Quotes about dark (3459 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“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 , Secret , Soul , Good Night

“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.

Love , Hate , Light , Motivational

“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

“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

This quote waiting for review.

“Although he still continued to go out walking alone, it was also true that with every outing, in each of them, he used to feel something strange and dark accumulating within him.”

José Baroja book El curioso caso de la sombra que murió como un recuerdo y otros cuentos

Feeling

“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 , Star , Time , Night

“… I had my own personal experiences with prejudice. I was the only child of color in primary school, junior high and high school. I went through all those years feeling like a freak in one all-white school after the other. The family next door wouldn't let their daughter play with me because I was Mexican. I got on a bus once in D.C. with my father, who was very dark, and they told us to go to the back of the bus, where black people had to sit in those years. All this created in me a feeling of empathy and solidarity with people of color and formed the roots of my commitment to fighting for social justice and against racism.”

Elizabeth Martinez (1925) American community organizer, activist, author, and educator

On becoming a political activist in "Unite and Overcome!" https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/spring-1997/unite-and-overcome in Teaching Tolerance (Spring 1997)

People , School , Family , Justice

“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

“The world's big and I want to have a good look at it before it gets dark.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

attributed to Muir by Linnie Marsh Wolfe, Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir (1945), page 331
1910s

World

“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

“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

“Seeing the play (A Lie of the Mind) clearly is part of why I wanted to direct it. I see hope at the end of this play. People talk about how dark the play was, but I feel like, if you really look at the darkness, you’re able to go through it, and you realize that you can handle dark moments in life and that everything will be all right.”

Ethan Hawke (1970) American actor and writer

The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/theater/31roundtable.html?pagewanted=all (2010-01-27)
2010–present

Life , People , Lie , Hope

“It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a day’s journey; and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed.”

Herodotus book Histories

Book 8, Ch. 98
variant: Not snow, no, nor rain, nor heat, nor night keeps them from accomplishing their appointed courses with all speed. (Book 8, Ch. 98)
Paraphrase: "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" ”
Appears carved over entrance to Central Post Office building in New York City.
The Histories

Men , Horse , Speed

“It is not only an intellectual proposal, but connection with a divine life that helps to overcome our weaknesses and the darkness of our lives, to rise the summit where we see the Lord, where we see Him glorious and risen and we are filled with joy, where we find the meaning of our existence.”

Antonio Arregui Yarza (1939) Catholic archbishop

The Church in Ecuador officially launches the National Mission: “The Church is in need of a good house-cleaning.” http://www.fides.org/en/news/24075-AMERICA_ECUADOR_The_Church_in_Ecuador_officially_launches_the_National_Mission_The_Church_is_in_need_of_a_good_house_cleaning (28 April 2009)

Life , Help , Joy

“We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

Heart

“We live in the flicker -- may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday.”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

“Within me, and in others, what I seek to know is the darkness and the glory of all humanity. My vulnerability leads me to Truth, which is the ultimate defense.”

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

Degrees: Thought Capsules and Micro Tales (1989)

Truth

“I found abundant “mental sunshine,” which bathed all the gray world suddenly in the clear light of reason and understanding. Word after word, sentence after sentence stabbed into the darkness like thunderclaps and lightningbolts of revelation, tearing and ripping away the cobwebs of more than thirty years of darkness, brilliantly illuminating the mysteries of the heretofore impenetrable murk in a world gone mad.”

George Lincoln Rockwell (1918–1967) American politician, founder of the American Nazi Party

As quoted by George P. Thayer in The Further Shores of Politics: The American Political Fringe Today, 2d ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968), p. 27.
undated

World , Understanding , Tear , 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

“To the earth I gave the earthly tribute
Of love, hopes, good and evil;
I am ready to begin another life,
I am silent and wait: the time has come;
I shall leave no brother in this world,
And dark and cold embrace
My tired soul;
Like a premature fruit, deprived of sap,
It withered in the storms of fate
Under the burning sun of existence.”

Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841) Russian writer, poet and painter

"I look upon the future with fear..." (1838)
Poems

Love , Life , Fate , World

“Dear sisters and brothers, we realise the importance of light when we see darkness. We realise the importance of our voice when we are silenced.”

Malala Yousafzai (1997) Pakistani children's education activist

UN speech, June 2013

Sister , Light , Silence

“The Atman, the Sun of Knowledge that rises in the sky of the heart, destroys the darkness of the ignorance, pervades and sustains all and shines and makes everything to shine.”

Adi Shankara (788–820) Hindu philosopher monk of 8th century

Source: Atma Bodha (1987), p. 121: Quote nr. 67.

Knowledge , Sun , Heart

“(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

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

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

Light

“Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

As quoted in 7 Laws of Human Nature: The Oneness of Universal Love (2017) by Conrad Spainhower and other self-help books and quotation sites.
Disputed

Hope

“When we attempt to understand the inmost nature of the outer world, we stand before it as before absolute darkness. There probably exists in nature, outside of ourselves, neither colour, odour, force, resistance, space, nor anything that we know as sensation. Light is produced by the excitement of the optic nerve, and it shines only in our brain; as to the excitement itself, there is nothing to prove that it is luminous; outside of us is profound darkness, or even worse, since darkness is the correlation of light. In the same way, all the sonorous excitements which assail us, the creakings of machines, the sounds of nature, the words and cries of our fellows are produced by excitements of our acoustic nerve; it is in our brain that noise is produced, outside there reigns a dead silence. The same may be said of all our other senses.

...In short, our nervous system, which enables us to communicate with objects, prevents us, on the other hand, from knowing their nature. It is an organ of relation with the outer world; it is also, for us, a cause of isolation. We never go outside ourselves. We are walled in. And all we can say of matter and of the outer world is, that it is revealed to us solely by the sensations it affords us, that it is the unknown cause of our sensations, the inaccessible excitant of our organs of the senses, and that the ideas we are able to form as to the nature and the properties of that excitant, are necessarily derived from our sensations, and are subjective to the same degree as those sensations themselves.”

Alfred Binet (1857–1911) French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test

Source: The Mind and the Brain, 1907, p. 25

World , Way , Communication , Idea

“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)

“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

“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

“It is good to be a cynic—it is better to be a contented cat — and it is best not to exist at all. Universal suicide is the most logical thing in the world—we reject it only because of our primitive cowardice and childish fear of the dark. If we were sensible we would seek death—the same blissful blank which we enjoyed before we existed.”

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

"Nietzscheism and Realism" from The Rainbow, Vol. I, No. 1 (October 1921); reprinted in "To Quebec and the Stars", and also in Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 71
Non-Fiction
Source: Collected Essays 5: Philosophy, Autobiography and Miscellany

Death , World , Fear , Cats

“While the cock with lively din
Scatters the rear of darkness thin,
And to the stack, or the barn door,
Stoutly struts his dames before,
Oft list'ning how the hounds and horn
Cheerly rouse the slumb'ring morn.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Source: L'Allegro (1631), Line 49

“Life in the oceans must be sheer hell. A vast, merciless hell of permanent and immediate danger. So much of a hell that during evolution some species—including man—crawled, fled onto some small continents of solid land, where the Lessons of Darkness continue.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Minnesota declaration (1999)

Life , Hell

“The prince of darkness is a gentleman!”

William Shakespeare King Lear

Source: King Lear

“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

“Music is a means capable of expressing dark dramatism and pure rapture, suffering and ecstasy, fiery and cold fury, melancholy and wild merriment – and the subtlest nuances and interplay of these feelings which words are powerless to express and which are unattainable in painting and sculpture.”

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) Russian composer and pianist

"The Power of Music" (1964), translated in Music Journal, September 1965, p. 37.

Music , Feeling , Suffering , Painting

“Awake, my heart, to be loved, awake, awake!
The darkness silvers away, the morn doth break,
It leaps in the sky.”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

Awake, My Heart, to Be Loved http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=6639&poem=27759, l. 1-3.
Poetry

Love , Heart

“The constellated sounds
ran sprinkling on earth’s floor
As the dark vault above
with stars was spangled o’er.”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

Noel Christmas Eve 1913.
Poetry

Star

“In a spiral galaxy, the ratio of dark-to-light matter is about a factor of ten. That's probably a good number for the ratio of our ignorance-to-knowledge. We're out of kindergarten, but only in about third grade.”

Vera Rubin (1928–2016) American astronomer

Knowledge , Light

“Alike for those who for To-day prepare,
And those that after some To-morrow stare,
A Muezzin from the Tower of Darkness cries
"Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There."”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Fools

“Religionists have kept their followers in line by suppressing their egos. By making their followers feel inferior, the awesomeness of their god is insured. Satanism encourages its members to develop a good strong ego because it gives them the self-respect necessary for a vital existence in this life. If a person has been vital throughout his life and has fought to the end for his earthly existence, it is this ego which will refuse to die, even after the expiration of the flesh which housed it. Young children are to be admired for their driving enthusiasm for life. This is exemplified by the small child who refuses to go to bed when there is something exciting going on, and when once put to bed, will sneak down the stairs to peek through the curtain and watch. It is this child-like vitality that will allow the Satanist to peek through the curtain of darkness and death and remain earthbound.”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible (1969)

Life , Death , God , Children

“Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire,
And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire,
Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,
So late emerged from, shall so soon expire.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Soul , Hell

“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

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

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

Hurtful

“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

Pain , World , Time , Joy

“I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently. Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease. I want to leave a mark. But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. (Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.) We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either. People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm. The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox. After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark almost blue color, and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar. A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.””

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

A desert blessing, an ocean curse. What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers."
Augustus "Gus" Waters, p. 310-313
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

Love , Death , War , People

“We're emerging from the new dark age. The dark age of emotions and feelings. We're awakening to the idea that it is possible to be a very good parent on a physical level while being a very bad parent on an emotional level.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Bad luck , Age , Feeling , Idea

“Laura felt a warmth inside her. It was very small, but it was strong. It was steady, like a tiny light in the dark, and it burned very low but no winds could make it flicker because it would not give up.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder book The Long Winter

Source: The Long Winter

Light , Strong

“If you can say something that's funny or do something that's ridiculous, it'll make people laugh. So many people struggle with dark thoughts, depression, and internal pain. I'm not an expert on it, but I know that if I'm ever feeling down, if someone can make me laugh, it really is a cure to those thoughts.”

Джош Дан (1988) American musician

Pain , People , Feeling

“In the dark a glimmering light is often sufficient for the pilot to find the polar star and to fix his course. To the pilgrim often a single footstep suffices to enable him to find his way across the bewildering plain.”

Pietro Metastasio Achille in Sciro

Fra l' ombre un lampo solo
Basta al nocchier fugace
Che già ritrova il polo,
Già riconosce il mar.
Al pellegrin ben spesso
Basta un vestigio impresso,
Perchè la via fallace
Non l'abbia ad ingannar.
Act I, scene 6.
Achille in Sciro (1736)

Way , Star , Light

“Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark, it's midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year!”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Source: Collected verse from 1929 on

Children , Time , New Year

“Within the dark forest of life, I encountered a soul who had adopted suffering as a way of life. I met her there once on a mission to seek meaning. I was close to loving her until I realized, no one could ever extinguish the fire. Innately, she was the torch that always burned.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1995

Love , Life , Way , Soul

“Alas, how can the poor souls live in Concord when you preachers sow amongst them in your sermons debate and discord? They look to you for light and you bring them darkness. Amend these crimes, I exhort you, and set forth God's word truly, both by true preaching and giving a good example, or else, I, whom God has appointed his vicar and high minister here, will see these divisions extinct, and these enormities corrected…”

Henry VIII of England (1491–1547) King of England from 1509 until 1547

Last speech to parliament, December 24, 1545. http://englishhistory.net/tudor/h8speech.html
See also: Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, Great Britain. Public Record Office, John Sherren Brewer, Robert Henry, vol. XX, part 2, p. 513. http://books.google.com/books?id=oBsFAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA4-PA513&dq=%22I,+whom+God+has+appointed+his+vicar+and+high+minister+%22&lr=

God , Soul , Light

“Intellectual darkness is essential to industrial slavery.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)
Context: Ignorance alone stands in the way of socialist success. The capitalist parties understand this and use their resources to prevent the workers from seeing the light.
Intellectual darkness is essential to industrial slavery.

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

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

Personality

“"But we've got passengers aboard," our skipper shouted through the darkness. "Prisoners?" the deck called; with a note of curiosity. "Stand by to bring the prisoners aboard." I climbed a rope ladder up the Augusta's side and crawled over the rail, cold, wet, hungry, and tired. The crew pressed forward to see its "prisoners". "Oh, hell," a sailor grunted, "it's only General Bradley."”

Omar Bradley (1893–1981) United States Army field commander during World War II

Source: A Soldier's Story (1951), p. 278.

Hell

“Modern philosophy, an element due to which the surrounding reality and even the psychology of people are changing. The first ray of light in the kingdom of darkness was the Internet, after a smartphone was proved that a small device the size of a palm can completely replace the TV and computer. All people in the older generation remained alive in television manipulations, not wanting to join in the innovations. 50 years ago, smartphones and the Internet were just sketches of dreamers, as 200 years ago dreamers dreamed of flying ships, which we now call planes, but dreams became reality and now a new dreamer with a Japanese name plans to destroy the main pillar of the monopoly of world-owned corporations by creating an alternative currency .”

Maxim Mernes (1996) Russian businessman, investor, blogger

About the state and technology
Source: Экономика Цифровой Эры, LiveLib, ru, 2019-11-21 https://www.livelib.ru/author/1229982-maksim-mernes,

People , World , Dreams , Reality

“In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

Light , Sun

“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

“Weather forecast for tonight: dark. Continued dark overnight, with widely scattered light by morning.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Light , Weather

“You must read, you must persevere, you must sit up nights, you must inquire, and exert the utmost power of your mind. If one way does not lead to the desired meaning, take another; if obstacles arise, then still another; until, if your strength holds out, you will find that clear which at first looked dark.”

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) Italian author and poet

Way , Reading , Perseverance , Night

“Oh unsurpassed generosity of God the Father, Oh wondrous and unsurpassable felicity of man, to whom it is granted to have what he chooses, to be what he wills to be! The brutes, from the moment of their birth, bring with them, as Lucilius says, “from their mother’s womb” all that they will ever possess. The highest spiritual beings were, from the very moment of creation, or soon thereafter, fixed in the mode of being which would be theirs through measureless eternities. But upon man, at the moment of his creation, God bestowed seeds pregnant with all possibilities, the germs of every form of life. Whichever of these a man shall cultivate, the same will mature and bear fruit in him. If vegetative, he will become a plant; if sensual, he will become brutish; if rational, he will reveal himself a heavenly being; if intellectual, he will be an angel and the son of God. And if, dissatisfied with the lot of all creatures, he should recollect himself into the center of his own unity, he will there become one spirit with God, in the solitary darkness of the Father, Who is set above all things, himself transcend all creatures.”
O summam Dei patris liberalitatem, summam et admirandam hominis foelicitatem! Cui datum id habere quod optat, id esse quod velit. Bruta simul atque nascuntur id secum afferunt (ut ait Lucilius) e bulga matris quod possessura sunt. Supremi spiritus aut ab initio aut paulo mox id fuerunt, quod sunt futuri in perpetuas aeternitates. Nascenti homini omnifaria semina et omnigenae vitae germina indidit Pater. Quae quisque excoluerit illa adolescent, et fructus suos ferent in illo. Si vegetalia planta fiet, si sensualia obrutescet, si rationalia caeleste evadet animal, si intellectualia angelus erit et Dei filius. Et si nulla creaturarum sorte contentus in unitatis centrum suae se receperit, unus cum Deo spiritus factus, in solitaria Patris caligine qui est super omnia constitutus omnibus antestabit.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola book Oration on the Dignity of Man

6. 24-31; translation by A. Robert Caponigri
Alternate translation of 6. 28-29 (Nascenti homini omnifaria semina et omnigenae vitae germina indidit Pater. Quae quisque excoluerit illa adolescent, et fructus suos ferent in illo.):
The Father infused in man, at birth, every sort of seed and sprouts of every kind of life. These seeds will grow and bear their fruit in each man who will cultivate them.
Oration on the Dignity of Man (1496)

Life , God , Angels , Birth

“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

“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

“When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.”

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

Training

“When you are covered by His wings, it can get pretty dark.”

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

“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

“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

“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

Tree , Light , Evil , For Men

“O Lord, this earth groans and suffers; chaos has made this world its abode. The darkness is so great that Thou alone canst dispel it. Come, manifest Thyself, that Thy work may be accomplished. Solitude, a harsh, intense solitude, and always this strong impression of having been flung headlong into an inferno of darkness! … Sometimes … I cannot prevent my total sub-mission from taking a hue of melancholy, and the calm and mute converse with the Master within is transformed for a moment into an invocation almost suppliant, O Lord, what have I done that Thou throwest me thus into the sombre night?”

The Mother (1878–1973) spiritual collaborator of Sri Aurobindo

Her entry in her diary when she left Pondicherry and on the tumultuous developments in the world for the War, quoted in "Diary notes and Meeting with Sri Aurobindo" and also in IV. Diary Notes And Meeting With Sri Aurobindo http://www.motherandsriaurobindo.org/Content.aspx?ContentURL=/_staticcontent/sriaurobindoashram/-04%20Centers/India/Pondicherry/Sri%20Aurobindo%20Society/Wilfried/The%20Mother%20-%20A%20Short%20Biography/007_Diary%20Notes%20and%20Meeting%20with%20Sri%20Aurobindo.htm, p. 21

World , Solitude , Strong , Suffering

“But even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can, within their own small ways, turn on a small light in a dark room.”

Miep Gies (1909–2010) Dutch citizen who hid Anne Frank

Way , Light

“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

“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.

Star , Hope

“Though I remained insensitive to the subtleties and delicate gradations of colour.... my eyes at least did not deceive me when I drew back and looked at the subject in its broad lines, and this was the starting-point of new compositions... Slowly I tried my strength in innumerable rough sketches which convinced me... I could see as clearly as ever when it came to vivid colours isolated in a mass of dark tones. How was I to put this to use? My intentions gradually became clearer... I said to myself, as I made my sketches, that a series of general impressions, captured at the times of day when I had the best chance of seeing correctly, would not be without interest. I waited for the idea to consolidate, for the grouping and composition of the themes to settle themselves in my brain little by little, of their own accord; and the day when I felt I held enough cards to be able to try my luck with a real hope of success, I determined to pass to action, and did so.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

remark by Monet – between 1900 and 1920 – on his 'Water lilies' paintings; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 132
1900 - 1920

Hope , Idea , Chance , Time

“For more than 70 years, the United States convinced much of the world that.. it somehow needed the United States to save it from communist darkness. "Just buy our weapons," said Washington, "let our military and our corporations roam freely across your land, and give us veto power over who your leaders will be, and we'll protect you."”

William Blum book Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower

third edition (2006), p. 1
Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower

World

“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

“Life always needs ideas capable of becoming the light that dispels the darkness.”

Zafar Mirzo (1972)

Life , Idea , Light

“Without darkness, nothing comes to birth, As without light, nothing flowers.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Flowers , Birth , Light

“The darkness isn't afraid of coming close to me, my fear of loneliness draws him towards me. Darkness surrounds me and despair takes hold of me. I start to torment my loneliness, and my silence begins to take my life. When I call my happiness darkness always turns happiness way. Darkness is not afraid of me coming close to me, my fear pulls it to me.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

Life , Happiness , Fear , Way

“The darkness isn't afraid of coming close to me, my fear of loneliness draws him towards me. Darkness surrounds me and despair takes hold of me. I start to torment my loneliness, and my silence begins to take my life. When I call my happiness darkness always turns happiness way. Darkness is not afraid of me coming close to me, my fear pulls it to me.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

Life , Happiness , Fear , Way

“You're like the sun. You give me a new hope to live every day, like a new ray of sun. Your love infuses energy in me. Your shining face removes the darkness of my life and I wish that my life always shines like your smile. You are sunshine and you have become essential to my life.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

Love , Life , Smile , Hope

“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.

Light , Family , Friendship , Missing You

“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,

Life , Light

“Part of the charm of synthetic organic chemistry derives from the vastness of the intellectual landscape along several dimensions. First, there is the almost infinite variety and number of possible target structures that lurk in the darkness waiting to be made. Then, there is the vast body of organic reactions that serve to transform one substance into another, now so large in number as to be beyond credibility to a non-chemist. There is the staggering range of reagents, reaction conditions, catalysts, elements, and techniques that must be mobilized in order to tame these reactions for synthetic purposes. Finally, it seems that new information is being added to that landscape at a rate that exceeds the ability of a normal person to keep up with it. In such a troubled setting any author, or group of authors, must be regarded as heroic if through their efforts, the task of the synthetic chemist is eased.”

Elias James Corey (1928) American chemist

Foreword of Name Reactions in Heterocyclic Chemistry (2004) by Jie Jack Li

Effort , Waiting , Parting , Personality

“We live in a troubled, but wonderful time. It is our good fortune to witness and benefit from scientific advances that would have been literally unimaginable to our grandparents. However, there are dark clouds on the horizon. The rate of growth of scientific knowledge has been so great as to outstrip the ability of our society to assimilate it, the capacity of the educational system to teach it properly and the wisdom of government adequately to sustain and apply it. There is growing indifference to science among the young. Even medical science, which touches the lives of us all, is generally left to the practitioners. Whatever the reason for this disparity between the importance of science and the lack of general public understanding, it is important to address it.”

Elias James Corey (1928) American chemist

E. J. Corey, ‎Barbara Czakó, ‎László Kürti, Molecules and Medicine (2007). Introduction

Wisdom , Education , Understanding , Knowledge

“There's light and joy, but there's also darkness all around and we can be lost in it.”

David Almond book Kit's Wilderness

Source: Kit's Wilderness

Light , Joy

“I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Variant: What I write is different from what I say, what I say is different from what I think, what I think is different from what I ought to think and so it goes further into the deepest darkness.

Way , Thinking

“Fear grows in darkness; if you think theres a bogeyman around, turn on the light.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Fear , Thinking , Light

“It was the possibility of darkness that made the day seem so bright.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: Wolves of the Calla

Good Night

“Every innocent face has a wild and dark side hidden deep within them; as humans, we are curious to see it exposed because we are intrigued by the unknown.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1986

“Imitate the oak trees, stripped naked by the dark winter frost; who recover in the spring to resemble a powerful towering statue of emerald; and relate to its origin, consisting of soil, clouds, and dead plants.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1979

Spring , Tree , Relation ships , Winter

“I will bring you flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want to do with you
what spring does with the cherry trees.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Mountain , Spring , Flowers , Kiss

“By night, Love, tie your heart to mine, and the two
together in their sleep will defeat the darkness”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: 100 Love Sonnets

Love , Sleep , Heart , Night

“I have slept with you all night long while the dark earth spins with the living and the dead, and on waking suddenly in the midst of the shadow my arm encircled your waist. Neither night nor sleep could separate us.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: Love Poems

Sleep , Night , Dead

“If the vision was true and mighty, as I know, it is true and mighty yet; for such things are of the spirit, and it is in the darkness of their eyes that men get lost.”

Black Elk (1863–1950) Oglala Lakota leader

Black Elk Speaks (1961)

Men

“Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything.”

Saul Bellow book Humboldt's Gift

Humboldt's Gift (1975), p. 265
General sources

Death

“In this winter night, long and ample for bitter memories, many a widow who lost her husband in the war and is now left alone will press her palms to her ageing face; and in the nocturnal darkness the burning tears, as bitter as wormwood, will scorch her fingers.”

Mikhail Sholokhov (1905–1984) Soviet writer

From A Word on Our Country.
One Man's Destiny (1967)

War , Age , Tear , Memory

“My total experience of school was mixed, with more darkness than light. Just as my image of society has become.”

Tomas Tranströmer (1931–2015) Swedish poet, psychologist and translator

42.
För levande och döda (For the Living and the Dead) 1996

School , Light

“One might ask why Senhor José needs a hundred-yard-long piece of string if the length of the Central Registry, despite successive extensions, is no more than eighty. That is the question of a person who imagines that one can do everything in life simply by following a straight line, that it is always possible to proceed from one place to another by the shortest route, perhaps some people in the outside world believe that they have done so, but here, where the living and the dead share the same space, sometimes, in order to find one of them, you have to make a lot of twists and turns, you have to skirt round mountains of bundles, columns of files, piles of cards, thickets of ancient remains, you have to walk down dark gulleys, between walls of grubby paper which, up above, actually touch, yards and yards of string will have to be unravelled, left behind, like a sinuous, subtle trail traced in the dust, there is no other way of knowing where you have to go next, there is no other way of finding your way back.”

José Saramago book All the Names

Source: All the Names (1997), pp. 140–141

Life , People , World , Way

“Fumbling in total darkness, they reached out to each other, naked, he penetrated her with desire and she received him eagerly, and they exchanged eagerness and desire until their bodies were locked in embrace, their movements in harmony, her voice rising from the depth of her being, his totally submerged, the cry that is born, prolonged, truncated, that muffled sob, that unexpected tear, and the machine trembles and shudders, probably no longer even on the ground but, having rent the screen of brambles and undergrowth, is now hovering at dead of night amid the clouds, Blimunda, Baltasar, his body weighing on hers, and both weighing on the earth, for at last they are here, having gone and returned.”

José Saramago book Baltasar and Blimunda

Em profunda escuridão se procuraram, nus, sôfrego entrou nela, ela o recebeu ansiosa, depois a sofreguidão dela, a ânsia dele, enfim os corpos encontrados, os movimentos, a voz que vem do ser profundo, aquele que não tem voz, o grito nascido, prolongado, interrompido, o soluço seco, a lágrima inesperada, e a máquina a tremer, a vibrar, porventura não está já na terra, rasgou a cortina de silvas e enleios, pairou no alto da noite, entre as nuvens, pesa o corpo dele sobre o dela, e ambos pesam sobre a terra, afinal estão aqui, foram e voltaram.
Source: Baltasar and Blimunda (1982), pp. 255–256

Tear , Cry , Night , Dead

“We have an odd relationship with words. We learn a few when we are small, throughout our lives we collect others through education, conversation, our contact with books, and yet, in comparison, there are only a tiny number about whose meaning, sense, and denotation we would have absolutely no doubts if, one day, we were to ask ourselves seriously what they meant. Thus we affirm and deny, thus we convince and are convinced, thus we argue, deduce, and conclude, wandering fearlessly over the surface of concepts about which we have only the vaguest of ideas, and, despite the false air of confidence that we generally affect as we feel our way along the road in the verbal darkness, we manage, more or less, to understand each other and even, sometimes, to find each other.”

José Saramago book The Double

The Double (2002)

Books , Education , Way , Feeling