Quotes about lighting
page 42

Mike Oldfield photo
Nasreddin photo

“Nasrudin walked into a house and exclaimed, "The moon is more useful than the sun."
"Why?" he was asked.
"Because at night we need the light more."”

Nasreddin (1208–1284) philosopher, Sufi and wise man from Turkey, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes

Paul Blenkiron, Stories and Analogies in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (2010), , p. 43

Denise Levertov photo

“Praise
the invisible sun burning beyond
the white cold sky, giving us
light and the chimney's shadow.”

Denise Levertov (1923–1997) Poet

Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus (1981); Online excerpt http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16007

José Martí photo

“All is beautiful and unceasing,
all is music and reason,
and all, like diamond,
is carbon first, then light.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

I (Yo soy un hombre sincero) as translated by Esther Allen in José Martí : Selected Writings (2002), p. 275
Simple Verses (1891)

Gabrielle Roy photo
Eugène Delacroix photo
Carol Ann Duffy photo
Victor Hugo photo

“There is now, in France, in each village, a lighted torch—the schoolmaster—and a mouth which blows upon it—the curé.”

Il y a maintenant en France dans chaque village un flambeau allumé, le maître d'école, et une bouche qui souffle dessus, le curé.
Histoire d'un crime. Déposition d'un témoin (1877), Deuxième Journée. La lutte, ch. III: La barricade Saint-Antoine
T. H. Joyce and Arthur Locker (tr.), The History of a Crime: The Testimony of an Eye-Witness (1877), The Second Day, Chapter III, p. 120 http://books.google.com/books?id=CT1BkrtaFlIC&pg=PA120&dq=%22There+is+now,+in+France,%22
Translation: In every French village there is now a lighted torch, the schoolmaster; and a mouth trying to blow it out, the priest.
Huntington Smith (tr.), History of a Crime (1888), The Second Day, Chapter III, p. 187 http://books.google.com/books?id=idfUAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA187&dq=%22In+every+French+village+there+is+now+a+lighted+torch%22
Variants: There is in every village a torch: The schoolteacher/teacher. And an extinguisher: The priest/clergyman.

Cecil Day Lewis photo
Noel Gallagher photo
Barbara Hepworth photo
Aldous Huxley photo
F. J. Duarte photo
Barend Cornelis Koekkoek photo

“Beforehand I don't make any drawing of the object or objects which I want to paint on the canvas or panel.... but I start directly to situate the designed plan on the canvas - After having thoroughly sketched and thought over my composition, especially the arrangement of light and dark, I start to paint it broadly with oil-paint and try as much as possible to achieve the hue or the colouring, in which I want to see my landscape.... when it is definitely completed.”

Barend Cornelis Koekkoek (1803–1862) painter from the Northern Netherlands

(original Dutch, citaat van B.C. Koekkoek:) Ik maak vooraf geene tekeningen van het voorwerp of de voorwerpen, die ik op het doek of paneel wil schilderen.. ..maar begin dadelijk het ontworpen plan op het doek te plaatsen – Na mijne compositie eerst behoorlijk geschetst en beredeneerd te hebben, voornamelijk de schikking van licht en donker, begin ik dezelve met olieverw breed te schilderen, zoveel trachtende de tint of het coloriet er in te brengen, in welke ik mijn landschap.. ..wil gezien hebben.. ..als het geheel afgeschilderd is.
Source: Herinneringen aan en Mededeelingen van…' (1841), p. 98-99

Lily Allen photo
Gideon Mantell photo
William Cowper photo

“Lights of the world, and stars of human race.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

Source: The Progress of Error (1782), Line 97.

Sri Aurobindo photo
W. H. Auden photo

“Look, stranger, on this island now
The leaping light for your delight discovers,
Stand stable here
And silent be,
That through the channels of the ear
May wander like a river
The swaying sound of the sea.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

Look, Stranger, on This Island Now (1936), first published in book form in Look, Stranger! (1936; US title On this Island)

Benito Mussolini photo

“My labor had not been easy nor light; our Masonry had spun a most intricate net of anti-religious activity; it dominated the currents of thought; it exercised its influence over publishing houses, over teaching, over the administration of justice and even over certain dominant sections of the armed forces. To give an idea of how far things had gone, this significant example is sufficient. When, in parliament, I delivered my first speech of November 16, 1922, after the Fascist revolution, I concluded by invoking the assistance of God in my difficult task. Well, this sentence of mine seemed to be out of place! In the Italian parliament, a field of action for Italian Masonry, the name of God had been banned for a long time. Not even the Popular party — the so-called Catholic party — had ever thought of speaking of God. In Italy, a political man did not even turn his thoughts to the Divinity. And, even if he had ever thought of doing so, political opportunism and cowardice would have deterred him, particularly in a legislative assembly. It remained for me to make this bold innovation! And in an intense period of revolution! What is the truth! It is that a faith openly professed is a sign of strength. I have seen the religious spirit bloom again; churches once more are crowded, the ministers of God are themselves invested with new respect. Fascism has done and is doing its duty.”

1920s
Source: My Autobiography (1928)

George Holmes Howison photo
Brian Clevinger photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“It is my belief that action under this section should be suspended until the Congress can reconsider the entire question in the light of the experience that has been developed since its enactment.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

William Lane Craig photo
`Abdu'l-Bahá photo

“Love is the mystery of divine revelations!
Love is the effulgent manifestation!
Love is the spiritual fulfillment!
Love is the breath of the Holy Spirit inspired into the human spirit!
Love is the cause of the manifestation of the Truth (God) in the phenomenal world!
Love is the necessary tie proceeding from the realities of things through divine creation!
Love is the means of the most great happiness in both the material and spiritual worlds!
Love is a light of guidance in the dark night!
Love is the bond between the Creator and the creature in the inner world!
Love is the cause of development to every enlightened man!
Love is the greatest law in this vast universe of God!
Love is the one law which causeth and controleth order among the existing atoms!
Love is the universal magnetic power between the planets and stars shining in the loft firmament!
Love is the cause of unfoldment to a searching mind, of the secrets deposited in the universe by the Infinite!
Love is the spirit of life in the bountiful body of the world!
Love is the cause of the civilization of nations in this mortal world!
Love is the highest honor to every righteous nation!
The people who are confirmed therein are indeed glorified by the Supreme Concourse, the angels of heaven and the dwellers of the Kingdom of El-Abha! But if the hearts of the people become devoid of the Divine Grace — the Love of God — they wander in the desert of ignorance, descend to the depths of ruin and fall to the abyss of despair where there is no refuge! They are like insects living in the lowest plane.
O beloved of God! Be ye the manifestations of God and the lamps of guidance throughout all regions shining with the light of love and union!
How beautiful the effulgence of this light!”

`Abdu'l-Bahá (1844–1921) Son of Bahá'u'lláh and leader of the Bahá'í Faith

“O thou who art attracted by the Fragrances of God!…” in Tablets of Abdul-Baha Abbas (1909), p. 730 http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/ab/TAB/tab-573.html

George William Russell photo
Arundhati Roy photo

“He is Karna, whom the world has abandoned. Karna Alone. Condemned goods. A prince raised in poverty. Born to die unfairly, unarmed and alone at the hands of his brother. Majestic in his complete despair. Praying on the banks of the Ganga. Stoned out of his skull.
Then Kunti appeared. She too was a man, but a man grown soft and womanly, a man with breasts, from doing female parts for years. Her movements were fluid. Full of women. Kunti, too, was stoned. High on the same shared joints. She had come to tell Karna a story.
Karna inclined his beautiful head and listened.
Red-eyed, Kunti danced for him. She told him of a young woman who had been granted a boon. A secret mantra that she could use to choose a lover from among the gods. Of how, with the imprudence of youth, the woman decided to test it to see if it really worked. How she stood alone in an empty field, turned her face to the heavens and recited the mantra. The words had scarcely left her foolish lips, Kunti said, when Surya, the God of Day, appeared before her. The young woman, bewitched by the beauty of the shimmering young god, gave herself to him. Nine months later she bore him a son. The baby was born sheathed in light, with gold earrings in his ears and a gold breastplate on his chest, engraved with the emblem of the sun.
The young mother loved her first-born son deeply, Kunti said, but she was unmarried and couldn't keep him. She put him in a reed basket and cast him away in a river. The child was found downriver by Adhirata, a charioteer. And named Karna.
Karna looked up to Kunti. Who was she? Who was my mother? Tell me where she is. Take me to her.
Kunti bowed her head. She's here, she said. Standing before you.
Karna's elation and anger at the revelation. His dance of confusion and despair. Where were you, he asked her, when I needed you the most? Did you ever hold me in your arms? Did you feed me? Did you ever look for me? Did you wonder where I might be?
In reply Kunti took the regal face in her hands, green the face, red the eyes, and kissed him on his brow. Karna shuddered in delight. A warrior reduced to infancy. The ecstasy of that kiss. He dispatched it to the ends of his body. To his toes. His fingertips. His lovely mother's kiss. Did you know how much I missed you? Rahel could see it coursing through his veins, as clearly as an egg travelling down an ostrich's neck.
A travelling kiss whose journey was cut short by dismay when Karna realised that his mother had revealed herself to him only to secure the safety of her five other, more beloved sons - the Pandavas - poised on the brink of their epic battle with their one hundred cousins. It is them that Kunti sought to protect by announcing to Karna that she was his mother. She had a promise to extract.
She invoked the Love Laws.”

pages 232-233.
The God of Small Things (1997)

John Muir photo
Charles Fillmore photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Andrew Marvell photo
Paramahansa Yogananda photo

“Grosser light vanishes into eternal rays
Of all-pervading Cosmic Joy.
From Joy we come,
For Joy we live,
In the sacred Joy we melt.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

Songs of the Soul by Paramahansa Yogananda, Quotes drawn from the poem "Samadhi"

Ivan Konev photo

“Our neighbors use searchlights, for they want more light. I tell you, Nikolai Pavlovich, we need more darkness.”

Ivan Konev (1897–1973) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "The Last Battle" - Page 354 - by Cornelius Ryan - History - 1966.

Norman Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank photo
Arshile Gorky photo
Philip José Farmer photo
Leo Tolstoy photo

“Wealth brings a heavy purse; poverty, a light spirit.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: Path of Life (1909), p. 88

David Bentley Hart photo
Tobin Bell photo
Mata Amritanandamayi photo
John Cheever photo
F. J. Duarte photo

“Regardless of the prophetic value of Dirac’s description [on interference] his was probably the first discussion… including a coherent beam of light. In other words, Dirac wrote the first chapter in laser optics.”

F. J. Duarte (1954) Chilean-American physicist

in Introduction to Lasers, [F. J. Duarte, Tunable Laser Optics, Elsevier Academic, 2003, 0-12-222696-8, 3]

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel photo

“Take playfulness seriously, and you will apprehend what is at the center and rediscover your revered art in a more sublime light.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

Deute den lieblichen Schein und mache Ernst aus dem Spiel, so wirst du das Centrum fassen und die verehrte Kunst in höherm Lichte wieder finden.
“Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 109

Richard Cobden photo

“I have generally made it a rule to parry the inquiries and comparisons which the Americans are so apt to thrust at an Englishman. On one or two occasions, when the party has been numerous and worth powder and shot, I have, however, on being hard pressed, and finding my British blood up, found the only mode of allaying their inordinate vanity to be by resorting to this mode of argument:—"I admit all that you or any other person can, could, may, or might advance in praise of the past career of the people of America. Nay, more, I will myself assert that no nation ever did, and in my opinion none ever will, achieve such a title to respect, wonder, and gratitude in so short a period; and further still, I venture to allege that the imagination of statesmen never dreamed of a country that should in half a century make such prodigious advances in civilization and real greatness as yours has done. And now I must add, and I am sure you, as intelligent, reasonable men, will go with me, that fifty years are too short a period in the existence of nations to entitle them to the palm of history. No, wait the ordeal of wars, distresses, and prosperity (the most dangerous of all), which centuries of duration are sure to bring to your country. These are the test, and if, many ages hence, your descendants shall be able only to say of their country as much as I am entitled to say of mine now, that for seven hundred years we have existed as a nation constantly advancing in liberty, wealth, and refinement; holding out the lights of philosophy and true religion to all the world; presenting mankind with the greatest of human institutions in the trial by jury; and that we are the only modern people that for so long a time withstood the attacks of enemies so heroically that a foreign foe never put foot in our capital except as a prisoner (this last is a poser);—if many centuries hence your descendants will be entitled to say something equivalent to this, then, and not till then, will you be entitled to that crown of fame which the historian of centuries is entitled to award."”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to F. Cobden (5 July 1835) during his visit to the United States, quoted in John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), pp. 33-34.
1830s

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Glory of earth, and light from heaven,
Young Genius! but for thee,
And the wild wonders to thee given,
How base our earth would be!”

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

(19th May 1827) Genius
The London Literary Gazette, 1827

Kenneth Grahame photo
Marianne von Werefkin photo
André Maurois photo
Sarah McLachlan photo
Charles Lamb photo

“I read your letters with my sister, and they give us both abundance of delight. Especially they please us two, when you talk in a religious strain,—not but we are offended occasionally with a certain freedom of expression, a certain air of mysticism, more consonant to the conceits of pagan philosophy, than consistent with the humility of genuine piety. To instance now in your last letter—you say, “it is by the press [sic], that God hath given finite spirits both evil and good (I suppose you mean simply bad men and good men), a portion as it were of His Omnipresence!” Now, high as the human intellect comparatively will soar, and wide as its influence, malign or salutary, can extend, is there not, Coleridge, a distance between the Divine Mind and it, which makes such language blasphemy? Again, in your first fine consolatory epistle you say, “you are a temporary sharer in human misery, that you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine Nature.” What more than this do those men say, who are for exalting the man Christ Jesus into the second person of an unknown Trinity,—men, whom you or I scruple not to call idolaters? Man, full of imperfections, at best, and subject to wants which momentarily remind him of dependence; man, a weak and ignorant being, “servile” from his birth “to all the skiey influences,” with eyes sometimes open to discern the right path, but a head generally too dizzy to pursue it; man, in the pride of speculation, forgetting his nature, and hailing in himself the future God, must make the angels laugh. Be not angry with me, Coleridge; I wish not to cavil; I know I cannot instruct you; I only wish to remind you of that humility which best becometh the Christian character. God, in the New Testament (our best guide), is represented to us in the kind, condescending, amiable, familiar light of a parent: and in my poor mind ’tis best for us so to consider of Him, as our heavenly Father, and our best Friend, without indulging too bold conceptions of His nature. Let us learn to think humbly of ourselves, and rejoice in the appellation of “dear children,” “brethren,” and “co-heirs with Christ of the promises,” seeking to know no further… God love us all, and may He continue to be the father and the friend of the whole human race!”

Charles Lamb (1775–1834) English essayist

Lamb's letter to Coleridge in Oct. 24th, 1796. As quoted in Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (1905). Letter 11.

Harry Greb photo
David Lloyd George photo
Mohammad Hidayatullah photo
Louisa May Alcott photo
Anthony Burgess photo

“On that day beneath the fluorescent lights of the YMCA, I was transcendent.”

Kai Cheng Thom (1991) writer

What I learned, loved and lost as a trans Zumba addict (2018)

Jayant Narlikar photo

“We have seven colours — violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red (Roy G. Biv). Our atmosphere has a number of particles and when light falls on them, it gets scattered. With blue colour having less wavelength and more scattering qualities, it scatters and makes the sky blue. While red colour has opposite qualities than blue so traffic lights are of this colour.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

His observations on the "strange events in our solar system" and as to why the sky looked blue and red colour was used in traffic lights to signal to vehicles to stop.
When Prof Jayant Narlikar saw the sun rise in the west

Harriet Winslow Sewall photo

“Poor indeed must thou be, if around thee
Thou no ray of light and joy canst throw”

Harriet Winslow Sewall (1819–1889) American poet

Why thus longing? reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Murray Leinster photo
Jacopone da Todi photo
Conor Oberst photo

“So you can try and live in darkness
but you will never shake the light.
It will greet you every morning and make you more aware with its absence at night”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2002)

Justin Cronin photo

“Mankind had built a world that would take a hundred years to die. A century for the last light to go out.”

Justin Cronin (1962) American writer

The Passage Trilogy, The Passage (2010)

John Romero photo
Tina Fey photo
Ernst Bloch photo
Sri Chinmoy photo
Roy Harper (singer) photo
Horatio Nelson photo
Wilkie Collins photo
Thomas Wolfe photo
Yogi Adityanath photo

“Sun has never deprived anyone of its light and energy irrespective of their caste and religion. Despite this, if it is being linked to communalism then I request such people to stay in their rooms during the day without sunlight.”

Yogi Adityanath (1972) Indian politician

On religious groups claiming that Surya Namaskar would cause communal disharmony, as quoted in "People opposed to 'Surya Namaskar' should lock themselves in 'dark room': Yogi Adityanath" http://zeenews.india.com/news/india/people-opposed-to-surya-namaskar-should-lock-themselves-in-dark-room-yogi-adityanath_1610111.html, Zee News (9 June 2015).

Mata Amritanandamayi photo
Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi photo
Neal Stephenson photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Charles Kingsley photo
Jean Genet photo
Diogenes Laërtius photo

“Diogenes lighted a candle in the daytime, and went round saying, "I am looking for a man."”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Diogenes, 6.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 6: The Cynics

Charles Darwin photo

“I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

volume I, chapter VIII: "Religion", page 313 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=331&itemID=F1452.1&viewtype=image
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887)

Hayley Jensen photo
Neil Peart photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Hugh Blair photo
Hariprasad Chaurasia photo
Bryant Jennings photo
Kate Bush photo

“Emma's come down.
She's stopped the light
Shining out of her eyes.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Lionheart (1978)

Steven Erikson photo
John Banville photo
Richard Henry Dana Jr. photo