Quotes about lighting
A collection of quotes on the topic of lighting, light, dark, darkness.
Quotes about lighting
“Women are beautiful in the light of the day, but are even more so in the shadows of the night.”
Aphorisms. Magnum in Parvo (2000)
'Where Do We Go From Here?" as published in Where Do We Go from Here : Chaos or Community? (1967), p. 62; many statements in this book, or slight variants of them, were also part of his address Where Do We Go From Here?" which has a section below. A common variant appearing at least as early as 1968 has "Returning violence for violence multiplies violence..." An early version of the speech as published in A Martin Luther King Treasury (1964), p. 173, has : "Returning hate for hate multiplies hate..."
1960s
Source: A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches
Context: The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. … Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
“What is to give light must endure burning.”
“If you look at the darkness, not light, every day, your life will be filled with darkness.”
Coos, "Miyuru Amarasiri," https://www.coos.com/quotes/if-you-look-at-the-darkness-not-light-every-day-your-life-will-be-filled-with-darkness-%E2%80%95-miyuru-bhashitha-amarasiri June 10, 2021,
“All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.”
Mozart brauchte kein Programm für seine Musik. Er musizierte und sang mit der göttlichen Leichtigkeit eines Kindes.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)
“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.”
Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 8, Supplemental image at randi.org http://www.randi.org/images/122801-BlueDot.jpg
Said to the prison warden on being moved to another prison; as quoted by Borivoje Jevtic (1914) http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_Assassination_of_Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand
“I'm walking on the sky I see the moon I see the light”
Suono Libero
Source: da Walking n° 15 cd 1
“If your hate could be turned into electricity, it would light up the whole world.”
“Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club.”
"Getting into Print", first published in 1903 in The Editor magazine
Variant: You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
Context: Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.
Context: Fiction pays best of all and when it is of fair quality is more easily sold. A good joke will sell quicker than a good poem, and, measured in sweat and blood, will bring better remuneration. Avoid the unhappy ending, the harsh, the brutal, the tragic, the horrible - if you care to see in print things you write. (In this connection don't do as I do, but do as I say.) Humour is the hardest to write, easiest to sell, and best rewarded... Don't write too much. Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen. Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.
“Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.”
“Open the window of your mind. Allow the fresh air, new lights and new truths to enter.”
Walking the Path of Compassion (2015)
“I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.”
Variant: Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra
“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”
"O gloriosissimi"
Hope, Faith, and Love (c. 1786); also known as "The Words of Strength", as translated in The Common School Journal Vol. IX (1847) edited by Horace Mann, p. 386
Context: There are three lessons I would write, —
Three words — as with a burning pen,
In tracings of eternal light
Upon the hearts of men. Have Hope. Though clouds environ now,
And gladness hides her face in scorn,
Put thou the shadow from thy brow, —
No night but hath its morn. Have Faith. Where'er thy bark is driven, —
The calm's disport, the tempest's mirth, —
Know this: God rules the hosts of heaven,
The habitants of earth. Have Love. Not love alone for one,
But men, as man, thy brothers call;
And scatter, like the circling sun,
Thy charities on all. Thus grave these lessons on thy soul, —
Hope, Faith, and Love, — and thou shalt find
Strength when life's surges rudest roll,
Light when thou else wert blind.
“I've got this light | I'll be around to grow | Who I was before | I cannot recall.”
“You yourself may not be luminous, but you are a conductor of light.”
Source: Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.”
“Let me light my lamp", says the star, "And never debate if it will help to remove the darkness”
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.”
Opening lines.
Source: Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.
“It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.”
Variant: Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness.
Source: This is My Story
Variant: I talk to you as I talk to my own soul," he said, turning me to face him. He reached up and cupped my cheek, fingers light on my temple. "And Sassenach," he whispered, "Your face is my heart.
Source: Dragonfly in Amber
“Blessed are the cracked, for they shall let in the light.”
“Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.”
“If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.”
“In my mind's eye my thoughts light fires in your cities.”
Misattributed
Source: Edna St. Vincent Millay, in "First Fig" from A Few Figs from Thistles (1920); said to be a motto Roald Dahl lived by.
“To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.”
“Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
Source: In Country Sleep, and Other Poems
“In us there is the Light of Nature, and that Light is God.”
Paracelsus - Doctor of our Time (1992)
“The light has gone out of my life.”
Entry in Roosevelt's diary, before which he put a large X, on 14 February 1884, the day in which both his mother and wife died within hours of each other.
1880s
“What is destined to happen will happen. Victory and defeat are like light and darkness.”
His own family toppled him, quoted in Obituary: N. T. Rama Rao, 19 January 1996, 8 January 2014, Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-n-t-rama-rao-1324748.html,
O'Reilly v. Mackman, [1983] 2 A.C. 238.
Judgments
Letters on Polish Affairs (1922)
Source: https://archive.org/stream/lettersonpolisha00sarouoft/lettersonpolisha00sarouoft_djvu.txt
From Daniel Ladinsky, The Gift: Poems by Hafiz https://books.google.com/books?id=_cdWZkYE_ZQC (1999), p. 34. This is not a translation or interpretation of any poem by Hafez; http://www.payvand.com/news/09/apr/1266.html it is an original poem by Ladinsky inspired by the spirit of Hafez in a dream.
Misattributed
His last words, as quoted in The Home Life of Sir David Brewster (2010), by his daughter, Margaret Maria Gordon. Cambridge University Press. Chapter XXI.
Es la hora, amor mío, de apartar esta rosa sombría,
cerrar las estrellas, enterrar la ceniza en la tierra:
y, en la insurrección de la luz, despertar con los que despertaron
o seguir en el sueño alcanzando la otra orilla del mar que no tiene otra orilla.
La Barcarola Termina (The Watersong Ends) (1967), trans. Anthony Kerrigan in Selected Poems by Pablo Neruda [Houghton Mifflin, 1990, ISBN 0-395-54418-1] (p. 500).
Babur writing about the battle against the Rajput Confederacy led by Maharana Sangram Singh of Mewar. In Babur-Nama, translated into English by A.S. Beveridge, New Delhi reprint, 1979, pp. 547-572.
Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles" (1992), Ch. 7 : Work, §3 : Personal Power, p. 190 (p. 165 in some editions). This famous passage from her book is very often erroneously attributed to Nelson Mandela. About the mis-attribution Williamson said, "Several years ago, this paragraph from A Return to Love began popping up everywhere, attributed to Nelson Mandela's 1994 inaugural address. As honored as I would be had President Mandela quoted my words, indeed he did not. I have no idea where that story came from, but I am gratified that the paragraph has come to mean so much to so many people."
Variant which appears in the film Coach Carter (2005): "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. It's not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
Variant which appears in the film Akeelah and the Bee (2006), displayed in a picture frame on the wall, attributing it to Mandela: "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same."
Source: https://www.facebook.com/LifeWithoutACentre/posts/1523252961105640
Source: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/14108295.alexis_karpouzos?page=2
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
https://twitter.com/wise_chimp/status/1488946174321205253?s=21
“What glorious light, wisdom without bound, wrapt in eternal solitary shade.”
Source: da I'm that)
“Your wide eyes are the only light I know from extinguished constellations.”
“When you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat.”
Variant: "... the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
Source: Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963), p. 326
Source: The World of Yesterday
“Without reading, we are all without light in the dark, without fire in the cold.”
Source: Tortall and Other Lands: A Collection of Tales
Widely known as The Prayer of St. Francis, it is not found in Esser's authoritative collection of Francis's writings.
[Fr. Kajetan, Esser, OFM, ed., Opuscula Sancti Patris Francisci Assisiensis, Rome, Grottaferrata, 1978]. Additionally there is no record of this prayer before the twentieth century.
[Fr. Regis J., Armstrong, OFM, Francis and Clare: The Complete Works, New York, Paulist Press, 1982, 10, 0-8091-2446-7]. Dr. Christian Renoux of the University of Orleans in France traces the origin of the prayer to an anonymous 1912 contributor to La Clochette, a publication of the Holy Mass League in Paris. It was not until 1927 that it was attributed to St. Francis.
The Origin of the Peace Prayer of St. Francis, 2013-06-28, Renoux, Christian http://www.franciscan-archive.org/franciscana/peace.html,.
[Christian, Renoux, La prière pour la paix attribuée à saint François: une énigme à résoudre, Paris, Editions franciscaines, 2001, 2-85020-096-4].
Misattributed
“My wish for you… is that your skeptic-eclectic brain be flooded with the light of truth.”
Source: The First Circle
“Light travels faster than sound. Isn't that why people appear bright before you hear them speak?”
Source: Letters to Milena
“You can't stop time. You can't capture light. You can only turn your face up and let it rain down.”
Source: The Memory Keeper's Daughter
