Quotes about dark (3456 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“I am an optimist... I choose to be. There is a lot of darkness in our world, there is a lot of pain and you can choose to see that or you can choose to see the joy. If you try to respond positively to the world, you will spend your time better.”

Tom Hiddleston (1981) English actor, producer and musical performer

World , Joy , Pain , Time

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

'Where Do We Go From Here?" as published in Where Do We Go from Here : Chaos or Community? (1967), p. 62; many statements in this book, or slight variants of them, were also part of his address Where Do We Go From Here?" which has a section below. A common variant appearing at least as early as 1968 has "Returning violence for violence multiplies violence..." An early version of the speech as published in A Martin Luther King Treasury (1964), p. 173, has : "Returning hate for hate multiplies hate..."
1960s
Source: A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches
Context: The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. … Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Motivational , Inspirational , Attitude , Success

“I know it seems hard sometimes but remember one thing. Through every dark night, there's a bright day after that. So no matter how hard it get, stick your chest out, keep ya head up…. and handle it.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Night

“Percy, let me go" she croaked. "You can't pull me up."
His face was white with effort. She could see in his eyes that he knew it was hopeless.
"Never," he said. He looked up at Nico, fifteen feet above.
"The other side, Nico! We'll see you there. Understand?"
Nico's eyes widened. "But-"
"Lead them!" Percy shouted. "Promise me!"
"I-I will."
Below them, the voice laughed in the darkness. Sacrifices. Beautiful sacrifices to wake the goddess.
Percy tightened his grip on Annabeth's wrist. His face was gaunt, scraped and bloody, his hair dusted with cobwebs, but when he locked eyes with her, she thought he had never looked more handsome.
"We're staying together," he promised. "You're not getting away from me. Never again."
Only then did she understand what would happen. A one-way trip. A very hard fall.
"As long as we're together," she said.
She heard Nico and Hazel still screaming for help. She saw sunlight far, far above- maybe the last sunlight she would ever see.
Then Percy let go of his ledge, and together, holding hands, he and Annabeth fell into the endless darkness.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Beauty , Way , Understanding , Effort

“If you look at the darkness, not light, every day, your life will be filled with darkness.”

Miyuru Amarasiri (2002) Artist

Coos, "Miyuru Amarasiri," https://www.coos.com/quotes/if-you-look-at-the-darkness-not-light-every-day-your-life-will-be-filled-with-darkness-%E2%80%95-miyuru-bhashitha-amarasiri June 10, 2021,

Light , Life

“The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Suicide , Night

“Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. LXVI
Following the Equator (1897)

“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”

Terry Pratchett book Reaper Man

Source: Reaper Man

Travel , Thinking , Light , Waiting

“Love is heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold, sick and healthy, asleep and awake- its everything except what it is! (Act 1, scene 1)”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet

Love , Light

“All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.”

Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) Catholic saint and founder of the Franciscan Order

World , Light

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Variant: I love you as one loves certain dark things, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
Source: 100 Love Sonnets

love , Good Night , Cute , Romantic

“I've always been misrepresented. You know, I could dress in a clown costume and laugh with the happy people but they'd still say I'm a dark personality.”

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

People , Personality , Happiness

“Percy smiled at her - that sarcastic troublemaker smile that had annoyed her for years but eventually had become endearing. His sea-green eyes were as gorgeous as she remembered. His dark hair was swept to one side, like he'd just come from a walk on the beach. He looked even better than he had six months ago - tanner and taller, leaner and more muscular.

Percy threw his arms around her. They kissed and for a moment nothing else mattered. An asteroid could have hit the planet and wiped out all life, and Annabeth wouldn't have cared.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Life , Smile , Kiss , Sea

“Someday we shall look back on this dark era of agriculture and shake our heads. How could we have ever believed that it was a good idea to grow our food with poisons?”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Source: Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating

Food , Idea

“Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot

Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 8, Supplemental image at randi.org http://www.randi.org/images/122801-BlueDot.jpg

Love , Life , World , Religion

“Why are our songs so dark but our shows a celebration? Because our songs are to help you get through those dark times and our shows are a celebration of you making it through another day. Our shows are celebrating the fact that you’re not alone. So let’s celebrate.”

Tyler Joseph (1988) American singer-songwriter and record producer

Time , Help

“What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

Hurtful

“I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Tree , Night

“A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Cats

“Only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Variant: Only in the darkness can you see the stars.
Context: But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.

Hope , Star

“Solitude was my only consolation - deep, dark, deathlike solitude.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer

Solitude

“Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Faith , Faith , Feeling , Bird

“so much of the world is plunged in darkness and chaos…

So ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

World , Light , Perfection , Forgetting

“We do not know what tomorrow will bring. We are not prophets. This is a step in the dark. We can only proceed into the future with faith.”

P. W. Botha (1916–2006) South African prime minister

As prime minister, introducing the 4th Amendment to the Constitution Bill, 23 May 1980, which envisaged a tricameral corporate federation. Cited in The Star, and Pieter-Dirk Uys, 1987, PW Botha in his own words, p. 27

Faith , Future

“And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter— they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Feeling , Soul

“I must see new things and investigate them. I want to taste dark water and see crackling trees and wild winds.”

Egon Schiele (1890–1918) austrian painter

Tree , Water

“There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula

Life , Light

“I am not a dark person and I don't consider myself dark.”

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

Personality

“The mind is endless. You put me in a dark solitary cell, and to you that's the end, to me it's the beginning, it's the universe in there, there's a world in there, and I'm free.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Source: Manson in His Own Words: The Shocking Confessions of 'The Most Dangerous Man Alive'

World , Universe

“I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Variant: Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.

Family , Friendship , Missing You , Cute

“It is the same with man as with the tree. The more he seeks to rise into the height and light, the more vigorously do his roots struggle earthword, downword, into the dark, the deep - into evil.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

For Men , Tree , Light , Evil

“Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams.”

Murasaki Shikibu book The Tale of Genji

Source: Tale of Genji, The Tale of Genji, trans. Arthur Waley, Ch. 1: Kiritsubo

Dreams

“Life is a winking light in the darkness.”

Hayao Miyazaki Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Life , Light

“I must also have a dark side if I am to be whole.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

“We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“In the dark you can feel really close to a person. You can say whatever you want.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: The Summer I Turned Pretty

Feeling , Personality

“I have no dress except the one I wear every day. If you are going to be kind enough to give me one, please let it be practical and dark so that I can put it on afterwards to go to the laboratory.”

Marie Curie (1867–1934) French-Polish physicist and chemist

Instructions regarding a proposed gift of a wedding dress for her marriage to Pierre in July 1895, as quoted in 'Madame Curie : A Biography (1937) by Eve Curie Labouisse, as translated by Vincent Sheean, p. 137

“Angels, living light most glorious!
Beneath the Godhead in burning desire
in the darkness and mystery of creation
you look on the eye of your God
never taking your fill:
What glorious pleasures take shape within you!”

Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) Medieval saint, prophetise, mystic and Doctor of Church

"O gloriosissimi"

God , Pleasure , Angels , Light

“For those diehard conspiracy theorists who will refuse to believe this, I turn the tables and say: show me where I needed anyone else. Financing? Logistics? Specialised tech skills? Brainpower? Strategy? Show me where I needed a dark, mysterious 'Mr X!”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

Letters published in the Buffalo News (10 June 2001)
2000s

“We have been ruled more by deceit than by force, and we have been degraded more by vice than by superstition. Slavery is the daughter of darkness: an ignorant people is a blind instrument of its own destruction.”

Simón Bolívar (1783–1830) Venezuelan military and political leader, South American libertador

Variant translation: Slavery is the daughter of darkness; an ignorant people is the blind instrument of its own destruction; ambition and intrigue take advantage of the credulity and inexperience of men who have no political, economic or civil knowledge. They mistake pure illusion for reality, license for freedom, treason for patriotism, vengeance for justice.
As translated by Frederick H. Fornoff in El Libertador : Writings Of Simon Bolivar (2003) edited by David Bushnell
The Angostura Address (1819)
Context: We have been ruled more by deceit than by force, and we have been degraded more by vice than by superstition. Slavery is the daughter of darkness: an ignorant people is a blind instrument of its own destruction. Ambition and intrigue abuses the credulity and experience of men lacking all political, economic, and civic knowledge; they adopt pure illusion as reality; they take license for liberty, treachery for patriotism, and vengeance for justice. If a people, perverted by their training, succeed in achieving their liberty, they will soon lose it, for it would be of no avail to endeavor to explain to them that happiness consists in the practice of virtue; that the rule of law is more powerful than the rule of tyrants, because, as the laws are more inflexible, every one should submit to their beneficent austerity; that proper morals, and not force, are the bases of law; and that to practice justice is to practice liberty.

People , Daughters

“For every dark night, there's a brighter day. ”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Sad , Hope , Night

“… Granny Weatherwax, who had walked nightly without fear in the bandit-haunted forests of the mountains all her life in the certain knowledge that the darkness held nothing more terrible than she was…”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Life , Fear , Mountain , Knowledge

“Let me light my lamp", says the star, "And never debate if it will help to remove the darkness”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Star , Light , Help

“It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Variant: Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness.
Source: This is My Story

Light

“(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Variant: Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.
Source: Thirst

Love , Dreams , Understanding , Sleep

“We're here for a reason. I believe a bit of the reason is to throw little torches out to lead people through the dark.”

Whoopi Goldberg (1955) American actress

People

“There can be no rebirth without a dark night of the soul, a total annihilation of all that you believed in and thought that you were.”

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) Indian Sufi

Source: Thinking Like The Universe: The Sufi Path Of Awakening

Soul , Night

“Life is difficult; facts uncompromising; and the passage to that fabled land where our brightest hopes are extinguished, our frail barks founder in darkness, one that needs, above all, courage, truth, and the power to endure.”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

Life , Truth , Hope , Courage

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”
— Pablo Neruda
From 100 Love Sonnets
like this quote”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Love , Secret , Quotes , Soul

“The mind once enlightened cannot again become dark.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

Source: A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal on the Affairs of North America

“In the beginning Marvel created the Bullpen and the Style. And the Bullpen was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the Artists. And the Spirit of Marvel said, Let there be The Fantasic Four. And there was The Fantasic Four. And Marvel saw The Fantasic Four. And it was good.”

Stan Lee (1922–2018) American comic book writer

“I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human noise we sat there making, not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

Heart

“Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Light

“As the mist leaves no scar
On the dark green hill
So my body leaves no scar
On you and never will”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

“I have seen the dark universe yawning
Where the black planets roll without aim,
Where they roll in their horror unheeded,
Without knowledge, or lustre, or name.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Source: Nemesis

Knowledge , Universe

“What is destined to happen will happen. Victory and defeat are like light and darkness.”

N. T. Rama Rao (1923–1996) Indian actor and Andhra Pradesh former chief minister

His own family toppled him, quoted in Obituary: N. T. Rama Rao, 19 January 1996, 8 January 2014, Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-n-t-rama-rao-1324748.html,

Light , Victory

“Creation does not cease
just because there is darkness!”

Suman Pokhrel (1967) Nepali poet, lyricist, playwright, translator and artist

<span class="plainlinks"> In Midnight Street http://www.prachyareview.com/poems-by-suman-pokhrel/</span>
From Poetry

“When you start the next project you have to forget everything you did before, otherwise Dark Knight will start to sound like Kung Fu Panda.”

Hans Zimmer (1957) German film composer and music producer

Source http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13964918.

Forgetting

“Losing him was blue like I’d never known;
Missing him was dark grey all alone.
Forgetting him was like trying to know
Somebody you've never met.
But loving him was red;
Loving him was red.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

Red.
Song lyrics, Red (2012)

Love , Forgetting

“You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

1960s, A Time for Choosing (1964)
Context: You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness. We will keep in mind and remember that Barry Goldwater has faith in us. He has faith that you and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.

Children , Hope

“I sat brooding intensely on the atrocities perpetrated on Hinduism and its dark and deadly future if left to face Islam outside and Gandhi inside, and (…) decided all of a sudden to take the extreme step against Gandhi.”

Nathuram Godse (1910–1949) Assassin of Mahatma Gandhi

Nathuram Godse: Why I Assassinated Gandhi (1993)

Future

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles" (1992), Ch. 7 : Work, §3 : Personal Power, p. 190 (p. 165 in some editions). This famous passage from her book is very often erroneously attributed to Nelson Mandela. About the mis-attribution Williamson said, "Several years ago, this paragraph from A Return to Love began popping up everywhere, attributed to Nelson Mandela's 1994 inaugural address. As honored as I would be had President Mandela quoted my words, indeed he did not. I have no idea where that story came from, but I am gratified that the paragraph has come to mean so much to so many people."

Variant which appears in the film Coach Carter (2005): "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It's not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Variant which appears in the film Akeelah and the Bee (2006), displayed in a picture frame on the wall, attributing it to Mandela: "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same."

God , Light , Children , People

“My child, let your life come into the world of darkness
like a spark of light, without flicker and pure,
and thank them in silence. You know,
my child, they are cruel in their greed and envy,
their words are disguised knives thirsting for blood.
But do not be afraid, my child, go and stand in their hearts,
and let your gentle eyes fall on them like the forgiving serenity of the night.
My child, let them see your face and so they know it
meaning of all things, let them love and love one another.
Go, at sunrise, open and lift up your heart like a blooming flower,
and at sunset, bend your head and silently complete the worship of the day.
Remember, my child, gods and demons, ghosts and elves are fragments of one,
built by the hand of the abyss.
So, move on, go to the shore of the vast darkness,
there, is the Great Meeting of Children,
there, the sea gives a smile to the beach,
there, sing the waves facing death.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://dailywisdomwords.com/community-poetry/my-child/

God , Light , Silence , Children

“At times, he yearns for the few pockets of darkness that remain on this night so illuminated by that cursed moon, by the despicable stars, by the cursed vehicles, by the hateful city.”

José Baroja book Un hijo de perra y otros cuentos

Hate , Night , Time , Star

“Between the fear that something would happen and the hope that still it wouldn't, there is much more space than one thinks. On that narrow, hard, bare and dark space a lot of us spend their lives.”

Ivo Andrič (1892–1975) novelist, short story writer

Fear , Hope , Thinking

“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.”

C.G. Jung book Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Variant: ‎"... the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
Source: Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963), p. 326

Light

“Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us.”

Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright

World , Light , Childhood

“You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that evey sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every moment scrutinized.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

"The Art of Living", interview with journalist Gordon Young first published in 1960
Variant: [T]here are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word "happy" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

Happy , Sad , Life , Sadness

“Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life.”

Stefan Zweig book The World of Yesterday

Source: The World of Yesterday

Life , War , Peace , Light

“There's unconditional love there. You hear that phrase a lot but it's real with me and her [June Carter]. She loves me in spite of everything, in spite of myself. She has saved my life more than once. She's always been there with her love, and it has certainly made me forget the pain for a long time, many times. When it gets dark and everybody's gone home and the lights are turned off, it's just me and her.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

Love , Life , Pain , Home

“A short story is a different thing altogether – a short story is like a quick kiss in the dark from a stranger.”

Stephen King book Skeleton Crew

Source: Skeleton Crew

Kiss

“Evil cannot and will not be vanquished by evil. Dark will only swallow dark and deepen. The good and the light are the keenest weapons.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Heaven and Earth

Light , Evil

“Night is a time of rigor, but also of mercy. There are truths which one can see only when it’s dark”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

Source: Teibele And Her Demon

Truth , Time , Night

“Without reading, we are all without light in the dark, without fire in the cold.”

Tamora Pierce (1954) American writer of fantasy novels for children

Source: Tortall and Other Lands: A Collection of Tales

Light , Reading

“He turned his head to look full at me, his hair fire-struck with the setting sun, face dark in silhouette. "Twenty-four years ago today, I married ye, Sassenach," he said softly. "I hope ye willna have cause yet to regret it." -Jamie Fraser”

Diana Gabaldon book Drums of Autumn

Source: Drums of Autumn

Hope , Sun

“Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left and live it properly. What doesn't transmit light creates its own darkness.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

Life , Thinking , Light , Dead

“I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Collected Poems

Depressing , Sleep

“In the dark, all cats are black.”

John Cage (1912–1992) American avant-garde composer

Cats

“Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved, as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying to self that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.”

Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) Catholic saint and founder of the Franciscan Order

Widely known as The Prayer of St. Francis, it is not found in Esser's authoritative collection of Francis's writings.
[Fr. Kajetan, Esser, OFM, ed., Opuscula Sancti Patris Francisci Assisiensis, Rome, Grottaferrata, 1978]. Additionally there is no record of this prayer before the twentieth century.
[Fr. Regis J., Armstrong, OFM, Francis and Clare: The Complete Works, New York, Paulist Press, 1982, 10, 0-8091-2446-7]. Dr. Christian Renoux of the University of Orleans in France traces the origin of the prayer to an anonymous 1912 contributor to La Clochette, a publication of the Holy Mass League in Paris. It was not until 1927 that it was attributed to St. Francis.
The Origin of the Peace Prayer of St. Francis, 2013-06-28, Renoux, Christian http://www.franciscan-archive.org/franciscana/peace.html,.
[Christian, Renoux, La prière pour la paix attribuée à saint François: une énigme à résoudre, Paris, Editions franciscaines, 2001, 2-85020-096-4].
Misattributed

Love , Life , Sadness , Peace

“It won’t be forever. You’ll be in the dark for as long as it takes and then you’ll come out.”

Sophie Kinsella book Finding Audrey

Source: Finding Audrey

“Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars. Cimourdain was full of virtues and truth, but they shine out of a dark background.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Part 2, Book 1, Ch. 2
Variant translation: What makes night within us may leave stars.
Source: Ninety-Three (1874)
Context: Cimourdain was a pure-minded but gloomy man. He had "the absolute" within him. He had been a priest, which is a solemn thing. Man may have, like the sky, a dark and impenetrable serenity; that something should have caused night to fall in his soul is all that is required. Priesthood had been the cause of night within Cimourdain. Once a priest, always a priest.
Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars. Cimourdain was full of virtues and truth, but they shine out of a dark background.

Truth , Soul , Star , Night

“Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Love

“If I die," he whispered in the dark, "dinna follow me. The bairns will need ye. Stay for them. I can wait.”

Diana Gabaldon book A Breath of Snow and Ashes

Source: A Breath of Snow and Ashes

Waiting

“Well, I'd love to wear a rainbow everyday and tell the world that everything's okay / But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back / 'Til things are brighter, I'm the man in black.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

Source: Man in Black

Love , World

“Light up the darkness.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Light

“It is early, early morning. It's that time when it's still dark but you know the day is coming. Blue is bleeding through black. Stars are dying.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: Underdog

Star , Time

“I dreamed of you. I dreamed you were wandering in the dark, and so was I. We found each other. We found each other in the dark.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Dreams

“Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites which people our life, which make it pungent, intoxicating. We only exist in terms of this conflict, in the zone where black and white clash.”

Louis Aragon (1897–1982) French poet, novelist and editor

Source: Paris Peasant

Life , People , Truth , Error

“When I buy a new book, I always read the last page first, that way in case I die before I finish, I know how it ends. That, my friend, is a dark side.”

Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter

Variant: I always read the last page of a book first so that if I die before I finish I'll know how it turned out.
Source: When Harry Met Sally

Books , Way , Reading

“We do not need to grieve for the dead. Why should we grieve for them? They are now in a place where there is no more shadow, darkness, loneliness, isolation, or pain. They are home.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Pain , Home , Loneliness , Dead

“As things stand now, I am going to be a writer. I'm not sure that I'm going to be a good one or even a self-supporting one, but until the dark thumb of fate presses me to the dust and says 'you are nothing', I will be a writer.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Source: Gonzo

Fate , Support

“I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

"Elm" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/elm.html
Source: Ariel (1965)
Context: p>I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.</p

Depressing , Feeling , Sleep

“There's always going to be bad stuff out there. But here's the amazing thing -- light trumps darkness, every time. You stick a candle into the dark, but you can't stick the dark into the light.”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

Light , Time

“Darkness got you like Shelob gor Frodo, only worse.”

P. C. Cast book Destined

Source: Destined

“J. M. W. Turner's Poem dedicated to Ivan Aivazovsky (1842)

Like a curtain slowly drawn
It stops suddenly half open,
Or, like grief itself, filled with gentle hope,
It becomes lighter in the shore-less dark,
Thus the moon barely wanes
Winding her way above the storm-tossed sea.
Stand upon this hill and behold endlessly
This scene of a formidable sea,
And it will seem to thee a waking dream.
That secret mind flowing in thee
Which even the day cannot scatter,
The serenity of thinking and the beating of the heart
Will enchain thee in this vision;
This golden-silver moon
Standing lonely over the sea,
All curtain the grief of even the hopeless.
And it appears that through the tempest
Moves a light caressing wind,
While the sea swells up with a roar,
Sometimes, like a battlefield it looks to me
The tempestuous sea,
Where the moon itself is a brilliant golden crown
Of a great king.
But even that moon is always beneath thee
Oh Master most high,
Oh forgive thou me
If even this master was frightened for a moment
Oh, noble moment, by art betrayed…
And how may one not delight in thee,
Oh thou young boy, but forgive thou me,
If I shall bend my white head
Before thy art divine
Thy bliss-wrought genius…”

J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) British Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker

Source: J.M.W. Turner

Secret , Dreams , Hope , Art

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

As quoted in The Leader's Digest : Timeless Principles for Team and Organization (2003) by Jim Clemmer, p. 84

Beauty , People , Beauty , Light

“When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.”

Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish physician and author

Hope , Appearance

“In darkness God's truth shines most clear.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

Source: The Hiding Place: The Triumphant True Story of Corrie Ten Boom

God , Truth

“None of us can ever save himself; we are the instruments of one another’s salvation, and only by the hope that we give to others do we lift ourselves out of the darkness into light.”

Dean Koontz book One Door Away from Heaven

Source: One Door Away from Heaven (2001), chapter 73, pp. 604, 605
Context: What will you find behind the door that is one door away from Heaven? […] If your heart is closed, then you will find behind that door nothing to light your way. But if your heart is open, you will find behind that door people who, like you, are searching, and you will find the right door together with them. None of us can ever save himself; we are the instruments of one another's salvation, and only by the hope that we give to others do we lift ourselves out of the darkness into light.

Hope , Light