Quotes about shade

A collection of quotes on the topic of shade, light, lighting, likeness.

Quotes about shade

Selena Gomez photo
Dmitri Shostakovich photo
William Cowper photo
Robert Browning photo
Franco Battiato photo

“What glorious light, wisdom without bound, wrapt in eternal solitary shade.”

Franco Battiato (1945) Italian singer-songwriter, composer, and filmmaker

Source: da I'm that)

Peter Singer photo
G. H. Hardy photo

“Mathematicians have constructed a very large number of different systems of geometry, Euclidean or non-Euclidean, of one, two, three, or any number of dimensions. All these systems are of complete and equal validity. They embody the results of mathematicians' observations of their reality, a reality far more intense and far more rigid than the dubious and elusive reality of physics. The old-fashioned geometry of Euclid, the entertaining seven-point geometry of Veblen, the space-times of Minkowski and Einstein, are all absolutely and equally real. …There may be three dimensions in this room and five next door. As a professional mathematician, I have no idea; I can only ask some competent physicist to instruct me in the facts.
The function of a mathematician, then, is simply to observe the facts about his own intricate system of reality, that astonishingly beautiful complex of logical relations which forms the subject-matter of his science, as if he were an explorer looking at a distant range of mountains, and to record the results of his observations in a series of maps, each of which is a branch of pure mathematics. …Among them there perhaps none quite so fascinating, with quite the astonishing contrasts of sharp outline and shade, as that which constitutes the theory of numbers.”

G. H. Hardy (1877–1947) British mathematician

"The Theory of Numbers," Nature (Sep 16, 1922) Vol. 110 https://books.google.com/books?id=1bMzAQAAMAAJ p. 381

Dante Alighieri photo

“I looked, and I beheld the shade of him
Who made through cowardice the great refusal.”

Canto III, lines 59–60 (tr. Longfellow).
The decision of Pope Celestine V to abdicate the Papacy and allow Dante's enemy, Pope Boniface VIII, to gain power.
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Dante Alighieri photo

“Hope nevermore to look upon the heavens;
I come to lead you to the other shore,
To the eternal shades in heat and frost.”

Canto III, lines 85–87 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Leonidas I photo

“Good. Then we'll have our battle in the shade.”

Leonidas I king of Sparta

It is said that on the eve of battle, he was told by a native of Trachis that the Persian archers were so numerous that, when they fired their volleys the mass of arrows blocked out the sun. Dienekes, however, quite undaunted by this prospect, remarked with a laugh, "Good. Then we'll have our battle in the shade."

Herodotus, in Histories; the remarks of Dienekes have sometimes become attributed to Leonidas.
Misattributed

Virgil photo

“I have lived
and journeyed through the course assigned by fortune.
And now my Shade will pass, illustrious,
beneath the earth.”

Vixi, et, quem dederat cursum Fortuna, peregi; Et nunc magna mei sub terras ibit Imago.

Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book IV, Lines 653–654 (tr. Allen Mandelbaum)

Stéphane Mallarmé photo

“The world isn't black and white, Annie, it's shades of grey.”

Tami Hoag (1959) American writer

Source: A Thin Dark Line

Frida Kahlo photo
Jim Davis photo
Robert Jordan photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Jeffrey Archer photo
Otto Dix photo

“After Herberholz had shown me all sorts of techniques, I suddenly got very interested in etching. I had a lot to say, I had a subject. Wash off the acid, put on the aquatint: a wonderful technique that you can use to get as many different shades and tones as you want. The 'doing' aspect of art becomes tremendously interesting when you start doing etchings; you get to be a real alchemist.”

Otto Dix (1891–1969) German painter and printmaker

Otto Dix quoted by Eva Karcher, in Otto Dix, New York: Crown Publishers, 1987, p. 22; as cited by Roy Forward, in 'Education resource material: beauty, truth and goodness in Dix's War' https://nga.gov.au/dix/edu.pdf, p. 10

Leonardo Da Vinci photo

“Many are they who have a taste and love for drawing, but no talent; and this will be discernible in boys who are not diligent and never finish their drawings with shading.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), IX The Practice of Painting

Barack Obama photo
Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Richard Strauss photo

“If you think that the brass is not blowing hard enough, tone it down another shade or two.”

Richard Strauss (1864–1949) German composer and orchestra director

Recollections and Reflections

Yeghishe Charents photo
Claude Monet photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Aaliyah photo
Ronald Reagan photo

“If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals — if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is. Now, I can’t say that I will agree with all the things that the present group who call themselves Libertarians in the sense of a party say, because I think that like in any political movement there are shades, and there are libertarians who are almost over at the point of wanting no government at all or anarchy. I believe there are legitimate government functions. There is a legitimate need in an orderly society for some government to maintain freedom or we will have tyranny by individuals. The strongest man on the block will run the neighborhood. We have government to ensure that we don’t each one of us have to carry a club to defend ourselves. But again, I stand on my statement that I think that libertarianism and conservatism are traveling the same path.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Interview published in Reason (1 July 1975)
1970s

Amy Winehouse photo

“He walks away,
The sun goes down,
He takes the day but I'm grown
And in your way,
In this blue shade
My tears dry on their own.”

Amy Winehouse (1983–2011) English singer and songwriter

Tears Dry On Their Own
Song lyrics, Back To Black (2006)

Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon photo

“Thy soft-breathed hopes with magic might
Have chased from my soul the shades of night”

Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon (1829–1879) Canadian writer

from The Parting Soul and her Guardian Angel

Gloria Estefan photo
Leonardo Da Vinci photo

“The eye can best distinguish the forms of objects when it is placed between the shaded and the illuminated parts.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

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

Virginia Woolf photo
Edgar Allan Poe photo
John Henry Newman photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo

“Inconceivable events and conditions form a class apart from all other story elements, and cannot be made convincing by any mere process of casual narration. They have the handicap of incredibility to overcome; and this can be accomplished only through a careful realism in every other phase of the story, plus a gradual atmospheric or emotional build-up of the utmost subtlety. The emphasis, too, must be kept right—hovering always over the wonder of the central abnormality itself. It must be remembered that any violation of what we know as natural law is in itself a far more tremendous thing than any other event or feeling which could possibly affect a human being. Therefore in a story dealing with such a thing we cannot expect to create any sense of life or illusion of reality if we treat the wonder casually and have the characters moving about under ordinary motivations. The characters, though they must be natural, should be subordinated to the central marvel around which they are grouped. The true "hero" of a marvel tale is not any human being, but simply a set of phenomena. Over and above everything else should tower the stark, outrageous monstrousness of the one chosen departure from Nature. The characters should react to it as real people would react to such a thing if it were suddenly to confront them in daily life; displaying the almost soul-shattering amazement which anyone would naturally display instead of the mild, tame, quickly-passed-over emotions prescribed by cheap popular convention. Even when the wonder is one to which the characters are assumed to be used, the sense of awe, marvel, and strangeness which the reader would feel in the presence of such a thing must somehow be suggested by the author.... Atmosphere, not action, is the thing to cultivate in the wonder story. We cannot put stress on the bare events, since the unnatural extravagance of these events makes them sound hollow and absurd when thrown into too high relief. Such events, even when theoretically possible or conceivable in the future, have no counterpart or basis in existing life and human experience, hence can never form the groundwork of an adult tale. All that a marvel story can ever be, in a serious way, is a vivid picture of a certain type of human mood. The moment it tries to be anything else it becomes cheap, puerile, and unconvincing. Therefore a fantastic author should see that his prime emphasis goes into subtle suggestion—the imperceptible hints and touches of selective and associative detail which express shadings of moods and build up a vague illusion of the strange reality of the unreal—instead of into bald catalogues of incredible happenings which can have no substance or meaning apart from a sustaining cloud of colour and mood-symbolism. A serious adult story must be true to something in life. Since marvel tales cannot be true to the events of life, they must shift their emphasis toward something to which they can be true; namely, certain wistful or restless moods of the human spirit, wherein it seeks to weave gossamer ladders of escape from the galling tyranny of time, space, and natural laws.”

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

"Some Notes on Interplanetary Fiction", Californian 3, No. 3 (Winter 1935): 39-42. Published in Collected Essays, Volume 2: Literary Criticism edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 178
Non-Fiction

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)

Barack Obama photo
Lil Wayne photo

“Choppa knock yo face off, black shades Ray Charles”

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

Cashed Out
Official Mix tapes, Dedication 4 (2012)

Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Paul Cézanne photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo

“Now the trickiest catch in the negro problem is the fact that it is really twofold. The black is vastly inferior. There can be no question of this among contemporary and unsentimental biologists—eminent Europeans for whom the prejudice-problem does not exist. But, it is also a fact that there would be a very grave and very legitimate problem even if the negro were the white man's equal. For the simple fact is, that two widely dissimilar races, whether equal or not, cannot peaceably coexist in the same territory until they are either uniformly mongrelised or cast in folkways of permanent and traditional personal aloofness. No normal being feels at ease amidst a population having vast elements radically different from himself in physical aspect and emotional responses. A normal Yankee feels like a fish out of water in a crowd of cultivated Japanese, even though they may be his mental and aesthetic superiors; and the normal Jap feels the same way in a crowd of Yankees. This, of course, implies permanent association. We can all visit exotic scenes and like it—and when we are young and unsophisticated we usually think we might continue to like it as a regular thing. But as years pass, the need of old things and usual influences—home faces and home voices—grows stronger and stronger; and we come to see that mongrelism won't work. We require the environing influence of a set of ways and physical types like our own, and will sacrifice anything to get them. Nothing means anything, in the end, except with reference to that continuous immediate fabric of appearances and experiences of which one was originally part; and if we find ourselves ingulphed by alien and clashing influences, we instinctively fight against them in pursuit of the dominant freeman's average quota of legitimate contentment.... All that any living man normally wants—and all that any man worth calling such will stand for—is as stable and pure a perpetuation as possible of the set of forms and appearances to which his value-perceptions are, from the circumstances of moulding, instinctively attuned. That is all there is to life—the preservation of a framework which will render the experience of the individual apparently relevant and significant, and therefore reasonably satisfying. Here we have the normal phenomenon of race-prejudice in a nutshell—the legitimate fight of every virile personality to live in a world where life shall seem to mean something.... Just how the black and his tan penumbra can ultimately be adjusted to the American fabric, yet remains to be seen. It is possible that the economic dictatorship of the future can work out a diplomatic plan of separate allocation whereby the blacks may follow a self-contained life of their own, avoiding the keenest hardships of inferiority through a reduced number of points of contact with the whites... No one wishes them any intrinsic harm, and all would rejoice if a way were found to ameliorate such difficulties as they have without imperilling the structure of the dominant fabric. It is a fact, however, that sentimentalists exaggerate the woes of the average negro. Millions of them would be perfectly content with servile status if good physical treatment and amusement could be assured them, and they may yet form a well-managed agricultural peasantry. The real problem is the quadroon and octoroon—and still lighter shades. Theirs is a sorry tragedy, but they will have to find a special place. What we can do is to discourage the increase of their numbers by placing the highest possible penalties on miscegenation, and arousing as much public sentiment as possible against lax customs and attitudes—especially in the inland South—at present favouring the melancholy and disgusting phenomenon. All told, I think the modern American is pretty well on his guard, at last, against racial and cultural mongrelism. There will be much deterioration, but the Nordic has a fighting chance of coming out on top in the end.”

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

Letter to James F. Morton (January 1931), in Selected Letters III, 1929-1931 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 253
Non-Fiction, Letters, to James Ferdinand Morton, Jr.

Edgar Allan Poe photo
Thomas Paine photo
Lewis Carroll photo
Rupert Brooke photo
Barack Obama photo

“That’s why our military can look the way it does — every shade of humanity, forged into common service. That’s why anyone who threatens our values, whether fascists or communists or jihadists or homegrown demagogues, will always fail in the end.”

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

2016, DNC Address (July 2016)
Context: America has changed over the years. But these values that my grandparents taught me — they haven’t gone anywhere. They’re as strong as ever, still cherished by people of every party, every race, every faith. They live on in each of us. What makes us American, what makes us patriots is what’s in here. That’s what matters. … And that’s why we can take the food and music and holidays and styles of other countries, and blend it into something uniquely our own. That’s why we can attract strivers and entrepreneurs from around the globe to build new factories and create new industries here. That’s why our military can look the way it does — every shade of humanity, forged into common service. That’s why anyone who threatens our values, whether fascists or communists or jihadists or homegrown demagogues, will always fail in the end.
That is America. That is America. Those bonds of affection; that common creed. We don’t fear the future; we shape it. We embrace it, as one people, stronger together than we are on our own.

Andrew Marvell photo

“The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.”

Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) English metaphysical poet and politician

The Garden (1650-1652)
Context: Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less
Withdraws into its happiness;
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.

Leonardo Da Vinci photo

“Light is the chaser away of darkness. Shade is the obstruction of light.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), III Six books on Light and Shade
Context: Light is the chaser away of darkness. Shade is the obstruction of light. Primary light is that which falls on objects and causes light and shade. And derived lights are those portions of a body which are illuminated by the primary light. A primary shadow is that side of a body on which the light cannot fall.

George Washington photo

“Every day the increasing weight of years admonishes me more and more, that the shade of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcome.”

George Washington (1732–1799) first President of the United States

1790s, Farewell Address (1796)
Context: Every day the increasing weight of years admonishes me more and more, that the shade of retirement is as necessary to me as it will be welcome. Satisfied, that, if any circumstances have given peculiar value to my services, they were temporary, I have the consolation to believe, that, while choice and prudence invite me to quit the political scene, patriotism does not forbid it.

Maya Angelou photo

“Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.”

Variant: It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning.
Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Glen Cook photo
O. Henry photo

“Pull up the shades so I can see New York. I don't want to go home in the dark.”

O. Henry (1862–1910) American short story writer

Last words, quoting a 1907 song by Harry Williams. (5 June 1910) Quoted in O. Henry Biography, ch. 9, Charles Alphonso Smith (1916).
Variant: Turn up the lights — I don't want to go home in the dark.

Warren Buffett photo

“Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Statement of January 1991, as quoted in Of Permanent Value: The Story of Warren Buffett (2007) by Andrew Kilpatrick

Wally Lamb photo
Thomas Gilovich photo
Henry David Thoreau photo
Khaled Hosseini photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo

“The owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering.”

Preface xxx
Variant: When philosophy paints its grey on grey, then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's grey on grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.
As translated by T. M. Knox, (1952) <!-- p. 13 -->
Source: Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820/1821)
Context: Only one word more concerning the desire to teach the world what it ought to be. For such a purpose philosophy at least always comes too late. Philosophy, as the thought of the world, does not appear until reality has completed its formative process, and made itself ready. History thus corroborates the teaching of the conception that only in the maturity of reality does the ideal appear as counterpart to the real, apprehends the real world in its substance, and shapes it into an intellectual kingdom. When philosophy paints its grey in grey, one form of life has become old, and by means of grey it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known. The owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering.

Khaled Hosseini photo
Mary E. Pearson photo
Brian Andreas photo
Juliet Marillier photo
Haruki Murakami photo
James Patterson photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Rudyard Kipling photo

“Gardens are not made by singing 'Oh, how beautiful!' and sitting in the shade.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Source: Complete Verse

Leo Tolstoy photo

“All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.”

Variant: All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.
Source: Anna Karenina

Jane Austen photo

“Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?”

Source: Pride and Prejudice

John Steinbeck photo
Wendell Berry photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Victor Hugo photo

“This is the shade of meaning: the door of a physician should never be closed; the door of a priest should always be open.”

Variant: A doctor’s door should never be closed, a priest's door should always be open.
Source: Les Misérables

James Patterson photo
Evelyn Waugh photo
Chuck Palahniuk photo
Suzanne Collins photo
Jane Austen photo

“To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.”

Mansfield Park (1814)
Works, Mansfiled Park
Context: "I shall soon be rested," said Fanny; "to sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure, is the most perfect refreshment."

Margaret Atwood photo