaven's Open (1991)

Way , Feeling , Time , Flying

“You'll come along for the sun if you come at all”

Daniel Johns (1979) Australian musician

Tuna in the Brine
Song lyrics, Diorama (2002)

“I am hard at work, at least I work as much as the weather permits. - I began a work the motif of which is the river bank in the direction of St. Paul's Church. Looking towards Rouen I have before me all the houses on the quays lighted by the morning sun, in the background the stone bridge, to the left the island with its houses, factories, boats, launches, to the right a mass of pinnaces of all colors… Yesterday, not having the sun, I began another work on the same motif in grey weather, only I looked more to the right [603]. I must leave you for my motif. I have a room on the street. I shall start on a view of the street in fog for it has been foggy every morning until eleven o'clock—noon. It should be interesting, the square in the fog, the tramways, the goings and comings..”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote in a letter, Rouen 11 October 1883, to his son Lucien; from Camille Pissarro - Letters to His Son Lucien ed. John Rewald, with assistance of Lucien Pissarro; from the unpublished French letters; transl. Lionel Abel; Pantheon Books Inc. New York, second edition, 1943, p. 40
1880's

Color , Light , Housing , Weather

“That my old bitter heart was pierced in this black doom,
That foreign devils have made our land a tomb,
That the sun that was Munster's glory has gone down
Has made me a beggar before you, Valentine Brown.”

Egan O'Rahilly (1670–1726) Irish poet

"Valentine Brown", as quoted in An Anthology of Irish Literature (1954), p. 239
Variant translation:
Because all night my mind inclines to wander and to rave,
Because the English dogs have made Ireland a green grave,
Because all of Munster's glory is daily trampled down,
I have traveled far to meet you, Valentine Brown.

Heart

“In the desert, initially, everywhere is like everywhere else—sky, sand, mountains. So far, this was the extent of what I’d seen in my involuntary roost. Then the day began to ebb, the world turned to topaz and gold, and the color of the sky seemed to sink away into the disc of the sun. I found I really could touch the beauty of it then, as I had touched its beauty so long ago when I was free to travel where I wished, and the city still owned me. Now, tinged with my sorrow, the loveliness was bittersweet, but strong as wine.”

Tanith Lee book Drinking Sapphire Wine

Part 2, Chapter 3 (pp. 69-70)
Drinking Sapphire Wine (1977)

World , Beauty , Color , Travel

“It has been observed here this morning that we are called fanatics. Bless me! That is nothing. Who has not been called a fanatic who has discovered anything new in philosophy or science? We have all read of Galileo the astronomer who, contrary to the system of astronomy that had been received for ages before his day, taught that the sun, and not the earth, was the centre of our planetary system? For this the learned astronomer was called "fanatic," and subjected to persecution and imprisonment of the most rigorous character. So it has been with others who have discovered and explained new truths in science and philosophy which have been in opposition to long-established theories; and the opposition they have encountered has endured until the truth of their discoveries has been demonstrated by time. The term "fanatic" is not applied to professors of religion only…I will tell you who the real fanatics are: they are they who adopt false principles and ideas as facts, and try to establish a superstructure upon a false foundation. They are the fanatics; and however ardent and zealous they may be, they may reason or argue on false premises till doomsday, and the result will be false. If our religion is of this character we want to know it; we would like to find a philosopher who can prove it to us. We are called ignorant; so we are: but what of it? Are not all ignorant? I rather think so. Who can tell us of the inhabitants of this little planet that shines of an evening, called the moon? When we view its face we may see what is termed "the man in the moon," and what some philosophers declare are the shadows of mountains. But these sayings are very vague, and amount to nothing; and when you inquire about the inhabitants of that sphere you find that the most learned are as ignorant in regard to them as the most ignorant of their fellows. So it is with regard to the inhabitants of the sun. Do you think it is inhabited? I rather think it is. Do you think there is any life there? No question of it; it was not made in vain. It was made to give light to those who dwell upon it, and to other planets; and so will this earth when it is celestialized. Every planet in its first rude, organic state receives not the glory of God upon it, but is opaque; but when celestialized, every planet that God brings into existence is a body of light, but not till then. Christ is the light of this planet. God gives light to our eyes.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses, 13:271 (July 24, 1870)
1870s

Life , God , Truth , Age

“And if California slides into the ocean
Like the mystics and statistics say it will,
I predict this motel will be standing until I pay my bill.Don't the sun look angry through the trees?
Don't the trees look like crucified thieves?
Don't you feel like Desperados under the eaves?
Heaven help the one who leaves.”

Warren Zevon (1947–2003) American singer-songwriter

"Desperadoes Under the Eaves"
Warren Zevon (1976)

Feeling , Tree , Help

“The lover of romance may lie in the sun, caring not for the time of day and content to watch the butterflies that cross his blue sky on the way from one flower to another. But the historian is an entomologist who must be stirring. He must catch the moths, which are his facts, in the net which is his memory, and he must fasten them upon his paper with sharp pins, which are dates.”

Francis Marion Crawford (1854–1909) Novelist, short story writer, essayist (1854-1909)

Don Orsino (1891)

Lie , Way , Flowers , Lovers

“I'm off to see The Bootleg Beatles as the bootleg Mark Chapman.
When The Evening Sun Goes Down, Cammell Laird Social Club”

Nigel Blackwell

2002
Lyrics

“The quiet of this afternoon is strange, haunting, awful;
Hear that buzzing in the hot grass, coming from live things; and those crows' cries from somewhere;
There is a sluggish, sad brook near here, too.
The bird is gone now, so graceful, fair as it was,
And the sky has nothing but the brightness of air in it.
The clean color of air.
The sun makes it be afternoon here;…”

Eli Siegel (1902–1978) Latvian-American poet, philosopher

Extract from the title poem Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana [Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana: Poems, Defintion Press, (1957)]

Sadness , Color , Bird , Grass

“The Spanish voyager, as his caravel ploughed the adjacent seas, might give full scope to his imagination, and dream that beyond the long, low margin of forest which bounded his horizon lay hid a rich harvest for some future conqueror; perhaps a second Mexico with its royal palace and sacred pyramids, or another Cuzco with its temple of the Sun, encircled with a frieze of gold. Haunted by such visions, the ocean chivalry of Spain could not long stand idle.”

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) American historian

Pt. I, Ch. 1
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

Dreams , Imagination , Future , Sea

“Say to them,
say to the down-keepers,
the sun-slappers,
the self-soilers,
the harmony-hushers,
"even if you are not ready for day
it cannot always be night."”

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) American writer

You will be right.
Speech to the Young : Speech to the Progress-Toward

Night

“My father is so expressive that things he feels even before they are thoughts are visible on his skin. He heats up. What other people work on, he was born with. He's got eyes like the sky and like hell at the same time. They're so clear and blue and alert and serious, and then they're like hell. That's how he is. He is total light and pureness and then hell. He gives totally or he gives nothing. He is like the sun, then an iceberg, then nonexistent, and then the sun again. Which is fine. It's a lot better than most people are.”

Nastassja Kinski (1961) German actress

As quoted in Denise Worrell (1989), Icons: Intimate Portraits.

People , Feeling , Hell , Light

“I can understand the ignorant masses loving to soak themselves in drink—oh, yes, it's very shocking that they should, of course—very shocking to us who live in cozy homes, with all the graces and pleasures of life around us, that the dwellers in damp cellars and windy attics should creep from their dens of misery into the warmth and glare of the public-house bar, and seek to float for a brief space away from their dull world upon a Lethe stream of gin. But think, before you hold up your hands in horror at their ill-living, what "life" for these wretched creatures really means. Picture the squalid misery of their brutish existence, dragged on from year to year in the narrow, noisome room where, huddled like vermin in sewers, they welter, and sicken, and sleep; where dirt-grimed children scream and fight and sluttish, shrill-voiced women cuff, and curse, and nag; where the street outside teems with roaring filth and the house around is a bedlam of riot and stench. Think what a sapless stick this fair flower of life must be to them, devoid of mind and soul. The horse in his stall scents the sweet hay and munches the ripe corn contentedly. The watch-dog in his kennel blinks at the grateful sun, dreams of a glorious chase over the dewy fields, and wakes with a yelp of gladness to greet a caressing hand. But the clod-like life of these human logs never knows one ray of light. From the hour when they crawl from their comfortless bed to the hour when they lounge back into it again they never live one moment of real life. Recreation, amusement, companionship, they know not the meaning of. Joy, sorrow, laughter, tears, love, friendship, longing, despair, are idle words to them. From the day when their baby eyes first look out upon their sordid world to the day when, with an oath, they close them forever and their bones are shoveled out of sight, they never warm to one touch of human sympathy, never thrill to a single thought, never start to a single hope. In the name of the God of mercy; let them pour the maddening liquor down their throats and feel for one brief moment that they live!”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Love , Life , Women , God

“It’s vital as we postulate and work toward exploration and human settlement beyond Earth. I like to think of the possibilities of sustaining humanity’s continuum, with preserved recorded history way beyond the life of our Sun.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Source: Zero Gravity interview (2006), Ch. 5

Life , Way , History , Thinking

“Philosophers have always tried to show that we are not like other animals, sniffing their way uncertainly through the world. Yet after all the work of Plato and Spinoza, Descartes and Bertrand Russell we have no more reason than other animals do for believing that the sun will rise tomorrow.”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Deception: Animal Faith (p. 55)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

World , Way , Animals

“The emphasis this week seems to be on the sun, and the fact that maybe its really the sun which has been driving climate change after all. That's what I've been saying for years, because its just unrealistic to ignore the largest and single most important contributor to our planets energy balance and to only focus on made-made CO2 and nothing else.”

Anthony Watts (1958) American television meteorologist

This week in Global Warming http://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/03/24/this-week-in-global-warming/, wattsupwiththat.com, March 24, 2007.
2007

Change

““Rumors that the sun is out at Santa Ynez are without foundation,” the radio said.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

December “NOT IN OUR STARS“
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

“Most wretched is the mortal that would shun
To look upon the visage of the sun.”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

Misero è ben chi veder schiva il sole!
Canto XXXII, stanza 23 (tr. W. S. Rose)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

“He kept flinching. The low sun shone in the face of a two-hundred-foot-tall wind turbine in the field across the crick, and its blades cast long scything shadows over them. … The sun above blinking on and off with each cut of a blade. … Something about their being in motion, in a place where everything else was almost pathologically still, seized the attention; they always seemed to be jumping out at you from behind corners.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Thanksgiving (prologue)
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

“Don't pray when it rains if you don't pray when the sun shines.”

Satchel Paige (1906–1982) American baseball player and coach; Negro Leagues

New York Post (4 October 1959)

“Delusion will vanish as the light becomes more and more effulgent, load after load of ignorance will vanish, and then will come a time when all else has disappeared and the sun alone shines.”

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

Pearls of Wisdom

Light , Time

“There'd been the biggest motorcade from the airport. Hot. Wild. Like Mexico and Vienna. The sun was so strong in our faces. I couldn't put on sunglasses… Then we saw this tunnel ahead, I thought it would be cool in the tunnel, I thought if you were on the left the sun wouldn't get into your eyes…”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

The "Camelot" interview (29 November 1963)

Strong

“Her heart was warmed and melted like the dew on roses under the morning sun.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea, Lines 1019–1021

Heart

“I am on the train going back to Stieglitz – and in a hurry to get there – I have had four months west and it seems to be all that I needed – It has been like the wind and the sun – there doesn't seem to have been a crack of the waking day or night that wasn’t full – I haven't gained an ounce in weight but I feel so alive that I am apt to crack at any moment..”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Source: 1920s, Letter to Ettie Stettheimer' (August 1929), p. 226

Feeling , Training , Night

“Suns are extinguished or become corrupted, planets perish and scatter across the wastes of the sky; other suns are kindled, new planets formed to make their revolutions or describe new orbits, and man, an infinitely minute part of a globe which itself is only an imperceptible point in the immense whole, believes that the universe is made for himself.”

Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789) French-German author, philosopher, encyclopedist

La Système de la nature; quoted by Norman Hampson, The Enlightenment p. 220 (paperback edition)

Universe , Parting

“Hezbollah is like a shining sun which warms up all oppressed Muslims, especially those in Palestine and Lebanon”

Mohammad Khatami (1943) Iranian prominent reformist politician, scholar and shiite faqih.

Said in a message to Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/world/middleeast/19iran.html
http://www.asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=6726
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/18/news/iran.php
http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=7960
Hizbullah

“Her sentences march under a harsh sun that bleaches color from them but bestows a peculiar, invigorating, Pascalian clarity.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

John Updike, reviewing The Only Problem in New Yorker, July 23, 1984.

Color

“Roll on, ye Stars! exult in youthful prime,
Mark with bright curves the printless steps of Time;
Near and more near your beamy cars approach,
And lessening orbs on lessening orbs encroach; —
Flowers of the sky! ye too to age must yield,
Frail as your silken sisters of the field!
Star after star from Heaven's high arch shall rush,
Suns sink on suns, and systems systems crush,
Headlong, extinct, to one dark center fall,
And Death and Night and Chaos mingle all!
— Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm,
Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form,
Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame,
And soars and shines, another and the same.”

Erasmus Darwin book The Botanic Garden

The Botanic Garden (1791), Part i.

Death , Youth , Age , Cars

“Aryabhata conceived the earth as a rotating sphere in space, which causes the apparent rising and setting of the sun. Varahamihira disagreed and Brahmagupta derided Aryabhata — but unlike medieval Europe, the intellectual climate in India was free and tolerant of dissent.”

Michel Danino (1956) Indian writer

On ancient Indian astronomers, as quoted in " Unlike medieval Europe, India’s intellectual climate was free and tolerant: Michel Danino http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/the-interviews-blog/unlike-medieval-europe-indias-intellectual-climate-was-free-and-tolerant-michel-danino/", The Times of India (9 February 2015)

“Yes, Peter. Are you going to ask that question with shades on?… I'm interested in the shade look, seriously…. For the viewers, there’s no sun.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Teasing Los Angeles Times reporter Peter Wallsten during a White House press conference, unaware that Wallsten suffers from Stargardt’s disease and is partly blind.
"Bush shows his sensitive side, telling blind journalist: 'I'm interested in the shade look'" http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1089264.ece, The Independent, June 16, 2006.
2000s, 2006

Question

“Hamm: Look at the ocean!(Clov gets down, takes a few steps towards window left, goes back for ladder, carries it over and sets it down under window left, gets up on it, turns the telescope on the without, looks at length. He starts, lowers the telescope, examines it, turns it again on the without.)Clov: Never seen anything like that!Hamm (anxious): What? A sail? A fin? Smoke?Clov (looking): The light is sunk. Hamm (relieved): Pah! We all knew that. Clov (looking): There was a bit left. Hamm: The base. Clov (looking): Yes. Hamm: And now? Clov (looking): All gone. Hamm: No gulls? Clov (looking): Gulls! Hamm: And the horizon? Nothing on the horizon? Clov (lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm, exasperated): What in God's name could there be on the horizon? (Pause.) Hamm: The waves, how are the waves? Clov: The waves? (He turns the telescope on the waves.) Lead. Hamm: And the sun? Clov (looking): Zero. Hamm: But it should be sinking. Look again. Clov (looking): Damn the sun. Hamm: Is it night already then? Clov (looking): No. Hamm: Then what is it? Clov (looking): Gray. (Lowering the telescope, turning towards Hamm, louder.) Gray! (Pause. Still louder.) GRRAY! (Pause. He gets down, approaches Hamm from behind, whispers in his ear.) Hamm (starting): Gray! Did I hear you say gray? Clov: Light black. From pole to pole.”

Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) Irish novelist, playwright, and poet

An explanation of the universe outside the room of Endgame
Endgame (1957)

God , Light , Night

“I could not find the way to God;
There were too many flaming suns
For signposts, and the fearful road
Led over wastes where millions
Of tangled comets hissed and burned—
I was bewildered and I turned.”

Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863–1944) British writer and literary critic

Poem The White Moth http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-white-moth/

God , Fear , Way

“Brother Matthias had the right idea about training a baseball club. He made every boy on the team play every position in the game, including the bench. A kid might pitch a game one day and find himself behind the bat the next or perhaps out in the sun-field. You see Brother Matthias' idea was to fit a boy to jump in in any emergency and make good. So whatever I have at the bat or on the mound or in the outfield or even on the bases, I owe directly to Brother Matthias.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

On the mentoring he received from Brother Matthias Boutlier, Prefect of Discipline at St. Mary's Industrial School for Boys, in "Ruth, As a Kid, Learns to Play in Any Position" http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1920/08/09/page/15/ by Ruth, as told to Westbrook Pegler (uncredited), in The Chicago Tribune (August 9, 1920), p. 15; reprinted as "We Did Everything," https://books.google.com/books?id=SAAlxi-0EZYC&pg=PA6&dq=%22Brother+Matthias+had+the+right+idea%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjv7_zWgLnQAhUJ7yYKHZQFA_EQ6AEIGjAB#v=onepage&q=%22Brother%20Matthias%20had%20the%20right%20idea%22&f=false in Playing the Game: My Early Years in Baseball (2011), p. 6

Game , Boy , Idea , Training

“You will see that the only liar in the Midi, if there is one, is the sun; everything that he touches he exaggerates.”

Alphonse Daudet book Tartarin of Tarascon

Le seul menteur du Midi, s'il y en a un, c'est le soleil. Tout ce qu'il touche, il l'exagère!
Source: Tartarin de Tarascon (1872), P. 40; translation p. 17.

“The great fact in life, the always possible escape from dullness, was the lake. The sun rose out of it, the day began there; it was like an open door that nobody could shut. The land and all its dreariness could never close in on you. You had only to look at the lake, and you knew you would soon be free.”

Willa Cather book The Professor's House

Book I, Ch. 1
The Professor's thoughts on Lake Michigan
The Professor's House (1925)

Life

“We are the warriors of the sun
The golden boys and the golden girls
For a better world”

Joan Baez (1941) American singer

Children of the 80's (1980)

World , Girl , Boy

“Contemplation The shining forth of That which is Unconditioned is as a fair mirror wherein shines the Eternal Light of God. It has no attributes, And here all the works of Reason fail. It is not God, But it is the Light whereby we see Him. Those who walk in the Divine Light discover in themselves the UnwalledEven though the eagle, king of birds, can with his powerful sight gaze steadfastly upon the brightness of the sun; yet do the weaker eyes of the bat fail and falter in the same It is neither thus nor thus, neither here nor there; for that which is Unconditioned hath enveloped all…Behold! such a following of the Way that is WaylessThe Love of God is a consuming Fire, which draws us out of ourselves and swallows us up in unity with God This revelation of the Father lifts the soul above the reason into the Imageless Nudity. There the soul is simple, pure, spotless, Empty of all things; And it is in this state of perfect emptiness that the Father manifests His Divine radiance is a knowing that is unconditioned,
For ever dwelling above the Reason.
Never can it sink down into the Reason,
And above it can the Reason never climb.
The shining forth of That which is Unconditioned is as a fair mirror.
Wherein shines the Eternal Light of God.
It has no attributes,
And here all the works of Reason fail.
It is not God, But it is the Light whereby we see Him.
Those who walk in the Divine Light of it
Discover in themselves the Unwalled.
That which Unconditioned,
Is above the Reason, not without it:
It beholds all things without amazement.
Amazement is far beneath it:
The contemplative life is without amazement.
That which is Unconditioned, it knows not what;
For it is above all, and is neither This nor That.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Twelve Beguines

Love , Life , God , Way

“Now, obviously, the human race is on the point of an extremely interesting evolutionary development. The first step towards escape from this vicious circle is to recognize that the apparent "ordinariness" of the world is a delusion. If we could become deeply and permanently convinced that the world "out there" is endlessly exciting, we would never again allow ourselves to become trapped in the swamp of "taken-for-grantedness". And we would become practically unkillable. Shaw says of his "Ancients" in Back to Methuselah "Even in the moment of death, their life does not fail them". "Life failure" is that feeling that there is nothing new under the sun, and that we all have to accept defeat in the end. If we could learn the mental trick of causing the dynamo to accelerate, this illusion would never again be able to exert its power over us.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

Source: The Mammoth Encyclopedia of the Unsolved (2000), p. 14

Life , Death , World , Feeling

“Mad Dogs & Englishmen
Go out in the midday sun.
The Japanese don't care to,
The Chinese wouldn't dare to,
The Hindus and Argentines
Sleep firmly from twelve to one,
But Englishmen
Detest a
Siesta.”

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

Mad Dogs and Englishmen (1930)

Dogs , Sleep , Madness

“To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

"The Dead Man at Grandview Point", p. 186
Desert Solitaire (1968)

Bird , Wolf

“There is a reason for me always shoe-gazing. I simply can't look into the eyes of several thousand people. (Toronto Sun newspaper)”

Robert Smith (musician) (1959) English singer, songwriter and musician

People , Shoe

“Just as the light of the sun irradiates the organ of vision and things visible, enabling the former to see and the latter to be seen, so too the irradiation of a spiritual light brings the mind into relation with that which is intelligible.”

Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253) English bishop and philosopher

Commentary on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, i.17 as quoted by Francis Seymour Stevenson, Robert Grosseteste: Bishop of Lincoln http://books.google.com/books?id=-pIuAAAAYAAJ, p. 52 (footnote 2)

Intelligence , Light

“And coincidence convinces the credulous. Two things happen at the same time, or one after another, and we assume there must be a link; well, we sacrificed a virgin last year, and there was a good harvest. Of course the ceremony to raise the sun works—it comes up every morning, doesn’t it? I say my prayers each night and the world hasn’t ended yet…
Dung beetle thinking. Life is too complicated for there not to be continual coincidences, and we just have to come to terms with the fact that they merely happen and aren’t ordained, that some things occur for no real reason whatsoever, and that this is not a punishment and that is not a reward. Good grief; the most copper-bottomed, platinum-card proof of divine intervention, of some holy masterplan, would be if there were no coincidences at all! That really would look suspicious.”

Iain Banks (1954–2013) Scottish writer

“Piece” (p. 75)
Short fiction, The State of the Art (1991)

Life , World , Thinking , Time

“The great gold planet that is the mourning heat of the Sun
Is greater than all gold, more powerful
Than the tawny body of a Lion that fire consumes
Like all that grows or leaps… so is the heart
More powerful than all dust.”

Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) British poet

Green Song & Other Poems (1944), Heart and Mind

Heart

“For as long as I can remember,' I said, continuing to speak to the figure standing in the archway, 'I have had an intense and highly aesthetic perception of what I call the icy bleakness of things. At the same time I have felt a great loneliness in this perception. This conjunction of feelings seems paradoxical, since such a perception, such a view of things, would seem to preclude the emotion of loneliness, or any sense of a killing sadness, as I think of it. All such heartbreaking sentiment, as usually considered, would seem to be on its knees before artworks such as yours, which so powerfully express what I have called the icy bleakness of things, submerging or devastating all sentiment in an atmosphere potent with desolate truths, permeated throughout with a visionary stagnation and lifelessness. Yet I must observe that the effect, as I now consider it, has been just the opposite. If it was your intent to evoke the icy bleakness of things with your dream monologues, then you have totally failed on both an artistic and an extra-artistic level. You have failed your art, you have failed yourself, and you have also failed me. If your artworks had really evoked the bleakness of things, then I would not have felt this need to know who you are, this killing sadness that there was actually someone who experienced the same sensations and mental states that I did and who could share them with me in the form of tape-recorded dream monologues. Who are you that I should feel this need to go to work hours before the sun comes up, that I should feel this was something I had to do and that you were someone that I had to know? This behavior violates every principle by which I have lived for as long as I can remember. Who are you to cause me to violate these long-lived principles?”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

The Bungalow House

Truth , Sadness , Dreams , Art

Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Abolitionist

Sections I–II, p. 11–12
Natural Law; or The Science of Justice (1882), Chapter II. The Science of Justice (Continued)

Universe , Reality , Men , Pleasure

“I don't think I could stab somebody, 'cause I'm really bad at a Capri Sun.”

Daniel Tosh (1975) American stand-up comedian

Comedy Central Presents: Daniel Tosh (2003)

Thinking

“From 1920 onward, [Mussolini] depicted Italy as a ‘proletarian’ nation exploited by hostile ‘plutocratic’ countries determined to deny her her rightful place under the sun. The true class struggle, according to Fascist doctrine, was the struggle between nations. Fascism strove to surmount narrow class allegiances: all classes had to subordinate their private interests to those of the nation and collaborate against the external enemy.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Property and Freedom (1999), p. 219

Hostility , Country

“[about solar energy] If you ask your congressman why, he'll say "Because it's hard. It's really hard. Makes me want to go poopie." You know why we don't have solar energy? It's because the sun goes away each day, and it doesn't tell us where it's going!”

Lewis Black (1948) American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor

Red, White, and Screwed (2006)

“You said
Remember that life is
Not meant to be wasted
We can always be chasing the sun
So fill up your lungs and just—run!
We can always be chasing the sun”

Sara Bareilles (1979) American pop rock singer-songwriter and pianist

"Chasing the Sun"
Lyrics, The Blessed Unrest (2013)

Life

“As yonder tower outstretches to the earth
The dark triangle of its shade alone
When the clear day is shining on its top;
So, darkness in the pathway of man's life
Is but the shadow of God's providence,
By the great Sun of wisdom cast thereon;
And what is dark below is light in heaven.”

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

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 282

Life , Wisdom , God , Light

“Standing on my watch-tower I am commanded, if I see aught of evil coming, to give warning. I solemnly declare that I do discern evil approaching; I see a storm collecting in the heavens; I discover the commotion of the troubled elements; I hear the roar of a distant wind — heaven and earth seem mingled in the conflict — and I cry to those for whom I watch, "A storm! A storm! Get you into the ark or you are swept away. "Oh! what is it I see? I see a world convulsed and falling to ruins — the sea burning like oil — nations rising from under ground — the sun falling — the damned in chains before the bar, and some of my poor hearers among them! I see them cast from the battlements of the judgment scene. My God! the eternal pit has closed upon them forever!”

Edward Dorr Griffin (1770–1837) American academic administrator

Sermons, vol. II (1839), sermon XXXIX: "The Watchman".

God , World , Distant , Evil

“"When you're a head coach, you don't know where to stand," Edwards said. "You're screwed up. You go on the field, no one's talking to you. `Somebody's gonna talk to me.' You don't know what to do. So you go over and talk to the other head coach, and kind of shake his hand, then you go, `Where do I stand?'"—In an interview with South Florida Sun-Sentinel Reporter Ethan J. Skolnick.”

Herm Edwards (1954) American football player, coach and analyst

With Kansas City

“For a young man, sleep is a sure solvent of distress. There whirls not for him in the night any so hideous phantasmagoria as will not become, in the clarity of the next morning, a spruce procession for him to lead. Brief the vague horror of his awakening; memory sweeps back to him, and he sees nothing dreadful after all. "Why not?" is the sun’s bright message to him, and "Why not indeed?"”

Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) English writer

his answer.”
Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. IV

Sleep , Memory , Night

“Sittin' in the mornin' sun,
I'll be sittin' when the evenin' comes.
Watchin' the ships roll in;
And I watch 'em roll away again.
Sittin' on the dock of the bay,
Watchin' the tide roll away.
Sittin' on the dock of the bay,
Wastin' time.”

Otis Redding (1941–1967) American singer, songwriter and record producer

(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay, co-written with Steve Cropper.
Song lyrics, The Dock of the Bay (1968)

Time

“I approached the confines of death, and having trod on the threshold of Proserpine, I returned therefrom, being borne through all the elements. At midnight I saw the sun shining with its brilliant light; and I approached the presence of the Gods beneath, and the Gods of heaven, and stood near, and worshipped them.”
Accessi confinium mortis et calcato Proserpinae limine per omnia vectus elementa remeavi, nocte media vidi solem candido coruscantem lumine, deos inferos et deos superos accessi coram et adoravi de proximo.

Apuleius book The Golden Ass

Bk. 11, ch. 23; pp. 239-40.
Describing initiation into the mysteries of Isis.
Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass)

Death , God , Light

“We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. … I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”

Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman

In conversation with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone (1931); as quoted in Uncommon Friends : Life with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel & Charles Lindbergh (1987) by James Newton, p. 31.

Money , Hope , Nature , Waiting

“Only our voices
and gray strips of palm
like shining backs
of coleoptera,
atrocious
and suffering
under the infinite sun;
…”

Caterina Davinio (1957) Italian writer

Aliens on Safari, Africa
Source: Caterina Davinio, Aliens on Safari (Light from Hell), in AAVV, Dentro il mutamento, Rome, Fermenti, 2011. English translation by Caterina Davinio and David W. Seaman.

Suffering

Quotes about the sun page 17

Quotes about the sun
page 17