“Find me in the shadows, and pull the shades down until tomorrow.”
Selena Gomez (1992) American singer and actress
A collection of quotes on the topic of shade, light, lighting, likeness.
“Find me in the shadows, and pull the shades down until tomorrow.”
Selena Gomez (1992) American singer and actress
“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)
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
“I looked, and I beheld the shade of him
Who made through cowardice the great refusal.”
Dante Alighieri book Inferno
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 book Inferno
Canto III, lines 85–87 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno
“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
“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)
“Have you noticed how many people who walk in the shade curse the Sun?”
Idries Shah book Reflections
Source: Reflections
Kevyn Aucoin (1962–2002) American make-up artist and photographer
“The world isn't black and white, Annie, it's shades of grey.”
Tami Hoag (1959) American writer
Source: A Thin Dark Line
Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer
Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
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 (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), IX The Practice of Painting
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2004, Democratic National Convention speech (July 2004)
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), II Linear Perspective
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), III Six books on Light and Shade
“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
Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter
remark by Monet – between 1900 and 1920 – on his 'Water lilies' paintings; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, pp. 131-132
1900 - 1920
Aaliyah (1979–2001) American singer, actress and model
As quoted in Aaliyah's Vibe cover story: "What Lies Beneath"
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 (1983–2011) English singer and songwriter
Tears Dry On Their Own
Song lyrics, Back To Black (2006)
“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 (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada
Christmas Through Your Eyes
2007, 2008
Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), III Six books on Light and Shade
John Henry Newman (1801–1890) English cleric and cardinal
Sermon 20 http://www.newmanreader.org/works/subjects/sermon20.html (1834).
Charles Portis book True Grit
Source: True Grit (1968), Chapter 5, p. 94 : 'Rooster Cogburn' to 'LaBoeuf'
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 (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher
Socrates, p. 107. Ellipsis in original.
Eupalinos ou l'architecte (1921)
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2017, Farewell Address (January 2017)
“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 (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), IX The Practice of Painting
Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter
Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 148, in: 'What he told me – I. The motif'
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.
Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist
1790s, Discourse to the Theophilanthropists (1798)
Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer
Eight or Nine Wise Words About Letter-Writing (1890)
Rupert Brooke (1887–1915) British poet
Sonnet http://books.google.com/books?id=SDgOAQAAMAAJ&q="Oh+Death+will+find+me+long+before+I+tire+Of+watching+you"&pg=PA47#v=onepage (1908-1910)
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 (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.
“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 (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 book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Variant: It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning.
Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
“But the sky was never quite the same shade of blue again.”
Anne Rice book The Vampire Lestat
Source: The Vampire Lestat
Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer
Source: Tempt Me at Twilight
Glen Cook book Shadows Linger
Source: Shadows Linger (1984), Chapter 33, “Juniper: The Encounter” (p. 367)
“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.
“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
Thomas Gilovich (1954) American psychologist
Source: How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
Source: Walden, or Life in the Woods
Sarah E. Wright (1929–2009) American writer
Source: This Child's Gonna Live
L.J. Smith (1965) American author
Source: Night World, No. 1
“The owl of Minerva takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering.”
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Elements of the Philosophy of Right
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.
“Like most hearts, it was complicated, shaded with dark and dappled with light.”
Kate DiCamillo (1964) American children's writer
“Angel and devil,” he said. “One is but a shade of the other.”
Danielle Trussoni book Angelology
Source: Angelology
Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last
Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last
“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
“All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.”
Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina
Variant: All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.
Source: Anna Karenina
“Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?”
Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice
Source: Pride and Prejudice
Victor Hugo book Les Misérables
Variant: A doctor’s door should never be closed, a priest's door should always be open.
Source: Les Misérables
Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer
Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer
Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder
“She'd wear shades of lipstick you'd expect to see around the base of a penis.”
Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters
Source: Invisible Monsters
“To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment.”
Jane Austen book Mansfield Park
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."
“and when they pulled her from the wreck, you know, she still had on her shades”
Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor