
“Shadow is the diminution alike of light and of darkness, and stands between darkness and light.”
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), III Six books on Light and Shade
Essays, Goethe's Works.
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)
“Shadow is the diminution alike of light and of darkness, and stands between darkness and light.”
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), III Six books on Light and Shade
On democracy. Quarterly Review, 115, 1864, p. 239
1860s
Section 1 : The Meaning of Life
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
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.
We are here — no matter who put us here, or how we came here — to fulfil a task. We cannot afford to go of our own volition until the last item of our duty is discharged.
O little Town of Bethlehem (1868), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Context: p>O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by;Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee to-night.</p
Nobel lecture (1981)
Context: Unlike other aspects of cognitive function, emotions have never been readily confinable to one hemisphere. Though generated by lateralized input, the emotional effects tend to spread rapidly to involve both hemispheres, apparently through crossed fiber systems in the undivided brain stem.
Speak, Memory: A Memoir (1951)
Context: The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour).