Quotes about lighting
page 2

Jodi Picoult photo
J.M.W. Turner photo

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

As quoted in The Leader's Digest : Timeless Principles for Team and Organization (2003) by Jim Clemmer, p. 84

“None of us can ever save himself; we are the instruments of one another’s salvation, and only by the hope that we give to others do we lift ourselves out of the darkness into light.”

Source: One Door Away from Heaven (2001), chapter 73, pp. 604, 605
Context: What will you find behind the door that is one door away from Heaven? […] If your heart is closed, then you will find behind that door nothing to light your way. But if your heart is open, you will find behind that door people who, like you, are searching, and you will find the right door together with them. None of us can ever save himself; we are the instruments of one another's salvation, and only by the hope that we give to others do we lift ourselves out of the darkness into light.

Douglas Adams photo

“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.”

Variant: Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
Source: Mostly Harmless

Hazrat Inayat Khan photo
William Shakespeare photo

“But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.”

Romeo, Act II, scene ii.
Variant: What light through yonder window breaks?
Source: Romeo and Juliet (1595)

William Wordsworth photo

“Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.”

The Tables Turned, st. 4 (1798).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

Bruce Lee photo
Bruce Lee photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Jeff Buckley photo
Socrates photo
Joseph Merrick photo
Solomon photo
Dante Alighieri photo
Tertullian photo
Ronald H. Coase photo
Dante Alighieri photo

“I came into a place void of all light,
which bellows like the sea in tempest,
when it is combated by warring winds.”

Canto V, lines 28–30 (tr. Charles S. Singleton).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Leonardo Da Vinci photo

“Shadow is the diminution alike of light and of darkness, and stands between darkness and light.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), III Six books on Light and Shade

Martin Luther photo

“Faith, like light, should ever be simple and unbending; while love, like warmth, should beam forth on every side, and bend to every necessity of our brethren.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 220

José Rizal photo

“Genius has no country. It blossoms everywhere. Genius is like the light, the air. It is the heritage of all.”

José Rizal (1861–1896) Filipino writer, ophthalmologist, polyglot and nationalist

Toast to the artists Juan Luna and Felix Hidalgo: Madrid, Spain (25 June 1884)

Subh-i-Azal photo

“Glorified art Thou, O God my God! I indeed testify to Thee and all-things at the moment when I am in Thy presence in pure servitude, upon this, that verily Thou art God, no other God is there besides Thee! Thou art unchanged, O my God, within the elevation of Grandeur and Majesty, and shall be unalterable, O my desirous boon, within the pinnacle of power and perfection inasmuch as nothing shall frustrate Thee and nothing shall extinguish Thee! Thou art unchanged as Thou art the Capable above Thy creation and Thou art unalterable as Thou indeed shall be as from before inasmuch as nothing is with Thee of anything and nothing is in Thy rank of anything! Thou accomplisheth and willeth and doeth and desireth! Glorified art Thou, O God my God, with Thy praise, salutations be upon the Primal Point, the Chemise of Thy Visage and the Light of Thy direction and the Luminosity of Thy Beinghood and the Clarity of Thy Selfhood and the Ocean of Thy Power by all that which Thou hath bestowed upon Him of Thy Stations and Thy Culminations and Thy Foundations, for nothing shall frustrate Thee of anything and nothing shall extinguish Thee of anything! No other God is There besides Thee, for verily Thou art the Lord of all the worlds! And blessings, O God my God, be upon the one who was the first to believe in Thee, the Visage of Thy Selfhood and the Decree of Thy direction; and upon the one who was the last to believe in Thee, the Essence of Thy direction and the Visage of Thy Holiness; and upon those whom Ye have made martyrs/witnesses (shuhadá’) unknown except by Thy Command nor restrained except by Thy Wisdom; then upon those to whom Ye have promised that Ye shall make Him manifest on the Day of Resurrection and He whom Ye will upraise on the Day of the Return by all which Thou will bestow upon Him of Thy Power and Thy Strength, for nothing shall extinguish Thee and nothing shall frustrate Thee! Ye determine all-things, for verily Thou art powerful over whatsoever Thou willeth! And I indeed testify, O my God, between Thy hands that verily there is no other god besides Thee and that He whom Ye shall make manifest on the Day of Resurrection is the Chemise of Thy Creativity and the Visage of Thy Manifestation and the direction of Thy Victory and the substance of Thy Pardoning and the branch of Thy Singularity and the clarity of Thy Unicitarianism and the Pen [of the Letter] Nún (al-qalam al-nún) within Thy Beinghood and the setting of the Cause-Command within Thy Essentiality inasmuch as there is no difference between Him and Thee except that He is Thy servant in Thy grasp, such that whatsoever is in the Heavens and the earth and what is between them will then be filled by His Name and by His Light until it be made apparent that no other god is there besides Thee and no Beloved is there like unto Thee and no Desired One is there other than Thee and no Dread is there of Thy like and no Justice of Thy equal! No other god is there besides Thee! Glorified art Thou, O God, and by Thy praise, blessings, O my God, be upon the Guide to the Throne of the Hidden Cloud and the Path to Thy Presence in the Sina'i of Authorization and the Caller by Thy Logos-Self and the Crier of Thy Permission between Thy Hands and the Ariser of Thy Attendance by Thy Command; then the Triumph, O my God, by all that which Thou will bestow upon Him of Thy Power, then that which will be made manifestly apparent of the Word upon the earth and what is upon it by Thy grandeur, and also in this that nothing shall ever put out His Light! Verily nothing shall frustrate Thee of anything and nothing shall extinguish Thee of anything! Thy mercy encompasseth all-things and verily Thou art powerful over what Ye have willed; and to the one who prays to Thee, Hearing, Answering, for verily Thou art Observant over us, and verily Thou art High, Praised beyond that which the inner hearts can comprehend!”

Subh-i-Azal (1831–1912) Persian religious leader

Ethics of the Spirituals

Peter Higgs photo
Francis of Assisi photo
Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues photo

“Some authors regard morality in the same light as we regard modern architecture. Convenience is the first thing to be looked for.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 166.

François-René de Chateaubriand photo

“As soon as a true thought has entered our mind, it gives a light which makes us see a crowd of other objects which we have never perceived before.”

François-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) French writer, politician, diplomat and historian

Aussitôt qu'une pensée vraie est entrée dans notre esprit, elle jette une lumière qui nous fait voir une foule d'autres objets que nous n'apercevions pas auparavant.
As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tyron Edwards.

Jibanananda Das photo

“Into the half light and shadow go I. Within my head”

Jibanananda Das (1899–1954) Bengali poet, writer, novelist and essayist
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot photo
Elliott Smith photo
Syd Barrett photo
Oswald Mosley photo
Thales photo

“Time is the wisest of all things that are; for it brings everything to light.”

Thales (-624–-547 BC) ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician

As quoted in Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, I, 35

Sia (musician) photo

“A shot in the dark
A past lost in space
Where do I start?
The past and the chase
You hunted me down
Like a wolf, a predator
I felt like a deer in the lights”

Sia (musician) (1975) Australian singer

She Wolf (Falling to Pieces), Nothing But the Beat 2.0 (2012). Cowritten with David Guetta, Chris Braide and Giorgio Tuinfort.
Songs

Giuseppe Verdi photo

“If we let fashion, love of innovation, and an alleged scientific spirit tempt us to surrender the native quality of our own art, the free natural certainty of our work and perception, our bright golden light, then we are simply being stupid and senseless.”

Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) Italian composer

Si rinunci per moda, per smania di novità, per affettazione di scienza, si rinneghi l'arte nostra, il nostro istinto, quel nostro fare sicuro spontaneo naturale sensibile abbagliante di luce, è assurdo e stupido.
Letter to Clarina Maffei, April 20, 1878, cited from Franco Abbiati Giuseppe Verdi (Milano: Ricordi, 1959) vol. 4, p. 79; translation from Franz Werfel and Paul Stefan (eds.), Edward Downes (trans.) Verdi: The Man in His Letters (New York: L. B. Fischer, 1942) p. 345.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
Isaac Newton photo
Han Yong-un photo
Le Corbusier photo

“Space and light and order. Those are the things that men need just as much as they need bread or a place to sleep.”

Le Corbusier (1887–1965) architect, designer, urbanist, and writer

The New York Times [obituary] (1965-08-28)
Attributed from posthumous publications

Bertrand Russell photo

“The facts of science, as they appeared to him [Heraclitus], fed the flame in his soul, and in its light, he saw into the depths of the world.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1910s, Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays http://archive.org/stream/mysticism00russuoft/mysticism00russuoft_djvu.txt (1918), Ch. 1: Mysticism and Logic

George Orwell photo
Socrates photo
Lucretius photo

“For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things that children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true. This terror, therefore, and darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of daylight, but by the aspect and law of nature.”
Nam veluti pueri trepidant atque omnia caecis in tenebris metuunt, sic nos in luce timemus interdum, nilo quae sunt metuenda magis quam quae pueri in tenebris pavitant finguntque futura. hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necessest non radii solis neque lucida tela diei discutiant sed naturae species ratioque.

Lucretius (-94–-55 BC) Roman poet and philosopher

Book II, lines 55–61 (tr. Rouse)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)

Henri Barbusse photo

“We do not die since we are alone. It is the others who die. And this sentence, which comes to my lips tremulously, at once baleful and beaming with light, announces that death is a false god.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XIV
Context: Once, bowed in the evening light, the dead man had said, "After my death, life will continue. Every detail in the world will continue to occupy the same place quietly. All the traces of my passing will die little by little, and the void I leave behind will be filled once more."
He was mistaken in saying so. He carried all the truth with him. Yet we, we saw him die. He was dead for us, but not for himself. I feel there is a fearfully difficult truth here which we must get, a formidable contradiction. But I hold on to the two ends of it, groping to find out what formless language will translate it. Something like this: "Every human being is the whole truth." I return to what I heard. We do not die since we are alone. It is the others who die. And this sentence, which comes to my lips tremulously, at once baleful and beaming with light, announces that death is a false god.

Bob Dylan photo

“Oh, the tree of life is growing where the spirit never dies
And the bright light of salvation shines in dark and empty skies.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Death is Not the End

James Madison photo

“It is due to justice; due to humanity; due to truth; due to the sympathies of our nature; in fine, to our character as a people, both abroad and at home, that they should be considered, as much as possible, in the light of human beings, and not as mere property. As such, they are acted on by our laws, and have an interest in our laws.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

They may be considered as making a part, though a degraded part, of the families to which they belong.
Speech in the Virginia State Convention of 1829-1830, on the Question of the Ratio of Representation in the two Branches of the Legislature (2 December 1829) http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/quotes/slavery.html
1820s

MF Doom photo
Leonard Cohen photo

“The light came through the window,
Straight from the sun above,
And so inside my little room
There plunged the rays of Love.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

"Love Itself"
Ten New Songs (2001)
Context: p>The light came through the window,
Straight from the sun above,
And so inside my little room
There plunged the rays of Love.In streams of light I clearly saw
The dust you seldom see,
Out of which the Nameless makes
A Name for one like me.</p

“The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.”

Francis William Bourdillon (1852–1921) British poet

"Light" (popularly known as "The Night has a Thousand Eyes"), published in The Spectator (October 1873).
Context: p>The Night has a thousand eyes,
And the Day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.</p

George MacDonald photo

“He brings hidden things out of the light of his own being into the light of ours.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

Source: Paul Faber, Surgeon (1879), Ch. 31 : A Conscience
Context: God hides nothing. His very work from the beginning is revelation, — a casting aside of veil after veil, a showing unto men of truth after truth. On and on, from fact to fact divine he advances, until at length in his Son Jesus he unveils his very face. Then begins a fresh unveiling, for the very work of the Father is the work the Son himself has to do, — to reveal. His life was the unveiling of himself, and the unveiling of the Son is still going on, and is that for the sake of which the world exists. When he is unveiled, that is, when we know the Son, we shall know the Father also. The whole of creation, its growth, its history, the gathering total of human existence, is an unveiling of the Father. He is the life, the eternal life, the Only. I see it — ah! believe me — I see it as I cannot say it. From month to month it grows upon me. The lovely home-light, the one essence of peaceful being, is God himself.
He loves light and not darkness, therefore shines, therefore reveals. True, there are infinite gulfs in him, into which our small vision cannot pierce, but they are gulfs of light, and the truths there are invisible only through excess of their own clarity. There is a darkness that comes of effulgence, and the most veiling of all veils is the light. That for which the eye exists is light, but through light no human eye can pierce. — I find myself beyond my depth. I am ever beyond my depth, afloat in an infinite sea; but the depth of the sea knows me, for the ocean of my being is God. — What I would say is this, that the light is not blinding because God would hide, but because the truth is too glorious for our vision. The effulgence of himself God veiled that he might unveil it — in his Son. Inter-universal spaces, icons, eternities — what word of vastness you can find or choose — take unfathomable darkness itself, if you will, to express the infinitude of God, that original splendor existing only to the consciousness of God himself — I say he hides it not, but is revealing it ever, for ever, at all cost of labor, yea of pain to himself. His whole creation is a sacrificing of himself to the being and well-being of his little ones, that, being wrought out at last into partakers of his divine nature, that nature may be revealed in them to their divinest bliss. He brings hidden things out of the light of his own being into the light of ours.
But see how different we are, — until we learn of him! See the tendency of man to conceal his treasures, to claim even truth as his own by discovery, to hide it and be proud of it, gloating over that which he thinks he has in himself, instead of groaning after the infinite of God! We would be forever heaping together possessions, dragging things into the cave of our finitude, our individual self, not perceiving that the things which pass that dreariest of doors, whatever they may have been, are thenceforth "but straws, small sticks, and dust of the floor." When a man would have a truth in thither as if it were of private interpretation, he drags in only the bag which the truth, remaining outside, has burst and left.

Joan of Arc photo

“The light comes at the same time as the Voice. … I will not tell you all; I have not leave; my oath does not touch on that.”

Joan of Arc (1412–1431) French folk heroine and Roman Catholic saint

Third public examination (24 February 1431) http://www.stjoan-center.com/Trials/sec03.html; part of this testimony has sometimes been paraphrased: If I am not in the state of grace, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.
Trial records (1431)
Context: The light comes at the same time as the Voice. … I will not tell you all; I have not leave; my oath does not touch on that. My Voice is good and to be honored. I am not bound to answer you about it. I request that the points on which I do not now answer may be given me in writing. … You shall not know yet. There is a saying among children, that 'Sometimes one is hanged for speaking the truth.'" [She is asked : Do you know if you are in the grace of God? ] If I am not, may God place me there; if I am, may God so keep me. I should be the saddest in all the world if I knew that I were not in the grace of God. But if I were in a state of sin, do you think the Voice would come to me? I would that every one could hear the Voice as I hear it.

Benjamin Creme photo
Yuri Gagarin photo

“Rays were blazing through the atmosphere of the earth, the horizon became bright orange, gradually passing into all the colors of the rainbow: from light blue to dark blue, to violet and then to black. What an indescribable gamut of colors! Just like the paintings of the artist Nicholas Roerich.”

Yuri Gagarin (1934–1968) Soviet pilot and cosmonaut, the first human in space

Statement of April 1961, as quoted in Warrior of Light : The Life of Nicholas Roerich : Artist, Himalayan explorer and visionary (2002) by Colleen Messina, p. 46

Francis of Assisi photo
Alexis Karpouzos photo
Alexis Karpouzos photo
Amanda Gorman photo

“There is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it.”

Amanda Gorman (1998) American poet and activist

Source: Poem The Hill We Climb (recited during the inauguration of the American president Joea Bidena)

Benjamin Disraeli photo

“Venice by moonlight is an enchanted city; the floods of silver light upon the moresco architecture, the perfect absence of all harsh sounds of carts and carriages, the never-ceasing music on the waters, produced an effect on the mind which cannot be experienced, I am sure, in any other city in the world.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Letter to Isaac Disraeli (c. 8 September 1826), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume. I. 1804–1859 (1929), p. 108

Benjamin Disraeli photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien photo
Le Corbusier photo

“Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light.”

Le Corbusier (1887–1965) architect, designer, urbanist, and writer

Vers une architecture [Towards an Architecture] (1923)
Context: Architecture is the masterly, correct and magnificent play of masses brought together in light. Our eyes are made to see forms in light; light and shade reveal these forms; cubes, cones, spheres, cylinders or pyramids are the great primary forms which light reveals to advantage; the image of these is distinct and tangible within us without ambiguity. It is for this reason that these are beautiful forms, the most beautiful forms. Everybody is agreed to that, the child, the savage and the metaphysician.

Nicholas Sparks photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Eckhart Tolle photo

“The light is too painful for someone who wants to remain in darkness.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Christine de Pizan photo

“[A] person whose head is bowed and whose eyes are heavy cannot look at the light.”

Christine de Pizan (1365–1430) Italian French late medieval author

Source: Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc

Jim Butcher photo
Jonathan Safran Foer photo
Franz Grillparzer photo
Joseph Brodsky photo

“For darkness restores what light cannot repair. There we are married, blest, we make once more the two-backed beast and children are the fair excuse of what we're naked for.”

Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996) Russian and American poet and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate

Quoted in: Drusilla Modjeska, ‎Beth Yahp (1995) Picador New Writing. Vol. 3-4, p. 13

Terry Pratchett photo

“Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Variant: It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness.
Source: Men at Arms: The Play

Woodrow Wilson photo

“We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

As quoted by Thomas A. Bruno in Take your dreams and Run (South Plainfield: Bridge, 1984), p. 2-3. Source: Dr. Preston Williams (2002): By the Way - A Snapshot Diagnosis of the Inner-City Dilemma, p. 38-39. Xulun Press, Fairfax, Virginia http://books.google.de/books?id=Xn9jxqatFecC&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=woodrow+wilson+We+Grow+Great+By+Dreams%27&source=bl&ots=TtioQ-yO0-&sig=qHWPj4-8g3hSjcV-qJTbzNg6nuI&hl=de&sa=X&ei=1QZ0U4DBOaf80QWSqYDQAw&ved=0CHYQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=woodrow%20wilson%20We%20Grow%20Great%20By%20Dreams'&f=false
1880s

William Shakespeare photo
Christina Rossetti photo
Jim Butcher photo
Albert Schweitzer photo
William Shakespeare photo
Frida Kahlo photo
Tennessee Williams photo
Patrick Rothfuss photo
Abraham Lincoln photo

“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to the light I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right — stand with him while he is right and part with him when he goes wrong.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Reported as an inscription quoting Lincoln in an English college in The Baptist Teacher for Sunday-school Workers : Vol. 36 (August 1905), p. 483. The portion beginning with "stand with anybody..." is from the 16 October 1854 Peoria speech..
Posthumous attributions

Tennessee Williams photo
C.G. Jung photo

“There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

“maybe death
isn't darkness, after all,
but so much light
wrapping itself around us”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays

Paracelsus photo