Quotes about lighting
page 5

Leonardo Da Vinci photo

“Observe the light and consider its beauty. Blink your eye and look at it. That which you see was not there at first, and that which was there is there no more.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), I Philosophy

Matthew Perry (actor) photo
Abraham Lincoln photo
Menander photo

“The truth sometimes not sought for comes forth to the light.”

Menander (-342–-291 BC) Athenian playwright of New Comedy

The Girl Who Gets Flogged, fragment 422.

Barack Obama photo
Niels Bohr photo
Isaac Newton photo
Françoise Sagan photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Utah Phillips photo
Eckhart Tolle photo
Emile Zola photo
Adelaide Anne Procter photo

“Be strong to hope, O Heart!
Though day is bright,
The stars can only shine
In the dark night.
Be strong, O Heart of mine,
Look towards the light!”

Adelaide Anne Procter (1825–1864) English poet and songwriter

"Be Strong".
Legends and Lyrics: A Book of Verses (1858)

Isaac Newton photo

“I keep the subject constantly before me, and wait 'till the first dawnings open slowly, by little and little, into a full and clear light.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Reply upon being asked how he made his discoveries, as quoted in " Biographia Britannica: Or the Lives of the Most Eminent Persons who Have Flourished in Great Britain from the Earliest Ages Down to the Present Times, Volume 5 http://books.google.es/books?id=rYhDAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA3241&dq=I+keep+the+subject+constantly+before+me+and+wait+till+the+first+dawnings+open+little+by+little+into+the+full+light.&hl=es&sa=X&ei=ZBsMUpiLDpPU8wTEkYGAAQ&ved=0CEMQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=I%20keep%20the%20subject%20constantly%20before%20me%20and%20wait%20till%20the%20first%20dawnings%20open%20little%20by%20little%20into%20the%20full%20light.&f=false", by W. Innys, (1760), p. 3241.

Jean De La Fontaine photo

“For thee I'll trace in verses which I write
Some sketches, paintings which indeed are light,
And if the prize of pleasing thee I do not bear away,
At least, the honour I shall have of having tried I say.”

Jean De La Fontaine (1621–1695) French poet, fabulist and writer.

Je vais t'entretenir de moindres aventures,
Te tracer en ces vers de légères peintures;
Et si de t'agréer je n'emporte le prix,
J'aurai du moins d'honneur de l'avoir entrepris.
Book I (1668), Dedication "To Monseigneur the Dauphin".
Fables (1668–1679)

Michael Collins (Irish leader) photo
André Maurois photo
Italo Calvino photo

“And in that moment we all thought of the space that her round arms would occupy moving backward and forward with the rolling pin over the dough, her bosom leaning over the great mound of flour and eggs, […] and we thought of the space the flour would occupy, and the wheat for the flour, and the fields to raise the wheat, and the mountains from which the water would flow to irrigate the fields; […] of the space it would take for the Sun to arrive with its rays, to ripen the wheat; of the space for the Sun to condense from the clouds of stellar gases and burn; of the quantities of stars and galaxies and galactic masses in flight through space which would be needed to hold suspended every galaxy, every nebula, every sun, every planet, and at the same time we thought of it, this space was inevitably being formed, at the same time that Mrs. Ph(i)Nk0 was uttering those words: "… ah, what noodles, boys!" the point that contained her and all of us was expanding in a halo of distance in light-years and light-centuries and billions of light-millennia, and we were being hurled to the four corners of the universe, […] and she, dissolved into I don't know what kind of energy-light-heat, she, Mrs. Ph(i)Nk0, she who in the midst of our closed, petty world had been capable of a generous impulse, "Boys, the noodles I would make for you!," a true outburst of general love, initiating at the same moment the concept of space and, properly speaking, space itself, and time, and universal gravitation, and the gravitating universe, making possible billions and billions of suns, and of planets, and fields of wheat, and Mrs. Ph(i)Nk0s, scattered through the continents of the planets, kneading with floury, oil-shiny, generous arms, and she lost at that very moment, and we, mourning her loss.”

Pages 46-47, "All at One Point".
Cosmicomics (1965)

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky photo

“Man will not always stay on Earth; the pursuit of light and space will lead him to penetrate the bounds of the atmosphere, timidly at first, but in the end to conquer the whole of solar space.”

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935) Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory

Original: (ru) Человечество не останется вечно на земле, но в погоне за светом и пространством сначала робко проникнет за пределы атмосферы, а затем завоюет себе все околосолнечное пространство
Source: from Воздухоплавание в наше время // Современный мир. — 1912. — № 7. — С. 260. (and His epitaph)
Source: Mentioned in Beyond the Planet Earth, by K. Tsiolkovsky (1920), translated by K. Syers (1960), reviewed by M. G. Whillans, Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Vol. 55 (1961), p. 144 http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/JRASC/0055//0000144.000.html

Karl Kraus photo

“Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Henri Barbusse photo
Charles Spurgeon photo

“I would sooner walk in the dark, and hold hard to a promise of my God, than trust in the light of the brightest day that ever dawned.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 601.

Leonardo Da Vinci photo

“When the sun appears which dispels darkness in general, you put out the light which dispelled it for you in particular for your need and convenience.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

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

Henry Miller photo
John Taylor (Latter Day Saints) photo
Isaac Newton photo
Shigeru Miyamoto photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Theodor W. Adorno photo
Suman Pokhrel photo

“Lampposts look
in the glow of their defeated light
robbed by the fog
but cannot tell
if the streets
lying by stretching limbs in courtyards
are sleeping face downwards or supine.”

Suman Pokhrel (1967) Nepali poet, lyricist, playwright, translator and artist

<span class="plainlinks"> In Midnight Street http://www.prachyareview.com/poems-by-suman-pokhrel/</span>
From Poetry

William Shakespeare photo
Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Joseph Goebbels photo

“We shall be quiet and wait till a star falls from heaven. Can you see, how above one light appears after the other and they together form a dome! We sit in silence and fold our hands in prayer. We shall be quiet and wait until a star falls from heaven.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Original: (de) Wir wollen stille sein und warten, bis ein Stern vom Himmel fällt. Siehst du, wie oben Licht an Licht sich zündet zu einem Dom! Wir sitzen im Schweigen und falten die Hände zum Gebet. Wir wollen stille sein und warten bis ein Stern vom Himmel fällt.
Source: Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Wallace Stevens photo

“An unaffected man in a negative light
Could not have borne his labor nor have died
Sighing that he should leave the banjo’s twang.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Change

Charles Spurgeon photo
Emil M. Cioran photo
A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada photo
José Saramago photo

“The man changed position, turned his back on the wardrobe blocking the door and let his right arm slide down toward the side on which the dog is lying. A minute later, he was awake. He was thirsty. He turned on his bedside light, got up, shuffled his feet into the slippers which were, as always, providing a pillow for the dog's head, and went into the kitchen. Death followed him. The man filled a glass with water and drank it. At this point, the dog appeared, slaked his thirst in the water-dish next to the back door and then looked up at his master. I suppose you want to go out, said the cellist. He opened the door and waited until the animal came back. A little water remained in his glass. Death looked at it and made an effort to imagine what it must be like to feel thirsty, but failed. She would have been equally incapable of imagining it when she'd had to make people die of thirst in the desert, but at the time she hadn't even tried. The dog returned, wagging his tail. Let's go back to sleep, said the man. They went into the bedroom again, the dog turned around twice, then curled up into a ball. The man drew the sheet up to his neck, coughed twice and soon afterward was asleep again. Sitting in her corner, death was watching. Much later, the dog got up from the carpet and jumped onto the sofa. For the first time in her life, death knew what it felt like to have a dog on her lap.”

Source: Death with Interruptions (2005), p. 172

“The light microscope opened the first gate to microcosm. The electron microscope opened the second gate to microcosm. What will we find opening the third gate?”

Ernst Ruska (1906–1988) German physicist

Das Lichtmikroskop öffnete das erste Tor zum Mikrokosmos. Das Elektronenmikroskop öffnete das zweite Tor zum Mikrokosmos. Was werden wir finden wenn wir das dritte Tor öffnen?
as quoted by Nan Yao, director of the Imaging and Analysis Center at the Princeton Materials Institute, in the Princeton Weekly Bulletin, February 26, 2001, Vol. 90, No. 18 http://www.princeton.edu/~iac/pwb2_26b.html.

Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Aurelius Augustinus photo

“It is no advantage to be near the light if the eyes are closed.”

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 607

Gregor Mendel photo

“Jesus appeared to the disciples after the resurrection in various forms. He appeared to Mary Magdalene so that they might take him for a gardener. Very ingeniously these manifestation of Jesus is to our minds difficult to penetrate. (He appears) as a gardener. The gardener plants seedlings in prepared soil. The soil must exert a physical and chemical influence so that the seed of the plant can grow. Yet this is not sufficient. The warmth and light of the sun must be added, together with rain, in order that growth may result. The seed of supernatural life, of sanctifying grace, cleanses from sin, so preparing the soul of man, and man must seek to preserve this life by his good works. He still needs the supernatural food, the body of the Lord, which received continually, develops and brings to completion of the life. So natural and supernatural must unite to the realization of the holiness to the people. Man must contribute his minimum work of toil, and God gives the growth. Truly, the seed, the talent, the grace of God is there, and man has simply to work, take the seeds to bring them to the bankers. So that we "may have life, and abundantly."”

Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) Silesian scientist and Augustinian friar

Mendel makes several allusions to biblical verses, including John 20:15, Matthew 25:26 and John 10:10.
Sermon on Easter
Original: Jesus erschien den Jüngern nach der Auferstehung in verschiedener Gestalt. Der Maria Magdalena erschien er so, daß sie ihn für einen Gärtner halten mochte. Sehr sinnreich sind diese Erscheinungen Jesu und unser Verstand vermag sie schwer zu durchdringen. (Er erscheint) als Gärtner. Dieser pflanzt den Samen in den zubereiteten Boden. Das Erdreich muss physikalisch-chemisch Einwirkung ausüben, damit der Same aufgeht. Doch reicht das nicht hin, es muß noch Sonnenwärme und Licht hinzukommen nebst Regen, damit das Gedeihen zustandekommt. Das übernatürliche Leben in seinem Keim, der heiligmachenden Gnade wird in die von der Sünde gereinigte, also vorbereitete Seele des Menschen hineingesenkt und es muß der Mensch durch seine guten Werke dieses Leben zu erhalten suchen. Es muss noch die übernatürliche Nahrung dazukommen, der Leib des Herrn, der das Leben weiter erhält, entwickelt und zur Vollendung bringt. So muss Natur und Übernatur sich vereinigen, um das Zustandekommen der Heiligkeit des Menschen. Der Mensch muß sein Scherflein Arbeit hinzugeben, und Gott gibt das Gedeihen. Es ist wahr, den Samen, das Talent, die Gnade gibt der liebe Gott, und der Mensch hat bloß die Arbeit, den Samen aufzunehmen, das Geld zu Wechslern zu tragen. Damit wir »das Leben haben und im Überflusse haben.

Robert Schumann photo

“To send light into the depths of the human heart -- this is the artist's calling!”

Robert Schumann (1810–1856) German composer, aesthete and influential music critic

Quotes in: John Sullivan Dwight (1856) Dwight's Journal of Music, Vol. 7-8, p. 12
Original: Licht senden in die Tiefen des menschlichen Herzens -- des Künstlers Beruf!; Quoted in E.W. Fritzsch (1884) Musikalisches Wochenblatt, Volume 15

Isaac Newton photo
Voltaire photo

“But that a camel-merchant should stir up insurrection in his village; that in league with some miserable followers he persuades them that he talks with the angel Gabriel; that he boasts of having been carried to heaven, where he received in part this unintelligible book, each page of which makes common sense shudder; that, to pay homage to this book, he delivers his country to iron and flame; that he cuts the throats of fathers and kidnaps daughters; that he gives to the defeated the choice of his religion or death: this is assuredly nothing any man can excuse, at least if he was not born a Turk, or if superstition has not extinguished all natural light in him.”

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

Mais qu’un marchand de chameaux excite une sédition dans sa bourgade; qu’associé à quelques malheureux coracites il leur persuade qu’il s’entretient avec l’ange Gabriel; qu’il se vante d’avoir été ravi au ciel, et d’y avoir reçu une partie de ce livre inintelligible qui fait frémir le sens commun à chaque page; que, pour faire respecter ce livre, il porte dans sa patrie le fer et la flamme; qu’il égorge les pères, qu’il ravisse les filles, qu’il donne aux vaincus le choix de sa religion ou de la mort, c’est assurément ce que nul homme ne peut excuser, à moins qu’il ne soit né Turc, et que la superstition n’étouffe en lui toute lumière naturelle.
Referring to Muhammad, in a letter to Frederick II of Prussia (December 1740), published in Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, Vol. 7 (1869), edited by Georges Avenel, p. 105
Citas

Robert Browning photo
Isaac Newton photo
Stefan Zweig photo
George Linley photo

“Tho' lost to sight, to memory dear
Thou ever wilt remain;
One only hope my heart can cheer,—
The hope to meet again.

Oh, fondly on the past I dwell,
And oft recall those hours
When, wandering down the shady dell,
We gathered the wild-flowers.

Yes, life then seemed one pure delight,
Tho' now each spot looks drear;
Yet tho' thy smile be lost to sight,
To memory thou art dear.

Oft in the tranquil hour of night,
When stars illume the sky,
I gaze upon each orb of light,
And wish that thou wert by.

I think upon that happy time,
That time so fondly loved,
When last we heard the sweet bells chime,
As thro' the fields we roved.”

George Linley (1798–1865) British writer

Song, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). This song was written and composed by Linley for Mr. Augustus Braham, and sung by him. It is not known when it was written,—probably about 1830. Another song, entitled "Though lost to Sight, to Memory dear," was published in London in 1880, purporting to have been written by Ruthven Jenkyns in 1703 and published in the "Magazine for Mariners". That magazine, however, never existed, and the composer of the music acknowledged, in a private letter, that he copied the words from an American newspaper. The reputed author, Ruthven Jenkyns, was living, under another name, in California in 1882.

Emil M. Cioran photo
Lewis Carroll photo
Elon Musk photo

“I think we have a duty to maintain the light of consciousness to make sure it continues into the future.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

[50-innovation-quotes-from-spacex-founder-elon-musk, https://www.inc.com/larry-kim/50-innovation-amp;-success-quotes-from-spacex-founder-elon-musk.html?mc_cid=9410b2edd6&mc_eid=6e846ba3e0]

E.M. Forster photo
Henrietta Swan Leavitt photo

“Since the [Cepheid] variables are probably at nearly the same distance from the Earth, their periods are apparently associated with their actual emission of light, as determined by their mass, density, and surface brightness.”

Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868–1921) astronomer

Periods of 25 Variable Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1912HarCi.173....1L (1912)

Tennessee Williams photo

“Shakespeare probably wrote a poem on that light bill, Mrs. Wingfield.”

Jim, Scene Seven
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

John Henry Newman photo
Anthony de Mello photo

“The sun and its light, the ocean and the wave, the singer and his song — not one. Not two.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Identity
One Minute Wisdom (1989)

Isaac Newton photo
Nanak photo
John Locke photo
Omar Bradley photo

“It is time that we steered by the stars, not by the lights of each passing ship.”

Omar Bradley (1893–1981) United States Army field commander during World War II

Statement (31 May 1948), quoted in An Inconvenient Truth : The Planetary Emergency Of Global Warming And What We Can Do About It (2006) by Al Gore

Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Nikola Tesla photo
Paul Valéry photo

“What grace of light, what pure toil goes to form
The manifold diamond of the elusive foam!
What peace I feel begotten at that source!
When sunlight rests upon a profound sea,
Time's air is sparkling, dream is certainty —
Pure artifice both of an eternal Cause.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Quel pur travail de fins éclairs consume
Maint diamant d'imperceptible écume,
Et quelle paix semble se concevoir!
Quand sur l'abîme un soleil se repose,
Ouvrages purs d'une éternelle cause,
Le temps scintille et le songe est savoir.
As translated by by C. Day Lewis
Charmes ou poèmes (1922)

Emile Zola photo
Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Caspar David Friedrich photo
Samuel Francis Smith photo

“Our fathers’ God, to thee,
Author of liberty,
To thee I sing;
Long may our land be bright
With freedom’s holy light;
Protect us by thy might,
Great God, our King!”

Samuel Francis Smith (1808–1895) Protestant Christian Minister Patriotic hymn writer

America, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Francesco Maria Grimaldi photo

“Light propagates and spreads not only directly, through refraction, and reflection, but also by a fourth mode, diffraction.”
Lumen propagatur seu diffunditur non solum Directe, Refracte, ac Reflexe, sed etiam alio quodam quarto modo, Diffracte.

Francesco Maria Grimaldi (1618–1663) Italian physicist

Physico-mathesis de lumine, coloribus, et iride, aliisque adnexis libri duo: opus posthumum, published in Bologna (1665), http://books.google.com/books?id=FzYVAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0#PPP27,M1 Proposition I.

Bertrand Russell photo

“One of the funniest examples of these kinds of statistics comes from Evolution: Possible or Impossible by James F. Coppedge [who] cites an article by Ulric Jelinek … which claims that the odds are 1 in 10^243 against "two thousand atoms" (the size of one particular protein molecule) ending up in precisely that particular order "by accident." Where did Jelenik get that figure? From Pierre Lecompte du Nouy… who in turn got it from Charles-Eugene Guye, a physicist who died in 1942. Guye had merely calculated the odds of these atoms lining up by accident if "a volume" of atoms the size of the Earth were "shaken at the speed of light." In other words, ignoring all the laws of chemistry, which create preferences for the formation and behavior of molecules, and ignoring that there are millions if not billions of different possible proteins--and of course the result has no bearing on the origin of life, which may have begun from an even simpler protein. This calculation is thus useless for all these reasons, and is typical in that it comes to Coppedge third-hand (and thus to us fourth-hand), and is hugely outdated (it was calculated before 1942, even before the discovery of DNA), and thus fails to account for over half a century of scientific progress.”

Pierre Lecomte du Noüy (1883–1947) French philosopher

Richard Carrier, "Bad Science, Worse Philosophy", Addendum B, http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/addendaB.html#et_al at The Secular Web (Internet Infidels: 2000)
About

Reginald Heber photo

“Before, beside us, and above
The firefly lights his lamp of love.”

Reginald Heber (1783–1826) English clergyman

Tour Through Ceylon; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 273.
Hymns

Benjamin Disraeli photo
Leonardo Da Vinci photo

“The eye which turns from a white object in the light of the sun and goes into a less fully lighted place will see everything as dark.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), I Prolegomena and General Introduction to the Book on Painting

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just photo

“It is time that we labored for the happiness of the people. Legislators who are to bring light and order into the world must pursue their course with inexorable tread, fearless and unswerving as the sun.”

Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (1767–1794) military and political leader

Travaillons enfin pour le bonheur du peuple, et que les legislateurs qui doivent éclairer le monde prennent leur course d'un pied hardi, comme le soleil.
Speech to the National Convention (December 27, 1792). [Source: Oeuvres Complètes de Saint-Just, Vol. 1 (2 vols., Paris, 1908), p. 383]

Thomas Paine photo

“Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country. All nations and ages have been subject to them. Britain has trembled like an ague at the report of a French fleet of flat-bottomed boats; and in the fourteenth [sic (actually the fifteenth)] century the whole English army, after ravaging the kingdom of France, was driven back like men petrified with fear; and this brave exploit was performed by a few broken forces collected and headed by a woman, Joan of Arc. Would that heaven might inspire some Jersey maid to spirit up her countrymen, and save her fair fellow sufferers from ravage and ravishment! Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered. In fact, they have the same effect on secret traitors, which an imaginary apparition would have upon a private murderer. They sift out the hidden thoughts of man, and hold them up in public to the world. Many a disguised Tory has lately shown his head, that shall penitentially solemnize with curses the day on which Howe arrived upon the Delaware.”

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

The Crisis No. I.
1770s, The American Crisis (1776&ndash;1783)

Isaac Newton photo
Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Thomas Paine photo
Alwin Mittasch photo

“Chemistry without catalysis would be a sword without a handle, a light without brilliance, a bell without sound.”

Alwin Mittasch (1869–1953) German chemist

Alwin Mittasch, as cited in: Ralph Edward Oesper, "Alwin Mittasch," Journal of Chemical Education (1948), 25, 532.

Isaac Bashevis Singer photo
Samuel Daniel photo
Arthur Streeton photo
Novalis photo
Leonardo Da Vinci photo

“The variety of colour in objects cannot be discerned at a great distance, excepting in those parts which are directly lighted up by the solar rays.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), VI Perspective of Colour and Aerial Perspective

Isaac Newton photo
Hans Frank photo

“Even in art, there is no light without shadows, and no shadows are cast without some light. Even the shadow of Adolf Hitler is accompanied by some light.”

Hans Frank (1900–1946) German war criminal

To Leon Goldensohn, July 20, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004 - Page 37

Joseph Addison photo
Leonardo Da Vinci photo

“If the Lord — who is the light of all things — vouchsafe to enlighten me, I will treat of Light; wherefore I will divide the present work into 3 Parts… Linear Perspective, The Perspective of Colour, The Perspective of Disappearance.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), I Prolegomena and General Introduction to the Book on Painting

Frank Zappa photo
Bob Marley photo

“Truth is the light
So you never give up the fight.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Final jamming of Live at the Roxy (recorded 1976)
Song lyrics

Smedley D. Butler photo
Fernando Pessoa photo

“Ah, the freshness in the face of leaving a task undone!
To be remiss is to be positively out in the country!
What a refuge it is to be completely unreliable!
I can breathe easier now that the appointments are behind me.
I missed them all, through deliberate negligence,
Having waited for the urge to go, which I knew wouldn't come.
I'm free, and against organised, clothed society.
I'm naked and plunge into the water of my imagination.
It's too late to be at either of the two meetings where I should have been at the same time,
Deliberately at the same time…
No matter, I'll stay here dreaming verses and smiling in italics.
This spectator aspect of life is so amusing!
I can't even light the next cigarette… If it's an action,
It can wait for me, along with the others, in the non-meeting called life.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

Ah a frescura na face de não cumprir um dever!
Faltar é positivamente estar no campo!
Que refúgio o não se poder ter confiança em nós!
Respiro melhor agora que passaram as horas dos encontros,
Faltei a todos, com uma deliberação do desleixo,
Fiquei esperando a vontade de ir para lá, que'eu saberia que não vinha.
Sou livre, contra a sociedade organizada e vestida.
Estou nu, e mergulho na água da minha imaginação.
E tarde para eu estar em qualquer dos dois pontos onde estaria à mesma hora,
Deliberadamente à mesma hora...
Está bem, ficarei aqui sonhando versos e sorrindo em itálico.
É tão engraçada esta parte assistente da vida!
Até não consigo acender o cigarro seguinte... Se é um gesto,
Fique com os outros, que me esperam, no desencontro que é a vida.
Álvaro de Campos (heteronym), "A Frescura" (1929), in Fernando Pessoa & Co: Selected Poems, trans. Richard Zenith (Grove Press, 1998)

Mark Twain photo

“Warm summer sun, shine kindly here;
Warm southern wind, blow softly here;
Green sod above, lie light, lie light —
Good-night, dear heart, good-night, good-night.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Epitaph for his daughter, Olivia Susan Clemens (1896), this is actually a slight adaptation of the poem "Annette" by Robert Richardson; more details are available at "The Poem on Susy Clemens' Headstone" http://www.twainquotes.com/headstone.html
Misattributed

Joseph Joubert photo
Marcel Proust photo
Paul Valéry photo

“What is there more mysterious than clarity?… What more capricious than the way in which light and shade are distributed over hours and over men?”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Socrates, p. 107. Ellipsis in original.
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)