Quotes about dark
page 28

“Light beyond metaphor,
Why did You deign to come into this darkness?
Your light does not illumine those who think they see You
And believe they sound Your depths.
Night, I know now, is day,
Virtue no more to be found.
He who witnesses Your splendor
Can never describe it.”

Jacopone da Todi (1236–1306) Italian Franciscan mystic

The Lauds

Thinking, Light, Night

“Now the drummers did not rush out to grab Chaney or shoot him but instead scattered like poultry while Chaney took my father's purse from his warm body and ripped open the trouser band and took the gold pieces too. I cannot say how he knew about them. When he finished his thieving he raced to the end of the street and struck the night watchman at the stock barn a fierce blow to the mouth with his rifle stock, knocking him silly. He put a bridle on Papa's horse Judy and rode out bareback. Darkness swallowed him up. He might have taken the time to saddle the horse or hitched up three spans of mules to a Concord stagecoach and smoked a pipe as it seems no one in that city was after him. He had mistaken the drummers for men.”

Charles Portis book True Grit

Source: True Grit (1968), Chapter 1, pp. 14-15 : thoughts of 'Mattie Ross'

Men, Time, Horse, Night

“Thank you for calling the Powers of Darkness. Your call may be recorded for security and training purposes. For general moral and ethical enquiries, press 1 on your keypad. To make a reservation, press 2. For details of our special discount packages for lawyers, politicians, and Microsoft executives, press 3.”

Tom Holt (1961) British writer

You Don't Have To Be Evil To Work Here, But It Helps (2006)

Training

“The glimmer continued to play about the vault of heaven. To the west one could see the roofs of nearby mansions and the tower of Our Lady's Church silhouetted against the dull red glow of embers in the darkness of the night.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part III: Fire in Copenhagen

Night

“Once I knew the depth where no hope was, and darkness lay on the face of all things. Then love came and set my soul free. Once I knew only darkness and stillness. Now I know hope and joy. Once I fretted and beat myself against the wall that shut me in. Now I rejoice in the consciousness that I can think, act and attain heaven. My life was without past or future; death, the pessimist would say, "a consummation devoutly to be wished." But a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living. Night fled before the day of thought, and love and joy and hope came up in a passion of obedience to knowledge. Can anyone who has escaped such captivity, who has felt the thrill and glory of freedom, be a pessimist?”

Helen Keller book Optimism

Optimism (1903)

Love, Life, Death, Hope

“In darkness a light shines on you and on me.”

Aaron Weiss

O, Porcupine.
Brother, Sister (2006)

Light

“Most days it's just stumbling around in the dark with the rest of creation, smashing into things and wondering why it hurts.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986)

Hurt

“I can see lights in the distance
Trembling in the dark cloak of night
Candles and lanterns are dancing, dancing
A waltz on All Souls Night.”

Loreena McKennitt (1957) Canadian musician and composer

The Visit (1991), All Souls Night

Soul, Light, Dance, Night

“It was India's Karma, her fate, to be conquered, and in her turn, to conquer her conqueror. She has already done so with her Mohammedan victors: Educated Mohammedans are Sufis, scarcely to be distinguished from Hindus. Hindu thought has permeated their civilisation; they assumed the position of learners. And England will be conquered in her turn. Today she has the sword, but it is worse than useless in the world of ideas. You know what Schopenhauer said of Indian thought. He foretold that its influence would be as momentous in Europe, when it became well known, as the revival of Greek and Latin; culture after the Dark Ages.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Source: Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, Vol. 5, p. 190

Fate, Age, World, Education

“Mystics of every faith report contacts with a world that startles and transforms them with its dazzling darkness. Zen stands squarely in this camp, its only uniqueness being that it makes breaking the language barrier its central concern.”

Huston Smith book The World's Religions

The World's Religions (1991)

World, Faith

“Few are the beliefs, still fewer the superstitions of to-day. We pretend to account for everything, till we do not believe enough for that humility so essential to moral discipline. But the dark creed of the fatalist still holds its ground — there is that within us, which dares not deny what, in the still depths of the soul, we feel to have a mysterious predominance. To a certain degree we controul our own actions — we have the choice of right or wrong; but the consequences, the fearful consequences, lie not with us. Let any one look upon the most important epochs of his life; how little have they been of his own making — how one slight thing has led on to another, till the result has been the very reverse of our calculations. Our emotions, how little are they under our own controul! how often has the blanched lip, or the flushed cheek, betrayed what the will was strong to conceal! Of all our sensations, love is the one which has most the stamp of Fate. What a mere chance usually leads to our meeting the person destined to alter the whole current of our life. What a mystery even to ourselves the influence which they exercise over us. Why should we feel so differently towards them, to what we ever felt before? An attachment is an epoch in existence — it leads to casting off old ties, that, till then, had seemed our dearest; it begins new duties; often, in a woman especially, changes the whole character; and yet, whether in its beginning, its continuance or its end, love is as little within our power as the wind that passes, of which no man knows whither it goeth or whence it comes.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

No.14. The Bride of Lammermuir — LUCY ASHTON.
Literary Remains

Love, Life, Fate, Lie

“Even such is time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust!”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

His Own Epitaph, written the night before his execution (1618) and found in his Bible in the Gate-house at Westminster; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tnk8RpOFWw "Even Such is Time" — Choir of Salisbury Cathedral

God, Youth, Age, Way

“The author had not followed the precedents of any other artist, nor has he been able to copy Nature itself.... He who departs from Nature will surely merits high esteem, since he has to put before thee yes of the public forms and poses which have existed previously in the darkness and confusion of an irrational mind..”

Francisco De Goya (1746–1828) Spanish painter and printmaker (1746–1828)

1790s, Goya's announcement about 'Los Caprichos', 6 Febr. 1799

Nature

“And had he not long read
Her heart's hush’d secret in the soft dark eye
Lighted at his approach, and on the cheek
Colouring all crimson at his lightest look?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Love’s Last Lesson
The Golden Violet (1827)

Secret, Light, Reading, Heart

“I remember when I was doing a film with Fred Astaire, it was nothing for him to work three or four days on two bars of music. One evening in the dark grey hours of dusk, I was walking across the deserted MGM lot when a small, weary figure with a towel around his neck suddenly appeared out of the giant cube sound stages. It was Fred. He came over to me, threw a heavy arm around my shoulder and said: "Oh Alan, why doesn't someone tell me I cannot dance?" The tormented illogic of his question made any answer insipid, and all I could do was walk with him in silence.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Alan Jay Lerner in Lerner, Alan Jay. On the Street Where I Live. New York: Norton, 1978. p. 89. (M).

Music, Question, Silence, Appearance

“She filled the pot, got out a new filter, threw the old one onto the garbage, and counted out five tablespoons of Columbian Supreme. Then she waited while the magic of modern invention turned tap water into a hot dark-brown caffeine-powered drink. It was better than any Biblical miracle and risked no beliefs.”

Jane Yolen book Briar Rose

Source: Briar Rose (1992), Chapter 8 (p. 43)

Drink, Water, Waiting

“I am a firm believer in living as if there were no such thing as a secret. If we hide our sins and live in darkness, we will never get the healing we so desperately need; in fact, if it is hidden so well that we don't even recognize it, we may never even find forgiveness.”

Ted Haggard (1956) American minister

[Haggard, Ted, Simple Prayers for a Powerful Life, Regal Books, September 2002, p. 110, ISBN 0830730559]

Secret, Forgiveness

“Spirit, that ruleth man's life to its ending,
Chance, Fortune, Fate, answer my summoning now;
The storm o'er the face of the night is descending,—
Fair moon, the dark clouds hide thy silvery brow.
Let these bring thy answer, and tell me if sadness
For ever man's penance and portion must be;
Doth the morning come forth from a birthplace of gladness?
Is there peace, is there rest, in thine empire or thee?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

A Night in May
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Life, Fate, Sadness, Peace

“What a bad day it was, the clouds were low and cloudy, the rain no fun, and the dark as it hit the late afternoon thick like someone who stops by your place and just won't leave. The day was canceled, almost, on account of the rain spilling itself over everything.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Adverbs (2006), Frigidly

“Dark Helmet : What? You went over my helmet?”

Mel Brooks (1926) American director, writer, actor, and producer

Spaceballs

“In fact, precisely at this transitional point of its nightly roll into darkness the great and particular glory of the Egdon waste began, and nobody could be said to understand the heath who had not been there at such a time. It could best be felt when it could not clearly be seen, its complete effect and explanation lying in this and the succeeding hours before the next dawn; then, and only then, did it tell its true tale.”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Bk. I, ch. 1
The Return of the Native (1878)

Lying, Understanding, Time

“It's a rather dark vision, actually.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Interview about The Dark Crystal (1982)

“There are few situations in life that cannot be honourably settled, and without loss of time, either by suicide, a bag of gold, or by thrusting a despised antagonist over the edge of a precipice upon a dark night.”

Ernest Bramah (1868–1942) English author

The Story of Hien and the Chief Examiner
Kai Lung's Golden Hours (1922)

Life, Suicide, Loss, Time

“Or light or dark, or short or tall,
She sets a springe to snare them all:
All's one to her—above her fan
She'd make sweet eyes at Caliban.”

Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907) American poet, novelist, editor

Quatrains, Coquette; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 139.

Spring, Light

“We are able to discern not only what we already are, but what we may become, to see in ourselves germs and promises of a growth to which no bounds can be set, to dart beyond what we have actually gained to the idea of perfection as the end of our being. It is by this self-comprehending power that we are distinguished from the brutes, which give no signs of looking into themselves. Without this there would be no self-culture, for we should not know the work to be done; and one reason why self-culture is so little proposed is, that so few penetrate into their own nature. To most men, their own spirits are shadowy, unreal, compared with what is outward. When they happen to cast a glance inward, they see there only a dark, vague chaos. They distinguish, perhaps, some violent passion, which has driven them to injurious excess; but their highest powers hardly attract a thought; and thus multitudes live and die as truly strangers to themselves as to countries of which they have heard the name, but which human foot has never trodden.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Self-Culture (1838)

Men, Idea, Nature, Passion

“They were the misfits of the world, the outcasts, for they deviated from the norm of humanity as established through all of history. Yet it was this very deviation which made them the hope of all mankind. Ordinary human beings—the kind of human beings who had brought the race this far—were not enough today. The ordinary humans had pushed the culture forward as far as they could push it. It had served its purpose; it had brought the ordinary human as far as he could go. Now the race evolved. Now new abilities had awoke and grown—exactly as the creatures of the Earth had evolved and specialized and then evolved again from that first moment when the first feeble spark of life had come into being in the seething chemical bath of a new and madcap planet.
Twisted brains, the normal people called them; magic people, dwellers of the darkness—and could anyone say no to this? For each people set its standards for each generation and these standards and these norms were not set by any universal rule, by no all-encompassing yardstick, but by what amounted to majority agreement, with the choice arrived at through all the prejudice and bias, all the faulty thinking and the unstable logic to which all intelligence is prone.”

Clifford D. Simak book Time is the Simplest Thing

Source: Time is the Simplest Thing (1961), Chapter 31 (pp. 233-234)

Life, People, World, Hope

“The sands of time are sinking
The dawn of heaven breaks;
The summer morn I've sighed for,
The fair, sweet morn, awakes.
Dark, dark hath been the midnight,
But dayspring is at hand,
And glory, glory dwellth
In Immanuel's hand”

Anne Ross Cousin (1824–1906) Scottish musician and songwriter

Verse 1 Hymn 776 Baptist Hymnal.

Time, Summer

“He who never looks up to a living God, to a heavenly presence, loses the power of perceiving that presence, and the universe slowly turns into a dead machine, clashing and grinding on, without purpose or end. If the light within us be darkness, how great is that darkness!”

James Freeman Clarke (1810–1888) American theologian and writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 563.

God, Light, Universe, Dead

“I feel that I have within me a medieval soul, and I believe that the soul of my country is medieval, that it has perforce passed through the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Revolution — learning from them, yes, but without allowing them to touch the soul, preserving the spiritual inheritance which has come down from what are called the Dark Ages. And Quixotism is simply the most desperate phase of the struggle between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which was the offering of the Middle Ages.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), Conclusion : Don Quixote in the Contemporary European Tragi-Comedy

Age, Feeling, Soul, Learning

“Lonestar
Where are you out tonight?
This feeling I'm trying to fight
It's dark and I think that I would give anything
For you to shine down on me”

Norah Jones (1979) American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist

"Lonestar", Come Away with Me (2002)
Song lyrics

Feeling, Thinking, Fight

“Unless you can subject your decision‐making to a ruthless and continuous JUDGMENT BY RESULTS, all your zigs and zags will only be random lunges in the dark, sooner or later bound to land you on the rocks.”

James A. Champy (1942) American businessman

Source: Reengineering management, 1995, p. 120

Decision

“Paul Ryan combines a profound sense of responsibility for what we owe the next generation with an unbounded optimism in America's future and an understanding of all the wonderful things the American people can do. Paul also combines firm principles with a practical concern for getting things done. He has never been content to simply curse the darkness; he would rather light candles. And throughout his legislative career he's shown the ability to work with members of both parties to find common ground on some of the hardest issues confronting the American people.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

2012-08-11
http://mittromneycentral.com/2012/08/11/video-and-transcript-romney-making-his-vp-announcement/
Video and Transcript: Romney Making His VP Announcement
Mitt Romney Central
2012

People, Optimism, Understanding, Sense

“Harry Dresden: There’s power in the night. There’s terror in the darkness. Despite all our accumulated history, learning, and experience, we remember. We remember times when we were too small to reach the light switch on the wall, and when the darkness itself was enough to make us cry out in fear. Get a good ways out from civilization-say, miles and miles away on a lightless lake-and the darkness is there, waiting. Twilight means more than just time to call the children in from playing outside. Fading light means more than just the end of another day. Night is when terrible things emerge from their sleep and seek soft flesh and hot blood. Night is when unseen beings with no regard for what our people have built and no place in what we have deemed the natural order look in at our world from outside, and think dark and alien thoughts. And sometimes, just sometimes, they do things.”

Jim Butcher The Dresden Files

Source: The Dresden Files, Turn Coat (2009), Chapter 40

Children, People, World, Fear

“If the U. S. was a person," he later became fond of saying, "and it sat down, Columbus, Ohio would instantly be plunged into darkness”

Thomas Pynchon book Against the Day

Source: Against the Day (2006), p. 66

Personality

“The infinity of God is not mysterious, it is only unfathomable; not concealed, but incomprehensible; it is a clear infinity, the darkness of the pure unsearchable sea.”

John Ruskin book Modern Painters

Volume II, part III, chapter V (1846).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)

God, Sea

“That's the spirit. Greg has taught you well. You have controlled your fear. Now, release your anger. Only your hatred can destroy me. Come to the dark side, Sarah. We have cookies.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

<nowiki>Re: [ 00/19 http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=137390810310498&w=2, 3.10.1-stable review</nowiki>, Torvalds, Linus, 2013-07-15, 2013-07-17] 2010s, 2013

Fear, Anger

“To say that man is a compound of strength and weakness, light and darkness, smallness and greatness, is not to indict him, it is to define him.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

As quoted in The Anchor Book of French Quotations with English Translations (1963) by Norbert Gutermam
Pensées Philosophiques (1746)

Light

“Rodriguez: When my mother read Hunger of Memory, she was horrified by it and she asked me, as an accusation, "Why did you hold these things in all of your years against me, why didn't you tell me? If I offended you by talking about how dark you were in the summer why didn't you tell me that? And tell me to stop? Why do you hold that for another 25 years and then spill it all out?"”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Good question, Mama. Good question.
Violating the Boundaries: An Interview with Richard Rodriguez (1999)

Hunger, Question, Memory, Reading

“The preface is usually that part of a book which can most safely be omitted. It usually represents that efflorescent manifestation of egotism which an author, after working hard, cannot spare either himself or his readers. More often than not the readers spare themselves. When, however, the writer is a daily perpetrator of high treason, his introductory remarks may command from the English public that kind of awful veneration with which £5000 confessions are perused in the Sunday newspapers, quite frequently after the narrator has taken his last leap in the dark.”

William Joyce (1906–1946) British fascist and propaganda broadcaster

William Joyce, Twilight over England (Internationaler Verlag, Berlin, 1940), preface.

Books, Parting

“The beacon-blaze unsheathing turns
The face of darkness pale
And now with one grand chop gives clearance to
Our human visions...”

Richard Wilbur (1921–2017) American poet

The Beacon

“Wearily have the years passed, I know; wearily to the pale watcher on the hill who has been so long gazing for the daybreak; wearily to the anxious multitudes who have been waiting for his tidings below. Often has the cry gone up through the darkness, " Watcher, what of the night?" and often has the disappointing answer come, "It is night still; here the stars are clear above me, but they shine afar, and yonder the clouds lower heavily, and the sad night winds blow." But the time shall come, and perhaps sooner than we look for it, when the countenance of that pale watcher shall gather into intenser expectancy, and when the challenge shall be given, with the hopefulness of a nearer vision, "Watcher, what of the night?" and the answer will come, "The darkness is not so dense as it was; there are faint streaks on the horizon's verge; mist is in the valleys, but there is a radiance on the distant hill. It comes nearer — that promise of the day. The clouds roll rapidly away, and they are fringed with amber and gold. It is, it is the blest sunlight that I feel around me — Morning! It is Morning!"”

William Morley Punshon (1824–1881) English Nonconformist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 410.

Sadness, Hope, Disappointment, Feeling

“But oftentimes celestial benedictions
Assume this dark disguise.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Resignation

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Resignation

“My eyes has been my camera taking pictures of the world and my songs has been my messages that I tried to scatter across the back sides and along the steps of the fire escapes and on the window sills and through the dark halls…”

Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) American singer-songwriter and folk musician

Bound For Glory (1943)

World

“No world lacks its villains so self-confident that they don’t believe they can get the best end of a bargain with the darkness.”

Glen Cook book Soldiers Live

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 5, “An Abode of Ravens: Headquarters” (p. 382)

World, Confidence, Self-confidence

“Raise a song for her, O Muse!
The violet-crownèd maiden,
And praise her soft throat's changing hues,
Her low voice, laughter-laden. Sing yet again her thousand charms,
Her eyes entrancing splendour,
Her swarthy cheeks and supple arms
And bosom dark and tender. Yea, sing forevermore of her,
My mistress soft-beguiling,
Fairest of all who are, or were,
My Sappho, sweetly-smiling.”

Alcaeus of Mytilene (-600–-560 BC) ancient Greek poet

"No More for Lycus", as translated by James S. Easby-Smith

Smile, Laughter, Change, Singing

“Ah, life, young and fragile life, sent forth from the dependable darkness, from the snug warmth of the maternal womb into a vast, unfamiliar and illuminated world! How it flinches and draws back, filled with aversion and discouragement! How it hesitates to accept the venture proposed to it!”

Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) Polish novelist and painter

“Nimrod” http://www.schulzian.net/translation/shops/nimrod.htm His father, Living things

Life, World, Maternity, Drawing

“Blaine remembered how strange, dark, atavistic and noble Hull’s lordly selection of death has seemed. Pretentious, of course; but then, life itself was a pretension in the vast universe of unliving matter.”

Robert Sheckley book Immortality, Inc.

Source: Immortality, Inc. (1959), Chapter 35 (p. 148)

Life, Death, Universe

“How could I not have known that there are little things the size of "Planck length" in the universe, which are a millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a centimeter? Imagine if you dropped one in a dark theater how hard it would be to find.”

Woody Allen book Mere Anarchy

Mere Anarchy (2007)

Imagination, Universe

“The free-infinite of the intelligence will go on in the conflict of transforming the finitude of the natural life; will go on to victory ever more and more. It may be, as was said before, by paths never so dark and devious, or now and again even retrograde; it may be by descent with the natural into the nether pit of sin and its self-operating punishment; but onward still the undying free spirit goes, and will go, secure in its own indestructible vision of its eternal Ideal, secure in the changeless light shed on it by the changeless God.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Harmony of Determinism and Freedom, p.373-4

Life, God, Intelligence, Nature

“Better a life like a falling star, bright across the dark, than a deathlessness which can see naught above or beyond itself.”

Poul Anderson book The Broken Sword

In the first edition of the book, this quote reads: Better a life like a falling star, brief and bright across the dark, than the long, long waiting of the immortals, loveless and cheerlessly wise.
Source: The Broken Sword (1954), Chapter 28 (p. 206)

Life, Star

“It is dark in my favorite dream. Someone is following me. I don't know why. I'm scared. Then suddenly I lift off. Far away. How do I feel? As if I am swimming in the air. Free. Weightless. Nobody can reach me. Nobody can touch me. It's a wonderful feeling.”

Aaliyah (1979–2001) American singer, actress and model

Interview in Die Zeit newspaper (2001) http://www.eonline.com/news/42093/aaliyah-funeral-set-pilot-probed

Dreams, Feeling

“There is nothing so despicable as a secret society that is based upon religious prejudice and that will attempt to defeat a man because of his religious beliefs. Such a society is like a cockroach — it thrives in the dark. So do those who combine for such an end.”

William Howard Taft (1857–1930) American politician, 27th President of the United States (in office from 1909 to 1913)

Speech to the Young Men's Hebrew Association in New York (20 December 1914).

Secret

“The fear was all he had left, but even that was something—he was afraid, so he must be alive! There was darkness, but there was Simon, too! There were not one and the same. Not yet. Not quite…”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 13, “Between Worlds” (p. 199).

Fear

“This is a dark painting with a bit of violence because I was very affected by Diana's death. I cried all day because I liked her, warts and all. Most of all I liked the way that she wanted to be loved and didn't mind admitting it.”

Stella Vine (1969) English artist

Richard Alleyen, "First blood to Saatchi as a star is born", http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/02/24/nsaat24.xml The Daily Telegraph, (2004-02-24) On Hi Paul Can You Come Over, her painting of Princess Diana.

Love, Death, Way, Painting

“Yonder in the unknown vastness"—his long finger stabbed at the black silent jungle which brooded beyond the firelight—"yonder lies mystery and adventure and nameless terror. Once I dared the jungle—once she nearly claimed my bones. Something entered into my blood, something stole into my soul like a whisper of unnamed sin. The jungle! Dark and brooding—over leagues of the blue salt sea she has drawn me and with the dawn I go to seek the heart of her. Mayhap I shall find curious adventure—mayhap my doom awaits me. But better death than the ceaseless and everlasting urge, the fire that has burned my veins with bitter longing.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Hills of the Dead" (1930)

Death, Soul, Heart, Sea

“Yeah, congratulations. Way to go, Punk, way to go. Congratulations on your big win. You need to enjoy them while you can. You see, you can smirk if you want to, but I see straight through you. When I look at you, I see a fraud. And I'm not talking about the fact that you call yourself the best in the world, I'm talking about you as a person. Because I did a little research this week, Punk, and I found something, a little deep, dirty, dark secret about you. You've been straight edge ever since you came to the WWE, but you've never explained the reasons why. I wanna tell all of these wannabes why you're straight edge. I wanna tell them that you're straight edge because your father is an alcoholic.
Yeah, that's right. Your father was an alcoholic who let you down every step of the way when you were growing up, and it terrifies you. You don't want to end up like him. But it's inevitable that you will, because alcohol is in your blood, it's in your genes, it's part of who you are, and that tortures you. I know you've built this facade, this wall that you're a sarcastic antihero with not a care in the world, but I think I've found something that you care about. I've found something that gives you nightmares, something that terrifies you.
And isn't it ironic that the very alcohol that you crave is the same thing that ruined your childhood? Oh, the nightmares you must have about your father; I almost feel bad for you, Punk. Is that the reason why you have all those tattoos? Was the pain of wanting to drink so bad that you needed the pain of a tattoo needle to take it out of your mind? Was that your only solace?
It doesn't matter if it is, Punk, because you are going to drink eventually, and I'm the one who is going to make you drink. At WrestleMania XXVIII, I'm going to take away your title, I'm gonna take away your claims of being the best in the world, I'm gonna take away your bravado, and I'm gonna leave you a broken man. You're gonna hit bottom, Punk, and when you do, you're going to embrace your destiny, and you're gonna take a drink. And it's gonna taste so good that you're gonna wanna take another one, and another one, and another one. After April 1st, I'm gonna be recognized for who I am—the undisputed best in the world and the new WWE Champion. And you're gonna be recognized for who you are, who your father was—a pathetic damn drunk!”

Chris Jericho (1970) American professional wrestler, musician, television host, podcast host and author

March 12, 2012 - WWE Raw

Pain, Alcohol, Secret, World

“This is just an ordinary day
Wipe the insecurities away
I can see that the darkness will erode
Looking out the corner of my eye
I can see that the sunshine will explode
Far across the desert in the sky
Beautiful girl
Won't you be my inspiration?
Beautiful girl
Don't you throw your love around
What in the world, what in the world
Could ever come between us?”

Dolores O'Riordan (1971–2018) Irish singer

"Ordinary Day"
Are You Listening? (2007)

Love, World, Beauty, Girl

“Whenever I get dumped, I nail the door shut so that no one can come inside, get a towel and clip it around my neck so it's like a Superman cape, take off my shoes so I can slide across the room, and…get a fake mic, like a celery stick or a pen, and I play any record that features the vocalist Ronnie James Dio. And you can just pretend you're Dio, because on every album he does, he has minimum one, usually three, *EVIL WOMAN LOOK OUT!*- songs. And if you wanna point like Dio, it's a three-finger point. (heavy metal voice) 'The exit is that way. Evil LURKS! Evil lurks in twilight! Dances in the DARK! Evil woman! Just WALK AWAY!”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Shoe, Way, Evil, Dance

“To hear never-heard sounds,
To see never-seen colors and shapes,
To try to understand the imperceptible
Power pervading the world;
To fly and find pure ethereal substances
That are not of matter
But of that invisible soul pervading reality.
To hear another soul and to whisper to another soul;
To be a lantern in the darkness
Or an umbrella in a stormy day;
To feel much more than know.
To be the eyes of an eagle, slope of a mountain;
To be a wave understanding the influence of the moon;
To be a tree and read the memory of the leaves;
To be an insignificant pedestrian on the streets
Of crazy cities watching, watching, and watching.
To be a smile on the face of a woman
And shine in her memory
As a moment saved without planning.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Task of a Poet http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21367/Task_of_a_Poet From the poems written in English

World, Smile, Color, Feeling

“The same dark spirit of domination has led them to — for the first time in American history — imprison American citizens with no charges, no right to see a lawyer, no right to notify their family, no right to know of what they are accused, and no right to gain access to any court to present an appeal of any sort. The Bush Administration has even acquired the power to compel librarians to tell them what any American is reading, and to compel them to keep silent about the request — or else the librarians themselves can also be imprisoned.
They have launched an unprecedented assault on civil liberties, on the right of the courts to review their actions, on the right of the Congress to have information to how they are spending the public's money and the right of the news media to have information about the policies they are pursuing.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Quotes, NYU Speech (2004)

Money, Family, History, Time

“Consequences. In real life, these ramifications emanate from every action like ripples from a stone thrown into a pond. Often in movies, especially those that feature characters who don't play by the rules, such penalties are suspended. However, in Christopher Nolan's Batman universe, decisions and actions have consequences. The Dark Knight, arguably the moodiest and most adult superhero motion picture ever to reach the screen, illustrates this lesson in ways that are startling and painful. This is a tough, uncompromising motion picture — one that defies the common notions of what is expected from a "superhero" film. While there are plenty of action sequences and instances of derring-do, The Dark Knight's subtext has a tragic underpinning that would intrigue Shakespeare or the Greeks. It's about power and impotence, sanity and madness, image and reality, selfishness and sacrifice, and — yes — consequences.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=1235 of The Dark Knight (2008). Four star reviews

Life, Pain, Penalty, Way

“"Sunlight's a thing that needs a window
Before it enter a dark room.
Windows don't happen."
So two old poets,
Hunched at their beer in the low haze
Of an inn parlour, while the talk ran
Noisily by them, glib with prose.”

R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet

"Poetry For Supper"
Poetry For Supper (1958)

Beer

“If I wanted, I could have changed cars on a daily basis. I could drink selected French Champagne everyday. When thousands of people would queue-up to enter the grounds of the Imperial Palace I had unfettered access to the Emperor. I chose to forfeit these privileges and opportunities and decided to free my people and country from darkness, poverty and underdevelopment. I had no other ambition.”

Mengistu Neway (1919–1961) Commander of the Ethiopian Imperial Bodyguard

As quoted by Dr. Yacob Haile-Mariam (January 2007) Open Letter to the People of Ethiopia and the Judges

People, Cars, Drink, Change

“The great hulking eminence of the stone-age mound stood out as an ominous dark shadow.”

Stephen R. Lawhead (1950) American writer

Source: The Bone House (2011), p. 162

Age

“Warm lights are on the sleepy uplands waning
Beneath dark clouds along the horizon rolled,
Till the slant sunbeams through the fringes raining
Bathe all the hills in melancholy gold.”

Sarah Helen Whitman (1803–1878) United States poet

A still Day in Autumn.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Light

“Thou, Everlasting Strength, hast set Thyself forth to bear our burdens. May we bear Thy cross, and bearing that, find there is nothing else to bear; and touching that cross, find that instead of taking away our strength, it adds thereto. Give us faith for darkness, for trouble, for sorrow, for bereavement, for disappointment; give us a faith that will abide though the earth itself should pass away — a faith for living, a faith for tying.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 107

Faith, Disappointment

“My son – and what's a son? A thing begot
Within a pair of minutes, thereabout:
A lump bred up in darkness.”

Thomas Kyd (1558–1594) English dramatist

Act III, sc. xia
Misattributed

“Let me come back again to the waking state. I have no choice but to consider it a phenomenon of interference. Not only does the mind display, in this state, a strange tendency to lose its bearings (as evidenced by the slips and mistakes the secrets of which are just beginning to be revealed to us), but, what is more, it does not appear that, when the mind is functioning normally, it really responds to anything but the suggestions which come to it from the depths of that dark night to which I commend it.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, Andre Breton (Manifesto of Surrealism; 1924)

Secret, Appearance, Night

“The idea for each of the stories in this book came in a moment of belief and was written in a burst of faith, happiness, and optimism. Those positive feelings have their dark analogues, however, and the fear of failure is a long way from the worst of them. The worst—for me, at least—is the gnawing speculation that I may have already said everything I have to say, and am now only listening to the steady quacking of my own voice because the silence when it stops is just too spooky.”

Stephen King book Nightmares & Dreamscapes

Nightmares & Dreamscapes (1993), Introduction

Books, Fear, Faith, Way

“In the dark, I like to read his mind
But I'm frightened of the things I might find.”

Aimee Mann (1960) American indie rock singer-songwriter (born 1960)

"Voices Carry" · Official video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uejh-bHa4To · Live 1985 performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCO-dzitHIE Song lyrics, Voices Carry (1985)

Reading

“.. Since I myself needed a year to discover the significance of this strange work, many of the texts and tunes, particularly in the first paintings, elude my memory and must - like the creation as a whole so it seems to me - remain shrouded in darkness.”

Charlotte Salomon (1917–1943) German painter

Charlotte's 4th introduction page, related to image JHM no. 4155-4 https://charlotte.jck.nl/detail/M004155-d: 'What is man, that thou art mindful..', p. 44 the quote is written in brush, combined with one rough painted figure Charlotte Salomon - Life? or Theater?

Memory, Painting

“As you serve others, you can inspire others. I’ve been inspired by the examples of many selfless servants. Winston Churchill, a leader of courage and resolve, inspired me during my Presidency—and, for that matter, in the post-presidency. Like Churchill, I now paint. Unlike Churchill, the painting isn’t worth much without the signature. In 1941, he gave a speech to the students of his old school during Britain’s most trying times in World War II. It wasn’t too long, and it is well-remembered. Prime Minister Churchill urged, 'Never give in… in nothing, great or small, large or petty. Never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense'. I hope you’ll remember this advice. But there’s a lesser-known passage from that speech that I also want to share with you. 'These are not dark days. These are great days. The greatest our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race'. When Churchill uttered these words, many had lost hope in Great Britain’s chance for survival against the Nazis. Many doubted the future of freedom. Today, some doubt America’s future, and they say our best days are behind us. I say, given our strengths—one of which is a bright new generation like you—these are not dark days. These are great days.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2010s, 2015, Remarks at the SMU 100th Spring Commencement (May 2015)

God, War, World, School

“Full of years, Sir Frank's body died. The diphtheria which carried him off caused him as much suffering as it would have done an ordinary man; dying was not eased by his unique gift. He slid out into the long darkness — but his consciousness continued unabated in eight other bodies.”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

Let's Be Frank (1957)

Suffering

“A light is gone from yonder sky,
A star has left its sphere;
The beautiful--and do they die
In yon bright world as here?
Will that star leave a lonely place,
A darkness on the night?—
No; few will miss its lovely face,
And none think heaven less bright!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Lost Star from The Literary Souvenir, 1828
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Love, World, Beauty, Star

“And here is the deep, dark, dirty secret of Islam: It is a religion that promotes pedophilia - sex with children. This so-called prophet Muhammad raped a 9-year-old girl - had sex with her… Around the world today, you have Muslim men having sex with 4-year-old girls, taking them as their brides, because they believe the prophet Muhammad did… I believe, as Christians and conservatives, it's time to take off the gloves and stand up and tell the truth about this evil, evil religion.”

Robert Jeffress (1955) Pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas

"Ask The Pastor", First Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas, , quoted in * 2010-09-05
Dallas pastor's broad-brush criticism of Islam goes way too far
Steve
Blow
The Dallas Morning News
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/columnists/steve-blow/20100904-Dallas-pastor-s-broad-brush-criticism-8678.ece

Men, Children, Truth, Secret

“I do not have a comic or tragic period in any real sense. I have always painted dark pictures; always some light pictures. I will probably go on doing so... Orchestral. My work in its entirety is like a symphony in which each painting has its part.”

Clyfford Still (1904–1980) American artist

Gallery Notes, Allbright-Knox Art Gallery, Vol. 24 summer 1961 pp. 9-14; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 197
1960s

Sense, Light, Parting, Painting

“These are the desolate, dark weeks
when nature in its barrenness
equals the stupidity of man. The year plunges into night
and the heart plunges
lower than night”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

"These"
Complete Collected Poems (1938)

Stupidity, Nature, Heart, Night

“The puppets in 'Dark Crystal' were very complicated, and some quite unpleasant. In that movie, I think we got into areas a bit too realistic.”

Jim Henson (1936–1990) American puppeteer

Interview with Associated Press (1984)

Thinking

“Dark night,
Oh terrible is thy shadow on the battle!
Blows dealt alike on friend and foe, the dead,
And dying trampled on— oh, day alone
Should look upon the soldier's deeds!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(1st February 1823) The Cadets. An Indian Sketch
The London Literary Gazette, 1823

Night, Dead

“Social media amplifies both the good side and the dark side of human nature. … Notwithstanding human ignorance, freedom of expression is essential.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Facebook Nation: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2014

Nature, Freedom

“A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far reaches of the internet, should never run our government or command our military. If he doesn’t respect respect all Americans, he can’t serve all Americans! … There’s no other Donald Trump. This is it.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Speech in Reno, Nevada (August 25, 2016)

History

“In the struggle of mankind with the elements, its aim is dominion over nature. Dominion is a relationship of the organizer to the organized. Step by step, mankind acquires control over and conquers nature; this means that step by step it organizes the universe; it organizes the universe for Itself and in its own interests. Such is the meaning and content of the age-long labour of mankind.
Nature resists elementally and blindly with the terrible strength of its dark, chaotic, but innumerable and Infinite army of elements. In order to conquer it, mankind must organize itself into a mighty army. Unconsciously, it has been doing this for centuries by forming working collective, ranging from the small primitive communes of the primordial epoch to the contemporary cooperation of hundreds of millions of people.
If mankind had to organize the universe only with the forces and means given to it by nature, it would not have any advantage over the other living creatures which also fight for survival against the rest of nature. In its labour mankind uses tools, which it takes from the same external nature. This forms the basis of its victories; it is this which long ago provided and continues to provide mankind with a growing superiority over the strongest and most terrible giants of elemental life and which distinguishes it from the rest of nature's kingdom.”

Alexander Bogdanov (1873–1928) Physician, philosopher, writer

Source: Essays in tektology, 1980, p. 1-2.

Life, People, Age, Communication

“Monks mass like a pack of wolves
from disputing with the masters who instruct them -
They know not when deep dark and dawn divorce
nor who sends the wind, nor who moves it,
where it disappears to, what land it strikes.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The Spoils of Annwn

“Charlemagne lived away back in the Dark Ages when people were not very bright. They have been getting brighter and brighter ever since, until finally they are like they are now.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part III: Strange Bedfellows, Charlemagne

People, Age

“There is a blood red circle
On the cold dark ground.
And the rain is falling down.
The church door's thrown open;
I can hear the organ's song.
But the congregation's gone.
My city of ruins.
My city of ruins.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"My City of Ruins"
Song lyrics, The Rising (2002)

“"I can see in the dark."
"That may be so, Mulla. But if it is true, why do you sometimes carry a candle at night?"
"To prevent other people from bumping into me."”

Nasreddin (1208–1284) philosopher, Sufi and wise man from Turkey, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes

N. Hanif (ed.), Biographical Encyclopaedia of Sufis: Central Asia and Middle East (2002), , p. 343

People, Night

“Thou unrelenting Past!
Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain,
And fetters, sure and fast,
Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.”

William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) American romantic poet and journalist

The Past http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page143, st. 1 (1828)

Strong, Past

“[blind_man] A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

This is attributed, with an expression of doubt as to its correctness, in Mathematics, Our Great Heritage: Essays on the Nature and Cultural Significance of Mathematics (1948) by William Leonard Schaaf, p. 163; also attributed in Pi in the Sky : Counting, Thinking and Being (1992) by John D. Barrow. There are a number of similar expressions to this with various attributions, but the earliest published variants seem to be quotations of Lord Bowen:
When I hear of an 'equity' in a case like this, I am reminded of a blind man in a dark room — looking for a black hat — which isn't there.
Lord Bowen, as quoted in "Pie Powder", Being Dust from the Law Courts, Collected and Recollected on the Western Circuit, by a Circuit Tramp (1911) by John Alderson Foote; this seems to be the earliest account of any similar expression. It is mentioned by the author that this expression has become misquoted as a "black cat" rather than "black hat."
An earlier example with "hat" as a learned judge is said to have defined the metaphysician, namely, as a blind man looking for a black hat in a dark room, the hat in question not being there Edinburgh Medical Journal, Volume 3 (1898)
With his obscure and uncertain speculations as to the intimate nature and causes of things, the philosopher is likened to a 'blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that is not there.'
William James, himself apparently quoting someone else's expression, in Some Problems of Philosophy : A Beginning of an Introduction to Philosophy (1911) Ch. 1 : Philosophy and its Critics
A blind man in a dark room seeking for a black cat — which is not there.
A definition of metaphysics attributed to Lord Bowen, as quoted in Science from an Easy Chair (1913) by Edwin Ray Lankester, p. 99
A blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.
A definition of metaphysics attributed to Lord Balfour, as quoted in God in Our Work: Religious Addresses (1949) by Richard Stafford Cripps, p. 72
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, as quoted in Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Time (1977) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 427
A metaphysician is like a blind man in a dark room, looking for a black cat — which isn't there.
Variant published in Smiles and Chuckles (1952) by B. Hagspiel
Misattributed

Cats