Quotes about lighting
page 4

“There is an inmost center in us all, where truth abides in fullness;…. and, to know, rather consists in opening out a way where the imprisoned splendor may escape, then in effecting entry for a light supposed to be without.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

Truth, Way, Light

“A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Nature, Light

“When you come to the edge of all the light you know,
and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown,
FAITH is knowing one of two things will happen:
There will be something solid to stand on
or you will be taught how to fly.”

Barbara Winter (1944)

Faith, Light, Flying

“But even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can, within their own small ways, turn on a small light in a dark room.”

Miep Gies (1909–2010) Dutch citizen who hid Anne Frank

Way, Light

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

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

Imagination, Light

“Good with out evil is like light with out darkness which in turn is like righteousness whith out hope.”

William Shakespeare All's Well That Ends Well

Source: All's Well That Ends Well

Hope, Light, Evil

“I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe.”

Donna Tartt book The Goldfinch

Source: The Goldfinch

Secret, Laughter, Light, Universe

“A wretched soul, bruised with adversity,
We bid be quiet when we hear it cry;
But were we burdened with light weight of pain,
As much or more we should ourselves complain.”

William Shakespeare The Comedy of Errors

Source: The Comedy of Errors

Pain, Soul, Light, Cry

“Light died in the west. Night and tears took the Nation. The star of Water drifted among the clouds like a murderer softly leaving the scene of the crime.”

Terry Pratchett book Nation

Source: Nation

Star, Tear, Light, Water

“A good friend once told me that the problems are like cockroaches. If drawn to light, they'll get scared.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book Marina

Source: Marina

Problem, Light

“most hated by the dark, for their name is light.”

Guy Gavriel Kay The Fionavar Tapestry

Source: The Fionavar Tapestry

Hate, Light

“In the light of our egos, we are all dethroned monarchs”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

Light

“No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Travel, Light, Waiting

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”

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

Imagination, Light

“Love is a weapon of Light, and it has the power to eradicate all forms of darkness. That is the key. When we offer love even to our enemies, we destroy their darkness and hatred…”

Yehuda Berg (1972) American writer

Love, Light

“How dare you say it's nothing to me?
Baby, you're the only light I ever saw.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Source: Continuum: Music by John Mayer

Light, Baby

“Universe consists of frozen light.”

David Bohm (1917–1992) American theoretical physicist

Light, Universe

“It seemed that at the end of the lecture Dr. Krokowski was making propaganda for psycho-analysis; with open arms he summoned all and sundry to come unto him. "Come unto me," he was saying, though not in those words, " come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy-laden." And he left no doubt of his conviction that all those present were weary and heavy-laden. He spoke of secret suffering, of shame and sorrow, of the redeeming power of the analytic. He advocated the bringing of light into the unconscious mind and explained how the abnormality was metamorphosed into the conscious emotion; he urged them to have confidence; he promised relief.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 4

Secret, Confidence, Light, Suffering

“Neither family, nor privilege, nor wealth, nor anything but Love can light that beacon which a man must steer by when he sets out to live the better life.”

Plato (-427–-347 BC) Classical Greek philosopher

178c, M. Joyce, trans, Collected Dialogues of Plato (1961), p. 533
The Symposium

Love, Life, Family, Light

“And freedom will win -- not because it’s inevitable, not because it is ordained, but because these basic human yearnings for dignity and justice and democracy do not go away. They can be suppressed. At times, they can be silenced, but they burn in every human heart in a place where no regime could ever reach, a light that no army can ever extinguish. And so long as free peoples summon the confidence and the courage and the will to defend the values that we cherish, then freedom will always be stronger and our ideas will always prevail no matter what.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Remarks to the People of Estonia (September 2014)

People, Justice, Democracy, Confidence

“Darkness is absence of light. Shadow is diminution of light.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

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

Light

“Speech perpetuates vision. We carry no light; we are things of shadow, for night closes our eyes, and we put out our hands to find our way when the light is gone; we only shine in speech; truth is made by the mouths of men. The wind of words — what is it? It is our breath — not all words, for there are artificial and copied ones which are not part of the speaker; but the profound words, the cries. In the human cry you feel the effort of the spring. The cry comes out of us, it is as living as a child. The cry goes on, and makes the appeal of truth wherever it may be, the cry gathers cries.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XXII - Light

Men, Truth, Way, Feeling

“Oh this is not that sweet love
Own companion to the dove;
But a wild and wandering thing,
Varying as the lights that fling
Radiance o'er his peacock's wing.
I do weep, that Love should be
Ever linked with Vanity.”

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

(25th January 1823) Medallion Wafers: Cupid Riding on a Peacock
The London Literary Gazette, 1823

Love, Light

“Within a person of light there is light, and he illumines the entire world. When he does not shine, there is darkness.”

Thomas the Apostle Apostle of Jesus Christ

24
Gospel of Thomas (c. 50? — c. 140?)

World, Light, Personality

“God is the light that illuminates the darkness, even if it does not dissolve it, and a spark of divine light is within each of us.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

In the letter I wrote to you, you will remember I said that our species will end but the light of God will not end and at that point it will invade all souls and it will all be in everyone.
2010s, 2013, Interview in La Repubblica

God, Light

“Every body in light and shade fills the surrounding air with infinite images of itself; and these, by infinite pyramids diffused in the air, represent this body throughout space and on every side.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), II Linear Perspective

Light

“I was obviously floating in the atmosphere; companioned not only by the strange child and the radiant pair, but by a constantly increasing throng of half-luminous, vine-crowned youths and maidens with wind-blown hair and joyful countenance. We slowly ascended together, as if borne on a fragrant breeze which blew not from the earth but from the golden nebulae, and the child whispered in my ear that I must look always upward to the pathways of light, and never backward to the sphere I had just left.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Fiction, The Crawling Chaos (1921)

Youth, Light

“For mum we're fly. What mum you don't know who am I? I am Józio. And this is my sister Rózia. Now we're fly in sky! There is better than mum. See how heads in ray. Clothes with lucifer light. And on my hand as butterfly airfoil in sky we have all what we want, every day other toy, where we go here is grass, where we touch here is a flower. But we have what we want, torture us boring and trepidation. Oh mum for Your children road to heaven has been closed! On Always!”

Adam Mickiewicz book Dziady

Do mamy lecim do mamy! Cóż to, mamo nie znasz Józia? Ja to Józio ja ten samy. A to moja siostra Rózia. My teraz w raju latamy, Tam nam lepiej niż u mamy. Patrz jakie główki w promieniu, Ubiór z jutrzenki światełka, A na oboim ramieniu Jak u motylków skrzydełka, w raju wszystkiego dostatek, Co dzień to inna zabawka, gdzie stąpim wypływa trawka, gdzie dotkniem rozkwita kwiatek. Lecz choć wszystkiego dostatek dręczy nad nuda i trwoga. Ach mamo dla twoich dziatek zamknięta do nieba droga! Part two. Dziady (Forefathers' Eve) http://www.ap.krakow.pl/nkja/literature/polpoet/mic_fore.htm

Children, Flowers, Sister, Light

“"That light," said the Chaplain, "is it going up or coming down?"
"It's coming down," said Lord Asriel, "but it isn't light. It's Dust."
Something in the way he said it made Lyra imagine dust with a capital letter, as if this wasn't ordinary dust. The reaction of the Scholars confirmed her feeling, because Lord Asriel's words caused a sudden collective silence, followed by gasps of incredulity.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Source: His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass (1995), Ch. 1 : The Decanter of Tokay

Way, Feeling, Imagination, Light

“So we find that the three possible solutions of the great problem of increasing human energy are answered by the three words: food, peace, work. Many a year I have thought and pondered, lost myself in speculations and theories, considering man as a mass moved by a force, viewing his inexplicable movement in the light of a mechanical one, and applying the simple principles of mechanics to the analysis of the same until I arrived at these solutions, only to realize that they were taught to me in my early childhood. These three words sound the key-notes of the Christian religion. Their scientific meaning and purpose now clear to me: food to increase the mass, peace to diminish the retarding force, and work to increase the force accelerating human movement. These are the only three solutions which are possible of that great problem, and all of them have one object, one end, namely, to increase human energy. When we recognize this, we cannot help wondering how profoundly wise and scientific and how immensely practical the Christian religion is, and in what a marked contrast it stands in this respect to other religions. It is unmistakably the result of practical experiment and scientific observation which have extended through the ages, while other religions seem to be the outcome of merely abstract reasoning. Work, untiring effort, useful and accumulative, with periods of rest and recuperation aiming at higher efficiency, is its chief and ever-recurring command. Thus we are inspired both by Christianity and Science to do our utmost toward increasing the performance of mankind. This most important of human problems I shall now specifically consider.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

The Problem of Increasing Human Energy (1900)

Age, Peace, Religion, Food

“Ladies and gentlemen, I am to talk to you about energy in the future. I will start by telling you why I believe that the energy resources of the past must be supplemented. First of all, these energy resources will run short as we use more and more of the fossil fuels. But I would […] like to mention another reason why we probably have to look for additional fuel supplies. And this, strangely, is the question of contaminating the atmosphere. […. ] Whenever you burn conventional fuel, you create carbon dioxide. […. ] The carbon dioxide is invisible, it is transparent, you can’t smell it, it is not dangerous to health, so why should one worry about it?
Carbon dioxide has a strange property. It transmits visible light but it absorbs the infrared radiation which is emitted from the earth. Its presence in the atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect […. ] It has been calculated that a temperature rise corresponding to a 10 per cent increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge New York. All the coastal cities would be covered, and since a considerable percentage of the human race lives in coastal regions, I think that this chemical contamination is more serious than most people tend to believe.”

Edward Teller (1908–2003) Hungarian-American nuclear physicist

As quoted in Benjamin Franta, "On its 100th birthday in 1959, Edward Teller warned the oil industry about global warming" https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/jan/01/on-its-hundredth-birthday-in-1959-edward-teller-warned-the-oil-industry-about-global-warming, The Guardian, 1 January 2018.

People, Health, Question, Thinking

“Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness; and this truth is in itself so excellent that, even when it dwells on humble and lowly matters, it is still infinitely above uncertainty and lies, disguised in high and lofty discourses; because in our minds, even if lying should be their fifth element, this does not prevent that the truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects, though not of wandering wits. But you who live in dreams are better pleased by the sophistical reasons and frauds of wits in great and uncertain things, than by those reasons which are certain and natural and not so far above us.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

Truth, Dreams, Lying, Fraud

“If your love and devotion are sufficient, you can literally liberate that soul from its state of bondage or incoherence. […] As a spiritual warrior and light bearer, a loving person can fight such an entity in order to release its soul and send it on its way.”

Bhakti Tirtha Swami (1950–2005) American Hindu writer

Source: Books, Spiritual Warrior, Volume I: Uncovering Spiritual Truths in Psychic Phenomena (Hari-Nama Press, 1996), Chapter 1: Dreams: A State of Reality, p. 23

Love, Way, Soul, Light

“Most shocking of all is alledging the Sacred Scriptures to favour this wicked practice. One would have thought none but infidel cavillers would endeavour to make them appear contrary to the plain dictates of natural light, and Conscience, in a matter of common Justice and Humanity; which they cannot be. Such worthy men, as referred to before, judged otherways; Mr. BAXTER declared, the Slave-Traders should be called Devils, rather than Christians; and that it is a heinous crime to buy them. But some say, "the practice was permitted to the Jews."”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

To which may be replied,
1770s, African Slavery in America (March 1775)

Men, Justice, Nature, Light

“"Our Second Experiment", the Professor announced, as Bruno returned to his place, still thoughtfully rubbing his elbows, "is the production of that seldom-seen-but-greatly-to-be-admired phenomenon, Black Light! You have seen White Light, Red Light, Green Light, and so on: but never, till this wonderful day, have any eyes but mine seen Black Light! This box", carefully lifting it upon the table, and covering it with a heap of blankets, "is quite full of it. The way I made it was this - I took a lighted candle into a dark cupboard and shut the door. Of course the cupboard was then full of Yellow Light. Then I took a bottle of Black ink, and poured it over the candle: and, to my delight, every atom of the Yellow Light turned Black! That was indeed the proudest moment of my life! Then I filled a box with it. And now - would anyone like to get under the blankets and see it?"Dead silence followed this appeal: but at last Bruno said "I'll get under, if it won't jingle my elbows."Satisfied on this point, Bruno crawled under the blankets, and, after a minute or two, crawled out again, very hot and dusty, and with his hair in the wildest confusion."What did you see in the box?" Sylvie eagerly enquired."I saw nuffin!" Bruno sadly replied. "It were too dark!""He has described the appearance of the thing exactly!"”

Lewis Carroll book Sylvie and Bruno

the Professor exclaimed with enthusiasm. "Black Light, and Nothing, look so extremely alike, at first sight, that I don't wonder he failed to distinguish them! We will now proceed to the Third Experiment."
Source: Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893), Chapter 21: The Professor's Lecture

Life, Way, Light, Silence

“Fire may be represented as the destroyer of all sophistry, and as the image and demonstration of truth; because it is light and drives out darkness which conceals all essences”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

or subtle things
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), X Studies and Sketches for Pictures and Decorations

Truth, Light

“To you, comrades, near and far, to you, other suns.
in other worlds, to all your souls on fire,
to all you burning fires,
to you burnished spirits
who light this untamed darkness called life, and death,
to you all who are sacrificed for the sake of light,
Greetings.”

Yeghishe Charents (1897–1937) Armenian poet

The Frenzied Masses (1919)

Life, Death, World, Soul

“Facing a landscape annihilated by the light, to remain serene supposes a temper I do not have. The sun is my purveyor of black thoughts; and summer the season when I have always reconsidered my relations with this world and with myself, to the greatest prejudice of both.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

The New Gods (1969)

World, Light, Sun, Summer

“Religion may be purified. This great work was begun two hundred years ago: but men can only bear light to come in upon them by degrees.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

The critical review, or annals of literature, Volume XXVI http://books.google.es/books?id=aItKAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=es#v=onepage&q&f=false, by A Society of Gentlemen (1768) p. 450 Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Voltaire / Quotes Citas

Men, Religion, Light

“Is not the Heat of the warm Room convey'd through the Vacuum by the Vibrations of a much subtiler Medium than Air, which after the Air was drawn out remained in the Vacuum? And is not this Medium the same with that Medium by which Light is refracted and reflected and by whose Vibrations Light communicates Heat to Bodies, and is put into Fits of easy Reflexion and easy Transmission?… And do not hot Bodies communicate their Heat to contiguous cold ones, by the Vibrations of this Medium propagated from them into the cold ones? And is not this Medium exceedingly more rare and subtile than the Air, and exceedingly more elastick and active? And doth it not readily pervade all Bodies? And is it not (by its elastick force) expanded through all the Heavens?”

Isaac Newton book Opticks, or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light

Query 18
Opticks (1704)

Communication, Light

“Clouds return and once again, it rains,
Lighting's flash from all sides, and with them,
Some go to Istanbul others turn to the west,
Some shine bright over China and others take care of,
Samarqand, some wandered to Rome, to
Kabul and Kandahar, some lie on Delhi,
Deccan thundering over…
My beloved Allah, may you always make Sindh a land of abundance,
My beloved Allah, may you make prosperous the whole universe.”

Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai book Shah Jo Risalo

Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai, Shah Jo Risalo
Shah Jo Risalo

Lie, Light, Universe

“[the task of material culture is] to shed light on the tasks of production in our country, and also to discover the place of the artist-constructor in production, in relation to improving the quality both of the manufactured product and of the organization of the new way of life in general.”

Vladimir Tatlin (1885–1953) Russian artist

Quote, May 1924; from Tatlin's lecture on 'Material Culture and Its Role in the Production of Life in the USSR'; as quoted by Larissa A. Zhadova, ed., Tatlin, trans. Paul Filotas et al; Thames and Hudson, London, 1988, p. 252
In May 1924, right in the middle of N.E.P., Tatlin offered his synoptic statement of what was still the task of material culture
Quotes, 1910 - 1925

Life, Way, Light, Country

“While the children laughed
I was always afraid
Of the Smile of the clown
So I close my eyes
Till I can't see the light
And I hide from the sound

We're two of a Kind
Silence and I
We need a chance to talk things over
Two of a kind
Silence and I”

Alan Parsons (1948) audio engineer, musician, and record producer from England

"Silence and I", from the album Eye In The Sky. (Written by Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson.)
Quotes from songs

Children, Smile, Light, Silence

“That is properly termed everlasting or eternal which neither had a beginning of existence, nor can ever cease to be what it is. And this is the idea conveyed by John when he says that God is light. Now His wisdom is the splendour of that light, not only in respect of its being light, but also of being everlasting light, so that His wisdom is eternal and everlasting splendour. If this be fully understood, it clearly shows that the existence of the Son is derived from the Father but not in time, nor from any other beginning, except, as we have said, from God Himself.”

Origen (185–254) Christian scholar in Alexandria

On First Principles, Bk. 1, ch. 2; par. 11
On First Principles

Wisdom, God, Idea, Light

“The outlines and form of any part of a body in light and shade are indistinct in the shadows and in the high lights; but in the portions between the light and the shadows they are highly conspicuous.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

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

Light, Parting

“A shadow will appear dark in proportion to the brilliancy of the light surrounding it and conversely it will be less conspicuous where it is seen against a darker background.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), IV Perspective of Disappearance

Light, Appearance

“Studying oneself is not the most comfortable of enterprises. One is caught between the desire to show oneself in the best possible light and the fear of claiming more than one’s due.”

Kenneth Arrow (1921–2017) American economist

in Lives of the Literature, edited by William Breit and ‎Barry T. Hirsch
1970s-1980s

Fear, Study, Light

“Transcendence remains because that light, all in everything, transcends the universe and the species it inhabits at this stage.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

2010s, 2013, Interview in La Repubblica

Light, Universe

“I would rather walk with God in the dark than go alone in the light.”

Mary Gardiner Brainard (1837–1905) American poet

Not knowing (1869).

God, Light

“We go by the major vote, and if the majority are insane, the sane must go to the hospital. As Satan said, "Evil, be thou my good," so they say, "Darkness, be thou my light."”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

Source: Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Horace Mann (1872), p. 184

Light, Evil

“We are all responsible. We are all complicit. White T-shirts catch the light. What matters is what we then do with that light. (The peace activists wore white t-shirts during their protests.)”

Leymah Gbowee (1972) Liberian peace activist

Interview for The Daily Beast (April 5, 2010)

Peace, Light

“Star of descending night! fair is thy light in the west! thou liftest thy unshorn head from thy cloud: thy steps are stately on thy hill. What dost thou behold in the plain? The stormy winds are laid. The murmur of the torrent comes from afar. Roaring waves climb the distant rock. The flies of evening are on their feeble wings; the hum of their course is on the field. What dost thou behold, fair light? But thou dost smile and depart. The waves come with joy around thee: they bathe thy lovely hair. Farewell, thou silent beam! Let the light of Ossian's soul arise!”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

"The Songs of Selma"
The Poems of Ossian

Love, Smile, Soul, Star

“Whence do you have it that the terrestrial globe is so heavy? For my part, either I do not know what heaviness is, or the terrestrial globe is neither heavy nor light, as likewise all other globes of the universe. Heaviness to me (and I believe to Nature) is that innate tendency by which a body resists being moved from its natural place and by which, when forcibly removed therefrom, it spontaneously returns there. Thus a bucketful of water raised on high and set free, returns to the sea; but who will say that the same water remains heavy in the sea, when being set free there, does not move?”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

Letter to Francesco Ingoli (1624)

Nature, Light, Universe, Water

“I do differ from you radically in respect to familiar things & scenes; for I always demand close correlation with the landscape & historic stream to which I belong, & would feel completely lost in infinity without a system of reference-points based on known & accustomed objects. I take complete relativity so much for granted, that I cannot conceive of anything as existing in itself in any recognisable form. What gives things an aspect & quasi-significance to us is the fact that we view things consistently from a certain artificial & fortuitous angle. Without the preservation of that angle, coherent consciousness & entity itself becomes inconceivable. Thus my wish for freedom is not so much a wish to put all terrestrial things behind me & plunge forever into abysses beyond light, matter, & energy. That, indeed, would mean annihilation as a personality rather than liberation. My wish is perhaps best defined as a wish for infinite visioning & voyaging power, yet without loss of the familiar background which gives all things significance. I want to know what stretches Outside, & be able to visit all the gulfs & dimensions beyond Space & Time. I want, too, to juggle the calendar at will; bringing things from the immemorial past down into the present, & making long journeys into the forgotten years. But I want the familiar Old Providence of my childhood as a perpetual base for these necromancies & excursions—& in a good part of these necromancies & excursions I want certain transmuted features of Old Providence to form part of the alien voids I visit or conjure up. I am as geographic-minded as a cat—places are everything to me. Long observation has shewn me that no other objective experience can give me even a quarter of the kick I can extract from the sight of a fresh landscape or urban vista whose antiquity & historic linkages are such as to correspond with certain fixed childhood dream-patterns of mine. Of course my twilight cosmos of half-familiar, fleetingly remembered marvels is just as unattainable as your Ultimate Abysses—this being the real secret of its fascination. Nothing really known can continue to be acutely fascinating—the charm of many familiar things being mainly resident in their power to symbolise or suggest unknown extensions & overtones.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Clark Ashton Smith (7 November 1930), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 214
Non-Fiction, Letters

Secret, Dreams, Feeling, Cats

“Let us look for our light in our feelings. There is a warmth in them that contains many clarities.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Feeling, Light

“Pimen [writing in front of a sacred lamp]:
One more, the final record, and my annals
Are ended, and fulfilled the duty laid
By God on me a sinner. Not in vain
Hath God appointed me for many years
A witness, teaching me the art of letters;
A day will come when some laborious monk
Will bring to light my zealous, nameless toil,
Kindle, as I, his lamp, and from the parchment
Shaking the dust of ages will transcribe
My true narrations.”

Aleksandr Pushkin Boris Godunov

(Variant translation):
One more story, just one more,
And then my history's completed,
All my chronicles written down
And my sinner's debt repaid to God.
Not for nothing.
The Lord appointed me to bear witness
For many many years and it was he
Taught me the art of creating books.
One day, in the far future,
some hard-working monk
Will find my painstaking,
anonymous writings.
He'll light his lamp,
as I light mine,
He'lll shake the dust of centuries from these scrolls.
Then he'll copy out, carefully, these true accounts,
So the descendants of today's Christians
May know the past of their native land
Remember their mighty Tsars warmly
For their glory and their knidness
And our Lord's mercy on their sins and crimes.
In my old age I live my life anew.
Pushkin, Alexander (2012). Pushkin's Boris Gudunov. Oberon Books.
Boris Godunov (1825)

God, Age, Art, Light

“It is simply the truth which has come to our aid. It is truth which has given us life. Affection is the greatest of human feelings because it is made of respect, of lucidity, and light. To understand the truth and make one's self equal to it is everything; and to love is the same thing as to know and to understand. Affection, which I call also compassion, because I see no difference between them, dominates everything by reason of its clear sight. It is a sentiment as immense as if it were mad, and yet it is wise, and of human things it is the only perfect one. There is no great sentiment which is not completely held on the arms of compassion.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XXIII - Face To Face

Love, Life, Truth, Feeling

“I loved him as young Genius loves,
When its own wild and radiant heaven
Of starry thought burns with the light,
The love, the life, by passion given.
I loved him, too, as woman loves--
Reckless of sorrow, sin, or scorn:
Life had no evil destiny
That, with him, I could not have borne!”

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

Title Poem
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Love, Life, Light, Passion

“When all the dark clouds roll away
And the sun begins to shine
I see my freedom from across the way
And it comes right in on time
Well it shines so bright and it gives so much light
And it comes from the sky above
Makes me feel so free makes me feel like me
And lights my life with love.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Brand New Day
Song lyrics, Moondance (1970)

Love, Life, Way, Feeling

“I confess today in good faith that I am angry with myself for having formerly seen in a bad light, within the revolutionary government, Robespierre and Saint-Just. I believe that these two men were better on their own than all the revolutionaries together.”

François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797) French political agitator and journalist of the French Revolutionary period

Je confesse aujourd'hui de bonne foi que je m'en veux d'avoir autrefois vu en noir, et le gouvernement révolutionnaire et Robespierre et Saint-Just. Je crois que ces hommes valaient mieux à eux seuls que tous les révolutionnaires ensemble.
[in Gracchus Babeuf avec les Egaux, Jean-Marc Shiappa, Les éditions ouvrières, 1991, 69, 27082 2892-7]
On Maximilien de Robespierre

Men, Faith, Light

“My work in the future must be devoted entirely to pure mathematics in its abstract meaning. I shall apply all my strength to bring more light into the tremendous obscurity which one unquestionably finds in analysis. It lacks so completely all plan and system that it is peculiar that so many have studied it. The worst of it is, it has never been treated stringently. There are very few theorems in advanced analysis which have been demonstrated in a logically tenable manner. Everywhere one finds this miserable way of concluding from the special to the general, and it is extremely peculiar that such a procedure has led to do few of the so-called paradoxes. It is really interesting to seek the cause.
In analysis, one is largely occupied by functions which can be expressed as powers. As soon as other powers enter—this, however, is not often the case—then it does not work any more and a number of connected, incorrect theorems arise from false conclusions. I have examined several of them, and been so fortunate as to make this clear. …I have had to be extremely cautious, for the presumed theorems without strict proof… had taken such a stronghold in me, that I was continually in danger of using them without detailed verification.”

Niels Henrik Abel (1802–1829) Norwegian mathematician

Letter to Christoffer Hansteen (1826) as quoted by Øystein Ore, Niels Henrik Abel: Mathematician Extraordinary (1957) & in part by Morris Kline, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times (1972) citing Œuvres, 2, 263-65

Way, Mathematics, Study, Light

“17. The Jnanin present in the heart sees the mind merged in the light of the heart, like moonlight in the presence of the sun during the day.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

The Science of the Heart

Light, Sun, Heart

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

Stephen Hawking book The Grand Design

The Grand Design (2010)

God, Law, Light, Universe

“We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the world. We give little thought to the machinery that generates the sun light that makes life possible, to the gravity that glues us to an Earth that would otherwise sent us spinning off into space, or to the atoms of which we are made and on whose stability we fundamentally depend. Few of us spend much time wondering why nature is the way it is, where the cosmos came from, or whether it was always there, if time will one day flow backwards or whether there are ultimate limits to what humans can know. What is the smallest piece of matter, why we remember the past and not the future, and why there is the universe?”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

[citation needed]
Others

Life, World, Way, Understanding

“My total experience of school was mixed, with more darkness than light. Just as my image of society has become.”

Tomas Tranströmer (1931–2015) Swedish poet, psychologist and translator

42.
För levande och döda (For the Living and the Dead) 1996

School, Light

“But there is one very odd thing - to notice that basically a picture doesn't change, that the first 'vision' remains almost intact, in spite of appearances. I often ponder on a light and a dark when I have put them into a painting; I try hard to break them up by interpolating a color that will create a different effect. When the work is photographed, I note that what I put in to correct my first vision has disappeared, and that, after all, the photographic image corresponds with my first vision before the transformation I insisted on.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Boisgeloup, winter 1934
As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 313
Quotes, 1930's

Color, Light, Appearance, Winter

“I can manage very well with the first grubby backside [of the model] which comes along – provided I find a skin which takes the light well.”

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) French painter and sculptor

Source: undated quotes, Renoir – his life and work, 1975, p. 150 : a quote from Vollard's book

Light

“Such arguments ill become us, since the time of reformation came, under Gospel light. All distinctions of nations, and privileges of one above others, are ceased; Christians are taught to account all men their neighbours; and love their neighbours as themselves; and do to all men as they would be done by; to do good to all men; and Man-stealing is ranked with enormous crimes. Is the barbarous enslaving our inoffensive neighbours, and treating them like wild beasts subdued by force, reconcilable with all these Divine precepts? Is this doing to them as we would desire they should do to us? If they could carry off and enslave some thousands of us, would we think it just?—One would almost wish they could for once; it might convince more than Reason, or the Bible.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1770s, African Slavery in America (March 1775)

Love, Men, Thinking, Light

“Let us, each of us, now embrace with solemn duty and awesome joy what is our lasting birthright. With common effort and common purpose, with passion and dedication, let us answer the call of history and carry into an uncertain future that precious light of freedom.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, Second Inaugural Address (January 2013)

History, Effort, Freedom, Light

“The toxic mix of religion and tribalism has become so dangerous as to justify taking seriously the alternative view, that humanism based on science is the effective antidote, the light and the way at last placed before us.”

Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist

Can biology do better than faith?, NewScientist.com, 2 November 2005, 2010-10-26 http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8254-can-biology-do-better-than-faith.html,

Religion, Way, Light, Science

“Colours no longer looked as brilliant to me as they use to do [Monet's sight was beginning to fail], I no longer painted shades of light so correctly. Reds looked muddy to me, pinks insipid, and the intermediate or lower notes in the colour scale escaped me. As for forms, I could see them as clear as ever, and render them as decisively. At first I tried pertinacity. How many times I have remained for hours near the little bridge, exactly were we are now, in the full glare of the sun, sitting on my camp-stool, under my sunshade, forcing myself to resume my interrupted task and to recapture the freshness my palette had lost! A waste of effort. What I painted was more and more mellow.... and (when) I compared it with what I used to do in the old days. I would fall into a frantic rage, and I slashed all my pictures with my penknife.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

remark by Monet – between 1900 and 1920 – on his 'Water lilies' paintings; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 131-132
1900 - 1920

Decision, Effort, Light, Rage

“Alas, how can the poor souls live in Concord when you preachers sow amongst them in your sermons debate and discord? They look to you for light and you bring them darkness. Amend these crimes, I exhort you, and set forth God's word truly, both by true preaching and giving a good example, or else, I, whom God has appointed his vicar and high minister here, will see these divisions extinct, and these enormities corrected…”

Henry VIII of England (1491–1547) King of England from 1509 until 1547

Last speech to parliament, December 24, 1545. http://englishhistory.net/tudor/h8speech.html See also: Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, Great Britain. Public Record Office, John Sherren Brewer, Robert Henry, vol. XX, part 2, p. 513. http://books.google.com/books?id=oBsFAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA4-PA513&dq=%22I,+whom+God+has+appointed+his+vicar+and+high+minister+%22&lr=

God, Soul, Light

“I present you with a Key : I have not heard of the like yet framed, since it pleased God to bring that mighty continent of America to light. Others of my countrymen have often, and excellently, and lately, written of the country, and none that I know beyond the goodness and worth of it.
This Key respects the native language of it, and happily may unlock some rarities concerning the natives themselves, not yet discovered.”

Roger Williams (theologian) (1603–1684) English Protestant theologian and founder of the colony of Providence Plantation

Preface
A Key into the Language of America (1643)

God, Light, Country

“The light of the stars travels millions of miles to reach the earth, but it cannot reach our hearts — so many millions of miles further off are we!”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Glimpses of Bengal http://www.spiritualbee.com/tagore-book-of-letters/ (1921)

Travel, Star, Light, Heart

“And then the spring of [19]'48 I toddled off to Paris on a Liberty ship... Yes, and arriving in Le Havre on that Liberty ship and seeing all those—the sun was coming up—and seeing all those ships sunk.. It was hardly... I mean, war, war, war, war…. I went to Paris, and I stayed with Zuka and Louis [Mitelberg] [her husband then, the cartoonist 'Tim']. And I looked for a place—and found it on Rue Gallande. Across the river was Notre Dame. That was all of four dollars a month, with a hole on the stairs as a toilet and a spigot with cold water and one light-bulb. That was all the electricity there was. But this view, I mean, God!... Saint Julien le Pauvre [Greek Orthodox Church, oldest in Paris] was right in front of me. And so I painted there.”

Joan Mitchell (1925–1992) American painter

first side of the first tape
1975 - 1992, Oral history interview with Joan Mitchell, 1986

God, War, Spring, Light

“Moreover, humour is itself but a superficial view of that which is in truth both tragic and terrible—the contrast between human pretence and cosmic mechanical reality. Humour is but the faint terrestrial echo of the hideous laughter of the blind mad gods that squat leeringly and sardonically in caverns beyond the Milky Way. It is a hollow thing, sweet on the outside, but filled with the pathos of fruitless aspiration. All great humorists are sad—Mark Twain was a cynic and agnostic, and wrote "The Mysterious Stranger" and "What Is Man?" When I was younger I wrote humorous matter—satire and light verse—and was known to many as a jester and parodist. … But I cannot help seeing beyond the tinsel of humour, and recognising the pitiful basis of jest—the world is indeed comic, but the joke is on mankind.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

"The Defence Remains Open!" (April 1921), published in Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 54
Non-Fiction

God, Truth, World, Sadness

“India's education had two aims, both organically linked. One was to strengthen our body and mind, our nerves and vitality. If the Indian teaching on this subject is followed faithfully, it ensures full, vigorous, healthy and long life. Similarly, it ensures health and unimpaired senses and a mind with undiminished powers. According to the Hindu Psychology, a man's mind and senses are powers of the soul. Therefore, they should be strengthened, widened, deepened, purified. "May I see and hear clearly and abundantly", is the repeated prayer in the, several Upanishads. Another variant of this prayer is: "May our eyes see the good, our ears hear the good." To see and hear and desire better, purer, finer and deeper is the first aim of Indian education. This means strengthening character, controlling desires and impulses, increasing powers of concentration and will. Not only this opens up our hidden powers, but this is even the basis of any fruitful life at all. If our senses and mind run their unbridled course, uninformed by any higher light, they will lead to self-destruction. But purified in the light of the soul, they become a blessing.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

On Hinduism (2000)

Life, Health, Education, Soul

“Pornography’s male-born explicitness renders visible what is invisible, woman’s chthonic internality. It tries to shed Apollonian light on woman’s anxiety-provoking darkness. The vulgar contortionism of pornography is the serpentine tangle of Medusan nature. Pornography is human imagination in tense theatrical action; its violations are a protest against the violations of our freedom by nature. The banning of pornography, rightly sought by Judeo-Christianity, would be a victory over the west’s stubborn paganism. But pornography cannot be banned, only driven underground, where its illicit charge will be enhanced.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 35

Imagination, Nature, Freedom, Light

“First a childhood, limitless and without
renunciation or goals. O unselfconscious joy.
Then suddenly terror, barriers, schools, drudgery,
and collapse into temptation and loss.Defiance. The one bent becomes the bender,
and thrusts upon others that which it suffered.
Loved, feared, rescuer, fighter, winner
and conqueror, blow by blow.And then alone in cold, light, open space,
yet still deep within the mature erected form,
a gasping for the clear air of the first one, the old one…Then God leaps out from behind his hiding place.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Erst eine Kindheit, grenzenlos und ohne
Verzicht und Ziel. O unbewußte Lust.
Auf einmal Schrecken, Schranke, Schule, Frohne
und Absturtz in Versuchung und Verlust.Trotz. Der Gebogene wird selber Bieger
und rächt an anderen, daß er erlag.
Geliebt, gefürchtet, Retter, Ringer, Sieger
und Überwinder, Schlag auf Schlag.Und dann allein im Weiten, Leichten, Kalten.
Doch tief in der errichteten Gestalt
ein Atemholen nach dem Ersten, Alten...Da stürzte Gott aus seinem Hinterhalt.
As translated by Cliff Crego
Imaginärer Lebenslauf (Imaginary Life Journey) (September 13, 1923)

Love, God, Fear, School

“If we suppose the distance of the fixed stars from the sun to be so great that the diameter of the earth's orbit viewed from them would not subtend a sensible angle, or which amounts to the same, that their annual parallax is quite insensible; it will then follow that a line drawn from the earth in any part of its orbit to a fixed star, will always, as to sense, make the same angle with the plane of the ecliptic, and the place of the star, as seen from the earth, would be the same as seen from the sun placed in the focus of the ellipsis described by the earth in its annual revolution, which place may therefore be called its true or real place.
But if we further suppose that the velocity of the earth in its orbit bears any sensible proportion to the velocity with which light is propagated, it will thence follow that the fixed stars (though removed too far off to be subject to a parallax on account of distance) will nevertheless be liable to an aberration, or a kind of parallax, on account of the relative velocity between light and the earth in its annual motion.
For if we conceive, as before, the true place of any star to be that in which it would appear viewed from the sun, the visible place to a spectator moving along with the earth, will be always different from its true, the star perpetually appearing out of its true place more or less, according as the velocity of the earth in its orbit is greater or less; so that when the earth is in its perihelion, the star will appear farthest distant from its true place, and nearest to it when the earth is in its aphelion; and the apparent distance in the former case will be to that in the latter in the reciprocal proportion of the distances of the earth in its perihelion and its aphelion. When the earth is in any other part of its orbit, its velocity being always in the reciprocal proportion of the perpendicular let fall from the sun to the tangent of the ellipse at that point where the earth is, or in the direct proportion of the perpendicular let fall upon the same tangent from the other focus, it thence follows that the apparent distance of a star from its true place, will be always as the perpendicular let fall from the upper focus upon the tangent of the ellipse. And hence it will be found likewise, that (supposing a plane passing through the star parallel to the earth's orbit) the locus or visible place of the star on that plane will always be in the circumference of a circle, its true place being in that diameter of it which is parallel to the shorter axis of the earth's orbit, in a point that divides that diameter into two parts, bearing the same proportion to each other, as the greatest and least distances of the earth from the sun.”

James Bradley (1693–1762) English astronomer; Astronomer Royal

Miscellaneous Works and Correspondence (1832), Demonstration of the Rules relating to the Apparent Motion of the Fixed Stars upon account of the Motion of Light.

Star, Sense, Light, Distant

“O thou that rollest above, round as the shield of my fathers! Whence are thy beams, O sun! thy everlasting light? Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty; the stars hide themselves in the sky; the moon, cold and pale, sinks in the western wave; but thou thyself movest alone. Who can be a companion of thy course? The oaks of the mountains fall; the mountains themselves decay with years; the ocean shrinks and grows again; the moon herself is lost in heaven: but thou art for ever the same, rejoicing in the brightness of thy course. When the world is dark with tempests, when thunder rolls and lightning flies, thou lookest in thy beauty from the clouds, and laughest at the storm. But to Ossian thou lookest in vain, for he beholds thy beams no more: whether thy yellow hair flows on the eastern clouds, or thou tremblest at the gates of the west. But thou art, perhaps, like me, for a season; thy years will have an end. Thou shalt sleep in thy clouds, careless of the voice of the morning. Exult then, O sun, in the strength of thy youth!”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

"Carthon", pp. 163–164
The Poems of Ossian

Youth, World, Beauty, Art

“The changing of bodies into light, and light into bodies, is very conformable to the course of Nature, which seems delighted with transmutations.”

Isaac Newton book Opticks, or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light

Query 30 : Are not gross bodies and light convertible into one another, and may not bodies receive much of their activity from the particles of light which enter into their composition?
Opticks (1704)

Nature, Light, Change

“When you’re a teenager and in your early twenties it seems desperately eternal and excruciatingly painful. Whereas as you grow older you realise that most things are excruciatingly painful and that is the human condition. Most of us continue to survive because we’re convinced that somewhere along the line, with grit and determination and perseverance, we will end up in some magical union with somebody. It’s a fallacy, of course, but it’s a form of religion. You have to believe. There is a light that never goes out and it’s called hope.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

from "I've always felt like an exile" by Andrew Billen in The Times (30th May 2006)
In interviews etc., About love

Pain, Religion, Hope, Light

“Tormented by spiritual thirst,
I dragged myself through a somber desert.
And a six-winged seraph
Appeared to meet me at the crossing of the ways.
He touched my eyes
With fingers as light as a dream:
And my prophetic eyes opened
Like those of a frightened eagle.
He touched my ears
And they were filled with noise and ringing:
And I heard the shuddering of the heavens,
And the flight of the angels in the heights,
And the movement of the beasts of the sea under the waters,
And the sound of the vine growing in the valley.
He bent down to my mouth
And tore out my tongue,
Sinful, decitful, and given to idle talk;
with the right hand steeped in blood
He inserted the tongue of a wise serpent,
Into my benumbed mouth.
He clove my breast with a sword,
And plucked out my quivering heart,
And thrust a coal of live fire
Into my gaping breast.
Like a corpse I lay in the desert.
And the voice of God called out to me:
'Arise, O prophet, see and hear,
Be filled with my will,
Go forth over land and sea,
And set the hearts of men on fire with your Word.”

Aleksandr Pushkin The Prophet

English translation found in New Society, Volume 8, (1966). New Society Limited. p. 413.
Also quoted by Kahn, Andrew (2006). The Cambridge Companion to Pushkin. Cambridge University Press, p. 84.
The Prophet (1826)

Men, God, Dreams, Angels

“We warriors of light must be prepared to have patience in difficult times and to know the Universe is conspiring in our favor, even though we may not understand how.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Introduction, p. xi.
The Alchemist (1988)

Understanding, Light, Universe, Time

“This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

"The Moon and the Yew Tree" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/yew.html Ariel (1965)

Tree, Light

“Soul is when you take a song and make it a part of you — a part that's so true, so real, people think it must have happened to you. … It's like electricity — we don't really know what it is, do we? But it's a force that can light a room. Soul is like electricity, like a spirit, a drive, a power.”

Ray Charles (1930–2004) American musician

As quoted in LIFE magazine (July 1966), also in Ray Charles : Man and Music (1998) by Michael Lydon, p. 264 As quoted in Pearls of Wisdom (198 http://interview.sweetsearch.com/2010/11/ray-charles.html Variant: What is soul? It's like electricity — we don't really know what it is, but it's a force that can light a room.

People, Soul, Thinking, Light

“Everything pales into insignificance compared to our passionate attachment. In this sense, falling in love is like the blinding light that hit Saul/Paul on the road to Damascus: a kind of religious suspension of the Ethical, to use Kerkegaard's terms.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

Source: The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), p.33, Idea's Appearing

Love, Sense, Light, Passion

“There yet remains but one concluding tale,
And then this chronicle of mine is ended—
Fulfilled, the duty God ordained to me,
A sinner. Not without purpose did the Lord
Put me to witness much for many years
And educate me in the love of books.
One day some indefatigable monk
Will find my conscientious, unsigned work;
Like me, he will light up his ikon-lamp
And, shaking from the scroll the age-old dust,
He will transcribe these tales in all their truth.”

Aleksandr Pushkin book Eugene Onegin

Prologue, sec. 5, l. 18-28.
Eugene Onegin (1823)

Love, God, Truth, Books

“Christianity has functioned for the normative self-understanding of modernity as more than a mere precursor or a catalyst. Egalitarian universalism, from which sprang the ideas of freedom and social solidarity, of an antonomous conduct of life and emancipation, of the individual morality of conscience, human rights, and democracy, is the direct heir to the judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of continual critical appropriation and reinterpretation. To this day, there is no alternative to it. And in the light of the current challenges of a postnational constellation, we continue to draw on the substance of this heritage. Everything else is just idle postmodern talk.”

Jürgen Habermas (1929) German sociologist and philosopher

Habermas (2006) "Conversation about God and the World." Time of transitions. Cambridge: Polity Press, p. 150-151.

Love, Life, Justice, Democracy

“April prepares her green traffic light and the world thinks Go.”

Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet

John Mistletoe (1931) http://books.google.com/books?id=20pJAAAAMAAJ&q=%22April+prepares+her+green+traffic+light+and+the+world+thinks+Go%22&pg=PA61#v=onepage

World, Thinking, Light