Quotes about the sun
page 23

Felix Adler photo

“When the light of the sun shines through a prism it is broken into beautiful colours, and when the prism is shattered, still the light remains.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 8 : Suffering and Consolation
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: When the light of the sun shines through a prism it is broken into beautiful colours, and when the prism is shattered, still the light remains. So does the life of life shine resplendent in the forms of our friends, and so, when their forms are broken, still their life remains; and in that life we are united with them; for the life of their life is also our life, and we are one with them by ties indissoluble.

Mikhail Lermontov photo

“I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"I Think of Those Who Were Truly Great"; also in Collected Poems 1928-1953 (1955)· Full text online and audio file of recitation by Spender, at the Poetry Archive http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=7523
Poems (1933)
Context: I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the spirit clothed from head to foot in song.

Henry David Thoreau photo

“In the mythus a superhuman intelligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as its hieroglyphics to address men unborn. In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun's rays.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday
Context: The hidden significance of these fables which is sometimes thought to have been detected, the ethics running parallel to the poetry and history, are not so remarkable as the readiness with which they may be made to express a variety of truths. As if they were the skeletons of still older and more universal truths than any whose flesh and blood they are for the time made to wear. It is like striving to make the sun, or the wind, or the sea symbols to signify exclusively the particular thoughts of our day. But what signifies it? In the mythus a superhuman intelligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as its hieroglyphics to address men unborn. In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun's rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.

Rumi photo

“Reason is like an officer when the King appears;
The officer then loses his power and hides himself.
Reason is the shadow cast by God; God is the sun.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

As translated in Masnavi I Ma'navi : The Spiritual Couplets of Maulána Jalálu-'d-Dín Muhammad Rúmí (1898) edited by Edward Henry Whinfield Book IV, Story IV : "Bayazid and his impious sayings when beside himself" <!-- also quoted in The Perennial Philosophy (1945) by Aldous Huxley -->

Šantidéva photo

“The Bodhimind is a great radiant sun
To disperse the darkness of unknowing,
And it is the very essence of butters
Gained from churning the milks of Dharma.”

Šantidéva (685–763) 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar

Bodhicaryavatara
Context: The Bodhimind is a great radiant sun
To disperse the darkness of unknowing,
And it is the very essence of butters
Gained from churning the milks of Dharma.
For all guests on the roads of life
Who would take the very substance of joy,
Here is the actual seat of true happiness,
A veritable feast to satiate the world.

“The Tennessee stud was long and lean
The color of the sun and his eyes were green.”

Jimmy Driftwood (1907–1998) singer

"Tennessee Stud" (1958)
Context: The Tennessee stud was long and lean
The color of the sun and his eyes were green.
He had the nerve and he had the blood
And there never was a hoss like the Tennessee stud.

D.H. Lawrence photo

“Oh, what a catastrophe for man when he cut himself off from the rhythm of the year, from his unison with the sun and the earth. Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and the setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and the equinox!”

D.H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter

A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1929)
Context: Sex is the balance of male and female in the universe, the attraction, the repulsion, the transit of neutrality, the new attraction, the new repulsion, always different, always new. The long neuter spell of Lent, when the blood is low, and the delight of the Easter kiss, the sexual revel of spring, the passion of midsummer, the slow recoil, revolt, and grief of autumn, greyness again, then the sharp stimulus of winter of the long nights. Sex goes through the rhythm of the year, in man and woman, ceaselessly changing: the rhythm of the sun in his relation to the earth. Oh, what a catastrophe for man when he cut himself off from the rhythm of the year, from his unison with the sun and the earth. Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was a personal, merely personal feeling, taken away from the rising and the setting of the sun, and cut off from the magic connection of the solstice and the equinox! This is what is the matter with us. We are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of Life, and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilised vase on the table.

Julian (emperor) photo

“The same things, therefore, does the Sun communicate to things intelligible, over whom he was appointed by the Good to reign and to command: although these were created and began to exist at the same moment with himself.”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

Upon the Sovereign Sun (362)
Context: The same things, therefore, does the Sun communicate to things intelligible, over whom he was appointed by the Good to reign and to command: although these were created and began to exist at the same moment with himself.

John Ruysbroeck photo

“Christ, the Eternal Sun, shining into the open heart, causes that heart to grow and to bloom, and it overflows with all the inward powers with joy and sweetness”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)
Context: You should watch the wise bee and do as it does. It dwells in unity, in the congregation of its fellows, and goes forth, not in the storm, but in calm and still weather, in the sunshine, towards all those flowers in which sweetness may be found. It does not rest on any flower, neither on any beauty nor on any sweetness; but it draws from them honey and wax, that is to say, sweetness and light-giving matter, and brings both to the unity of the hive, that therewith it may produce fruits, and be greatly profitable. Christ, the Eternal Sun, shining into the open heart, causes that heart to grow and to bloom, and it overflows with all the inward powers with joy and sweetness. So the wise man will do like the bee, and he will fly forth with attention and with reason and with discretion, towards all those gifts and towards all that sweetness which he has ever experienced, and towards all the good which God has ever done to him. And in the light of love and with inward observation, he will taste of the multitude of consolations and good things; and will not rest upon any flower of the gifts of God, but, laden with gratitude and praise, will fly back into the unity, wherein he wishes to rest and to dwell eternally with God.

“History is theirs whose language is the sun.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"An Elementary School Classroom In A Slum"
Ruins and Visions (1942)
Context: Unless, governor, teacher, inspector, visitor,
This map becomes their window and these windows
That shut upon their lives like catacombs,
Break O break open 'till they break the town
And show the children green fields and make their world
Run azure on gold sands and let their tongues
Run naked into books, the white and green leaves open
History is theirs whose language is the sun.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo
Clifford D. Simak photo

“The sun was setting, throwing a fog-like dusk across the stream and trees, and there was a coolness in the air.”

Cemetery World (1973)
Context: The sun was setting, throwing a fog-like dusk across the stream and trees, and there was a coolness in the air. It was time, I knew, to be getting back to camp. But I did not want to move. For I had the feeling that this was a place, once seen, that could not be seen again. If I left and then came back, it would not be the same; no matter how many times I might return to this particular spot the place and feeling would never be the same, something would be lost or something would be added, and there never would exist again, through all eternity, all the integrated factors that made it what it was in this magic moment.

Vladimir I. Arnold photo

“They first began teaching their ugly scholastic pseudo-mathematics to their students, then to schoolchildren (forgetting Hardy's warning that ugly mathematics has no permanent place under the Sun).”

Vladimir I. Arnold (1937–2010) Russian mathematician

"On teaching mathematics", as translated by A. V. Goryunov, in Russian Mathematical Surveys Vol. 53, no. 1 (1998), p. 229–236.
Context: In the middle of the twentieth century it was attempted to divide physics and mathematics. The consequences turned out to be catastrophic. Whole generations of mathematicians grew up without knowing half of their science and, of course, in total ignorance of any other sciences. They first began teaching their ugly scholastic pseudo-mathematics to their students, then to schoolchildren (forgetting Hardy's warning that ugly mathematics has no permanent place under the Sun).

Edwin Markham photo

“One thing shines clear in the heart's sweet reason,
One lightning over the chasm runs —
That to turn from love is the world's one treason
That darkens all the suns.”

Edwin Markham (1852–1940) American poet

Source: The Shoes of Happiness, and Other Poems (1913), The Crowning Hour, II
Context: p>If this is a dream, then perhaps our dreaming
Can touch life's height to a finer fire:
Who knows but the heavens and all their seeming
Were made by the heart's desire?One thing shines clear in the heart's sweet reason,
One lightning over the chasm runs —
That to turn from love is the world's one treason
That darkens all the suns.</p

Ramakrishna photo

“God now and then assumes various forms for His lovers and reveals Himself to them as a Person. But with the rising of the sun of Knowledge, the blocks of ice melt. Then one doesn't feel any more that God is a Person, nor does one see God's forms. What He is cannot be described.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942), p. 148
Context: Think of Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute, as a shoreless ocean. Through the cooling influence, as it were, of the bhakta's love, the water has frozen at places into blocks of ice. In other words, God now and then assumes various forms for His lovers and reveals Himself to them as a Person. But with the rising of the sun of Knowledge, the blocks of ice melt. Then one doesn't feel any more that God is a Person, nor does one see God's forms. What He is cannot be described. Who will describe Him? He who would do so disappears. He cannot find his "I" any more.

Yann Martel photo

“To my mind, faith is like being in the sun. When you are in the sun, can you avoid creating a shadow?”

Yann Martel (1963) Canadian author best known for the book Life of Pi

Source: Beatrice & Virgil (2010), p. 103
Context: To my mind, faith is like being in the sun. When you are in the sun, can you avoid creating a shadow? Can you shake that area of darkness that clings to you, always shaped like you, as if constantly to remind you of yourself? You can't. This shadow is doubt. And it goes wherever you go as long as you stay in the sun. And who wouldn't want to be in the sun?

Benjamin Franklin photo

“But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

At the signing of the United States Constitution, Journal of the Constitutional Convention (17 September 1787).
Constitutional Convention of 1787
Context: Whilst the last members were signing it Doctor Franklin looking towards the President's Chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that Painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. "I have," said he, "often and often in the course of the Session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun."

Katherine Mansfield photo

“By health I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with what I love — the earth and the wonders thereof — the sea — the sun.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

Entry in her journal (10 October 1922) which she tore out to send to John Middleton Murry, before changing her mind. This later became the last published entry in The Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927) ed. J. Middleton Murry
Context: By health I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with what I love — the earth and the wonders thereof — the sea — the sun. All that we mean when we speak of the external world. A want to enter into it, to be part of it, to live in it, to learn from it, to lose all that is superficial and acquired in me and to become a conscious direct human being. I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming so that I may be (and here I have stopped and waited and waited and it’s no good — there’s only one phrase that will do) a child of the sun. About helping others, about carrying a light and so on, it seems false to say a single word. Let it be at that. A child of the sun.

Julian (emperor) photo

“We celebrate the most solemn of our Games, dedicating it to the honour of the "Invincible Sun," during which it is not lawful for anything cruel (although necessary), which the previous month presented in its Shows, should be perpetrated on this occasion.”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

Upon the Sovereign Sun (362)
Context: We celebrate the most solemn of our Games, dedicating it to the honour of the "Invincible Sun," during which it is not lawful for anything cruel (although necessary), which the previous month presented in its Shows, should be perpetrated on this occasion. The Saturnalia, being the concluding festival, are closely followed in cyclic order by the Festival of the Sun; the which I hope that the Powers above will grant me frequently to chaunt, and to celebrate; and above all others may the Sovereign Sun, lord of the universe! He who proceeding from all eternity in the generative being of the Good, stationed as the central one amidst the central intelligible deities, and replenishing them all with concord, infinite beauty, generative superabundance, and perfect intelligence, and with all blessings collectively without limit of time; and in time present illuminating his station which moves as the centre of all the heavens, his own possession from all eternity!

Ernest Hemingway photo

“No well-run yacht basin in Southern waters is complete without at least two sun-burned, salt bleached-headed Esthonians who are waiting for a check from their last article.”

Source: To Have and Have Not (1937), Ch. 24
Often misquoted or inaccurately paraphrased as "In every port in the world, at least two Estonians can be found."
Context: At pier four there is a 34-foot yawl-rigged yacht with two of the three hundred and twenty-four Esthonians who are sailing around in different parts of the world, in boats between 28 and 36 feet long and sending back articles to the Esthonian newspapers. These articles are very popular in Esthonia and bring their authors between a dollar and a dollar and thirty cents a column. They take the place occupied by the baseball or football news in American newspapers and are run under the heading of Sagas of Our Intrepid Voyagers. No well-run yacht basin in Southern waters is complete without at least two sun-burned, salt bleached-headed Esthonians who are waiting for a check from their last article. When it comes they will set sail to another yacht basin and write another saga. They are very happy too. Almost as happy as the people on the Alzira III. It's great to be an Intrepid Voyager.

Oliver Wendell Holmes photo

“Lord of all being, thronèd afar,
Thy glory flames from sun and star;
Center and soul of every sphere,
Yet to each loving heart how near!”

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

"Lord Of All Being" (1848).
Context: Lord of all being, thronèd afar,
Thy glory flames from sun and star;
Center and soul of every sphere,
Yet to each loving heart how near!
Sun of our life, Thy quickening ray,
Sheds on our path the glow of day;
Star of our hope, Thy softened light
Cheers the long watches of the night.

Cyrano de Bergerac photo

“On top of that, insufferable vanity has convinced humans that nature has been made only for them, as though the sun, a huge body four hundred and thirty-four times as large as the earth, had been lit only to ripen our crab apples and cabbages.”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist

The Other World (1657)
Context: Most men judge only by their senses and let themselves be persuaded by what they see. Just as the man whose boat sails from shore to shore thinks he is stationary and that the shore moves, men turn with the earth under the sky and have believed that the sky was turning above them. On top of that, insufferable vanity has convinced humans that nature has been made only for them, as though the sun, a huge body four hundred and thirty-four times as large as the earth, had been lit only to ripen our crab apples and cabbages.
I am not one to give in to the insolence of those brutes. I think the planets are worlds revolving around the sun and that the fixed stars are also suns that have planets revolving around them. We can't see those worlds from here because they are so small and because the light they reflect cannot reach us. How can one honestly think that such spacious globes are only large, deserted fields? And that our world was made to lord it over all of them just because a dozen or so vain wretches like us happen to be crawling around on it? Do people really think that because the sun gives us light every day and year, it was made only to keep us from bumping into walls? No, no, this visible god gives light to man by accident, as a king's torch accidentally shines upon a working man or burglar passing in the street.

Nicolaus Copernicus photo

“At rest, however, in the middle of everything is the sun.”

Alternate translation: Then in the middle of all stands the sun. For who, in our most beautiful temple, could set this light in another or better place, than that from which it can at once illuminate the whole? Not to speak of the fact that not unfittingly do some call it the light of the world, others the soul, still others the governor. Tremigistus calls it the visible God; Sophocles' Electra, the All-seer. And in fact does the sun, seated on his royal throne, guide his family of planets as they circle round him.
Book 1, Ch. 10, Alternate translation as quoted in Edwin Arthur Burtt in The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925)
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543)
Context: At rest, however, in the middle of everything is the sun. For, in this most beautiful temple, who would place this lamp in another or better position than that from which it can light up the whole thing at the same time? For, the sun is not inappropriately called by some people the lantern of the universe, its mind by others, and its ruler by still others. The Thrice Greatest labels it a visible god, and Sophocles' Electra, the all-seeing. Thus indeed, as though seated on a royal throne, the sun governs the family of planets revolving around it.

Willa Cather photo

“I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge.”

Book I, Ch. 2
My Antonia (1918)
Context: I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

Nicolaus Copernicus photo

“Finally we shall place the Sun himself at the center of the Universe.”

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) Renaissance mathematician, Polish astronomer, physician

As quoted in The Copernican Revolution : Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought (1957) by Thomas S. Kuhn
Context: Finally we shall place the Sun himself at the center of the Universe. All this is suggested by the systematic procession of events and the harmony of the whole Universe, if only we face the facts, as they say, "with both eyes open."

Gaio Valerio Catullo photo

“Suns may set and rise again. For us, when the short light has once set, remains to be slept the sleep of one unbroken night.”
Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus<br/>rumoresque senum severiorum<br/>omnes unius aestimemus assis soles occidere et redire possunt: nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux, nox est perpetua una dormienda.

V, lines 1–6
Thomas Campion's translation:
My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love;
And though the sager sort our deeds reprove,
Let us not weigh them: Heaven's great lamps do dive
Into their west, and straight again revive,
But, soon as once set is our little light,
Then must we sleep one ever-during night.
From A Book of Airs (1601)
Carmina
Context: Let us live, my Lesbia, and love, and value at one farthing all the talk of crabbed old men. Suns may set and rise again. For us, when the short light has once set, remains to be slept the sleep of one unbroken night.

Winston S. Churchill photo

“We are going on swinging bravely forward along the grand high road and already behind the distant mountains is the promise of the sun.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at Kinnaird Hall, Dundee, Scotland ("Unemployment"), October 10, 1908, in Liberalism and the Social Problem (1909), Churchill, Echo Library (2007), p. 87
Early career years (1898–1929)
Context: What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal? And I avow my faith that we are marching towards better days. Humanity will not be cast down. We are going on swinging bravely forward along the grand high road and already behind the distant mountains is the promise of the sun.

William Herschel photo

“It is very probable that the great stratum called the Milky Way is that in which the sun is placed, though perhaps not in the very centre of its thickness.”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

Source: Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works (1880), Ch.4 "Life and Works".
Context: It is very probable that the great stratum called the Milky Way is that in which the sun is placed, though perhaps not in the very centre of its thickness.... We gather this from the appearance of the Galaxy, which seems to encompass the whole heavens, as it certainly must do if the sun is within it.<!-- p. 159-160

William Morris photo

“When the dead, and their deeds that die not shall awaken,
And the world's tale shall sound in your trumpet of warning,
And the sun smite the banner called Scorn of the Scorning,
And dead pain ye shall trample, dead fruitless desire,
As ye wend to pluck out the new world from the fire.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Love is Enough (1872), Song VI: Cherish Life that Abideth
Context: Live on, for Love liveth, and earth shall be shaken
By the wind of his wings on the triumphing morning,
When the dead, and their deeds that die not shall awaken,
And the world's tale shall sound in your trumpet of warning,
And the sun smite the banner called Scorn of the Scorning,
And dead pain ye shall trample, dead fruitless desire,
As ye wend to pluck out the new world from the fire.

Albert Pike photo

“The Sun is the ancient symbol of the life-giving and generative power of the Deity.”

Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. I : Apprentice, The Twelve-Inch Rule and Common Gavel, p. 1
Context: The Sun is the ancient symbol of the life-giving and generative power of the Deity. To the ancients, light was the cause of life; and God was the source from which all light flowed; the essence of Light, the Invisible Fire, developed as Flame manifested as light and splendor. The Sun was his manifestation and visible image; and the Sabæans worshipping the Light — God, seemed to worship the Sun, in whom they saw the manifestation of the Deity.
The Moon was the symbol of the passive capacity of nature to produce, the female, of which the life-giving power and energy was the male. It was the symbol of Isis, Astarte, and Artemis, or Diana. The "Master of Life" was the Supreme Deity, above both, and manifested through both; Zeus, the Son of Saturn, become King of the Gods; Horus, son of Osiris and Isis, become the Master of Life; Dionusos or Bacchus, like Mithras, become the author of Light and Life and Truth.

Epictetus photo
Stéphane Mallarmé photo

“When the sad sun sinks,
It shall pierce through the body of wax till it shrinks!”

Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) French Symbolist poet

Nurse.
Hérodiade (1898)
Context: When the sad sun sinks,
It shall pierce through the body of wax till it shrinks!
No sunset, but the red awakening
Of the last day concluding everything
Struggles so sadly that time disappears,
The redness of apocalypse, whose tears
Fall on the child, exiled to her own proud
Heart, as the swan makes its plumage a shroud
For its eyes, the old swan, and is carried away
From the plumage of grief to the eternal highway
Of its hopes, where it looks on the diamonds divine
Of a moribund star, which never more shall shine!

Robinson Jeffers photo

“The long migrations meet across you and it is nothing to you, you have forgotten us, mother.
You were much younger when we crawled out of the womb and lay in the sun’s eye on the tideline.”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

"Continent's End" in Tamar and Other Poems (1924)
Context: The long migrations meet across you and it is nothing to you, you have forgotten us, mother.
You were much younger when we crawled out of the womb and lay in the sun’s eye on the tideline. It was long and long ago; we have grown proud since then and you have grown bitter; life retains
Your mobile soft unquiet strength; and envies hardness, the insolent quietness of stone.

Bernard of Clairvaux photo

“To reach this state is to become deified. As a drop of water poured into wine loses itself, and takes the color and savor of wine; or as a bar of iron, heated red-hot, becomes like fire itself, forgetting its own nature; or as the air, radiant with sun-beams, seems not so much to be illuminated as to be light itself; so in the saints all human affections melt away by some unspeakable transmutation into the will of God. For how could God be all in all, if anything merely human remained in man? The substance will endure, but in another beauty, a higher power, a greater glory.”

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) French abbot, theologian

From, On Loving of God, Paul Halsall trans., Ch. 10
Context: Seeing that the Scripture saith, God has made all for His own glory (Isa. 43.7), surely His creatures ought to conform themselves, as much as they can, to His will. In Him should all our affections center, so that in all things we should seek only to do His will, not to please ourselves. And real happiness will come, not in gratifying our desires or in gaining transient pleasures, but in accomplishing God’s will for us: even as we pray every day: ‘Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven’ (Matt. 6.10). O chaste and holy love! O sweet and gracious affection! O pure and cleansed purpose, thoroughly washed and purged from any admixture of selfishness, and sweetened by contact with the divine will! To reach this state is to become deified. As a drop of water poured into wine loses itself, and takes the color and savor of wine; or as a bar of iron, heated red-hot, becomes like fire itself, forgetting its own nature; or as the air, radiant with sun-beams, seems not so much to be illuminated as to be light itself; so in the saints all human affections melt away by some unspeakable transmutation into the will of God. For how could God be all in all, if anything merely human remained in man? The substance will endure, but in another beauty, a higher power, a greater glory. When will that be? Who will see, who possess it? ‘When shall I come to appear before the presence of God?’ (Ps. 42.2). ‘My heart hath talked of Thee, Seek ye My face: Thy face, Lord, will I seek’ (Ps. 27.8). Lord, thinkest Thou that I, even I shall see Thy holy temple?

Khalil Gibran photo

“They honour not the man, the living man,
The first man who opened His eyes and gazed at the sun
With eyelids unquivering.
Nay, they do not know Him, and they would not be like Him.”

A Man From Lebanon: Nineteen Centuries Afterward
Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)
Context: Master, Master Poet,
Master of words sung and spoken,
They have builded temples to house your name,
And upon every height they have raised your cross,
A sign and a symbol to guide their wayward feet,
But not unto your joy.
Your joy is a hill beyond their vision,
And it does not comfort them.
They would honour the man unknown to them.
And what consolation is there in a man like themselves, a man whose
kindliness is like their own kindliness,
A god whose love is like their own love,
And whose mercy is in their own mercy?
They honour not the man, the living man,
The first man who opened His eyes and gazed at the sun
With eyelids unquivering.
Nay, they do not know Him, and they would not be like Him.

Robert Graves photo

“Though I am a poor old man
Worth very little,
Yet I suck at my long pipe
At peace in the sun,
I do not fret nor much regret
That my work is done.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

Country Sentiment (1920)
Context: I am an old man
With my bones very brittle,
Though I am a poor old man
Worth very little,
Yet I suck at my long pipe
At peace in the sun,
I do not fret nor much regret
That my work is done.

"Brittle Bones".

Julian (emperor) photo

“I pray the Sovereign Sun himself to grant me ability to explain the nature of the station that he holds amongst those in whose middle he is placed!”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

Upon the Sovereign Sun (362)
Context: I pray the Sovereign Sun himself to grant me ability to explain the nature of the station that he holds amongst those in whose middle he is placed! By the term "middle" we are to understand not what is so defined in the case of things contrary to each other, as "equi-distant from the extremes," as orange and dark brown in the case of colours; lukewarm, in that of hot and cold, and other things of the sort; but the power that collects and unites into one things dispersed, like the "Harmony" of Empedocles, from which he completely excludes all discord and contention.

“They teased out the seed that the cold kept asleep, —
All the coils, loops and whorls.
They trellised the sun; they plotted for more than themselves.”

Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) American poet

"Frau Bauman, Frau Schmidt, and Frau Schwartze," ll. 19-25
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)
Context: Like witches they flew along rows,
Keeping creation at ease;
With a tendril for needle
They sewed up the air with a stem;
They teased out the seed that the cold kept asleep, —
All the coils, loops and whorls.
They trellised the sun; they plotted for more than themselves.

James A. Garfield photo

“We will stand by them until the sun of liberty, fixed in the firmament of our Constitution, shall shine with equal ray upon every man, black or white, throughout the Union”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1880s, Speech to the 'Boys in Blue' (1880)
Context: And it did gentle the condition and elevate the heart of every worthy soldier who fought for the Union, [applause, ] and he shall be our brother forevermore. Another thing we will remember: we will remember our allies who fought with us. Soon after the great struggle began, we looked behind the army of white rebels, and saw 4,000,000 of black people condemned to toil as slaves for our enemies; and we found that the hearts of these 4,000,000 were God-inspired with the spirit of Liberty, and that they were all our friends. [Applause. ] We have seen the white men betray the flag and fight to kill the Union; but in all that long, dreary war we never saw a traitor in a black skin. [Great cheers. ] Our comrades escaping from the starvation of prison, fleeing to our lines by the light of the North star, never feared to enter the black man's cabin and ask for bread. ["Good, good," "That's so," and loud cheers. ] In all that period of suffering and danger, no Union soldier was ever betrayed by a black man or woman. [Applause. ] And now that we have made them free, so long as we live we will stand by these black allies. [Renewed applause. ] We will stand by them until the sun of liberty, fixed in the firmament of our Constitution, shall shine with equal ray upon every man, black or white, throughout the Union. [Cheers. ] Fellow-citizens, fellow-soldiers, in this there is the beneficence of eternal justice, and by it we will stand forever. [Great applause. ] A poet has said that in individual life we rise, "On stepping-stones of our dead selves to higher things," and the Republic rises on the glorious achievements of its dead and living heroes to a higher and nobler national life. [Applause. ] We must stand guard over our past as soldiers, and over our country as the common heritage of all. [Applause. ]

“You’re out of the woods
You’re out of the dark
You’re out of the night
Step into the sun, step into the light”

Yip Harburg (1896–1981) American song lyricist

"Optimistic Voices".
Context: You’re out of the woods
You’re out of the dark
You’re out of the night
Step into the sun, step into the light,
Keep straight ahead
For the most glorious place
On the Face of the Earth
Or the sky. Hold onto your breath
Hold onto your heart
Hold onto your hope,
March up to the gate
And bid it open.

William Drummond of Hawthornden photo

“What doth it serve to see sun's burning face,
And skies enamelled with both the Indies' gold?”

William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649) British writer

"What doth it Serve?"
Poems (1616)
Context: What doth it serve to see sun's burning face,
And skies enamelled with both the Indies' gold?
Or moon at night in jetty chariot roll'd,
And all the glory of that starry place?

Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo

“As she fled fast through sun and shade
The happy winds upon her played,
Blowing the ringlet from the braid.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate

Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere

Giordano Bruno photo

“Blind error, avaricious time, adverse fortune,
Deaf envy, vile madness, jealous iniquity,
Crude heart, perverse spirit, insane audacity,
Will not be sufficient to obscure the air for me,
Will not place the veil before my eyes,
Will never bring it about that I shall not
Contemplate my beautiful Sun.”

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer

"Of Love" as translated in The Infinite in Giordano Bruno : With a Translation of His Dialogue, Concerning the Cause, Principle, and One (1978) by Sidney Thomas Greenburg, p. 89
Variant translation:
Cause, Principle and One, the Sempiterne,
On whom all being, motion, life, depend.
From whom, in length, breadth, depth, their paths extend
As far as heaven, earth, hell their faces turn :
With sense, with mind, with reason, I discern
That not, rule, reckoning, may not comprehend
That power and bulk and multitude which tend
Beyond all lower, middle, and superne. <p> Blind error, ruthless time, ungentle doom,
Deaf envy, villain madness, zeal unwise,
Hard heart, unholy craft, bold deeds begun,
Shall never fill for one the air with gloom,
Or ever thrust a veil before these eyes,
Or ever hide from me my glorious sun.
As quoted in "Giordano Bruno" by Thomas Davidson, The Index Vol. VI. No. 36 (4 March 1886), p. 429
Cause, Principle, and Unity (1584)
Context: Cause, Principle, and One eternal
From whom being, life, and movement are suspended,
And which extends itself in length, breadth, and depth,
To whatever is in Heaven, on Earth, and Hell;
With sense, with reason, with mind, I discern,
That there is no act, measure, nor calculation, which can comprehend
That force, that vastness and that number,
Which exceeds whatever is inferior, middle, and highest;
Blind error, avaricious time, adverse fortune,
Deaf envy, vile madness, jealous iniquity,
Crude heart, perverse spirit, insane audacity,
Will not be sufficient to obscure the air for me,
Will not place the veil before my eyes,
Will never bring it about that I shall not
Contemplate my beautiful Sun.

“For God is Love, yea, all Love, and so all Love, that nothing but Love can come from him; and the Christian Religion is nothing else but an open, full Manifestation of the universal Love towards all Mankind.
As the Light of the Sun has only one common Nature towards all Objects that can receive it, so God has only one common Nature of Goodness towards all created Nature, breaking forth in infinite Flames of Love, upon every Part of the Creation, and calling everything to the highest Happiness it is capable of.”

William Law (1686–1761) English cleric, nonjuror and theological writer

The Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration (1739)
Context: Some People have an Idea, or Notion of the Christian Religion, as if God was thereby declared so full of Wrath against fallen Man, that nothing but the Blood of his only begotten Son could satisfy his Vengeance.
Nay, some have gone such Lengths of Wickedness, as to assert that God had by immutable Decrees reprobated, and rejected a great Part of the Race of Adam, to an inevitable Damnation, to show forth and magnify the Glory of his Justice.
But these are miserable Mistakers of the Divine Nature, and miserable Reproachers of his great Love, and Goodness in the Christian Dispensation.
For God is Love, yea, all Love, and so all Love, that nothing but Love can come from him; and the Christian Religion is nothing else but an open, full Manifestation of the universal Love towards all Mankind.
As the Light of the Sun has only one common Nature towards all Objects that can receive it, so God has only one common Nature of Goodness towards all created Nature, breaking forth in infinite Flames of Love, upon every Part of the Creation, and calling everything to the highest Happiness it is capable of.

Ursula K. Le Guin photo

“Greed puts out the sun.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, The Other Wind (2001), Chapter 5 “Rejoining” (p. 281)

Anatole France photo

“The sun is about to descend into the roseate waters of the Sacred River.”

Source: The Revolt of the Angels (1914), Ch. XXXV
Context: Zita told him of the black standards assembled in crowds in all the waste places of the globe; of the deliverance premeditated and prepared in the provinces of Heaven, where the first revolt had long ago been fomented.
"Prince," she went on, "your army awaits you. Come, lead it on to victory.""Friends," replied the great archangel, "I was aware of the object of your visit. Baskets of fruit and honeycombs await you under the shade of this mighty tree. The sun is about to descend into the roseate waters of the Sacred River. When you have eaten, you will slumber pleasantly in this garden, where the joys of the intellect and of the senses have reigned since the day when I drove hence the spirit of the old Demiurge. To-morrow I will give you my answer."

Charlie Chaplin photo

“Hannah, can you hear me? Wherever you are, look up, Hannah. The clouds are lifting. The sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light.”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

The Great Dictator (1940), The Barber's speech
Context: I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone, if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness — not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another.
In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world — millions of despairing men, women and little children — victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say — do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed — the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes — men who despise you — enslave you — who regiment your lives — tell you what to do — what to think or what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men — machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate! Only the unloved hate — the unloved and the unnatural!
Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the 17th Chapter of St. Luke it is written: "the Kingdom of God is within man" — not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power — the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.
Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth the future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie! They do not fulfill their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people! Now, let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.
Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!
[Cheers]
Hannah, can you hear me? Wherever you are, look up, Hannah. The clouds are lifting. The sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world, a kindlier world, where men will rise above their hate, their greed and brutality. Look up, Hannah. The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow — into the light of hope, into the future, the glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up, Hannah. Look up.

Dinah Craik photo

“I fear, the inevitable conclusion we must all come to is, that in the world happiness is quite indefinable. We can no more grasp it than we can grasp the sun in the sky or the moon in the water.”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

Source: A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 10
Context: I fear, the inevitable conclusion we must all come to is, that in the world happiness is quite indefinable. We can no more grasp it than we can grasp the sun in the sky or the moon in the water. We can feel it interpenetrating our whole being with warmth and strength; we can see it in a pale reflection shining elsewhere; or in its total absence, we, walking in darkness, learn to appreciate what it is by what it is not.

Roger Ebert photo

“They’re not talking about faster than the speed of light. Speed has nothing to do with it. The entangled objects somehow communicate instantaneously at a distance. If that is true, distance has no meaning. Light-years have no meaning. Space has no meaning. In a sense, the entangled objects are not even communicating. They are the same thing. At the “quantum level” (and I don’t know what that means), everything may be actually or theoretically linked. All is one. Sun, moon, stars, rain, you, me, everything. All one.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Source: Life Itself : A Memoir (2011), Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God
Context: Quantum theory is now discussing instantaneous connections between two entangled quantum objects such as electrons. This phenomenon has been observed in laboratory experiments and scientists believe they have proven it takes place. They’re not talking about faster than the speed of light. Speed has nothing to do with it. The entangled objects somehow communicate instantaneously at a distance. If that is true, distance has no meaning. Light-years have no meaning. Space has no meaning. In a sense, the entangled objects are not even communicating. They are the same thing. At the “quantum level” (and I don’t know what that means), everything may be actually or theoretically linked. All is one. Sun, moon, stars, rain, you, me, everything. All one. If this is so, then Buddhism must have been a quantum theory all along. No, I am not a Buddhist. I am not a believer, not an atheist, not an agnostic. I am more content with questions than answers.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo

“Yet the moonlight is the sunlight and the sun himself will pass.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate

Source: Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886), Line 182

P. D. Ouspensky photo

“He knows that it is he who stands before an altar with magic symbols, and reaches from earth to heaven; that he also walks on a dusty road under a scorching sun to a precipice where a crocodile awaits him”

P. D. Ouspensky (1878–1947) Russian esotericist

Card XII : The Hanged Man http://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/sot/sot23.htm
The Symbolism of the Tarot (1913)
Context: And then I saw a man in terrible suffering, hung by one leg, head downward, to a high tree. And I heard the voice: —
"Look! This is a man who saw Truth. Suffering awaits the man on earth, who finds the way to eternity and to the understanding of the Endless.
"He is still a man, but he already knows much of what is inaccessible even to Gods. And the incommensurableness of the small and the great in his soul constitutes his pain and his golgotha.
"In his own soul appears the gallows on which he hangs in suffering, feeling that he is indeed inverted.
"He chose this way himself.
"For this he went over a long road from trial to trial, from initiation to initiation, through failures and falls.
"And now he has found Truth and knows himself.
"He knows that it is he who stands before an altar with magic symbols, and reaches from earth to heaven; that he also walks on a dusty road under a scorching sun to a precipice where a crocodile awaits him; that he dwells with his mate in paradise under the shadow of a blessing genius; that he is chained to a black cube under the shadow of deceit; that he stands as a victor for a moment in an illusionary chariot drawn by sphinxes; and that with a lantern in bright sunshine, he seeks for Truth in a desert.
"Now he has found Her."

Epictetus photo
Sallustius photo

“Just as it happens that the Sun, which is good for all, may be injurious to persons with ophthalmia or fever.”

Sallustius Roman philosopher and writer

IX. On Providence, Fate, and Fortune.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: To believe that human things, especially their material constitution, are ordered not only by celestial beings but by the celestial bodies is a reasonable and true belief. Reason shows that health and sickness, good fortune and bad fortune, arise according to our deserts from that source. But to attribute men's acts of injustice and lust to fate, is to make ourselves good and the Gods bad. Unless by chance a man meant by such a statement that in general all things are for the good of the world and for those who are in a natural state, but that bad education or weakness of nature changes the goods of Fate for the worse. Just as it happens that the Sun, which is good for all, may be injurious to persons with ophthalmia or fever.

Sallustius photo

“To say that God turns away from the evil is like saying that the sun hides himself from the blind.”

Sallustius Roman philosopher and writer

XIV. In what sense, though the Gods never change, they are said to be made angry and appeased.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: If any one thinks the doctrine of the unchangeableness of the Gods is reasonable and true, and then wonders how it is that they rejoice in the good and reject the bad, are angry with sinners and become propitious when appeased, the answer is as follows: God does not rejoice — for that which rejoices also grieves; nor is he angered — for to be angered is a passion; nor is he appeased by gifts — if he were, he would be conquered by pleasure.
It is impious to suppose that the divine is affected for good or ill by human things. The Gods are always good and always do good and never harm, being always in the same state and like themselves. The truth simply is that, when we are good, we are joined to the Gods by our likeness to live according to virtue we cling to the Gods, and when we become evil we make the Gods our enemies — not because they are angered against us, but because our sins prevent the light of the Gods from shining upon us, and put us in communion with spirits of punishment. And if by prayers and sacrifices we find forgiveness of sins, we do not appease or change the Gods, but by what we do and by our turning toward the divine we heal our own badness and so enjoy again the goodness of the Gods. To say that God turns away from the evil is like saying that the sun hides himself from the blind.

Sallustius photo

“There is a certain force, less primary than being but more primary than the soul, which draws its existence from being and completes the soul as the sun completes the eyes.”

Sallustius Roman philosopher and writer

VIII. On Mind and Soul, and that the latter is immortal.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
Context: There is a certain force, less primary than being but more primary than the soul, which draws its existence from being and completes the soul as the sun completes the eyes. Of souls some are rational and immortal, some irrational and mortal. The former are derived from the first Gods, the latter from the secondary.

Benjamin Franklin photo

“Hide not your talents, they for use were made. What's a sun-dial in the shade? ”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …
Brother Andrew photo

“Without God and without sun We will get the harvest done.”

Brother Andrew (1928–2022) Christian missionary

Source: God's Smuggler

Jan Neruda photo
Francois Mauriac photo
Maharana Pratap photo

“It will not be long before MahãrãNã Pratãpa SiMha of Mewar becomes renowned as hindu-kula-kamala-divãkara, the Sun which brings bloom to the lotus that is the Hindu nation.”

Maharana Pratap (1540–1597) Hindu Rajput ruler of Mewar

Goel, S. R. in in Shourie, A., & Goel, S. R.(1993). Hindu temples: What happened to them. (Second Enlarged Edition)

Aga Khan III photo

“It is for the Indian patriot to recognise that Persia, Afghanistan and possibly Arabia must sooner or later come within the orbit of some Continental Power — such as Germany, or what may grow out of the break up of Russia — or must throw in their lot with that of the Indian Empire, with which they have so much more genuine affinity. The world forces that move small States into closer contact with powerful neighbours, though so far most visible in Europe, will inevitably make themselves felt in Asia. Unless she is willing to accept the prospect of having powerful and possibly inimical neighbours to watch, and the heavy military burdens thereby entailed, India cannot afford to neglect to draw her Mahomedan neighbour States to herself by the ties of mutual interest and goodwill … In a word, the path of beneficent and growing union must be based on a federal India, with every member exercising her individual rights, her historic peculiarities and natural interests, yet protected by a common defensive system and customs union from external danger and economic exploitation by stronger forces. Such a federal India would promptly bring Ceylon to the bosom of her natural mother, and the further developments we have indicated would follow. We can build a great South Asiatic Federation by now laying the foundations wide and deep on justice, on liberty, and on recognition for every race, every religion, and every historical entity … A sincere policy of assisting both Persia and Afghanistan in the onward march which modem conditions demand, will raise two natural ramparts for India in the north-west that neither German nor Slav, Turk nor Mongol, can ever hope to destroy. They will be drawn of their own accord towards the Power which provides the object lesson of a healthy form of federalism in India, with real autonomy for each province, with the internal freedom of principalities assured, with a revived and liberalised kingdom of Hyderabad, including the Berars, under the Nizam. They would see in India freedom and order, autonomy and yet Imperial union, and would appreciate for themselves the advantages of a confederation assuring the continuance of internal self-government buttressed by goodwill, the immense and unlimited strength of that great Empire on which the sun never sets. The British position of Mesopotamia and Arabia also, whatever its nominal form may be, would be infinitely strengthened by the policy I have advocated.”

Aga Khan III (1877–1957) 48th Imam of the Nizari Ismaili community

India in Transition (1918)

Omar Bradley photo
Chögyam Trungpa photo
Antonio Fresco photo

“I know paper straws are better for the environment and I’m all for that. But for the love of everything that is under the sun, can we agree that paper straws actually SUCK more than the person using them? We gotta do better than this!”

Antonio Fresco (1983) American DJ, music producer, and radio personality

Twitter statement about environmental impact of plastic straws. https://twitter.com/djantoniofresco/status/1199086440031956993 (25 November 2019)

William Blake photo
Aristotle photo

“For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little and stated difficulties about the greater matters, e.g. about the phenomena of the moon and those of the sun and of the stars, and about the genesis of the universe. And a man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant (whence even the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of Wisdom, for the myth is composed of wonders); therefore since they philosophized order to escape from ignorance, evidently they were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end.”

Metaphysics by Aristotle &ndash; Book 1, ClassicalWisdom.com
The second sentence is in Metaphysics A 2, 928<sup>b</sup> 17&ndash;20, Aristotle: Metaphysics Beta: Symposium Aristotelicum, Michel Crubellier & Andre´ Laks, eds. (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 4.
Metaphysics
Variant: [And] one who experiences a difficulty and who feels wonder thinks that he does not understand..., so that, if it is to escape ignorance that they have practised philosophy, then it is clearly for the sake of knowing, and not for any practical purpose, that they have pursued understanding.

Shivaji photo
Eric Rücker Eddison photo
Gwyneth Paltrow photo

“We’re human beings and the sun is the sun — how can it be bad for you? I think we should all get sun and fresh air. I don’t think anything that is natural can be bad for you — it’s really good to have at least 15 minutes of sun a day.”

Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) American actress, singer, and food writer

http://nationalpost.com/health/this-certainly-would-go-against-any-medical-advice-i-would-give-canadian-doctors-respond-to-gwyneth-paltrows-sun-exposure-suggestion source

Toni Morrison photo
Frank Wilczek photo
Clive Staples Lewis photo
J. Howard Moore photo
J. Howard Moore photo
J. Howard Moore photo
Carl Sagan photo
Tony Benn photo
Lewis Black photo
Charles Darwin photo

“To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated; but I may remark that, as some of the lowest organisms, in which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiving light, it does not seem impossible that certain sensitive elements in their sarcode should become aggregated and developed into nerves, endowed with this special sensibilites.”

On the Origin of Species (1859)

Vikram Sarabhai photo
William Logan (author) photo

“Two things are essential to the astrologer, namely, a bag of cowries and an almanac, When any one comes to consult him he quietly sits down, facing the sun, on a plank seat or mat, murmuring some mantrams or sacred verses, opens his bag of cowries and pours them on the floor. With his right hand he moves them slowly round and round, solemnly inciting meanwhile a stanza or two in praise of his guru or teacher and of his deity, invoking their help. He then stops and explains what, lie has been doing, at the same time taking a handful of cowries from the heap and placing them on one side. In front is a diagram drawn with chalk on tire floor and consisting of twelve compartments. Before commencing operations with the diagram he selects three or five of the cowries highest up in tho heap and places them in a line on the right-hand side. These represent Ganapati (the Belly God, the remover of difficulties), the sun, the planet Jupiter, Sarasvati (the Goddess of speech), and his own Guru or preceptor. To all of those the astrologor gives due obeisance, touching his ears and the ground three times with both hands. The cowries are next arranged in the compartments of tho diagram and are moved about from compartment to compartment by the astrologer, who quotes meanwhile tho authority on which ho makes such moves. Finally he explains the result, and ends with again worshipping the deified cowries who were witnessing the operation as spectators.”

Malabar Manual, Page 142 https://archive.org/details/MalabarLogan/page/n154
Malabar Manual (1887)

Seneca the Younger photo
Seneca the Younger photo
Swami Vivekananda photo
Plutarch photo
Theodor Mommsen photo

“Few men have had their elasticity so thoroughly put to the proof as Caesar-- the sole creative genius produced by Rome, and the last produced by the ancient world, which accordingly moved on in the path that he marked out for it until its sun went down. Sprung from one of the oldest noble families of Latium--which traced back its lineage to the heroes of the Iliad and the kings of Rome, and in fact to the Venus-Aphrodite common to both nations--he spent the years of his boyhood and early manhood as the genteel youth of that epoch were wont to spend them. He had tasted the sweetness as well as the bitterness of the cup of fashionable life, had recited and declaimed, had practised literature and made verses in his idle hours, had prosecuted love-intrigues of every sort, and got himself initiated into all the mysteries of shaving, curls, and ruffles pertaining to the toilette-wisdom of the day, as well as into the still more mysterious art of always borrowing and never paying. But the flexible steel of that nature was proof against even these dissipated and flighty courses; Caesar retained both his bodily vigour and his elasticity of mind and of heart unimpaired. In fencing and in riding he was a match for any of his soldiers, and his swimming saved his life at Alexandria; the incredible rapidity of his journeys, which usually for the sake of gaining time were performed by night--a thorough contrast to the procession-like slowness with which Pompeius moved from one place to another-- was the astonishment of his contemporaries and not the least among the causes of his success. The mind was like the body. His remarkable power of intuition revealed itself in the precision and practicability of all his arrangements, even where he gave orders without having seen with his own eyes. His memory was matchless, and it was easy for him to carry on several occupations simultaneously with equal self-possession. Although a gentleman, a man of genius, and a monarch, he had still a heart. So long as he lived, he cherished the purest veneration for his worthy mother Aurelia (his father having died early); to his wives and above all to his daughter Julia he devoted an honourable affection, which was not without reflex influence even on political affairs. With the ablest and most excellent men of his time, of high and of humbler rank, he maintained noble relations of mutual fidelity, with each after his kind. As he himself never abandoned any of his partisans after the pusillanimous and unfeeling manner of Pompeius, but adhered to his friends--and that not merely from calculation--through good and bad times without wavering, several of these, such as Aulus Hirtius and Gaius Matius, gave, even after his death, noble testimonies of their attachment to him.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol.4. Part 2.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

Ibrahim Kodra photo

“I look for the distant horizon, the existence of life, the infinite, the rays of the sun, evolution, I seek the irrational, the indestructible, the wave of the sea, the invincible, I seek the unexpected, the timeless, the intelligible, the resourcefulness, the institutable, I look for the insurable, the non-transferable, the immutable, the insurrection, I seek the unusual, the irreplaceable, the insoluble, the impossible, I seek the onset, the invisible, the primordial, the unreachable, I seek the organism of the cosmos, the mystery of the air, the breath of the wind, the dawning of the dawn, I seek an earth to cultivate, the first flower, the first seed, the future, I seek …”

Ibrahim Kodra (1918–2006) father of Albanian contemporary art

Io cerco l'orizzonte lontano, l'esistenza della vita, l'infinito, i raggi del sole, l'evoluzione, io cerco l'irrazionale, l'indistruttibile, l'onda del mare, l'invincibile, io cerco l'inatteso, l'intemporale, l'inteleggibile, l'intraprendenza, l'istituibile, io cerco l'instaurabile, l'intrasferibile, l'intramutabile, l'insurrezione, io cerco l' inconsueto, l'insostituibile, l'insolubile, l'impossibile, io cerco l'insorgenza, l'invisibile, il primordiale, l'inarrivabile, io cerco l'organismo del cosmo, il mistero dell'aria, il soffio del vento, il sorgere dell'aurora, io cerco una terra da coltivare, il primo fiore, il primo seme, dell'avvenire, io cerco ...

Johann Gottlieb Fichte photo
Eratosthenes photo
James Bradley photo

“My Instrument being fixed, I immediately began to observe such Stars as I judged most proper to give me light into the Cause of the Motion… There was Variety enough of small ones; and not less than twelve, that I could observe through all the Seasons of the Year; they being bright enough to be seen in the Day-time, when nearest the Sun. I had not been long observing, before I perceived, that the Notion we had before entertained of the Stars being farthest North and South, when the Sun was about the Equinoxes, was only true of those that were near the solstitial Colure: And after I had continued my Observations a few Months, I discovered what I then apprehended to be a general Law, observed by all the Stars, viz.”

James Bradley (1693–1762) English astronomer; Astronomer Royal

That each of them became stationary, or was farthest North or South, when they passed over my Zenith at six of the Clock, either in the Morning or Evening. I perceived likewise, that whatever Situation the Stars were in with respect to the cardinal Points of the Ecliptick, the apparent Motion of every one tended the same Way, when they passed my Instrument about the same Hour of the Day or Night; for they all moved Southward, while they passed in the Day, and Northward in the Night; so that each was farthest North, when it came about Six of the Clock in the Evening, and farthest South when it came about Six in the Morning.
A Letter from the Reverend Mr. James Bradley Savilian Proffesor of Astronomy at Oxford, and F.R.S. to Dr. Edmund Halley, Astronom. Reg. &c. giving an Account of a New Discovered Motion of the Fix'd Stars. Philosophical Transactions (Jan 1, 1727) 1727-1728 No. 406. vol. XXXV. pp. 637-661 http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/35/399-406/637.full.pdf+html.

Bill Nye photo

“If you could invent a better battery, one that can store more energy using less exotic metal, one that could handle the heat without loss of performance or just plain catching on fire, we could store energy from the wind and the Sun and have it available whenever we need it. You would change the world all right. You might also get rich – crazy rich!”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

[NewsBank, Bill Nye challenges grads to 'change the world', The Eagle Tribune, Lawrence, Massachusetts, May 18, 2014]

Georg Büchner photo

“Freedom and whores are the most cosmopolitan items under the sun.”

Act IV.
Dantons Tod (Danton's Death) (1835)

John Fante photo
Russell Brand photo
James Frazer photo
Juan Ramón Jimenéz photo