Quotes about lighting
page 41

Anne Brontë photo
Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo
Mark Rothko photo
Halldór Laxness photo
George W. Bush photo
Nisargadatta Maharaj photo
Taylor Swift photo
John Marshall Harlan photo
Neil Diamond photo
Henri Poincaré photo
Thomas Hughes photo
James A. Michener photo
Augustus De Morgan photo
Flower A. Newhouse photo
Clifford D. Simak photo
Alfred George Gardiner photo

“Death to the killers, bringing light to life.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"Not Palaces" (l. 32)

Nicholas Murray Butler photo

“Man's conception of what is most worth knowing and reflecting upon, of what may best compel his scholarly energies, has changed greatly with the years. His earliest impressions were of his own insignificance and of the stupendous powers and forces by which he was surrounded and ruled. The heavenly fires, the storm-cloud and the thunderbolt, the rush of waters and the change of seasons, all filled him with an awe which straightway saw in them manifestations of the superhuman and the divine. Man was absorbed in nature, a mythical and legendary nature to be sure, but still the nature out of which science was one day to arise. Then, at the call of Socrates, he turned his back on nature and sought to know himself; to learn the secrets of those mysterious and hidden processes by which he felt and thought and acted. The intellectual centre of gravity had passed from nature to man. From that day to this the goal of scholarship has been the understanding of both nature and man, the uniting of them in one scheme or plan of knowledge, and the explaining of them as the offspring of the omnipotent activity of a Creative Spirit, the Christian God. Slow and painful have been the steps toward the goal which to St. Augustine seemed so near at hand, but which has receded through the intervening centuries as the problems grew more complex and as the processes of inquiry became so refined that whole worlds of new and unsuspected facts revealed themselves. Scholars divided into two camps. The one would have ultimate and complete explanations at any cost; the other, overcome by the greatness of the undertaking, held that no explanation in a large or general way was possible. The one camp bred sciolism; the other narrow and helpless specialization.
At this point the modern university problem took its rise; and for over four hundred years the university has been striving to adjust its organization so that it may most effectively bend its energies to the solution of the problem as it is. For this purpose the university's scholars have unconsciously divided themselves into three types or classes: those who investigate and break new ground; those who explain, apply, and make understandable the fruits of new investigation; and those philosophically minded teachers who relate the new to the old, and, without dogma or intolerance, point to the lessons taught by the developing human spirit from its first blind gropings toward the light on the uplands of Asia or by the shores of the Mediterranean, through the insights of the world's great poets, artists, scientists, philosophers, statesmen, and priests, to its highly organized institutional and intellectual life of to-day. The purpose of scholarly activity requires for its accomplishment men of each of these three types. They are allies, not enemies; and happy the age, the people, or the university in which all three are well represented. It is for this reason that the university which does not strive to widen the boundaries of human knowledge, to tell the story of the new in terms that those familiar with the old can understand, and to put before its students a philosophical interpretation of historic civilization, is, I think, falling short of the demands which both society and university ideals themselves may fairly make.
A group of distinguished scholars in separate and narrow fields can no more constitute a university than a bundle of admirably developed nerves, without a brain and spinal cord, can produce all the activities of the human organism.”

Nicholas Murray Butler (1862–1947) American philosopher, diplomat, and educator

Scholarship and service : the policies of a national university in a modern democracy https://archive.org/details/scholarshipservi00butluoft (1921)

John Ruysbroeck photo
James Taylor photo

“Oh, Mexico.
It sounds so sweet with the sun sinking low.
Moon's so bright like to light up the night,
Make everything all right.”

James Taylor (1948) American singer-songwriter and guitarist

"Mexico"
Song lyrics, Gorilla (1975)

Orson Pratt photo
John Heywood photo

“You stand in your owne light.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Part II, chapter 4.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Sathya Sai Baba photo
Bruce Springsteen photo

“And she was blinded by the light. Cut loose like a deuce,
Another runner in the night. Blinded by the light.
She got down but she never got tight, but she'll make it alright.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Blinded by the Light"
Song lyrics, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973)

Carl Sandburg photo

“I see America, not in the setting sun of a black night of despair ahead of us, I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God. I see great days ahead, great days possible to men and women of will and vision …”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

Interview with Frederick Van Ryn, This Week Magazine (January 4, 1953), p. 11. Sandburg previously used these words at a rally at Madison Square Garden, New York City (October 28, 1952), praising Adlai E. Stevenson during the latter's 1952 presidential campaign. Reported in The Papers of Adlai E. Stevenson (1955), vol. 4, p. 175.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Irene Dunne photo
Frederick William Robertson photo
Henry M. Leland photo

“On the train I was going over the problem of Sixes versus Fours and the disturbing periodic vibrations with which the 'six-cylinder manufacturers were contending. I realized the emphasis our competitors were placing on the fact that six smaller cylinders, producing the same maximum power as four larger ones, would result in smaller individual impulses, and consequent smoother action.
I knew that we were having good results with well-balanced four-cylinder motors. I first reasoned that if six light cylinders gave the same maximum power and lighter impulses than the tour, then eight still smaller cylinders would give still lighter impulses than the six cylinders. I also reasoned that, because of the lighter weight, those eight cylinder pistons could be run at higher speeds than either sixes or fours. Furthermore I did not like the six crankshaft. If made small enough to be in proportion with those light pistons, the extra length might introduce those undesirable vibrations; if made heavy enough to avoid; if made heavy enough to avoid these periodic vibrations there was the wight problem contend with.
As I lay awake pondering these factors, the idea came to me that we were having good success with four-cylinder motors; we would surely have equally good results with blocks of lighter four cylinders and pistons. Why not make up those smaller blocks of lighter four cylinders and pistons, and put two of the blocks together at an angle and avoid that troublesome long crankshaft. The more I thought of this idea on that trip, the more convinced I became that it could be worked out.”

Henry M. Leland (1843–1932) American businessman

Source: Master of Precision: Henry M. Leland, 1966, p. 147; Leland talking about his idea for a V8 engine around 1913-14. Partly cited in: Alexander Richard Crabb (1969), Birth of a giant: the men and incidents that gave America the motorcar. p. 315

Florbela Espanca photo

“The soul of a poetess is all made of light, like that of the stars: it doesn’t blind the onlooker, it illuminates…”

Florbela Espanca (1894–1930) Portuguese poet

As almas das poetisas são todas feitas de luz, como as dos astros: não ofuscam, iluminam...
Contos – À Margem dum Soneto (O Dominó Preto); quoted in Citações e Pensamentos de Florbela Espanca (2012), p. 39
Translation http://www.vidaslusofonas.pt/florbela_espanca2.htm by John D. Godinho

Lil Wayne photo

“Awaited on my turn to burn can I get a light? Little dog, bigger bite, Jackson Five, little Mike.”

Lil Wayne (1982) American rapper, singer, record executive and businessman

SportsCenter
Official Mix tapes, Dedication 2 (2006)

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Stephen Stich photo

“In light of the evolutionary links and behavioural similarities between humans and higher animals, it is hard to believe that belief-desire psychology could explain human behaviour, but not animal behaviour. If humans have beliefs, so do animals.”

Stephen Stich (1943) American philosopher

"Do Animals Have Beliefs?" (1979); as quoted in The Case for Animal Rights by Tom Regan (University of California Press, 2004), p. 36 https://books.google.it/books?id=Y0tWjRmxFE4C&pg=PA36.

James Bradley photo
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo
Sri Aurobindo photo
Prem Rawat photo
Torquato Tasso photo

“The time for work is while the sun's light shines,
but every living thing finds peace at night.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Tempo è da travagliar mentre il sol dura;
Ma nella notte ogni animale ha pace.
Canto VI, stanza 52 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Richard Blackmore photo

“The Inclinations of Men, in this their degenerate State, carry them with great Force to those voluptuous Objects, that please their Appetites and gratify their Senses; and which not only by their early Acquaintance and Familiarity, but as they are adapted to the prevailing Instincts of Nature, are more esteem'd and pursu'd than all other Satisfactions. As those inferior Enjoyments, that only affect the Organs of the Body are chiefly coveted, so next to these, that light and facetious Qualification of the Mind, that diverts the Hearers and is proper to produce Mirth and Alacrity, has, in all Ages, by the greatest Part of Mankind, been admir'd and applauded. No Productions of Human Understanding are receiv'd with such a general Pleasure and Approbation, as those that abound with Wit and Humour, on which the People set a greater Value, than on the wisest and most instructive Discourses. Hence a pleasant Man is always caress'd above a wise one, and Ridicule and Satyr, that entertain the Laughers, often put solid Reason and useful Science out of Countenance. The wanton Temper of the Nation has been gratify'd so long with the high Seasonings of Wit and Raillery in Writing and Conversation, that now almost all Things that are not accommodated to their Relish by a strong Infusion of those Ingredients, are rejected as the heavy and insipid Performances of Men of a plain Understanding and meer Masters of Sense.”

Richard Blackmore (1654–1729) English poet and physician

Essay upon Wit http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13484/13484-8.txt (1711)

Rajiv Malhotra photo
Adolphe Tavernier photo
Ernest Hemingway photo

“And how much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old and illusions shattered.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Letter to his family (18 October 1918); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker. It was also published in The Oak Parker (Oak Park, IL) on 16 November 1918. Only 19 years old at the time, Hemingway was recovering from wounds suffered at the front line while serving as a Red Cross volunteer.

David Chalmers photo
T.S. Eliot photo

“We see the light but see not whence it comes.
O Light Invisible, we glorify Thee!”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Choruses from The Rock (1934)

Thomas Carlyle photo
Geert Wilders photo
Francis Turner Palgrave photo

“The realist, then, would seek in behalf of philosophy the same renunciation the same rigour of procedure, that has been achieved in science. This does not mean that he would reduce philosophy to natural or physical science. He recognizes that the philosopher has undertaken certain peculiar problems, and that he must apply himself to these, with whatever method he may find it necessary to employ. It remains the business of the philosopher to attempt a wide synoptic survey of the world, to raise underlying and ulterior questions, and in particular to examine the cognitive and moral processes. And it is quite true that for the present no technique at all comparable with that of the exact sciences is to be expected. But where such technique is attainable, as for example in symbolic logic, the realist welcomes it. And for the rest he limits himself to a more modest aspiration. He hopes that philosophers may come like scientists to speak a common language, to formulate common problems and to appeal to a common realm of fact for their resolution. Above all he desires to get rid of the philosophical monologue, and of the lyric and impressionistic mode of philosophizing. And in all this he is prompted not by the will to destroy but by the hope that philosophy is a kind of knowledge, and neither a song nor a prayer nor a dream. He proposes, therefore, to rely less on inspiration and more on observation and analysis. He conceives his function to be in the last analysis the same as that of the scientist. There is a world out yonder more or less shrouded in darkness, and it is important, if possible, to light it up. But instead of, like the scientist, focussing the mind's rays and throwing this or that portion of the world into brilliant relief, he attempts to bring to light the outlines and contour of the whole, realizing too well that in diffusing so widely what little light he has, he will provide only a very dim illumination.”

Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957) American philosopher

Chap XXV.
The Present Conflict of Ideals: A Study of the Philosophical Background of the World War (1918)

François Fénelon photo

“In the light of eternity we shall see that what we desired would have been fatal to us, and that what we would have avoided was essential to our well-being.”

François Fénelon (1651–1715) Catholic bishop

Nous verrons à sa lumière, dans l'éternité, que ce que nous désirions nous eût été funeste, et que ce que nous voulions éviter était essentiel à notre bonheur.
Instructions et avis sur divers points de la morale et de la perfection chrétienne, ch. 18, cited from Œuvres de Fénelon (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1845) vol. 1, p. 325; translation from Selections from the Writings of Fénelon (Boston: Samuel G. Simpkins, 1844) p. 82.

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“He said it was fearful to see them stand,
Nor the living nor yet the dead,
And the light glared strange in the glassy eyes
Whose human look was fled.
For frost had done one half life's part,
And kept them from decay;
Those they loved had mouldered, but these
Look'd the dead of yesterday.”

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

The Frozen Ship, from The London Literary Gazette, (16th September 1826) - Metrical Fragment No. V. - The Frozen Ship, under the pen name 'Iole'
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Sara Teasdale photo
Hans Frank photo

“Ah! American cigarettes are like the American soul - sweet and light.”

Hans Frank (1900–1946) German war criminal

To Leon Goldensohn, February 12, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

Gianni Sarcone photo

“Colors are ghosts, they only start to exist when light is perceived on the retina as a stimulus and is processed into color perception in our brain.”

Gianni Sarcone (1962) Italian author, artist, designer, and researcher in visual perception and cognitive psychology

Tangente Magazine (2013).

Steven Erikson photo
Van Morrison photo
Pope Benedict XVI photo
Jack McDevitt photo
David Hare photo

“Children always turn toward the light.”

David Hare (1947) British writer

Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Guesses at Truth (London: Macmillan, ([1827-48] 1867) p. 159.
Misattributed

Lucius Shepard photo
Algernon Charles Swinburne photo
Edward Carpenter photo

“Plato in his allegory of the soul—in the Phaedrus—though he apparently divides the passions which draw the human chariot into two classes, the heavenward and the earthward—figured by the white horse and the black horse respectively—does not recommend that the black horse should be destroyed or dismissed, but only that he (as well as the white horse) should be kept under due control by the charioteer. By which he seems to intend that there is a power in man which stands above and behind the passions, and under whose control alone the human being can safely move. In fact if the fiercer and so-called more earthly passions were removed, half the driving force would be gone from the chariot of the human soul. Hatred may be devilish at times—but after all the true value of it depends on what you hate, on the use to which the passion is put. Anger, though inhuman at one time is magnificent and divine at another. Obstinacy may be out of place in a drawing-room, but it is the latest virtue on a battlefield when an important position has to be held against the full brunt of the enemy. And Lust, though maniacal and monstrous in its aberrations, cannot in the last resort be separated from its divine companion, Love. To let the more amiable passions have entire sway notoriously does not do: to turn your cheek, too literally, to the smiter, is (pace Tolstoy) only to encourage smiting; and when society becomes so altruistic that everybody runs to fetch the coal-scuttle we feel sure that something has gone wrong. The white-washed heroes of our biographies with their many virtues and no faults do not please us. We have an impression that the man without faults is, to say the least, a vague, uninteresting being—a picture without light and shade—and the conventional semi-pious classification of character into good and bad qualities (as if the good might be kept and the bad thrown away) seems both inadequate and false.”

Edward Carpenter (1844–1929) British poet and academic

Defence of Criminals: A Criticism of Morality (1889)

Jacques Derrida photo
James Marsters photo
Ingrid Newkirk photo

“Perhaps the mere idea of receiving a nasty missive will allow animal researchers to empathize with their victims for the first time in their lousy careers. I find it small wonder that the laboratories aren’t all burning to the ground. If I had more guts, I’d light a match.”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

The Chronicle of Higher Education, 1999 November 12.
After The Justice Department mailed 87 razor blade–laced threats to medical researchers studying news drugs on primates.
On animal research and activism against it

G. K. Chesterton photo

“The academic mind reflects infinity, and is full of light by the simple process of being shallow and standing still.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

Inglewood in Manalive (1912)

Ogden Nash photo
John Maynard Keynes photo

“The study of economics does not seem to require any specialized gifts of an unusually high order. Is it not, intellectually regarded, a very easy subject compared with the higher branches of philosophy and pure science? Yet good, or even competent, economists are the rarest of birds. An easy subject, at which very few excel! The paradox finds its explanation, perhaps, in that the master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts. He must reach a high standard in several different directions and must combine talents not often found together. He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher – in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must lie entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood; as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near the earth as a politician. Much, but not all, of this many-sidedness Marshall possessed. But chiefly his mixed training and divided nature furnished him with the most essential and fundamental of the economist's necessary gifts – he was conspicuously historian and mathematician, a dealer in the particular and the general, the temporal and the eternal, at the same time.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Source: Essays In Biography (1933), Alfred Marshall, p. 170; as cited in: Donald Moggridge (2002), Maynard Keynes: An Economist's Biography, p. 424

André Maurois photo
George Gordon Byron photo
Clifford D. Simak photo
Anton Chekhov photo
Aleister Crowley photo

“My light! O my father the Devil! It hath made all things one, being perfect, even as doth the Darkness!”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Source: Magical Record of the Beast 666: The Diaries of Aleister Crowley 1914-1920 (1972), p. 266

Pope Benedict XVI photo

“My aim in painting is to create pulsating, luminous, and open surfaces that emanate a mystic light, in accordance with my deepest insight into the experience of life and nature.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

As quoted in The Artist's Voice : Talks With Seventeen Modern Artists (1962) by Katharine Kuh, p. 128
1960s

Neil Peart photo

“Genius is the fire that lights itself. -Commenting on Buddy Rich.”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Other

Firuz Shah Tughlaq photo

“A report was brought to the Sultan that there was in Delhi an old Brahman (zunar dar) who persisted in publicly performing the worship of idols in his house; and that people of the city, both Musulmans and Hindus, used to resort to his house to worship the idol. The Brahman had constructed a wooden tablet (muhrak), which was covered within and without with paintings of demons and other objects. On days appointed, the infidels went to his house and worshipped the idol, without the fact becoming known to the public officers. The Sultan was informed that this Brahman had perverted Muhammadan women, and had led them to become infidels. An order was accordingly given that the Brahman, with his tablet, should be brought into the presence of the Sultan at Firozabad. The judges and doctors and elders and lawyers were summoned, and the case of the Brahman was submitted for their opinion. Their reply was that the provisions of the Law were clear: the Brahman must either become a Musulman or be burned. The true faith was declared to the Brahman, and the right course pointed out, but he refused to accept it. Orders were given for raising a pile of faggots before the door of the darbar. The Brahman was tied hand and foot and cast into it; the tablet was thrown on top and the pile was lighted. The writer of this book was present at the darbar and witnessed the execution. The tablet of the Brahman was lighted in two places, at his head and at his feet; the wood was dry, and the fire first reached his feet, and drew from him a cry, but the flames quickly enveloped his head and consumed him. Behold the Sultans strict adherence to law and rectitude, how he would not deviate in the least from its decrees!”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Delhi. Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. Elliot and Dowson. Vol. III, p. 365 ff https://archive.org/stream/cu31924073036737#page/n379/mode/2up Quoted in Shourie, Arun (2014). Eminent historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud. Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India : HarperCollins Publishers.

Hillary Clinton photo
Robert Ley photo
Swami Vivekananda photo
Robert Seymour Bridges photo
George W. Bush photo
Robert Hall photo
William Herschel photo

“Here [in Slough], soon after my arrival, I began to lay the foundation upon which by degrees the whole structure was raised as it now stands, and the speculum being highly polished and put into the tube, I had the first view through it on February 19, 1787. …the first speculum, by a mismanagement of the person who cast it, came out thinner on the centre of the back than was intended, and on account of its weakness would not permit a good figure to be given to it. …A second mirror was cast January 26, 1788, but it cracked in cooling. February 16 we recast it, and it proved to be of a proper degree of strength. October 24 it was brought to a pretty good figure and polish, and I observed the planet Saturn with it. But not being satisfied, I continued to work upon it till August 27, 1789, when it was tried upon the fixed stars, and I found it to give a pretty sharp image. Large stars were a little affected with scattered light, owing to many remaining scratches on the mirror. August the 28th, 1789, having brought the telescope to the parallel of Saturn, I discovered a sixth satellite of that planet, and also saw the spots upon Saturn better than I had ever seen them before, so that I may date the finishing of the forty-foot telescope from that time.”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

Source: Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works (1880), Ch.4 "Life and Works".

Anne Brontë photo

“A light wind swept over the corn; and all nature laughed in the sunshine.”

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XV : An Encounter and its Consequences; Gilbert Markham