Quotes about darkness (3456 quotes, page 30)

“The mighty river flowing dark and deep,
With ebb and flood from the remote sea-tides,
Vague-sounding through the City’s sleepless sleep,
Is named the River of the Suicides.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

Part XIX
The City of Dreadful Night (1870–74)

Suicide , Sleep , Sea

“This swirl of stars,' Draconus suddenly said, 'marks the plunge of light into darkness. These stars, they are distant suns, shihing their light down upon distant, unknown worlds. Worlds, perhaps, little different from this one. Or vastly different. It hardly matters. Each star swirls its path towards the centre, and at that centre is death - the death of light, the death of time itself.”

Steven Erikson book Forge of Darkness

Forge of Darkness (2013)

Death , World , Star , Light

“"Heaven! What have I done?" exclaimed he. "The vapor, the influence of that brute force,—it has bewildered me and obscured my perception. I have made the very stroke—the fatal stroke—that I have dreaded from the first. It is all over—the toil of months, the object of my life. I am ruined!"
And there he sat, in strange despair, until his lamp flickered in the socket and left the Artist of the Beautiful in darkness.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

Life , Beauty , Despair

“If you look out and see a trace
Of dark red that used to be my face,
In the clarity of His grace:
Remember me.”

Aaron Weiss

A→B Life (2002)

“I remember about 1660 there was a great difference between him and Sir Hierome Sanchy, one of Oliver's knights…The Knight had been a Soldier, and challenged Sir William to fight with him. Sir William is extremely short sighted, and being the challengee it belonged to him to nominate place and weapon. He nominates, for the place, a darke Cellar, and the weapon to be a great Carpenter's Axe. This turned the knight's challenge into Ridicule, and so it came to nought.”

John Aubrey book Brief Lives

"Sir William Petty"
Brief Lives

Fight

“Oh, we can populate the dark with horrors, even we who think ourselves informed and sure, believing nothing we cannot measure or weigh. I know beyond all doubt that the dark things crowding in on me either did not exist or were not dangerous to me, and still I was afraid.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Pt. 1
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

Thinking

“According to my theory, a dark spot in the sun is a place in its atmosphere which happens to be free from luminous decompositions”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

above it
Source: Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works (1880), Ch.4 "Life and Works" quote from his paper "Nature and Construction of the Sun and Fixed Stars" (1795).

Sun

“Alf Todd,’ said Ukridge, soaring to an impressive burst of imagery, ‘has about as much chance as a one-armed blind man in a dark room trying to shove a pound of melted butter into a wild-cat’s ear with a red-hot needle.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Ukridge (1924)

Cats , Chance

“Fear can only grow in darkness. Once you face fear with light, you win.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 90

Fear , Light

“Content is king. Planned Parenthood’s success lies in their operating in total darkness. Their friends in media and government have protected them. But soon there will be an army of Lila Rose's who will shine light on unthinkable abuses behind closed doors, which will shock the consciences of most Americans.”

James O'Keefe (1984) American conservative filmmaker

Changing the World by the Time He’s 30 http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/changing_the_world_by_the_time_hes_30 (March 31, 2010)

Light , Success

“The junior partner of Caine and Cooper, though a man of blameless life, had one of those dark, saturnine faces which suggest a taste for the more sinister forms of crime, and on one cheek of that dark, saturnine face was a long scar. Actually it had been caused by the bursting of a gingerbeer bottle at a Y. M. C. A. picnic, but it gave the impression of being the outcome of battles with knives in the cellars of the underworld.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Pigs Have Wings

Pigs Have Wings (1952)

Life

“Sweet empty sky of June without a stain,
Faint, gray-blue dewy mists on far-off hills
Warm, yellow sunlight flooding mead and plain,
That each dark copse and hollow overfills:”

Emma Lazarus (1849–1887) American poet

Beginning lines from Epochs I. Youth.

“Last night I had looked into the heart of darkness, and the sight had terrified me. What part should I play in the great purification? Most likely that of the Biblical scapegoat.”

John Buchan book Prester John

Source: Prester John (1910), Ch. XII

Heart , Parting , Night

“In the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don't know any better.”

Michael Crichton (1942–2008) American author, screenwriter, film producer

Environmentalism as a Religion (2003)

People , Age , Fear , Way

Cyril Connolly book Enemies of Promise

Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 2: The Charlock’s Shade, Ch. 15: The Slimy Mallows (p. 122-123)

Death , Truth , Hope , Way

“And about the table where stood the Dark Man, immovable as a mountain, washed the red waves of slaughter.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Dark Man" (1931)

Mountain

“If I saw something once that I can't explain, that doesn't make them real. And if a trick of the dark gave me a chill, that doesn't make them real. And if a madman says what's at the core of us all is a senseless, flapping quiver of black shade, that's just one more reason not to believe.”

Charlie Huston book Joe Pitt Casebooks

My Dead Body, Character: Joe Pitt (narration)
Joe Pitt Casebooks

“Smooth are his words, his voice as honey sweet,
Yet war is in his heart, and dark deceit!”

Moschus Ancient Greek poet

'The Stray Cupid', tr. R. Polwhele, lines 14–15
Compare: "The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart: his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords." Psalm 55:21 (KJV)
The Idylliums of Moschus, Idyllium I

War , Heart

“Some love to roam o’er the dark sea’s foam,
Where the shrill winds whistle free.”

Charles Mackay (1814–1889) British writer

"Some Love to Roam".
Legends of the Isles and Other Poems (1851)

Love , Sea

“The recognition of the light of reality within the darkness of abstraction is a contradiction – both the affirmation and the negation of the real at one and the same time. The new philosophy, which thinks the concrete not in an abstract but a concrete way, which acknowledges the real in its reality – that is, in a way corresponding to the being of the real as true, which elevates it into the principle and object of philosophy – is consequently the truth of the Hegelian philosophy, indeed of modern philosophy as a whole.”

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) German philosopher and anthropologist

Part III, Section 31
Principles of Philosophy of the Future http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/future/index.htm (1843)

Truth , Way , Thinking , Reality

“The breaking of casting cliches also broke boundaries. A short, Latin-looking actress like me playing classical roles such as Miss Julie, and playing them well, made casting directors uncomfortable. It was unheard of that a short, dark-haired actress of Greek temperament could play the aristocratic Miss Julie. Not beautiful or tall enough etc. It proved one of the best productions of Miss Julie ever seen in London.”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

On the formation of Internationalist Theatre.
The South African Interview (August 8, 2011)

Beauty

“A scrimmage in a Border Station—
A canter down some dark defile—
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail—
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!”

Rudyard Kipling Arithmetic on the Frontier

Arithmetic on the Frontier, Stanza 3.
Departmental Ditties and other Verses (1886)

Education

“As everybody who met him noted, Krajisnik had only one long and extraordinarily brushy eyebrow, which spanned his forehead, creating what looked like a permanent dark cloud over his deep-set eyes. Although Krajisnik had not been indicted by the War Crimes Tribunal - and could therefore participate in Dayton - it was hard to distinguish his views from those of his close friend Radovan Karadzic. Milosevic had often said that Krajisnik was "more difficult" than Karadzic, but we had little basis on which to make an indipendent judgment. (…) He and Izetbegovic knew each other well, from lengthy meetings in the Bosnian Assembly before the war. Krajisnik owned a five-hectare farm on the edge of Sarajevo, in an area that would probably revet to the Muslims in any settlement, and we often made bitter jokes that the war was really over "Krajisnik's five hectares."”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p. 255

War

“A Marshal of France is a fine fellow, second only to the Emperor, and he wore a dark blue uniform edged with golden leaves, and his collar and shoulders were heavy with gilt decorations. A Marshal of France was given privileges, riches, and honour, but they had to be earned by answering the difficult questions.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Narrator, p. 238
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Sword (1983)

Question

“We must not close with Christ because we feel Him, but because God lias said it, and we must take God's word even in the dark.”

Robert Murray M'Cheyne (1813–1843) British writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 590.

God , Feeling , Christ

“Nary a grin grinned Rudolph Reed,
Nary a curse cursed he,
But moved in his House. With his dark little wife,
And his dark little children three.”

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) American writer

The Ballad of Rudolph Reed

Children , Housing

“The music ends. The screen grows dark. We hurry
To go our devious secret ways, forgetting
Those many lives... We loved, we laughed, we killed,
We danced in fire, we drowned in a whirl of sea-waves.
The flutes are stilled, and a thousand dreams are stilled.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Love , Secret , Dreams , Music

“What is the light from yon deep wood flashing —
What the sound on the wild wind borne?
What the dark ranks that are onwards dashing
To the voice of the pealing horn?
Who are they that thundering go? —
It is the Black Hunt of the bold Litzou!”

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

The London Literary Gazette (3rd January 1835) Versions from the German (First Series.) - 'The Black Hunt of Litzou'
Translations, From the German

Light

“My little fellow, about four years old, whom I brought with me, gave himself no trouble amid the boats, omnibuses, and railway coaches, on sea, land, and in dark tunnels; his father was at his side, and never a care or fear or doubt or anxiety had he. May we have grace to be led by the hand, and trust to the care and kindness of a reconciled God and Father.”

Thomas Guthrie (1803–1873) British divine

Source: The Autobiography of Thomas Guthrie and Memoir Vol.2 (1875), P. 203.

God , Fear , Sea

“I am an artist, I trade in uncertainty and superstition and cant. I invent dark visions of impossible situations that can never be resolved.”

Ralph Steadman book The Joke's Over

Fear And Loathing, p. 81
The Joke's Over (2006)

“Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what is going to happen to him from one moment to the next, or how one will bear it. This is irreducible. And it's true of everybody. Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

"An interview with James Baldwin" (1961), in Conversations with James Baldwin, p. 21

Peace , Nature

“Men are not in hell because God is angry with them. They are in wrath and darkness because they have done to the light, which infinitely flows forth from God, as that man does to the light who puts out his own eyes.”

William Law (1686–1761) English cleric, nonjuror and theological writer

As quoted in Art and the Message of the Church (1961) by Walter Ludwig Nathan, p. 120.

Men , God , Hell , Light

“This Mr. Dewhurst has not understood the Impressionist movement in the very least. All he sees in it is a technical method... He also says that before going to London we knew nothing whatsoever about light; but we have studies that prove the contrary. He omits the influence of Claude Lorrain, Corot, all the 18th-century painters, Chardin most of all. But what he fails to realize is that while Turner and Constable were of service to us, they confirmed our suspicion that those painters had not understood 'The Analysis of Shadows', which in the case of Turner are always a deliberate effect, a plain dark patch. As to the division of tones, Turner confirmed us its value as a method, but not as a means of accuracy or truth to nature. In any case, the 18th century was our tradition. It seems to me that Turner too, had looked at Claude Lorrain. I am even inclined to think there is a picture by Turner, 'Sunset', hung side by side with a Claude.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

Quote in a letter to his son Lucien, 8 Mai 1903, as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock - , Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 149
Quote of Pissarro - referring to the writer of the book Impressionist Painting, it Genesis and Development, published in 1904
after 1900

Truth , Nature , Thinking , Study

“America now is stumbling through the darkness of hatred and divisiveness. Our values, our principles, and our determination to succeed as a free and democratic people will give us a torch to light the way. And we will survive and become the stronger — not only because of a patriotism that stands for love of country, but a patriotism that stands for love of people.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

Address to the state conference of the Order of DeMolay, Grand Rapids, Michigan (7 September 1968); published in Gerald R. Ford, Selected Speeches (1973) edited by Michael V. Doyle
1960s

Love , People , Way , Light

“I was moved of the Lord to write a paper to the Protector, Oliver Cromwell; wherein I did, in the presence of the Lord God, declare that I denied the wearing or drawing of a carnal sword, or any other outward weapon, against him or any man; and that I was sent of God to stand a witness against all violence, and against the works of darkness; and to turn people from darkness to light; and to bring them from the causes of war and fighting, to the peaceable gospel. When I had written what the Lord had given me to write, I set my name to it, and gave it to Captain Drury to hand to Oliver Cromwell, which he did.”

George Fox (1624–1691) English Dissenter and founder of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

Autobiography of George Fox (1694)

God , War , People , Light

“As far as I am concerned, I learned this technique [the use of flat areas, painted in bright color - sometimes in contrasting juxtaposition, sometimes like pieces of colored glass in heavy dark outlines] from Kandinsky and, at the same time, from the glass paintings of the Bavarian peasants of the Murneau area, who had painted for centuries in this style.”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

Source: Interview by Edouard Roditi (1958), p. 117

Color , Learning , Time , Painting

“Light is the left hand of darkness
and darkness the right hand of light.
Two are one, life and death, lying
together like lovers in kemmer,
like hands joined together,
like the end and the way.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 16 “Between Drumner and Dremegole” (p. 233)

Life , Death , Way , Lying

“And then a funny thing happened to me…except when I think about it, it wasn't very funny at all. There must be a line in all of us, a very clear one, just like the line that divides the light side of a planet from the dark. I think they call that line the terminator. That's a very good word for it. Because at that moment I was freaking out, and at the next I was as cool as a cucumber.”

Stephen King book Rage

Rage (1977)

Thinking , Light

“The bliss of murder! The relief, the soaring ecstasy from the shedding of another’s blood! Wese, old nightbird, friend, alehouse crony, you are oozing away into the dark earth below the street. Why aren’t you simply a bladder of blood so that I could stamp on you and make you vanish into nothingness? Not all we want comes true, not all the dreams that blossomed have borne fruit, your solid remains lie here, already indifferent to every kick. What’s the good of the dumb question you are asking?”

Franz Kafka book A Fratricide

"A Fratricide" (1917)

Lie , Dreams , Question , Indifference

“Grey-eyed Athene sent them a favourable gale, a fresh West Wind, singing over the wine-dark sea.”

Homér The Odyssey (Cowper)

II. 420–421 (tr. S. H. Butcher and Andrew Lang).
Odyssey (c. 725 BC)

Wine , Singing , Sea

“For me, a line has to sing before it does anything else. The great thrill is when a sentence that starts out being completely plain suddenly begins to sing, rising far above itself and above any expectation I might have had for it. That's what keeps me going on those dark December days when I think about how I could be living instead of writing.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville, The Art of Fiction No. 200 (2009)

Thinking , Singing

“Oedipus had already probed his impious eyes with guilty hand and sunk deep his shame condemned to everlasting night; he dragged out his life in a long-drawn death. He devotes himself to darkness, and in the lowest recess of his abode he keeps his home on which the rays of heaven never look; and yet the fierce daylight of his soul flits around him with unflagging wings and the Avengers of his crimes are in his heart.”
Impia jam merita scrutatus lumina dextra merserat aeterna damnatum nocte pudorem Oedipodes longaque animam sub morte trahebat. illum indulgentem tenebris imaeque recessu sedis inaspectos caelo radiisque penates seruantem tamen adsiduis circumuolat alis saeva dies animi, scelerumque in pectore Dirae.

Statius book Thebaid

Source: Thebaid, Book I, Line 46

Life , Death , Home , Soul

“I make all my decisions on intuition. I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect.”

Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) Swedish filmmaker

As quoted in "Ingmar Bergman Confides in Students" http://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/08/movies/ingmar-bergman-confides-in-students.html New York Times, May 7, 1981.

Decision

“Having failed, do you accept failure, saying only: Well, it is so. I will turn to other things? When night comes, do you accept the blackness of it, saying only: Well, it is so. I will turn and wait for morning? Or do you go on striving to light a candle against that dark however often the wind blows out the flame, however often the night returns?”

Tanith Lee book Volkhavaar

Source: Volkhavaar (1977), Chapter 11 (p. 102)

Failure , Light , Waiting , Night

“All across America, thousands of est graduates, Forum participants, Erhard employees, and other faithful acolytes — not to mention countless others who may have remembered only vaguely the man with the strange-sounding name of Werner Erhard — watched as 60 Minutes correspondent Ed Bradley related a dark story of Erhard's past.”

Ed Bradley (1941–2006) News correspondent

[Steven Pressman, w:Steven Pressman, Outrageous Betrayal: The Dark Journey of Werner Erhard from est to Exile, St. Martin's Press, 1993, New York, 253-258, 0-312-09296-2, OCLC 27897209 http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/27897209]
About

Faith , Past

“Sickness, the serpent, is coming to bite you,
Death, the old dark man, is coming to carry you off,
Rest uneasy, you stinking carrion, on your gold beds.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Two, Part II “The Water”, Chapter 1 (p. 170)
The Birthgrave (1975)

Death

“The house - a substantial but essentially modest suburban villa - was furnished with voluptuous grandeur in approximations of various styles, predominantly those of several Louis, with late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century additions. Heavy coloured glass ashtrays of monstrous size and weight rested in inlaid marquetry tables of vaguely Pompadour associations. At dinner we drank champagne from ruby Bohemian glasses: the meat was carved at a Boulle-type sideboard. ‘Regency’ wallpaper of dark green and lighter green stripes was partially covered by gilt-framed landscapes of no style whatsoever.”

Anita Brookner (1928–2016) British novelist and art historian.

A Friend From England (1987)

Housing

“You can take the darkness from the deep of the night
And turn it to a beacon burning endlessly bright
I gotta follow it 'cause everything I know
Well, it's nothing 'till I give it to you.”

Jim Steinman (1947) American musician

Making Love out of Nothing at All (1983)

Night

“Wide, wide flow the nine streams through the land, Dark, dark threads the line from south to north. Blurred in the thick haze of the misty rain Tortoise and Snake hold the great river locked. The yellow crane is gone, who knows whither? Only this tower remains a haunt for visitors. I pledge my wine to the surging torrent, The tide of my heart swells with the waves.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Changsha (1925), Yellow Crane Tower (1927)
Original: (zh-CN) 茫茫九派流中国，沉沉一线穿南北。烟雨莽苍苍，龟蛇锁大江。黄鹤知何去？剩有游人处。把酒酹滔滔，心潮逐浪高！

Wine , Heart

“One day, maybe she'd stick around to explore her own capacity for the dark, but at the moment all she wanted was a cheeseburger.”

Lisa Alther book Kinflicks

Kinflicks

“I had to read it out to my sister, who was witness to my early dark days, when my mother was afraid what would happen to me. But, I knew I couldn't read without choking up, so I asked Gautami to read it out for me.”

Kamal Haasan (1954) Indian actor

About the letters from Balachander, in “His Master's voice 1 September 2010”

Sister , Reading

“Where the light is, and each thing clear,
Separate from all others, standing in its place,
I drink the time and touch whatever's near, And hope for day when the whole world has that face:
For what assures her present every year?
In dark accidents the mind's sufficient grace.”

Delmore Schwartz (1913–1966) American poet

"The Beautiful American Word, Sure" http://www.pbs.org/hollywoodpresents/collectedstories/writing/write_ds_poetry.html
Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge (1959)

World , Hope , Drink , Light

“To the Buddhas of the ten directions
I join my hands in respect
Let blaze the light of Dharmas truth
For the beings lost in darkness”

Šantidéva (685–763) 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar

Bodhicaryavatara

Truth , Light

“O Heaven! Today I am sick and tired
Of the colors and forms of this world! …
I close my eyes to disregard the present,
Gradually shifting into the past upon my eyelids.
I close my eyes to let the dark shadows arise boundlessly,
Immense as in the deep of night,
To let my soul grow dark with the artificial,
In the world of the dead so long awaited.
Let the shades of ghosts and demons one by one appear.
Let their cries, their shouts of epilogue, reverberate in my ear.
Let me roll about, my soul intoxicated with illusion,
To put out of mind for a few minutes the scenes of this world!
Let my soul soar rapidly over great distances
In the dark night shadows of my eyelids,
And proudly assert: Here is a world
Created in a moment of grief.”

Chế Lan Viên (1920–1989) Vietnamese writer

"Creation", as quoted in "Shattered Identities and Contested Images: Reflections of Poetry and History in 20th-Century Vietnam" by Neil Jamieson, in Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1992, p. 89, and in Understanding Vietnam by Neil Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), ISBN 978-0520916586, p. 164

World , Color , Soul , Appearance

“And what is the middle? Division that strives towards a multiple unity, ignorance that labours towards a flood of varied light, pain that travails towards the touch of an unimaginable ecstasy. For all these things are dark figures and perverse vibrations.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Thoughts and Glimpses (1916-17)

Pain , Light

“Thousands of years ago, tribes of human beings suffered great privations in the struggle to survive. In this struggle it was important not only to be able to handle a club, but also to possess the ability to think reasonably, to take care of the knowledge and experience garnered by the tribe, and to develop the links that would provide cooperation with other tribes. Today the entire human race is faced with a similar test. In infinite space many civilizations are bound to exist, among them civilizations that are also wiser and more "successful" than ours. I support the cosmological hypothesis which states that the development of the universe is repeated in its basic features an infinite number of times. In accordance with this, other civilizations, including more "successful" ones, should exist an infinite number of times on the "preceding" and the "following" pages of the Book of the Universe. Yet this should not minimize our sacred endeavors in this world of ours, where, like faint glimmers of light in the dark, we have emerged for a moment from the nothingness of dark unconsciousness of material existence. We must make good the demands of reason and create a life worthy of ourselves and of the goals we only dimly perceive.”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Nobel Lecture

Life , Books , World , Support

“Russia, Russia — unwashed, backward, appealing Russia, so ashamed of your own backwardness, so orientally determined to conceal it from us by clever deceit. So sensitive and so suspicious in the face of the wicked, civilized west. I shall always remember you — slyly, touchingly, but with great shouting and confusion — pumping hot water into our sleeping car in the frosty darkness of a December morning in order that we might not know, in order that we might never realize, to how primitive a land we had come.”

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian

Written about an incident where hot water was pumped from a switch engine on the next track into a diplomats sleeping-car; as quoted in George Kennan and the Dilemmas of US Foreign Policy (1988) by David Allan Mayers, p. 30

Cars , Sleep , Water

“Margaret: Haven't you done as much as God can reasonably want?
More: Well… finally… it isn't a matter of reason; finally it's a matter of love.
Alice: You're content, then, to be shut up here with mice and rats when you might be home with us!
More: Content? If they'd open a crack that wide I'd be through it. Well, has Eve run out of apples?
Margaret: I've not yet told you what the house is like, without you.
More: Don't, Meg.
Margaret: What we do in the evenings, now that you're not there.
More: Meg, have done!
Margaret: We sit in the dark because we've no candles. And we've no talk because we're wondering what they're doing to you here.
More: The King's more merciful than you. He doesn't use the rack.”

Robert Bolt A Man for All Seasons

Act II
A Man for All Seasons (1960)

Love , God , Home , Housing

“When I was a small child, for some reason—and I don’t know if this was from cartoons or movies or what—I was very frightened of skeletons. I also was very afraid of the dark. I used to have incredibly terrible nightmares. I was afraid of everything as a child. Now look what I’m doing.”

Rich Koz (1952) American actor and comedian

Rich Koz http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/October-2017/Rich-Koz/ (October 27, 2017)

“I'm on a search for the truth," she says during a recent visit to the District to promote her new book, "Objection!," in which the former prosecutor calls defense attorneys "dangerous" and compares them to pigs. The way Grace sees it, prosecutors want to do what's right, whereas defense attorneys are unethical and just want to win. She'd never cross over to what she calls the "dark side" because "I don't really want to have any part of getting guilty people off.”

Nancy Grace (1959) American legal commentator, television host, television journalist, and former prosecutor

Quoted on The Washington Post, "Nancy Grace, Ruling for The Viewer" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/26/AR2005062601211.html, June 27, 2005

People , Truth , Books , Way

“"Found the short story collection, PIGEONS FROM HELL by Robert E. Howard the creator of Conan the Barbarian when I was thirteen, or fourteen. It was the first dark fantasy and heroic fantasy I’d ever read. In that moment I knew not only did I want to be a writer, but this is what I wanted to write." ~ Laurel K. Hamilton, About Laurel K. Hamilton,”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

http://www.laurellkhamilton.org/Laurell.html LaurelKHamilton.com
About

Hell , Reading

“I find it difficult to take these psycho-analysts at all seriously when they try to scrutinise spiritual experience by the flicker of their torch-lights,'yet perhaps one ought to, for half-knowledge is a powerful thing and can be a great obstacle to the coming in front of the true Truth. This new psychology looks to me very much like children learning some summary and not very adequate alphabet, exulting in putting their a-b-c-d of the subconscient and the mysterious underground super-ego together and imagining that their first book of obscure beginnings (c-a-t cat, t-r-e-e tree) is the very heart of the real knowledge. They look from down up and explain the higher lights by the lower obscurities; but the foundation of these things is above and not below, upari budhna esam [Rig-Veda, 1.24.7]. The superconscient, not the subconscient, is the true foundation of things. The significance of the lotus is not to be found by analysing the secrets of the mud from which it grows here; its secret is to be found in the heavenly archetype of the lotus that blooms for ever in the Light above. The self-chosen field of these psychologists is besides poor, dark and limited; you must know the whole before you can know the part and the highest before you can truly understand the lowest. That is the promise of the greater psychology awaiting its hour before which these poor gropings will disappear and come to nothing…. Wanton waste, careless spoiling of physical things in an incredibly short time, loose disorder, misuse of service and materials due either to vital grasping or to tamasic inertia are baneful to prosperity and tend to drive away or discourage the Wealth-Power. These things have long been rampant in the society and, if that continues, an increase in our means might well mean a proportionate increase in the wastage and disorder and neutralise the material advantage. This must be remedied if there is to be any sound progress…. Asceticism for its own sake is not the ideal of this yoga, but self-control in the vital and right order in the material are a very important part of it… and even an ascetic discipline is better for our purpose than a loose absence of true control. Mastery of the material does not mean having plenty and profusely throwing it out or spoiling it as fast as it comes or faster. Mastery implies in it the right and careful utilisation of things and also a self-control in their use…. There is a consciousness in [things], a life which is not the life and consciousness of man and animal which we know, but still secret and real. That is why we must have a respect for physical things and use them rightly, not misuse and waste, ill-treat or handle with a careless roughness. This feeling of all being consciousness or alive comes when our own physical consciousness'and not the mind only'awakes out of its obscurity and becomes aware of the One in all things, the Divine everywhere.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

Undated
India's Rebirth

Life , Children , Truth , Secret

“Beyond the constructive elements of the picture, I studied the tonalities of nature by adding layer upon layer of diluted black watercolour paint. Each layer must dry well. In this way a mathematically correct scale of light and dark values is the result. Squinting facilitates our perception of this phenomenon in nature.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1908), # 840, in The Diaries of Paul Klee; University of California Press, 1964; as quoted by Francesco Mazzaferro, in 'The Diaries of Paul Klee - Part Three' : Klee as a Secessionist and a Neo-Impressionist Artist http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2015/05/paul-klee-ev.html
1903 - 1910

Way , Mathematics , Nature , Study

“He stepped onto the path that led through the swamp to the History House.
He left no ripples in the water.
No footprints on the shore.
He held his mundu spread above his head to dry. The wind lifted it like a sail. He was suddenly happy.Things will get worse, he thought to himself. Then better. He was walking swiftly now, towards the Heart of Darkness. As lonely as a wolf.
The God of Loss.
The God of Small Things.
Naked but for his nail varnish.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

The God of Small Things (1997)

God , History , Wolf , Water

“But wow! This goofy child president we have on our hands now. He is demonstrably a fool and a failure, and this is only the summer of '03. The American nation is in the worst condition I can remember in my lifetime, and our prospects for the immediate future are even worse... The Bush family must be very proud of themselves today, but I am not. Big Darkness, soon come. Take my word for it.”

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

"Big Darkness" (22 July 2003)
2000s

Family , Fools , Failure , Future

“When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz, one is tempted to throw away one's books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner.”

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

Oeuvres complètes, vol. 7, p. 678

Books

“How soft, how sad his voice is ever calling,
Ever unanswered, and the dark rain falling”

James Joyce book Pomes Penyeach

She Weeps Over Rahoon, p. 12
Pomes Penyeach (1927)

Sadness

“The suicidally disgruntled were legion, And their enemies included any and all Americans, Brits, Canadians, Danes, et cetera; or, conversely, all Moslems, dark-skinned people, non-English-speakers, immigrants; all Catholics, fundamentalists, atheists; all liberals, all conservatives…For such people the consummate act of moral clarity was a lynching or a suicide bombing, a fatwa or a pogrom. And they were ascendant now, rising like dark stars over a terminal landscape.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Spin

Source: Spin (2005), p. 191

People , Star , Suicide

“Every man is a missionary, now and forever, for good or for evil, whether he intends or designs it or not. He may be a blot, radiating his dark influence outward to the very circumference of society; or he may be a blessing, spreading benediction over the length and breadth of the world: but a blank he cannot be. There are no moral blanks; there are no neutral characters. We are either the sower that sows and corrupts, or the light that splendidly illuminates, and the salt that silently operates; but being dead or alive, every man speaks.”

Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847) Scottish mathematician and a leader of the Free Church of Scotland

actually a quote from Voices of the Dead by John Cumming (1854) (p.8: The Speaking Dead)
Misattributed

World , Light , Evil , Dead

“Now the entire herd had begun to wheel wider and faster along the bluff and the outermost ranks swung centrifugally over the escarpment row on row wailing and squealing and above this the howls and curses of the drovers that now upreared in the moil of flesh they tended and swept with dust had begun to assume satanic looks with their staves and wild eyes as if they were no true swineheards but disciples of darkness got among these charges to herd them to their doom.”

Cormac McCarthy book Outer Dark

Outer Dark (1968)

“Every sleepy light
Must say goodbye
To the day before it dies
In a sea of honey
A sky of honey
Keep us close to your heart
So if the skies turn dark
We may live on in
Comets and stars.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sky of Honey (Disc 2)

Star , Light , Heart , Sea

“It's always dawnest before dark”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Adverbs (2006), Soundly

“In estimating the amount of dark matter, cosmologists developing the standard model have to make some rather strong assumptions about their observations.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 7, New Cosmological Data, p. 120

Strong

“Here’s a pot with a cot in a park
In a park where the peach-blossoms blew,
Where the lovers eloped in the dark,
Lived, died and were changed into two
Bright birds that eternally flew
Through the boughs of the may, as they sang;
’T is a tale was undoubtedly true
In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.”

Andrew Lang (1844–1912) Scots poet, novelist and literary critic

Ballades in Blue China (1880)

Lovers , Bird , Change

“Go to the family where darkness and suspicion and jealousy and disorder reign, and if they will but receive Christ, mark how light and confidence and order and peace spring up. Go to the regions of superstition and idolatry, and see what transformations are effected by Jesus.”

Edward Thomson (1810–1870) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 84.

Jealousy , Family , Peace , Confidence

“We are approaching a darkness in the land. Boys and girls are emerging from every level of school with certificates and degrees, but they can't read, write or calculate. We don't have academic honesty or intellectual rigor. Schools have abandoned integrity and rigor.”

Julius Sumner Miller (1909–1987) American physicist

As quoted in "TV and Classroom Physicist : 'Professor Wonderful,' Julius Sumner Miller, Dies" by Gerald Faris, in The Los Angeles Times (16 April 1987)

School , Girl , Boy , Reading

“Religion is a wizard, a sibyl. She faces the wreck of worlds, and prophesies restoration. She faces a sky blood-red with sunset colours that deepen into darkness, and prophesies dawn. She faces death, and prophesies life.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 2 : Religion
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)

Life , Death , World , Religion

“To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock,
In a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock,
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock,
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

The Mikado (1885)

Life , Silence

“But I must own that I am much in the Dark about Light. I am not satisfy'd with the doctrine that supposes particles of matter call'd light continually driven off from the Sun's Surface, with a Swiftness so prodigious!”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Letter to Cadwallader Colden (23 April 1752).
Epistles

Light , Sun

“Tonight our bed is cold;
I'm lost in the darkness of our love.
God have mercy on the man
Who doubts what he's sure of.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Brilliant Disguise"
Song lyrics, Tunnel Of Love (1987)

Love , God

“The Buddhists maintain that there is no Creator but an infinitude of creative powers, which collectively form the one eternal substance, the essence of which is inscrutable — hence not a subject for speculation for any true philosopher. Socrates invariably refused to argue upon the mystery of universal being, yet no one would ever have thought of charging him with atheism, except those who were bent upon his destruction. Upon inaugurating an active period, says the Secret Doctrine, an expansion of this Divine essence, from within outwardly, occurs in obedience to eternal and immutable law, and the phenomenal or visible universe is the ultimate result of the long chain of cosmical forces thus progressively set in motion. In like manner, when the passive condition is resumed, a contraction of the Divine essence takes place, and the previous work of creation is gradually and progressively undone. The visible universe becomes disintegrated, its material dispersed; and "darkness," solitary and alone, broods once more over the face of the "deep." To use a metaphor which will convey the idea still more clearly, an outbreathing of the "unknown essence" produces the world; and an inhalation causes it to disappear. This process has been going on from all eternity, and our present universe is but one of an infinite series which had no beginning and will have no end.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book Isis Unveiled

Source: Isis Unveiled (1877), Volume II, Chapter VI

Secret , World , Law , Idea

“She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Remark upon learning of the death of Eleanor Roosevelt, drawing upon the motto of the Christopher Society: "It is better to light one candle than curse the darkness." ; quoted in The New York Times (8 November 1962)

World , Light

“She picks up the baby and contemplates the Bonsai-bush, and, as we watch, in the growing half-dark, the Bonsai-bush flowers. On the black-and-white film, the thousands of flower-petals blush a deep red.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Conclusion of the published script.
The Pillow Book

Flowers , Baby

“It was quite dark when he went by the towers of Tor, where archers shoot ivory arrows at strangers lest any foreigner should alter their laws, which are bad, but not to be altered by mere aliens.”

Lord Dunsany (1878–1957) Irish writer and dramatist

The Book of Wonder http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8wond10.txt, Distressing Tale of Thangobrind the Jeweller

Law

“The melodic curves of speech are an expression of the complete organism and of all phases of its spiritual activities. They demonstrate whether a man is stupid or intelligent, sleepy or awake, tired or alert. They tell us whether he is a child or an old man, whether it is morning or evening, light or darkness, heat or frost, and disclose whether a person is alone or in company. The art of dramatic writing is to compose a melodic curve that will, as if by magic, reveal immediately a human being in one definite phase of his existence.”

Leoš Janáček (1854–1928) Czech composer

Leoš Janáček: Letters and Reminiscences (Stedron, Bohumir, ed. Translated by Geraldine Thomsen. Prague: Artia, 1995).

Stupidity , Art , Intelligence , Light

“Marching into the woods in the darkness
I'm Robin Hood breaking your fortress
Light it up start the fire, gonna strike you
Step aside cause I’m on my way to
Rome, yeah I'm made of stone
I walk the road alone
Fighting for my throne Woah oh”

Michelle Lambert (1985) American singer-songwriter and violinist

"Warrior" (2015)

Way , Light , Fight

“The greatest American industry—why has no one ever said so?—is the industry of using words. We pay tens of millions of people to spend their lives lying to us, or telling us the truth, or supplying us with a nourishing medicinal compound of the two. All of us are living in the middle of a dark wood—a bright Technicolored forest—of words, words, words. It is a forest in which the wind is never still: there isn’t a tree in the forest that is not, for every moment of its life and our lives, persuading or ordering or seducing or overawing us into buying this, believing that, voting for the other.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Taste of the Age”, pp. 27–28
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

Life , People , Truth , Lying

“How can man understand God, since he does not yet understand his own mind, with which he endeavors to understand Him? 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 (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 267.

God , Understanding , Sea

“For five years I have talked to the House on these matters – not with very great success. I have watched this famous island descending incontinently, fecklessly, the stairway which leads to a dark gulf. It is a fine broad stairway at the beginning, but after a bit the carpet ends. A little farther on there are only flagstones, and a little farther on still these break beneath your feet. [ … ] Look back upon the last five years – since, that is to say, Germany began to rearm in earnest and openly to seek revenge … historians a thousand years hence will still be baffled by the mystery of our affairs. They will never understand how it was that a victorious nation, with everything in hand, suffered themselves to be brought low, and to cast away all that they had gained by measureless sacrifice and absolute victory – gone with the wind! Now the victors are the vanquished, and those who threw down their arms in the field and sued for an armistice are striding on to world mastery. That is the position – that is the terrible transformation that has taken place bit by bit.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in the House of Commons (24 March 1938) "Foreign Affairs and Rearmament" http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1938/mar/24/foreign-affairs-and-rearmament#column_1454, 12 days after the Anschluss (the Nazi annexation of Austria).
The 1930s

World , Understanding , Revenge , Suffering

“So down to Main Street and to Fifth Street, to the long dark bars, to the King Edward Cellar, and there a girl with yellow hair and sickness in her smile. Her name was Jean, she was thin and tubercular, but she was hard too, so anxious to get my money, her languid mouth for my lips, her long fingers at my trousers, her sickly lovely eyes watching every dollar bill.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Love , Money , Smile , Girl

“Pale, cold torchlight.
Slender shadows from a row of tall bamboo
Flicker dimly on the coffin of a child
Carried through the chilling dew.
A sobbing old woman lays bare her heart.
I stare at the countless stars in silence, asking myself:
Since when has my soul been destroyed?
And might that dark coffin of a child
Not contain my corpse as well?
Vaguely, from the immensity of space,
I heard a star cast a soft reply.”

Chế Lan Viên (1920–1989) Vietnamese writer

"The Funeral Procession", as quoted in Understanding Vietnam by Neil Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), p. 164

Soul , Star , Silence , Heart

“Is it all in that pretty little head of yours?
What goes on in that place in the dark?
Well I used to know a girl and I would have
sworn that her name was Veronica
Well she used to have a carefree mind of her
own and a delicate look in her eye
These days I'm afraid she's not even sure if her
name is Veronica.”

Elvis Costello (1954) English singer-songwriter

Veronica, written by Elvis Costello and Paul McCartney
Song lyrics, Spike (1989)

Girl

“I saw some amazing, beautiful, invigorating parts of America, but I saw some dark parts of America, an ugly side of America, a side of America that rarely sees the light of day. I refer, of course, to the anus and testicles of my co-star, Ken Davitian.”

Sacha Baron Cohen (1971) English stand-up comedian, writer, actor, and voice actor

On his travels to the United States. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-2549442_2,00.html

Beauty , Star , Light , Parting

“When you are reading a book in a dark room, and come to a difficult part, you take it to a window to get more light. So take your Bibles to Christ.”

Robert Murray M'Cheyne (1813–1843) British writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 39.

Books , Light , Reading , Christ

“Watching for a spark
It's a moonlight show
Reaching through the dark
Do you have to go?”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Discovery (1984)

“Probably there is no department of science, no form o humanity, in which greater advances have been made of late years, than in the medical and moral management of the insane. When we contrast the spacious and airy apartments of the insane. When we contrast the spacious and airy apartments and the grounds of our asylums, with the dark, and narrow, and dirty cells, in which, twenty years ago, the best accommodated of these poor creatures were immured - their neat and confortable dress, with their former rags and nakedness - their wholesome food, with their former rags and nakedness - their wholesome food, their former rations - and abovel all, the kindness and affection which is shown to them noew, with their ulter neglect in the days when they were executed from the privileges and society of men, we find ourselves shuddering at the thought of what we have seen, and lost in admiration of what we now see.
Wherever the Christian religion exists, we find the same rapid advances making towards the accomplishment of the great purposes of humanity. It seems as if the miracles of our Saviour were meant as protoypes of what his religion was to accomplish. It is by the influence of this religion of the march of science and philosophical discovery, that, by all Christian nations, the winds and the waves have been rebuked - that man is enabled to ride out the storm upon the ocean, as if it were hushed, and, like Peter of old, to walk upon the sea as on dry land.”

Daniel Drake (1785–1852) American physician and writer

Daniel Drake (1834). The Western Journal of the Medical & Physical Sciences http://books.google.com.mx/books?id=gtpXAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false. Volume 7, p. 618

Men , Religion , Food , Science

“Such was the man who was sent on an embassy to Ajmir, in order that the Rai (Pithaura) of that country might see the right way without the intervention of the sword, and that he might incline from the track of opposition into the path of propriety, leaving his airy follies for the institutes of the knowledge of Allah, and acknowledging the expediency of uttering the words of martyrdom and repeating the precepts of the law, and might abstain from infidelity and darkness, which entails the loss of this world and that to come, and might place in his ear the ring of slavery to the sublime Court (may Allah exalt it!) which is the centre of justice and mercy, and the pivot of the Sultans of the worldand by these means and modes might cleanse the fords of good life from the sins of impurity'…'The army of Islam was completely victorious, and 'an hundred thousand grovelling Hindus swiftly departed to the fire of hell'… After this great victory, the army of Islam marched forward to Ajmir, where it arrived at a fortunate moment and under an auspicious bird, and obtained so much booty and wealth, that you might have said that the secret depositories of the seas and hills had been revealed….'While the Sultan remained at Ajmir, he destroyed the pillars and foundations of the idol temples, and built in their stead mosques and colleges, and the precepts of Islam, and the customs of the law were divulged and established”

Hasan Nizami Persian language poet and historian

About the conquest of Ajmer (Rajasthan) Hasan Nizami: Taju’l-Ma’sir, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 213-216. Also quoted (in part) in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.

Life , Secret , World , Justice

“Behind every man's external life, which he leads in company, there is another which he leads alone, and which he carries with him apart. We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us.”

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist

[Morgan, Forrest, Shakespeare—the Man, The works of Walter Bagehot, vol. 1, 1891, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101064786716;view=1up;seq=388, 280 of 255–302]
Shakespeare—the Man (1853)

Life

“Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars - Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyberborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Phoenix on the Sword" (1932)

Women , Age , World , Dreams

“He that has light within his own clear breast,
May sit i' the centre, and enjoy bright day;
But he that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts,
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun;
Himself is his own dungeon.”

John Milton Comus

Source: Comus (1634), Lines 381-385

Soul , Light , Sun

Quotes about darkness page 30

Quotes about darkness
page 30