Quotes about darkness

page 6

“Positive energy brings good feelings, and dark energy often means harm. But the destruction in dark energy is also a subtle aspect of construction, like how even forest fires have their benefits. Sometimes enemies are our best teachers, people can learn from their mistakes, destruction sometimes means rebirth.”

“Something pure to burn away the darkness that hides inside my mind!”

“Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, — and all it wants, — is the liberty of appearing. The sun needs no inscription to distinguish him from darkness; and no sooner did the American governments display themselves to the world, than despotism felt a shock and man began to contemplate redress.”

“To all these insanities will be added the most shameful—the intensified competition between male and female. We insist upon equal and full rights for women, but the servants of darkness will expel them from many fields of activity, even where they bring the most benefit. We have spoken about the many maladies in the world, but the renewed struggle between the male and female principles will be the most tragic. It is hard to imagine how disastrous this will be, for it is a struggle against evolution itself! What a high price humanity pays for every such opposition to evolution! In these convulsions the young generations are corrupted. Plato spoke about beautiful thinking, but what kind of beauty is possible when there is hostility between man and woman? Now is the time to think about equal and full rights, but darkness invades the tensed realms. However, all the dark attacks will serve a certain good purpose, for those who have been humiliated in Kali Yuga will be glorified in Satya Yuga. ...Let us remember that these years of Armageddon are the most intense, and one’s health should be especially guarded because the cosmic currents will increase many diseases. You must understand that this time is unique... It is near-sighted to think that if war is prevented all problems will be solved! There are those who think so and imagine that they can cheat evolution, not realizing that the worst war is in their own homes. However, there do exist places on Earth where evolution develops normally, and We are always there.”

“I quitted the Bastille, about half-past eleven in the evening. The night was dark, the quarter in which I resided but little frequented. What was my surprise, then, to hear myself acclaimed by eight or ten thousand persons. My door was forced open; the courtyard, the staircase, the rooms were crowded with people. I was carried straight to the arms of my wife.”

“Violence was common in both places, but the violence of the capitalist order seemed inherent in it; whilst the violence of Russia, bad though it was, aimed at a new order based on peace and cooperation and real freedom for the masses. With all her blunders, Soviet Russia had triumphed over enormous difficulties and taken great strides towards this new order. While the rest of the world was in the grip of the depression and going backward in some ways, in the Soviet country a great new world was being built up before our eyes. Russia, following the great Lenin, looked into the future and thought only of what was to be, while other countries lay numbed under the dead hand of the past and spent their energy in preserving the useless relics of a bygone age. In particular, I was impressed by the reports of the great progress made by the backward regions of Central Asia under the Soviet regime. In the balance, therefore, I was all in favour of Russia, and the presence and example of the Soviets was a bright and heartening phenomenon in a dark and dismal world.”

“As we were very much pressed for time we were unable to see as much of the jail as we wanted to. We had an impression that we had been shown the brighter side of jail life. Nonetheless, two facts stood out. One was that we had actually seen desirable and radical improvements over the old system prevailing even now in most countries and the second and even more important fact was the mentality of the prison officials, and presumably the higher officials of the government also, in regard to jails. Actual conditions may or may not be good but the general principles laid down for jails are certainly far in advance of anything we had known elsewhere in practice. Anyone with a knowledge of prisons in India and of the barbarous way in which handcuffs, fetters and other punishments are used will appreciate the difference. The governor of the prison in Moscow who took us round was all the time laying stress on the human side of jail life, and how it was their endeavour to keep this in the front and not to make the prisoner feel in any way dehumanised or outcasted. I wish we in India would remember this wholesome principle and practise it in our daily lives even outside jail…. It can be said without a shadow of doubt that to be in a Russian prison is far more preferable than to be a worker in an Indian factory, whose lot is 10 to 11 hours work a day and then to live in a crowded and dark and airless tenement, hardly fit for an animal. The mere fact that there are some prisons like the ones we saw is in itself something for the Soviet Government to be proud of.”

“The darkness. Goddamn the darkness. It seemed to Garraty they had been buried alive in it. Immured in it. Dawn was a century away. Many of them would never see the dawn. Or the sun. They were buried six feet deep in the darkness. All they needed was the monotonous chanting of the priest, his voice muffled but not entirely obscured by the new-packed darkness, above which the mourners stood. The mourners were not even aware that they were here, they were alive, they were screaming and scratching and clawing at the coffin-lid darkness, the air was flaking and rusting away, the air was turning into poison gas, hope fading until hope itself was darkness, and above all of it the nodding chapel-bell voice of the priest and the impatient, shuffling feet of mourners anxious to be off into the warm May sunshine. Then, overmastering that, the sighing, shuffling chorus of the bugs and the beetles, squirming their way through the earth, come for the feast…I could go crazy, Garraty thought. I could go right the fuck off my rocker.”

“In this era, the old things are being swept away and the new things are still being born. But until this historical era reaches its culmination, all certainty will remain an exception. People sense that everything about their everyday lives is a little out of order, out of order to a terrifying degree. All of us must live within a certain historical era, but this era sinks away from us like a shadow, and we feel we have been abandoned. In order to confirm our own existence, we need to take hold of something real, of something most fundamental, and to that end we seek the help of an ancient memory, the memory of a humanity that has lived through every era, a memory clearer and closer to our hearts than anything we might see gazing far into the future. And this gives rise to a strange apprehension about the reality surrounding us. We begin to suspect that this is an absurd and antiquated world, dark and bright at the same time. Between memory and reality there are awkward discrepancies, producing a solemn but subtle agitation, an intense but as yet indefinable struggle.”

“In our age of profound change, the Church is called to offer its unique contribution, by making visible the signs of the presence and closeness of God. And the Jubilee is a favorable time for us all, for in contemplating the Divine Mercy, which surpasses every human limitation and shines on the darkness of sin, we can become more convincing and effective witnesses.”

“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.”

“While fame impedes and constricts, obscurity wraps about a man like a mist; obscurity is dark, ample, and free; obscurity lets the mind take its way unimpeded. Over the obscure man is poured the merciful suffusion of darkness. None knows where he goes or comes. He may seek the truth and speak it; he alone is free; he alone is truthful, he alone is at peace.”

“Bubbles! Oh come on Sharon! I'm fucking Ozzy Osbourne, the Prince of fucking Darkness. Evil! Evil! What's fucking evil about a buttload of fucking bubbles!?”

“From my early youth, since I attained the age of puberty before I was twenty, until the present time when I am over fifty, I have ever recklessly launched out into the midst of these ocean depths, I have ever bravely embarked on this open sea, throwing aside all craven caution; I have poked into every dark recess, I have made an assault on every problem, I have plunged into every abyss, I have scrutinized the creed of every sect, I have tried to lay bare the inmost doctrines of every community. All this have I done that I might 68 distinguish between true and false, between sound tradition and heretical innovation. Whenever I meet one of the Batiniyah, I like to study his creed; whenever I meet one of the Zahiriyah, I want to know the essentials of his belief. If it is a philosopher, I try to become acquainted with the essence of his philosophy; if a scholastic theologian I busy myself in examining his theological reasoning; if a Sufi, I yearn to fathom the secret of his mysticism; if an ascetic (muta'ahhid) , I investigate the basis of his ascetic practices; if one ofthe Zanadiqah or Mu'attilah, I look beneath the surface to discover the reasons for his bold adoption of such a creed.”

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

““Friendship is rooted in the protection of deep dark secrets.””

“Never reveal your dark moments to anyone, for what people do not know cannot be utilized to destroy you. By nature, people are envious and jealous; and will attempt to bring you down. Silence reveals nothing.”

“Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath. Or when a dark mood comes upon you and you start getting into a negative mind-pattern and thinking how dreadful your life is, your thinking has become aligned with the pain-body, and you have become unconscious and vulnerable to the pain-body's attack. "Unconscious," the way that I use the word here, means to be identified with some mental or emotional pattern. It implies a complete absence of the watcher.”

“When you linger in tormented darkness, remember, the dawning always arrives on time.”

“True friendship is like the sun that you can't always see in the darkness of night, but you know will return to brighten your day.”

“I really believe in the art of storytelling and as an actor, I think it’s such a great opportunity to be able to do what we do because so many people are trying to do that and I’ve worked for so long to try to get interesting opportunities that I just wanna make sure I do the character justice. I guess you could call it method in many ways but for me, it’s just trying to commit to the character in the best way possible, whatever that entails, whether it’s giving yourself acne or diving into a very dark place.”

“The marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if there were no dark valleys to traverse.”

“[T]here are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word "happy" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.”

“Here are two kinds of light, the light on the hither side of the darkness and the light beyond the darkness. We must press on through the darkness and the terror of it if we would reach the holier light beyond.
We are here — no matter who put us here, or how we came here — to fulfil a task. We cannot afford to go of our own volition until the last item of our duty is discharged.”

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

“In complete darkness we are all the same, it is only our knowledge and wisdom that separates us, don't let your eyes deceive you.”

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

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

“The concept of the black and white people boils down to: No light without darkness—You depend on each other!”

“Conservation means freezing in the dark.”

“Grant us the single heart once more
That mocks no sacred thing,
The Sword of Truth our fathers wore
When Thou wast Lord and King. Let darkness unto darkness tell
Our deep unspoken prayer;
For, while our souls in darkness dwell,
We know that Thou art there.”

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

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

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

“If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said I am, in height, six feet four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing on an average one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair and gray eyes. No other marks or brands recollected.”

“If I told you that a flower bloomed in a dark room, would you trust it?
I mean I write poems in these songs dedicated to you
When you're in the mood for empathy, there's blood in my pen
Better yet where your friends and them?”

“You know why my spirit's callin'
Darkness can't take light from me
Haven't you gone far enough?
Sacrificed the ones you love
Gave up on your sanity
Like some twisted fantasy
What would I say to everything?
Your actions cost everything.”

“There is a high goal, a mountain peak, a star that shines in the darkness, beckoning above the horizon. Its mere existence gives you hope—and that is the meaning without which you cannot live.”

“[T]he supremacy of the Brahmins maintains doctrinal orthodoxy; the revolt of the Kshatriyas leads to heterodoxy; but with the domination of the lower castes comes intellectual night, and this is what in our day has become of a West that threatens to spread its own darkness over the entire world.”

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

“But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.”

“Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.”

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

“Therefore, dark past,
I’m about to do it.
I’m about to forgive you

for everything.”

“Closing my eyes doesn’t help. Fire burns brighter in the darkness.”

“We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life.”

“I spoke it soft, but close enough to brush against her lips. I spoke it quiet, but near enough so that the sound of it went twining through her hair. I spoke it hard and firm and dark and sweet.”

“Darkness as well as light. Or do I mean darkness, another kind of light? Lucifer would say so, and I have a weakness for fallen angels.”

“As the area of light expands, so does the perimeter of darkness.”

“Foolish Ever, don't you realize there's no longer any difference between you and your-monster? You are the monster. It's your dark side, your shadow self, and you've now joined as one.”

“We’re taught that in life, we should try to look on the bright side, to be optimistic. Not in this case. In this case, look on the dark side. Assume rejection first. Assume you’re the rule, not the exception.”

“See? There it is again. My flame in the dark.”

“It's not dark yet, but it's getting there…”

“Keep walking. Hot night right now, right here. All you have is what you are. All you want is much too much. All you get is so much less. All you feel is nothing. All you see is darkness. All you know is senseless and all you can do about it is ride.”

“[…] a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend.”

“It is better to recognise that we are in darkness than to pretend that we can see the light.”

“Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned.”

“I'm tired and I want to rest; I want to get out of this and go lie down somewhere, off where it's dark and no one speaks. Forever.”

“Let us dance in the sun, wearing wild flowers in our hair and let us huddle together as darkness takes over. We are at home amidst the birds and the trees, for we are children of nature.”

“He liked to observe emotions; they were like red lanterns strung along the dark unknown of another's personality, marking vulnerable points.”

“Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself. In all matters of discovery and invention, even of those that appertain to the imagination, we are continually reminded of the story of Columbus and his egg. Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it.”

“I want to see thirst
In the syllables,
Tough fire
In the sound;
Feel through the dark
For the scream.”

“Wake the sleeper must, and confront his fears, or risk being lost in the dark places of the mind forever.”

“You like being vague, don't you? (Amanda)
It was a choice of being a Dark-Hunter or a prophet. Personally I like the slash-and-kill stuff much more than prayers and the lotus position. (Acheron)”

“Simon,” said a voice at his shoulder, and he turned to see Izzy, her face a pale smudge between dark hair and dark cloak, looking at him, her expression half-angry, half-sad. “I guess this is the part where we say goodbye?”

“There is no light for those who do not know darkness.”

“i will wade out
till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers
I will take the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
Alive
with closed eyes
to dash against darkness
in the sleeping curves of my body”

“What is dark within me, illumine.”

“There's a light somewhere.
It may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.”

“All secrets are deep. All secrets become dark. That's in the nature of secrets.”

“It was finally becoming clear to her that love wasn't about finding someone perfect to marry. Love was about seeing through to the truth of a person, and accepting all their shades of light and dark. Love was an ability.”

“One is never alone with a book nearby, don't you agree? Every page reminds us of a day that has passed and makes us relive the emotions that filled it. Happy hours underlined in red pencil, dark ones in black…”

“It is important for people to know that no matter what lies in their past, they can overcome the dark side and press on to a brighter world.”

“A: The soul wanders in the dark, until it finds love. And so, wherever our love goes, there we find our soul.
Q: It always happens?
A: If we're lucky. And if we let ourselves be blind.
Q: Instead of watching out?
A: Instead of always watching out.”

“Which meant his only assets were one whiny imprisoned goddess, one sort-of-girlfriend with a dagger, and Leo, who apparently thought he could defeat the armies of darkness with breath mints.”

“Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”

“Home is the place where when you go there, you have to finally face the thing in the dark.”

“My God. Is there some unwritten law that you guys have to be giants? (Amanda)
What can I say? Artemis likes her Dark-Hunters tall. Short men need not apply. (Acheron)”

“There was her face, like a summer peach, beautiful and warm, and the light of the candles reflected in her dark eyes. [He] held his breath. The entire world waited and held its breath.”

“It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us… There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you… We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.”

“Come on back and we’ll see if you remember the simplest thing of all – how it is to be children, secure in belief and thus afraid of the dark.”

“Now it was coming to an end, and it was like he was watching the last flicker of light wink out in the darkness of an endless tunnel.”

“She remembered no one at all. She remembered one day thinking: I am alone. There is no I but I. She lived in the dark. She taught herself to walk in the light, though it was not easy.”

“It was nice standing out in the darkness, in the damp grass, with spring coming on and a feeling in my heart of imminent disaster.”

“Survival," I said softly. "It's selfish, and it's dark, and we've always been a species willing to do anything to satisfy our needs. Individuals have morals. Mobs have appetites.”

“For those who've never experienced a sunrise in the rural midwest, it's roughly as soft and romantic as someone's abruptly hitting the lights in a dark room.”

“But there is one thing you must remember, if you forget all else. There is no good or evil, save in the way you see the world. There is no dark or light save in your own vision. All changes in the blink of an eyelid; yet all remains the same.”

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

“Darkness feeds on apathy.”

“Here then at long last is my darkness. No cry of light, no glimmer, not even the faintest shard of hope to break free across the hold.”

“Outside, in the newly fallen darkness, the world had been transformed. The sky had become a glistening tapestry of stars.”

“There was a heavy, dark pause of vast significance.
Which Jim broke by flashing his hands and belting out, “Booga-wooga!”
At least Eddie laughed. Adrian flipped Jim the bird and headed to the fridge for another beer.”

“Do not mistake me for my mask. You see light dappling on the water and forget the deep, cold dark beneath.”

“No one reaches out to you for compassion or empathy so you can teach them how to behave better. They reach out to us because they believe in our capacity to know our darkness well enough to sit in the dark with them.”

“And as I watched him, I knew that in every dark night there was, somewhere, a small light burning that could never be quenched.”

“Nothing is as it seems. Black can appear white when the light is blinding but white loses all luster at the faintest sign of darkness.”

“If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark.”

“They say there is no light without dark, no good without evil, no male without female, no right without wrong. That nothing can exist if it's direct opposite does not also exist.”

“His library was a fine dark place bricked with books, so anything could happen there and always did. All you had to do was pull a book from the shelf and open it and suddenly the darkness was not so dark anymore.”