Quotes about darkness (3456 quotes, page 35)

“Darkness taught me always step forward into your life never turn back i am with you. Don't scare to me i will show you the right path. Don't think about your sorrows and worries of life. I will lead you to the light of your life, even if I have to lay fireflies on your path.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

Light , Thinking , Life

“We have become aware of the responsibility for our attitude towards the dark pages in our history. We have understood that bad service is done to the nation by those who are impelling to renounce that past. Such attitude leads to a moral self-destruction.”

Aleksander Kwaśniewski (1954) Polish politician, president of Poland

"Speech at the Jedwabne Ceremony" http://www.dialog.org/hist/kwasniewski.html (10 July 2001)

History , Past

“Happiness is the illusion of being happy, unhappiness is the fear of being it. A little bit of fear helps you to live in the light, too much strangles you in the dark.”

Menotti Lerro (1980) Italian poet

Donna Giovanna, Act I, scene iii.
Theater Quotes

Light , Happiness , Help , Fear

“Wherever will the promised light be? Is there a paradise among the clouds maybe, rest in the wind, refreshment on the seabed? Where does the dark, the insomnia, the madness, the crying, the illness, the death finish? Where does God hide himself?”

Menotti Lerro (1980) Italian poet

Dove sarà mai la luce promessa? C’è forse un paradiso tra le nuvole, riposo nel vento, ristoro nei fondali marini? Dove finisce il buio, l’insonnia, la pazzia, il pianto, la malattia, la morte? Dove si nasconde Dio?
FROM: Andrew Mangham, The Poetry of Menotti Lerro, Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2011, pp. 71-72. ISBN 978-1443828444

God , Light , Cry , Madness

“There is no day without darkness and night without light.”

Menotti Lerro (1980) Italian poet

Non c’è giorno senza tenebre e notte senza luce.

Night , Light

“Now I'm going into darkness
trying to find my light
my heart is like an eclipse
every hour's midnight
Feel like time is running out
I need to break free
cos I'm going into darkness
and you're the only one who can't see”

Example (musician) (1982) English rapper and singer

"Into Darkness" (song)
("Into Darkness" on YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbZu6nL3IeE
Mixtapes, Bangers & Ballads (2018)

Light , Time , Heart , Feeling

“Even the caterpillar must endure the dark journey before gaining wings and transforming into a butterfly. It is their spiritual struggle in life.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Life

“It is not necessary to define the meaning of a shadow while you are still in the darkness.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“I’ve gone through so many dark periods of my life, but my art has always been there. I firmly believe in this way of living, and I hope to die like this.”

Tan Kheng Hua (1963) Singaporean actress

"Tan Kheng Hua Talks ‘Kung Fu,’ ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ and Living for Her Art" in Observer (22 April 2021) https://observer.com/2021/04/tan-kheng-hua-kung-fu-interview-crazy-rich-asians/

Hope , Art , Way , Life

“Fireflies remind me of that no matter how big the troubles may be, a small lamp of hope can dispel darkness. It doesn't matter if you are small, but what matters is your belief in yourself.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

Hope

“If night were a thief, it would be steal my happiness or my dreams of life. Maybe she doesn't know that I don't have anything special that she can steal. He finds nothing under my pillow except my sorrows.
If she looks around, she would have found a shining chest kept in a dark corner, when she open it, she would find nothing but my loneliness. she had to go empty handed with remorse.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

Happiness , Loneliness , Night , Dreams

“The Dark Ages may return, the Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of Science, and what might now shower immeasurable material blessings upon mankind, may even bring about its total destruction. Beware, I say; time may be short.”

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

Post-war years (1945–1955)
Source: The Sinews of Peace https://www.nato.int/docu/speech/1946/s460305a_e.htm speech, Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, March 5, 1946.

Age , Science , Time

“The outsiders. I’m interested in the people that don’t necessarily fit and the thing that gives you permission to be uncomfortable. I like dark work because you’re forced to learn about certain things…”

Dael Orlandersmith (1959) American actress and writer

On the themes that she favors in “Dael Orlandersmith on ‘Until the Flood’” https://www.theintervalny.com/interviews/2018/02/dael-orlandersmith-on-until-the-flood/ in The Interval (2018 Feb 1)

People , Learning

“The urge to control others is very strong, but the desire for freedom and the ability to show compassion will always survive. Darkness is everywhere, but the Light still appears.”

John Twelve Hawks book The Traveler

Source: Fourth Realm Trilogy (2005-2009), The Traveler (2005), Ch. 26

Freedom , Light , Strong , Appearance

“Knowledge comes to a warrior, floating, like specks of gold dust, the same dust that covers the wings of moths. So for a warrior, knowledge is like taking a shower, or being rained on by specks of dark gold dust.”

Carlos Castaneda book The Wheel of Time

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from "Tales of Power" (Chapter 10)

Knowledge

“Death is everywhere. It may be the headlights of a car on a hilltop in the distance behind. They may remain visible for a while, and disappear into the darkness as if they had been scooped away; only to appear on another hilltop, and then disappear again.”

Carlos Castaneda book The Wheel of Time

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe], (1998), Quotations from A Separate Reality (Chapter 6)

Cars , Appearance , Death

“O autumn winds that bake and burn
And all the world to darkness turn,
Now storm and seize and make of me…
A swarm of leaves from Autumn’s Tree!”

Ray Bradbury book The Halloween Tree

Source: The Halloween Tree (1972), Chapter 11 (p. 79)

Tree , Autumn , World

“The Jews belong to a dark and repulsive force. One knows how numerous this clique is, how they stick together and what power they exercise through their unions. They are a nation of rascals and deceivers.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

Oration in Defense of Flaccus. See Apostle Paul: A Polite Bribe https://books.google.com.br/books?id=wefkDwAAQBAJ&pg=108 by Robert Orlando, p. 108.

Exercises

“The sunlights differ, but there is only one darkness.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Dispossessed (1974), Chapter 13

“Cool Papa was so fast that he could turn off the light switch and get into bed before the room got dark.”

Satchel Paige (1906–1982) American baseball player and coach; Negro Leagues

Source: "On Today's Scene: Paige Admits He's Feeling His Age" by William Gildea, The Washington Post (Apr 29, 1969), p. D2

Light

“When the dark days come - and they will - try and remember this: it will pass,it will definitely pass.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977) Nigerian writer

Source: RISD commencement 2019
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CWsDB7fKt2m/?utm_medium=copy_link

“Venous blood isn’t really blue. In lipstick terms it’s dark plum, not crimson gloss.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Labyrinth Index (2018), Chapter 1, “God Save the King” (p. 13)

“A lot of Hollywood is very dark. Girls my age, I find a lot of them that I have literally grown up and auditioned with take these different paths that break their hearts, but they felt like they had to do it in order to get where they want to go. It’s just so hard on their spirit.”

Madeline Carroll (1996) American actress

Source: Madeline Carroll: I Almost Quit Acting ForGood Before Being Cast In ‘I Can OnlyImagine’ https://hollywoodlife.com/2018/03/16/i-can-only-imagine-movie-madeline-carroll-interview/ (March 16, 2018)

Girl , Age , Heart

“More and more
my mind shut
down
behind the wine . . .
until
I was conscious of just
sections of
time.
Bits and
pieces of
grey awareness.
Then . . .
v-e-r-y-s-o-o-n
it was
all
completely
dark.”

Dan Fante (1944–2015) American writer

Source: Novels, Chump Change (1998), Ch.10 - p.75

Time , Wine

“Only what we have lost forever, we possess forever. Only where there are graves, are there resurrections. Only when we have drunk from the river of darkness, shall we truly see. Only when our legs have rotted off, shall we truly dance.”

Brother Theodore (1906–2001) German-American monologuist and comedian

Dance

“You carne in to this world with enough light to find your way out of the dark, enough kindness to save a soul, enough love to shift a planet. I1 Don't worry, you are equipped vith all you could ever need Look with in, you are drenched in magic. Alexis karpouzos”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://gr.pinterest.com/pin/688628599258307225/

Soul , Light , World , Way

“As far as the Breakout is that...Breakout, itself is concerned, it was dark, and it was a rather rainy, misty night. We went at high speed, ran through the mine fields, which we knew like the palm of our hands...no problem at all.”

John D. Bulkeley (1911–1996) United States Navy Medal of Honor recipient

Recalling his experiences in evacuating General Douglas MacArthur from Corregidor during the 1941 Japanese invasion of the Philippines
Source: "Better have the books corrected." https://corregidor.org/chs_mac/bulkeley.htm (1987)

Night , Speed , Problem

“A hero; in our dark, indifferent and cruel universe is the one who makes life bearable and meaningful for human condition.”

Guity Novin (1944) artist

Source: Facebook Page (2021)

Indifference , Universe , Life

“Was it better to die in the illusion of sunshine and warmth or face death in a cold darkness of reality? Was it better to die in happy ignorance or terrified knowledge? The answer, if you’re a Londoner, is that it’s better not to die at all.”

Ben Aaronovitch book Whispers Under Ground

Source: Whispers Under Ground (2012), Chapter 21, “Oxford Circus” (p. 224)

Happiness , Knowledge , Reality , Death

“Anything that can go wrong with armed men in the light can go twice as wrong in the dark.”

Ben Aaronovitch book Moon Over Soho

Source: Moon Over Soho (2011), Chapter 12, “It Don’t Mean a Thing” (p. 265)

Light , Men

“He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbours.””

Robert Frost Mending Wall

Source: 1910s, Mending Wall (1914)

Tree

“Arabs would have sat in the dark forever had not the Zionist engineers harnessed the Jordan river for electrification. Now they swarm into Palestine in seeking the light.”

Winston S. Churchill book The World Crisis

1922
The World Crisis (1923–1931)

Light

“No night is so dark, no situation so dire, but the intervention of the gods cannot make it worse.”

Jim C. Hines (1974) American writer

Source: The Goblin Quest Series, Goblin Hero (2007), Chapter 3 (p. 42)

God , Night

“The solution to your depression lies en esa cueva oscura [in this dark cave] and a deeper integration of your psyche.”

Gloria E. Anzaldúa (1942–2004) Chicana cultural theory, feminist theory, and queer theory

Source: Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality (2015), p. 111

“Once in the darknet, you can buy anything you want, even in the dark side, you can order a murder.”

Nikita Vasilyevich Smirnov (28)

Source: https://promdevelop.ru/economy/darknet/

“It is better as it is: I have failed but I can sleep;
Though the pit I now am in is very dark and deep
I can walk to-morrow's streets and can meet to-morrow's men
Unashamed to face their gaze as I go to work again.I have lost the hope I had; in the dust are all my dreams,
But my loss is not so great or so dreadful as it seems;
I made my fight and though I failed I need not slink away
For I do not have to fear what another man may say.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: When Day is Done (1921), The Loss Is Not So Great, stanzas 1 and 2.

Sleep , Fear , Loss , Dreams

“In trying to work for you, we might have failed to take good care of your souls as expected. We ask for your forgiveness in this Year of Mercy. We ask a bit a bit of amnesty from you. We should humbly acknowledge before God and his people the fact that in the history of our priesthood, the dark presence of sin is also found, so there is the need for us in this Year of Mercy to commit ourselves fully to the search for holiness.”

Robert Ndlovu (1955) Archbishop of Harare

Source: Archbishop of Harare celebrates Chrism Mass http://www.archivioradiovaticana.va/storico/2016/03/24/archbishop_of_harare_celebrates_chrism_mass/en-1217797 (24 March 2016)

Soul , God , History , Search

“I often dream about falling. Such dreams are commonplace to the ambitious or those who climb mountains. Lately I dreamed I was clutching at the face of a rock but it would not hold. Gravel gave way. I grasped for a shrub, but it pulled loose, and in cold terror 1 fell into the abyss. Suddenly I realized that my fall was relative; there was no bottom and no end. A feeling of pleasure overcame me. I realized that what I embody, the principle of life, cannot be destroyed. It is written into the cosmic code, the order of the universe. As I continued to fall in the dark void, embraced by the vault of the heavens, I sang to the beauty of the stars and made my peace with the darkness.”

Heinz R. Pagels (1939–1988) American physicist

Source: The Cosmic Code (1982), p. 312-313

Mountain , Star , Life , Pleasure

“Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.”

Louise Glück The Wild Iris

Source: "The Wild Iris" 1992

Sun

“Like a flame in the night
Like a ghost in the dark
There's a ray, there's a light
There's a hope, there's a spark”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Stimulate" (from 8 Mile, 2002)
2000s

Night , Light , Hope

“Being able to exist in a place where light and dark meet is actually not a recipe for unhappiness. It is a recipe for a deeper kind of happiness.”

Susan Cain book Bittersweet

Bastian, Jonathan (host). "Bittersweet: Susan Cain on the joy of sweet sorrow". KCRW.com (Los Angeles). May 21, 2022.

Light , Happiness

“The sick reality about our over dependance on language is that trying to live without it is like a blind and deaf man with no arms or legs trying to navigate a dark narrow cave, and the cave is full of tarantulas.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

About the human dependency on language to communicate, as quoted in The Washington Post (18 June 2011)

Dependency , Reality

“All the mysteries of the world seem normal after dark. If imagination shows dead thumbs aching for a ride, those dead folk only prove the hot and spermy goodness of life.”

Jack Cady book The Night We Buried Road Dog

Source: The Night We Buried Road Dog (1993), p. 469

Imagination , World , Dead , Life

“Her beauty is best experienced in the dark.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Ron English's Fauxlosophy: Volume 2 (2022)

Beauty

“The tragedy of life is linked inescapably with its splendor; you could tear civilization down and rebuild it from scratch, and the same dualities would rise again. Yet to fully inhabit these dualities—the dark as well as the light—is, paradoxically, the only way to transcend them.”

Susan Cain (1968) self-help writer

Bittersweet Introduction at p. xxiii

Light , Way , Life , Tear

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

Antonio Arregui Yarza (1939) Catholic archbishop

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

Help , Joy , Life

“A world with no place for God is dark, empty without hope.”

Massimo Introvigne (1955) Italian philosopher

"Filming the Age of Kingdom: The End Times and the Movies of The Church of Almighty God" https://bitterwinter.org/end-times-and-the-movies-of-cag/

God , World , Hope

“Take away the cross of Christ, and the Bible is a dark book.”

J.C. Ryle (1816–1900) Anglican bishop

"What Think You of the Cross?", p. 276
Startling Questions (1853)

Books , Christ

“In my native land waves of attachment to friends and kin surge,
Hatred for enemies rages like fire,
The darkness of stupidity, not caring what to adopt or avoid, thickens -
To abandon my native land is the practice of a bodhisattva”

Dilgo Khyentse (1910–1991) Bhutanese Buddhist Lama

The Heart of Compassion (2006)

Stupidity , Rage

“On the Death of Jim Larkin

Not with public words now can his greatness
Be told to the children, for he was more
Than a labour-agitating orator —
The flashing flaming sword merely bore witness
To the coming of the dawn. ‘Awake and look!
The flowers are growing for you, and wonderful trees,
And beyond are not the serf’s grey docks, but seas —
Excitement out of the creator’s poetry book.

When the Full Moon’s in the River the ghost of bread
Must not haunt all your weary wanderings home.
The ships that were dark galleys can become
Pine forests under the winter’s starry plough
And the brown gantries will be the lifted hand
Of man the dreamer whom the gods endow.’

And thus I hear Jim Larkin shout above
The crowd who wanted him to turn aside
From Reality coming to free them. Terrified
They hid in the clouds of dope and would not move.
They ate the opium of the murderer’s story
In the Sunday newspapers; they stood to stare
Not at a blackbird, but at a millionaire
Whose horses ran for serfdom’s greater glory.

And Tyranny trampled them in Dublin’s gutter,
Until Larkin came along and cried
The call of Freedom and the call of Pride,
And Slavery crept to its hands and knees,
And Nineteen Thirteen cheered from out the utter
Degradation of their miseries.”

Patrick Kavanagh (1904–1967) poet

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND1NCf1ZRFM

Sea , Death , God , Children

“When you come from a dark tunnel of life… and step by step you advance overcoming all obstacles, at the exit you will find your light.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: Quando provieni da un oscuro tunnel della vita... e passo dopo passo avanzi superando tutti gli ostacoli, all'uscita troverai la tua luce.
Source: prevale.net

Life , Light