“Darkness is drawn to light, but light does not know it; light must absorb the darkness and therefore meet its own extinguishment.”

—  Edna O'Brien

Source: In the Forest

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Edna O'Brien 13
Novelist, memoirist, biographer, playwright, poet and short… 1930

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“St. John said, "And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." The light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not understand it, and cannot extinguish it ( I need the double meaning here of comprehend). This is the great cry of affirmation that is heard over and over again in our imaginative literature, in all art.”

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Section 3.13 <!-- p. 183 -->
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Context: St. John said, "And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." The light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not understand it, and cannot extinguish it ( I need the double meaning here of comprehend). This is the great cry of affirmation that is heard over and over again in our imaginative literature, in all art. It is a light to lighten our darkness, to guide us, and we do not need to know, in the realm of provable fact, exactly where it is going to take us.

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“Light does not come from light, but from darkness.”

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“we must bring
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Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer
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“However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor

Interviewed by Eric Nordern, Playboy (September 1968); later published in Stanley Kubrick: Interviews (2001) http://books.google.com/books?id=iOU9bIlnPHIC&pg=PA73&lpg=PA73&dq=however+vast+darkness+supply+light&source=web&ots=WSx0cc_E1n&sig=OMT0-SOVCFtSN8a1WosgIR1PMWA
Context: The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death — however mutable man may be able to make them — our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

“The darkness has it's own light.”

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““They did not like to retain God in their knowledge” (Rom. i. 28), and though they could not extinguish “the Light that lighteth every man,” and which “shone in the darkness;” yet because the darkness could not comprehend the Light, they refused to bear witness of it, and worshipped, instead, the shaping mist, which the Light had drawn upward from the ground (i. e., from the mere animal nature and instinct), and which that Light alone had made visible”

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i.e., by super-inducing on the animal instinct the principle of self-consciousness
Aids to Reflection (1873), footnote to Aphorism 106 part 13

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“Here are two kinds of light, the light on the hither side of the darkness and the light beyond the darkness.”

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Section 1 : The Meaning of Life
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Context: Here are two kinds of light, the light on the hither side of the darkness and the light beyond the darkness. We must press on through the darkness and the terror of it if we would reach the holier light beyond.
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Source: Going Bovine

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“Shadow is the diminution alike of light and of darkness, and stands between darkness and light.”

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