Quotes about shadow

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

Quotes about shadow

“Women are beautiful in the light of the day, but are even more so in the shadows of the night.”

Andrzej Majewski (1966) Polish writer and photographer

Aphorisms. Magnum in Parvo (2000)

Women, Beauty, Light, Night

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Variant: I love you as one loves certain dark things, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
Source: 100 Love Sonnets

love, Good Night, Cute, Romantic

“you are my sun, and if the sun went out, the shadow would die.”

Sidney Sheldon (1917–2007) American writer

Sun

“Find me in the shadows, and pull the shades down until tomorrow.”

Selena Gomez (1992) American singer and actress

“I decided long ago never to walk in anyone's shadow if I fail, if I succeed at least I did as I believe.”

Whitney Houston (1963–2012) American singer, actress, model, and record producer

“Whatever plane our consciousness may be acting in, both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our only realities. As we rise in the scale of development we perceive that during the stages through which we have passed we mistook shadows for realities, and the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached "reality"; but only when we shall have reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by Maya [illusion].”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) occult writer

Idea, Reality, Time

“Friendship is the shadow of the evening, which increases with the setting sun of life.”

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

Life, Friendship, Sun

“Some people seemed to get all sunshine, and some all shadow…”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

People

“If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?”

Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer

Children, Color, Game, Coffee

“Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long.”

T.S. Eliot book The Hollow Men

Variant: Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
Source: The Hollow Men (1925)

Life

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”
— Pablo Neruda
From 100 Love Sonnets
like this quote”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Love, Secret, Quotes, Soul

“In this world, whenever there is light, there are also shadows. As long as the concept of winners exist, there must also be losers. The selfish desire of wanting to maintain peace causes wars and hatred is born to protect love.”

Masashi Kishimoto (1974) Japanese manga artist

Love, War, World, Peace

“Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

This has become attributed to both Walt Whitman and Helen Keller, but has not been found in either of their published works, and variations of the quote are listed as a proverb commonly used in both the US and Canada in A Dictionary of American Proverbs (1992), edited by Wolfgang Mieder, Kelsie B. Harder and Stewart A. Kingsbury.
Misattributed

Inspirational, Attitude, Success, Wise

“There is no doubt; even a rejection can be the shadow of a caress”.”

José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist

“A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows.”

Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) Catholic saint and founder of the Franciscan Order

“I wanted my heart to bloom
and shelter a shadow of love”

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

The Tajmahal and my Love http://www.best-poems.net/love_poems/the_taj_mahal_amp_my_love.html/ From Poetry

Love, Heart

“Millions of shadows walking into nothingness.”

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

Source: da La polvere del branco

“I have seen beyond the bounds of infinity and drawn down daemons from the stars…. I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness….”

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

Death, World, Star, Madness

“Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.”

Wole Soyinka (1934) Nigerian writer

Reality

“I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness.”

H.P. Lovecraft book From Beyond

Source: From Beyond

Death, World, Madness

“We do not need to grieve for the dead. Why should we grieve for them? They are now in a place where there is no more shadow, darkness, loneliness, isolation, or pain. They are home.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Pain, Home, Loneliness, Dead

“For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Source: Selected Poems and Four Plays

Love, Star, Thinking

“If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Thinking, Appearance

“What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared?”

Mikhail Bulgakov (1891–1940) Russian author primarily known for his novel "Master and Margarita"

Evil

“Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings — always darker, emptier, simpler.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Sec. 179
The Gay Science (1882)

Feeling

“Across the silent stream
Where the dream-shadows go,
From the dim blue Hill of Dream
I have heard the west wind blow.”

William Sharp (writer) (1855–1905) Scottish writer

From the Hills of Dream, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Dreams

“Shadow is the diminution alike of light and of darkness, and stands between darkness and light.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

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

Light

“The ways of love are all the same, whether infantile, childish, sexual, tender, sadistic, erotic, or whispered. It's simply a question of understanding, of understanding oneself above all: in bed, in broad daylight, madly or not at all, in shadow, in sunlight, in despair or at table. Otherwise, it's no use. Any of it. And the little time we have left for living, while we're still alive, in other words capable of giving pleasure, and the little time we have left for thinking (or pretending to) in this vast, mindless cacophony that daily life has become, ineluctable, uncontrollable, and truly unacceptable to any civilized person, we must make absolutely certain that we share.”

Françoise Sagan (1935–2004) French writer

Scars on the Soul (1972)

Love, Life, Pleasure, Way

“Shadow in the flame. The flame is not so bright to itself as to those on whom it shines: so too the wise man.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 570
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation

“And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted — nevermore!”

Edgar Allan Poe The Raven

Stanza 18.
The Raven (1844)

Soul

“Into the half light and shadow go I. Within my head”

Jibanananda Das (1899–1954) Bengali poet, writer, novelist and essayist

Light

“Placing your stick at the end of the shadow of the pyramid, you made by the sun's rays two triangles, and so proved that the pyramid [height] was to the stick [height] as the shadow of the pyramid to the shadow of the stick.”

Thales (-624–-547 BC) ancient Greek philosopher and mathematician

W. W. Rouse Ball, A Short Account of the History of Mathematics (1893, 1925)

Sun

“Is your voice “silence”?
When you are not singing a song then I hear your song’s melody clearly!
Your voice is silence. Is your face “darkness”?
When I shut my eyes then I see your face clearly!
Your face is darkness.Is your shadow “light”?
Your shadow is cast on the dark window after the moon has gone down!
Your shadow is light.”

Han Yong-un (1879–1944) Korean writer

"Inverse Proportion", translated by Sammy Solberg

Light, Silence, Singing

“When I had journeyed half of our life's way,
I found myself within a shadowed forest,
for I had lost the path that does not stray.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto I, lines 1–3 (tr. Mandelbaum).
Longfellow's translation:
: Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straight-forward pathway had been lost.
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Life, Way

“The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow of the earth on the moon and I have more faith in the Shadow than in the Church.”

Ferdinand Magellan (1480–1521) Portuguese explorer

This quotation is often found on the internet attributed to Magellan, but never with a source, and no English occurrence prior to its use by Robert Green Ingersoll in his essay "Individuality" http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/individuality.html (1873) has been located. Thus, it it most likely spurious. In that essay Ingersoll states: It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions, — some one who had the grandeur to say his say. I believe it was Magellan who said, "The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church." On the prow of his ship were disobedience, defiance, scorn, and success. Disputed Variant: The Church says that the Earth is Flat, but I know that it is Round. For I have seen its Shadow on the Moon and I have more Faith in a Shadow than in the Church. Source: As quoted in Oxford Academic (25 July 2013) http://oupacademic.tumblr.com/post/56463634957/misquotation-i-have-seen-the-shadow-of-the-earth

Faith

“Creatures of a day! What is a man?
What is he not? A dream of a shadow
Is our mortal being.”

Pindar (-517–-437 BC) Ancient Greek poet

Pythian 8, line 95-8; pages 162-3. (446 BC)
Context: Creatures of a day! What is a man?
What is he not? A dream of a shadow
Is our mortal being. But when there comes to men
A gleam of splendour given of Heaven,
Then rests on them a light of glory
And blesséd are their days.

Dreams

“As humans, it is likely we shall periodically deviate from virtue as temptation continually lurks in the shadows and taunts us to succumb. Most digressions are minor and do not disrupt our lives unless we decide to live two of them.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1988

“We know so little,
so little, almost nothing
and this is only truth,
when and from where?
from the fissure of infinity
and the unreel of time,
lonely splinters
we wander on dreamy travels,
and the truth a flowing shadow
and it call us,
but the call still is not heard,
nor does the caller reveal his face.
and people voicelessly love and die,
because the truth dosen't speak
but dance in the harmony of unity.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: An ocean of souls

“Those who seek shelter in the shadows, are free of criticism and controversy.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1989

“Those who seek shelter in the shadows, are free of criticism and controversy.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1989

“We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

Joy, Thinking

“If you follow the classical pattern, you are understanding the routine, the tradition, the shadow -- you are not understanding yourself.”

Bruce Lee book Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Source: Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Understanding

“Shadows in shadows
He watches through
dreams
Wings black as Africa
Body strong as stone
Done waiting
The ravens call.”

Kristin Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

Dreams, Strong, Waiting

“Some things have to be seen in the shadows”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Variant: somethings can only be seen in the shadows
Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“The best political, social, and spiritual work we can do is to withdraw the projection of our shadow onto others.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

“I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Friendship, For Friend, Change

“There are black zones of shadow close to our daily paths, and now and then some evil soul breaks a passage through. When this happens the man who knows must strike before reckoning the consequences.”

H.P. Lovecraft book The Thing on the Doorstep

Fiction
Source: "The Thing on the Doorstep" (1937), first published in Weird Tales

Soul, Evil

“I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
by the false azure in the windowpane;”

Vladimir Nabokov book Pale Fire

Source: Pale Fire (1962)

Falseness

“Poetry is the shadow cast by our imaginations.”

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919) American artist, writer and activist

These Are My Rivers: New & Selected Poems, 1955-1993 (New Directions) ISBN: 0-0112-1273-4 0-0112-1252-1

Imagination

“God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown. — And we — we still have to vanquish his shadow, too.”

Friedrich Nietzsche God is dead

Gott ist tot! aber so wie die Art der Menschen ist, wird es vielleicht noch Jahrtausende lang Höhlen geben, in denen man seinen Schatten zeigt.
Und wir — Wir müssen auch noch seinen Schatten besiegen.
Sec. 108
Quotes about quotes: see also God is dead.
The Gay Science (1882)
Source: The Portable Nietzsche

Men, God, Way, Dead

“I see things, that's all. Write enough stories and every shadow on the floor looks like a footprint; every line in the dirt like a secret message.”

Stephen King book Bag of Bones

Source: Bag of Bones

Secret

“What men call the shadow of the body is not the shadow of the body, but is the body of the soul.”

Oscar Wilde book A House of Pomegranates

Source: A House of Pomegranates

Men, Soul

“Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts. There are seven words that will make a person love you. There are ten words that will break a strong man’s will. But a word is nothing but a painting of a fire. A name is the fire itself.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 86, “The Fire Itself” (pp. 672-673)

Love, Men, Tear, Light

“No, no, I am but shadow of myself:
You are deceived, my substance is not here;”

William Shakespeare Henry VI, Part 1

Source: Henry VI, Part 1

“Our imagination flies -- we are its shadow on the earth.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor

Imagination

“How pale the Princess is! Never have I seen her so pale. She is like the shadow of a white rose in a mirror of silver.”

Oscar Wilde Salome

Source: Salomé

Princess

“In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

Light, Sun

“The most dangerous kind of person… is one who is afraid of his own shadow.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly

Personality

“Is it the sea you hear in me?
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?

Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: Ariel: The Restored Edition

Love, Lie, Cry, Sea

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

Books, Dreams, Sleep, Reading

“One should, when overwhelmed by the shadow of a giant, move aside and see if the colossal shadow isn't merely that of a pygmy blocking out the sun.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

Sun

“Eyes watching always
Shadows in shadows they wait
A black feather falls

First accepted, loved
Then betrayed-spit in the face
Vengeance sweet like dots.”

Kristin Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

Love, Waiting

“When I was sixteen, I made the discovery -- love. All at once and much, much too completely. It was like you suddenly turned a blinding light on something that had always been half in shadow, that's how it struck the world for me.”

Tennessee Williams A Streetcar Named Desire

Source: A Streetcar Named Desire

Love, World, Light

“And it is very much lamented,…
That you have no such mirrors as will turn
Your hidden worthiness into your eye
That you might see your shadow.”

William Shakespeare Julius Caesar

Source: Julius Caesar

“Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Wo die Liebe herrscht, da gibt es keinen machtwillen, und wo die macht den vorrang hat, da fehlt die Liebe. Das eine ist der Schatten des andern. P. 97 http://books.google.com/books?id=iGS8q_odsKAC&q=%22Wo+die+Liebe+herrscht+da+gibt+es+keinen+machtwillen+und+wo+die+macht+den+vorrang+hat+da+fehlt+die+Liebe+Das+eine+ist+der+Schatten+des+andern%22&pg=PA97#v=onepage The Psychology of the Unconscious (1943)

Love

“I felt myself melting into the shadows like the negative of a person I'd never seen before in my life.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Life, Personality

“Only Evil and Greater Evil exist and beyond them, in the shadows, lurks True Evil. True Evil, Geralt, is something you can barely imagine, even if you believe nothing can still surprise you. And sometimes True Evil seizes you by the throat and demands that you choose between it and another, slightly lesser, Evil.”

Andrzej Sapkowski book The Last Wish

Source: The Last Wish

Imagination, Evil

“I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff -and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Pale Fire

Source: Pale Fire

Falseness

“When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
"When I have fears that I may cease to be" (1817)
Source: The Complete Poems

Love, Books, World, Fear

“In any case life is but a procession of shadows, and God knows why it is that we embrace them so eagerly, and see them depart with such anguish, being shadows.”

Virginia Woolf book Jacob's Room

Source: Jacob's Room

Life, God

“If we shadows have offended,
Know but this and all is mended.
That you have but slumbered here,
While these visions did appear,
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding, but a dream.”

William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream

Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream

Dreams, Appearance

“Being his real brother I could feel I live in his shadows, but I never have and I do not now. I live in his glow.”

Michael Morpurgo book Private Peaceful

Source: Private Peaceful

Feeling

“Everything in the world is beautiful, but Man only recognizes beauty if he sees it either seldom or from afar. Listen, today we are gods! Our blue shadows are enormous! We move in a gigantic, joyful world!”

Vladimir Nabokov book The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov

Source: The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov

God, World, Beauty

“Summer is the season of motion, winter is the season of form. In summer everything moves save the fixed and inert. Down the hill flows the west wind, making wavelets in the shorter grass and great billows in the standing hay; the tree in full leaf sways its heavy boughs below and tosses its leaves above; the weed by the gate bends and turns when the wind blows down the road. It is the shadow of moving things that we usually see, and the shadows are themselves in motion. The shadow of a branch, speckled through with light, wavers across the lawn, the sprawling shadow of the weed moves and sways across the dust.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Northern Farm: A Glorious Year on a Small Maine Farm

Tree, Light, Grass, Winter

“I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Others may know pleasure, but pleasure is not happiness. It has no more importance than a shadow following a man.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

Happy, Pleasure, Happiness

“It’s a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Love, Dreams

“Out, out brief candle, life is but a walking shadow… a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

William Shakespeare Macbeth

Variant: Life... is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Source: Macbeth

Life

“The bright dawn flooded the room, and swept the fantastic shadows into dusky corners, where they lay shuddering.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Perhaps a man's character was like a tree, and his reputation like its shadow; the shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

As quoted in "Lincoln's Imagination" by Noah Brooks, in Scribner's Monthly (August 1879), p. 586 http://books.google.com/books?id=jOoGAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA586 Posthumous attributions Variant: Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

Thinking, Tree

“All true stories begin and end in a cemetery" - The Shadow of the Wind”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

“One marvel of a day he had walked so far that when he returned the moon was high and full and all the world was purple shadow and silver.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden

Source: The Secret Garden

World

“Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

William Shakespeare Macbeth

Source: Macbeth, Act V, scene v.
Context: Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Life

“How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also If I am to be whole”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

“Turn to the light. Don't fear the shadow it creates.”

Ted Dekker (1962) American writer

Fear, Light