Quotes about sunrise (97 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“What about sunrise, what about rain?
What about all the things that you said we were to gain?
What about flowering fields, is there a time?
What about all the dreams that you said was yours and mine?”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

HIStory: Past, Present & Future, Book I (1995)

Dreams , Flowers , Time

“One summer morning at sunrise a long time ago
I met a little girl with a book under her arm.
I asked her why she was out so early and
she answered that there were too many books and
far too little time. And there she was absolutely right.”

Tove Jansson (1914–2001) Finnish children's writer and illustrator

Books , Girl , Time , Summer

“My child, let your life come into the world of darkness
like a spark of light, without flicker and pure,
and thank them in silence. You know,
my child, they are cruel in their greed and envy,
their words are disguised knives thirsting for blood.
But do not be afraid, my child, go and stand in their hearts,
and let your gentle eyes fall on them like the forgiving serenity of the night.
My child, let them see your face and so they know it
meaning of all things, let them love and love one another.
Go, at sunrise, open and lift up your heart like a blooming flower,
and at sunset, bend your head and silently complete the worship of the day.
Remember, my child, gods and demons, ghosts and elves are fragments of one,
built by the hand of the abyss.
So, move on, go to the shore of the vast darkness,
there, is the Great Meeting of Children,
there, the sea gives a smile to the beach,
there, sing the waves facing death.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://dailywisdomwords.com/community-poetry/my-child/

God , Light , Silence , Children

“He who kisses joy as it flies by will live in eternity's sunrise.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Kiss , Joy

“If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it. If He had a wallet, your photo would be in it. He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning… Face it, friend. He is crazy about you!”

Max Lucado (1955) American clergyman and writer

God , Photo , Spring , Flowers

“You know, a landscape painter's day is delightful. You get up early, at three o'clock in the morning, before sunrise; you go and sit under a tree; you watch and wait. At first there is nothing much to be seen. Nature looks like a whitish canvas with a few broad outlines faintly sketched in; all is misty, everything quivers in the cool dawn breeze. The sky lights up. The sun has not yet burst through the gauze veil that hides the meadow, the little valley, the hill on the horizon... Ah, a first ray of sunshine!”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) French landscape painter and printmaker in etching

Corot's description of the beginning of a day in Switzerland, Château de Gruyères, 1857; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963
1850s

Nature , Tree , Light , Waiting

“Some day I shall sing to thee in the sunrise of some other world, I have seen thee before in the light of the earth, in the love of man.”

Rabindranath Tagore Stray Birds

Source: Stray Birds

Love , World , Light , Singing

“We speak still of "sunrise" and "sunset." We do so as if the Copernican model of the solar system had not replaced, ineradicably, the Ptolemaic. Vacant metaphors, eroded figures of speech, inhabit our vocabulary and grammar. They are caught, tenaciously, in the scaffolding and recesses of our common parlance. There they rattle about like old rags or ghosts in the attic.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: Real Presences (1989), I: A Secondary City, Ch. 1 (p. 3).

“What I have just heard is pure... listen!... radiance, that you took from cloud-linings and sunrises and distilled into light that I can hear! Do you know how good, how lovely that is, what you can make the piano do?”

Richard Bach book The Bridge Across Forever

Source: The Bridge Across Forever (1984), Ch. 21

Love , Light

“Among Troyon's paintings there are two huge ones; Return to the Farm is marvelous with its beautiful stormy sky. There is much windy motion in the clouds, and the cows and dogs are very good. In Going to the Market you see the mist at sunrise. It's superb and, most of all, very luminous. The wide space in View from Surennes is amazing. You feel you are really in the countryside.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

1859 letter to Eugène Boudin, June 3, 1859; as cited in Rodolphe Rapetti (1990) Monet, p. 11
Monet wrote Boudin this letter just after he visited the 1859 Salon.
1850 - 1870

Beauty , Dogs , Feeling , Painting

“There’s always a sunrise and always a sunset and it’s up to you to choose to be there for it,’ said my mother. 'Put yourself in the way of beauty.”

Cheryl Strayed book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Source: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Good Morning , Beauty , Way

“You stand on dead men's legs. You've never had any of your own. You couldn't walk alone between two sunrises and hustle the meat for your belly”

Jack London book The Sea-Wolf

Source: The Sea Wolf

Men , Dead

“For those who've never experienced a sunrise in the rural midwest, it's roughly as soft and romantic as someone's abruptly hitting the lights in a dark room.”

David Foster Wallace book The Pale King

Source: The Pale King

Light

“With their backs to the sunrise they worship the night.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Source: Individuality From 'The Gods and Other Lectures'

Night

“I wake up wating you. I fall asleep wanting you. I watch a magnificent sunrise and can think only of sharing it with you. I glimpse a piece of amver and see your eyes. Jillian, I've caught a disease, and the fever abates only when I'm near you.”

Karen Marie Moning book To Tame a Highland Warrior

Source: To Tame a Highland Warrior

Disease , Thinking

“Sunrise

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Way , Happiness

“When is the night over? Is it the start of sunrise or the end of it? Is it when you finally go to sleep or simply when you realize that you have to?”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

Sleep , Night

“Desire makes life happen. Makes it matter. Makes everything worth it. Desire is life. Hunger to see the next sunrise or sunset, to touch the one you love, to try again.

'Hell would be waking up and wanting nothing,' he agrees.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

Love , Life , Hunger , Hell

“Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space.”

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

Beauty , Peaceful

“My last sunrise. That morning, I was not yet a vampire. And I saw my last sunrise. I remember it completely; yet I do not think I remember any other sunrise before it.”

Anne Rice book Interview with the Vampire

Source: Interview with the Vampire

Thinking

“What swells inside me is a love so boundless, I am the sunrise and sunset. I am Liberty Bell in the Cascades. I am Beihai Lake. I am every beautiful, truly beautiful, thing I've ever seen, captured in my personal Geographia, the atlas of myself.”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

Source: North of Beautiful

Love , Beauty , Personality

“It's a strange courage
you give me ancient star:Shine alone in the sunrise
toward which you lend no part!”

William Carlos Williams book Al Que Quiere!

"El Hombre"
Al Que Quiere! (1917)

Star , Courage , Parting

“Sunrise paints the sky with pinks and the sunset with peaches. Cool to warm. So is the progression from childhood to old age.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Age , Childhood , Painting

“Remember that each light between sunrise and sunset is worth dying for at least once.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Shadowrise

Light

“There is no sunrise so beautiful that it is worth waking me up to see it.”

Mindy Kaling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Funny , Good Morning , Beauty

“For thousands of nights I dreamed of making love to you. No man on earth has ever hated sunrise as I do.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Again the Magic

love , Good Night , Romantic , For Her

“Who can live with this Consciousness and not wake frightened at sunrise?”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Source: The Fall of America: Poems of These States 1965-1971

“Many girls have been romanced under the moon, and I don’t mean to say moonlight is overrated, but few I think have known the magic of a sunrise kiss.”

Jerry Spinelli book Love, Stargirl

Source: Love, Stargirl

Girl , Kiss , Thinking

“He who binds to himself a joy
Does the wingèd life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

No. 1, He Who Binds
1790s, Poems from Blake's Notebook (c. 1791-1792), Several Questions Answered

Life , Kiss , Joy

“Death isn't peaceful; it is just nothing. Everything is gone. No more sunrises, no more hopes, no more fears. Nothing.”

Linda Howard (1950) American writer

Source: Kill and Tell

Death , Fear , Peace , Hope

“When I encounter a sunrise, a painting, a woman, or an idea that makes my heart bound like a young calf, then I know I am standing in front of happiness.”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

Idea , Heart , Painting , Happiness

“It is man's consolation that the future is to be a sunrise instead of a sunset.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Que l'avenir soit un orient au lieu d'être un couchant, c'est la consolation de l'homme.
Part I, Book II, Chapter II, Section V
William Shakespeare (1864)
Source: Les Misérables

Future

“There's a sunrise and a sunset every single day, and they're absolutely free. Don't miss so many of them.”

Jo Walton (1964) Welsh Canadian writer

“The sun rises every day. What is to love? Lock the sun in a box. Force the sun to overcome adversity in order to rise. Then we will cheer! I will often admire beautiful sunrise, but I will never consider the sun a champion for having risen.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Love , Beauty , Sun , Box

“therefore i live for today-
certain of finding at sunrise
guidance and strength for the way.
power for each moment of weakness,
hope for each moment of pain,
comfort for every sorrow,
sunshine and joy after rain!”

Billy Graham (1918–2018) American Christian evangelist

Source: Hope for Each Day: Words of Wisdom and Faith

Pain , Hope , Way , Joy

“I see God in a sunrise, not in repetitious ritual.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Bloodfever

God

“Egyptians believe in the power of the sunrise. They believe each morning begins not just a new day, but a new world.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

World

“If you want to be reminded of the love of the Lord, just watch the sunrise.”

Jeannette Walls book Half Broke Horses

Source: Half Broke Horses

Love

“But often faltering feet
Come surest to the goal;
And they who walk in darkness meet
The sunrise of the soul.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Reliance, st. 2.

Soul

“Chairman (Larry) O'Brien, Chairwoman (Yvonne) Burke, Senator (Ted) Kennedy, Senator (Thomas) Eagleton and my fellow citizens, I'm happy to join us (sic) for this benediction of our Friday sunrise service. I assume that everyone here is impressed with my control of this Convention in that my choice for Vice President was challenged by only 39 other nominees. And I can tell you that Eleanor (McGovern) is very grateful that the Oregon delegation at least kept her in the race with (wife of Attorney General John N Mitchell) Martha Mitchell. -McGovern's acceptance speech at the 1972 Democratic National Convention, America's Political Parties: Power and Privelige Part 1: The Democrats hosted by Ben Wattenberg”

George S. McGovern (1922–2012) American politician, Congressman, senator, Democratic presidential candidate

Parting , Happiness

“All my life's a circle;
Sunrise and sundown;
Moon rolls thru the nighttime;
Till the daybreak comes around.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Circle
Song lyrics, Sniper and Other Love Songs (1972)

Life

“My songs were once of the sunrise:
They shouted it over the bar;
First-footing the dawns, they flourished,
And flamed with the morning star.

My songs are now of the sunset:
Their brows are touched with light,
But their feet are lost in the shadows
And wet with the dews of night.”

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) English poet, critic and editor

"Envoy"
Poems (1898)

Star , Light , Night

“A man should not marry after thirty years of age; should not enter the government service after the age of forty; should not have any more children after the age of fifty; and should not travel after the age of sixty. This is because the proper time for those things has passed. At sunrise the country is bright and fresh, and you dress, wash, and eat your breakfast, but before long it is noon. Then you realize how quickly time passes. I am always surprised when people talk about other people's ages, because what is a lifetime but a small part of much greater period? Why talk about insects when the whole world is before you? How can you count time by years? All that is clear is that time passes, and all the time there is a continual change going on. Some change has taken place ever since I began to write this. This continual change and decay fills me with sadness.”

Shi Nai'an (1296–1372) Chinese writer

Variant translation by Lin Yutang: "A man should not marry after thirty if he is not already married, and should not enter the government service if he is not already in the service. At fifty, he should not start to raise a family, and at sixty should not travel abroad. This is because there is a time for everything; done out of season and time, there may be more disadvantages than advantages. One wakes up at dawn completely refreshed, washes his face and puts on the headdress, has his breakfast; chews willow branches [for brightening his teeth], and attends to various things. Before he knows it he asks is it noon, and is told it is long past noon. As the morning goes, so goes the afternoon, and as one day passes, so pass the 36,000 days of one's life. If one is going to be upset by this thought, how can one ever enjoy life? I often wonder at a statement that such and such a person is so many years old. By this one means an accumulation of years. But where have the years accumulated? Can one lay hold of them and count them? This shows that the me of the past has long vanished. Moreover, when I have completed this sentence, the preceding sentence has already vanished. That is the tragedy." (The Importance of Understanding, 1960; pp. 83–84)
Preface to Water Margin

Children , People , Age , World

“It comes, it comes!' they sang. 'Sleepers awake! It comes, it comes, it comes.' One dreadful glance over my shoulder I essayed — not long enough to see (or did I see?) the rim of the sunrise that shoots Time dead with golden arrows and puts to flight all phantasmal shapes. Screaming, I buried my face in the fold of the Teacher's robe. 'The morning! The morning!”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Great Divorce

I cried. 'I am caught by the morning and I am a ghost.'
Source: The Great Divorce (1944–1945), Ch. 14

Teachers , Time , Dead

“Sit like a fool then, crassly emptying
Glass after wineglass in some foul tavern,
Watching the night and its candles gutter,
Snoring at sunrise.
In England now the wind blows high
And clouds brush rudely at the sky;
The blood runs thinly through my frame,
I half-caress the hearthstone’s flame,
Oppressed by autumn’s desolate cry.
Then homesick for the south am I,
For where the lucky swallows fly,
But each warm land is just a name
In England now.
The luckless workers I espy
With chins dipped low and collars high,
Walk into winter, do not blame
The shifting globe. A gust of shame
Represses my unmanly sigh
In England now.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

English Literature: A Survey for Students.
Poetry

Fools , Autumn , Winter , Cry

“Now shall we say that only the first men were well alive, and the existing generation is invalided and degenerate? … A more subtle and severe criticism might suggest that some dislocation has befallen the race; that men are off their centre; that multitudes of men do not live with Nature, but behold it as exiles. People go out to look at sunrises and sunsets who do not recognize their own quietly and happily, but know that it is foreign to them. As they do by books, so they quote the sunset and the star, and do not make them theirs. Worse yet, they live as foreigners in the world of truth, and quote thoughts, and thus disown them. Quotation confesses inferiority.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Quotation and Originality

Men , People , Truth , Books

“First stage: small stage", say the Persian caravaneers who know so well that, the first evening, everyone realises that he's forgotten something at home. Normally, one covers no more than a "pharsar" (around 6km). The careless should be able to go home and come back before sunrise. This concession to distraction is one more thing I love about Persia. I don't think there's a single practical measure in this country that neglects the irreducible imperfection of man.”

Nicolas Bouvier book L'Usage du monde

Première étape : petite étape », disent les caravaniers persans qui savent bien que, le soir du départ, chacun s'aperçoit qu'il a oublié quelque chose à la maison. D'ordinaire, on ne fait qu'un pharsar. Il faut que les étourdis puissent encore aller et revenir avant le lever du soleil. Cette part faite à la distraction m'est une raison de plus d'aimer la Perse. Je ne crois pas qu'il existe dans ce pays une seule disposition pratique qui néglige l'irréductible imperfection de l'homme.
Un pharsar représente environ 6 kilomètres. L'Usage du monde (1963), Nicolas Bouvier, éd. Payot, coll. « Petite Bibliothèque Payot/Voyageurs », 1992 (ISBN 2-228-88560-6), p. 259

Love , Home , Thinking , Country

“I know what they think they seek. But I know it to be a lie. Listen to me, Arren. You will die. You will not live forever. Nor will any man nor any thing. Nothing is immortal. But only to us is it given to know that we must die. And that is a great gift: the gift of selfhood. For we have only what we know we must lose, what we are willing to lose…. That selfhood which is our torment, and our treasure, and our humanity, does not endure. It changes; it is gone, a wave on the sea. Would you have the sea grow still and the tides cease, to save one wave, to save yourself? Would you give up the craft of your hands, and the passion of your heart, and the light of sunrise and sunset, to buy safety for yourself—safety forever? That is what they seek to do on Wathort and Lorbanery and elsewhere. That is the message that those who know how to hear have heard: By denying life you may deny death and live forever!—And this message I do not hear, Arren, for I will not hear it. I will not take the counsel of despair.”

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) American writer

Source: Earthsea Books, The Farthest Shore (1972), Chapter 8, "The Children of the Open Sea" (Ged)

Life , Death , Lie , Thinking

“But the Jat peasantry were determined that it was over their corpses that the ravager should enter the sacred capital of Braja. 'eight miles north of MathurA, JawAhir Singh barred the invader's path with less than 10,000 men and offered a desperate resistance (28th February, 1757). From sunrise the battle raged for nine hours, and at the end of it 'ten to twelve thousand infantry lay dead on the two sides taken together, the wounded were beyond count”

Ahmed Shah Durrani (1722–1772) founder of the Durrani Empire, considered founder of the state of Afghanistan

Jadunath Sarkar, Fall of the Mughal Empire, Volume II, Fourth Edition, New Delhi, 1991, p.69.

Men , Rage , Dead

“As a general rule, therefore, the lights and shadows of clouds near the horizon are less vivid than in clouds higher up. Exceptions to this rough rule will be found when the source of light is near the horizon, as in sunset and sunrise, also when there is a gathering of local stormclouds which may hover over the distance as a dark pall, when there is fair weather and light, transparent clouds near to us.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Perspective of clouds, p. 100

Light , Weather

“He wrote down everything he saw and heard, and most of his thoghts, sometimes in verse, sometimes in prose. It could take him many hours to write in his diary a survey of one full day: everything was an experience, any noteworthy observation which some nameless person might make was a new vista, any insignificant piece of information was a new sunrise, any ordinary poem he read for the first time was the beginning of a new epoch like a flight around the globe; the world was multiform, magnificent and opulent, and he loved it.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland

Love , World , Time , Reading

“All the glories of the sunset,
In the sunrise one may see;
That which others call the dawning
Is the night for you and me.”

Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt (1836–1919) American writer

To-day, Stanza 3.

Night

“Welcome to the early twenty-first century, human.
It’s night in Milton Keynes, sunrise in Hong Kong. Moore’s Law rolls inexorably on, dragging humanity toward the uncertain future. The planets of the solar system have a combined mass of approximately 2 x 1027 kilograms. Around the world, laboring women produce forty-five thousand babies a day, representing 1023 MIPS of processing power. Also around the world, fab lines casually churn out thirty million microprocessors a day, representing 1023 MIPS. In another ten months, most of the MIPS being added to the solar system will be machine-hosted for the first time. About ten years after that, the solar system’s installed processing power will nudge the critical 1 MIPS per gram threshold—one million instructions per second per gram of matter. After that, singularity—a vanishing point beyond which extrapolating progress becomes meaningless. The time remaining before the intelligence spike is down to single-digit years …”

Charles Stross book Accelerando

Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 2 (“Troubadour”), pp. 38-39

Women , World , Law , Intelligence

“Some people collect paperweights, or pre-Columbian figures, or old masters, or young mistresses, or tombstone rubbings, or five-minute recipes, or any of a thousand other things including bruises, most of them satisfying, depending on the genes and the bank account and where the heart lies.
My own collection is sunrises; and I find that they have their advantages. Sunrises are usually handsome, they can't possibly be dusted, and they take only a little room, so long as it has a window to see them from. Moreover, I can't give way to the urge to show off my collection to my friends. I can only talk about it, and they needn't listen.”

Peg Bracken (1918–2007) American writer

I Didn't Come Here to Argue, "The Sunrise Collector: What to Do till Your Horoscope Gets There," (1969), Fawcett Crest edition, page 37.

People , Way , Heart , Dependency

“There is an aphorism about a farmer who before sunrise on a cold and misty morning, saw a huge beast on a distant hill. He seized his rifle and walked cautiously toward the ogre to head off an attack on his family. When he got nearer, he was relieved to find that the beast was only a small bear. He approached more confidently and when he was within a few hundred yards the distorting haze had lifted sufficiently so that he could recognize the figure as only that of a man. Lowering his rifle, he walked toward the stranger and discovered he was his brother.”

Louis Nizer book My Life in Court

My Life in Court (1961), p. 443.

Family , Confidence , Distant

“Take of London fog 30 parts; malaria 10 parts, gas leaks 20 parts, dewdrops gathered in a brickyard at sunrise 25 parts; odor of honeysuckle 15 parts. Mix. The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a Nashville drizzle.”

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

"A Municipal Report"
Strictly Business (1910)

Parting

“Then silence is sawn in half by a dragonfly
as eels sign their names along the bottom-sand
when the sunrise brightens the river's memory and waves of huge ferns are nodding to the sea's sound.
Although the smoke forgets the earth from which is ascends
and the nettles guard the holes where the laurels were killed an iguana hears the axes, clouding each lens
over its lost name, when the hunched island was called
'Iounalao' 'Where it iguana is from' But, taking its own time, the iguana will scale
the rigging of vines in a year, its dewlap fanned,
its elbows akimbo, its deliberate tail moving with the island. The slit pods of its eyes
ripened in a pause that lasted for centuries,
that rose with the Aruacs' smoke till a new race unknown to the lizard stood measuring the trees.
These were their pillars that fell, leaving a blue space
for a single God where the old gods stood before, The first god was a gommier. The generator
began with a whine, and a shark, with sidewise jaw,
sent the chips flying like mackrel over water into trembling weeds”

Derek Walcott book Omeros

"A Far Cry from Africa" (1962), Omeros

God , Tree , Silence , Water

“I know she loves the sunrise
No longer sees it with her sleeping eyes
And I know that when she said she's gonna try
Well it might not work because of other ties and
I know she usually has some other ties
And I wouldn't want to break 'em, nah, I wouldn't want to break 'em
Maybe she'll help me to untie this but
Until then well, I'm gonna have to lie too”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

Flake.
Song lyrics, Brushfire Fairytales (2001)

Love , Lie , Sleep , Help

“When the morning breezes blow toward the town at sunrise, if they bring with them mists from marshes and, mingled with the mist, the poisonous breath of the creatures of the marshes to be wafted into the bodies of the inhabitants, they will make the site unhealthy.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter IV "The Site of a City" Sec. 1

“It was early one morning on a calm sea, off Guatemala, when over my couch - a coil of rope - I saw the beginning of a fiery red sunrise on one side and the moon looking like a silver coin on the other.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

Quote in his autobiography (1922); as cited in 'Calder' 1966, pp. 54–55; as quoted on Wikipedia: Alexander Calder
In June 1922, Calder found work as a mechanic on the passenger ship H. F. Alexander. Calder slept on deck and awoke one early morning off the Guatemalan Coast; he saw both the sun rising and the full moon setting on opposite horizons
1920s

Sea

“We start with enthusiasm — out we go each of us to our task in all the brightness of sunrise, and hope beats along our pulses; we believe the world has no blanks except to cowards, and we find, at last, that, as far as we ourselves are concerned, it has no prizes; we sicken over the endless unprofitableness of labour most when we have most succeeded, and when the time comes for us to lay down our tools we cast them from us with the bitter aching sense, that it were better for us if it had been all a dream. We seem to know either too much or too little of ourselves — too much, for we feel that we are better than we can accomplish; too little, for, if we have done any good at all, it has heen as we were servants of a system too vast for us to comprehend. We get along through life happily between clouds and sunshine, forgetting ourselves in our employments or our amusements, and so long as we can lose our consciousness in activity we can struggle on to the end. But when the end comes, when the life is lived and done, and stands there face to face with us; or if the heart is weak, and the spell breaks too soon, as if the strange master-worker has no longer any work to offer us, and turns us off to idleness and to ourselves; in the silence then our hearts lift up their voices, and cry out they can find no rest here, no home. Neither pleasure, nor rank, nor money, nor success in life, as it is called, have satisfied, or can satisfy; and either earth has nothing at all which answers to our cravings, or else it is something different from all these, which we have missed finding — this peace which passes understanding — and from which in the heyday of hope we had turned away, as lacking the meretricious charm which then seemed most alluring.
I am not sermonizing of Religion, or of God, or of Heaven, at least not directly.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Confessions Of A Sceptic
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

Life , Money , God , Pleasure

“The political solidarity of the working class means the death of despotism, the birth of freedom, the sunrise of civilization.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)

Death , Birth , Freedom

“Who'll love Aladdin Sane?
Battle cries and champagne just in time for sunrise.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

Aladdin Sane
Song lyrics, Aladdin Sane (1973)

Love , Time

“It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning
When the light drips through the shutters like the dew,
I arise, I face the sunrise,
And do the things my fathers learned to do.
Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops
Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die,
And I myself on a swiftly tilting planet
Stand before a glass and tie my tie.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

Senlin: A Biography (1918)

Star , Light , Learning

“I've had my share of pleasure and I've tasted pain
I never thought that I would touch an angel's wing
There's a journey in my eyes
It's getting hard for me to hide
Like the ocean at the sunrise.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Heavy on My Heart
Anastacia (2004)

Pain , Pleasure , Angels

“A pair of lovers are like sunset and sunrise: there are such things every day but we very seldom see them.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 11

Lovers

“For a sunrise or a sunset, you're manic or you’re depressed.
Will you ever feel ok?”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Sunrise, Sunset
Fevers and Mirrors (2000)

Feeling

“How absurd it must seem for an immortal soul to be destined for Heaven or Hell, and yet be sitting in a kitchen, as a maid, or to see oneself objectified as a mechanic! how falsely the usual sunrise waked us, the clock dial, the city street the job! How wrongfully people find themselves in these systems — our time isn't there, our space isn't there, our space isn't even here… the whole social story of waking, and certainly the day of the mechanic, is false.”

Ernst Bloch (1885–1977) German philosopher

Traces (1930), p. 27

People , Soul , Hell , Time

“Numbers were a mystery to me. I was so far behind. It was only in Nairobi, at age ten, that I figured out anything at all about the way time is calculated: minutes, hours, years. In Saudi Arabia the calendar had been Islamic, based on lunar months; Ethiopia maintained an ancient solar calendar. The year was written 1399 in Saudi Arabia, 1972 in Ethiopia, and 1980 in Kenya and everywhere else. In Ethiopia we even had a different clock: sunrise was called one o'clock and noon was called six. (Even within Kenya, people used two systems for telling time, the British and the Swahili.) The months, the days--everything was conceived differently. Only in Juja Road Primary school did I begin to figure out what people meant when they referred to precise dates and times. Grandma never learned to tell time at all. All her life, noon was when shadows were short, and your age was measured by rainy seasons. She got by perfectly well with her system.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali book Infidel

Source: Infidel (2007), Chapter 5: Secret Rendezvous, Sex, and the Scent of Sukumawiki

Life , People , Age , School

“Even peasants wholly without knowledge of the quarters of the sky believe that oxen ought to face only in the direction of the sunrise.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book VI, Chapter VI, Sec. 1

Knowledge

“…Upon this, Sher Shah turned again towards Kalinjar… The Raja of Kalinjar, Kirat Sing, did not come out to meet him. So he ordered the fort to be invested, and threw up mounds against it, and in a short time the mounds rose so high that they overtopped the fort. The men who were in the streets and houses were exposed, and the Afghans shot them with their arrows and muskets from off the mounds. The cause of this tedious mode of capturing the fort was this. Among the women of Raja Kirat Sing was a Patar slave-girl, that is a dancing-girl. The king had heard exceeding praise of her, and he considered how to get possession of her, for he feared lest if he stormed the fort, the Raja Kirat Sing would certainly make a jauhar, and would burn the girl…
“On Friday, the 9th of RabI’u-l awwal, 952 A. H., when one watch and two hours of the day was over, Sher Shah called for his breakfast, and ate with his ‘ulama and priests, without whom he never breakfasted. In the midst of breakfast, Shaikh NizAm said, ‘There is nothing equal to a religious war against the infidels. If you be slain you become a martyr, if you live you become a ghazi.’ When Sher Shah had finished eating his breakfast, he ordered Darya Khan to bring loaded shells, and went up to the top of a mound, and with his own hand shot off many arrows, and said, ‘Darya Khan comes not; he delays very long.’ But when they were at last brought, Sher Shah came down from the mound, and stood where they were placed. While the men were employed in discharging them, by the will of Allah Almighty, one shell full of gunpowder struck on the gate of the fort and broke, and came and fell where a great number of other shells were placed. Those which were loaded all began to explode. Shaikh Halil, Shaikh Nizam, and other learned men, and most of the others escaped and were not burnt, but they brought out Sher Shah partially burnt. A young princess who was standing by the rockets was burnt to death. When Sher Shah was carried into his tent, all his nobles assembled in darbAr; and he sent for ‘Isa Khan Hajib and Masnad Khan Kalkapur, the son-in-law of Isa Khan, and the paternal uncle of the author, to come into his tent, and ordered them to take the fort while he was yet alive. When ‘Isa Khan came out and told the chiefs that it was Sher Shah’s order that they should attack on every side and capture the fort, men came and swarmed out instantly on every side like ants and locusts; and by the time of afternoon prayers captured the fort, putting every one to the sword, and sending all the infidels to hell. About the hour of evening prayers, the intelligence of the victory reached Sher Shah, and marks of joy and pleasure appeared on his countenance. Raja Kirat Sing, with seventy men, remained in a house. Kutb Khan the whole night long watched the house in person lest the Raja should escape. Sher Shah said to his sons that none of his nobles need watch the house, so that the Raja escaped out of the house, and the labour and trouble of this long watching was lost. The next day at sunrise, however, they took the Raja alive…””

Sher Shah Suri (1486–1545) founder of Sur Empire in Northern India

Tarikh-i-Sher Shahi of Abbas Khan Sherwani in Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, Volume IV, pp. 407-09. Quoted in S.R.Goel, The Calcutta Quran Petition

Death , Women , Men , War

“The Sultan is not slack in jihad. He never lets go of his spear or bridle in pursuing jihad by land and sea routes. This is his main occupation which engages his eyes and ears. He has spent vast sums for the establishment of the faith and the spread of Islam in these lands, as a result of which the light of Islam has reached the inhabitants and the flash of the true faith brightened among them. Fire temples have been destroyed and the images and idols of Budd have been broken, and the lands have been freed from those who were not included in the darul Islam, that is, those who had refused to become zimmis. Islam has been spread by him in the far east and has reached the point of sunrise. In the words of Abu Nasr al-Aini, he has carried the flags of the followers of Islam where they had never reached before and where no chapter or verse (of the Quran) had ever been recited. Thereafter he got mosques and places of worship erected, and music replaced by call to prayers (azan), and the incantations of fire-worshippers stopped by recitations of the Quran. He directed the people of Islam towards the citadels of the infidels and, by the grace of Allah, made them (the believers) inheritors of wealth and land and that country which they (the believers) had never trodden upon.”

Muhammad bin Tughluq (1290–1351) Turkic Sultan of Delhi

Tughlaq Kalina Bharata, Persian texts translated into Hindi by S.A.A. Rizvi, 2 Volumes, Aligarh, 1956-57. p. 325 ff. Vol I. (Shihabuddin Al Umari.) Also quoted (using a different translation) in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts. 8th to 15th Centuries, p. 274.

People , Faith , Music , Light

“Let there be light! said Liberty,
And like sunrise from the sea,
Athens arose!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Hellas

Source: Hellas (1821), l. 682

Light , Sea

“He is walking up an incline. There are tracks below him and the slow clatter of a freight, the hiss of an engine. At the top of a hill he stops to look back. He can see nothing but fog spaced with a file of blurred archlights. Then he walks on, taking pleasure in breathing, in the beat of his blood, in the tread of his feet on the pavement, between rows of otherworldly frame houses. Gradually the fog thins, a morning pearliness is seeping in from somewhere. Sunrise finds him walking along a cement road between dumping grounds full of smoking rubbishpiles. The sun shines redly through the mist on rusty donkey-engines, skeleton trucks, wishbones of Fords, shapeless masses of corroding metal. Jimmy walks fast to get out of the smell. He is hungry; his shoes are beginning to raise blisters on his big toes. At a cross-road where the warning light still winks and winks, is a gasoline station, opposite it the Lightning Bug lunchwagon. Carefully he spends his last quarter on breakfast. That leaves him three cents for good luck, or bad luck for that matter. A huge furniture truck, shiny and yellow, has drawn up outside.
"Say will you give me a lift?" he asks the redhaired man at the wheel.
"How fur ye goin?"
"I dunno.... Pretty far."”

John Dos Passos book Manhattan Transfer

Source: Manhattan Transfer (1925), pp. 403-404

Bad luck , Pleasure , Shoe , Light

“Lost — Yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

Published as "A Beautiful Thought … we clip from an exchange paper" in Universalist Union (16 March 1844) this is often quoted as an advertisement originally written by Mann, attributed to him in Getting on in the World (1874) by William Mathews, p. 268; and most publications since that date, and sometimes titled "Lost, Two Golden Hours".
Variants:
Lost,
Two golden hours:
Each with a set of
Sixty diamond minutes!
No reward
Is offered, for they are .
Lost for ever!
Published as "Loss of Time" in The Church of England Magazine (28 June 1856) without any crediting of authorship.
Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset...
The most commonly quoted variant simply begins with a comma rather than a dash.

“ One is reminded of the actor, playing the role of a villain in a traveling theatrical troupe, who, at a particularly tense moment in the play, was shot by an excited cowpuncher in the audience. But this kind of confusion does not seem to be confined to unsophisticated theatergoers. […] Paul Muni, after playing the part of Clarence Darrow in Inherit the Wind, was invited to address the American Bar Association; Ralph Bellamy, after playing the role of Frankin D. Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello, was invited by several colleges to speak on Roosevelt. Also, there are those astonishing patriots who rushed to the recruiting offices to help defend the nation when, on October 30, 1938, the United States was "invaded" by an "army from Mars" in a radio dramatization. ”

S. I. Hayakawa book Language in Thought and Action

Source: Language in Thought and Action (1949), The Pitfalls of Drama, p. 28

Travel , Help , Parting

“Wilt thou not save me? once in every year
This rightful form of mine that thou dost see
By favour of the Goddess have I here
From sunrise unto sunset given me,
That some brave man may end my misery.
And thou — art thou not brave? can thy heart fail,
Whose eyes e'en now are weeping at my tale?”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), The Lady of the Land

Art , Heart

“This sort of scenario has happened, I imagine, millions of times. It has rarely happened in a nicer, sweeter, more gentle way than in Richard Linklater's "Before Sunrise," which I could call a "Love Affair" for Generation X, except that Jesse and Celine stand outside their generation, and especially outside its boring insistence on being bored.
The R rating for this film, based on a few four-letter words, is entirely unjustified. It is an ideal film for teenagers.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/before-sunrise-1995 of Before Sunrise (27 January 1995)
Reviews, Three star reviews

Love , Way , Imagination , Time

“Navy Department, Washington, Sept. 16, 1879.
General Order: The Acting Secretary of the Navy announces, with regret, to the Navy and Marine Corps, the death of Rear-Admiral Charles Boarman, on the 13th instant, at his home in Martinsburg, West Virginia, in the eighty-fourth year of his age, and after an honorable service of over sixty-eight years. Rear-Admiral Boarman entered the Navy, June 9, 1811, and at the time of his death had been longer in the service than any other Officer borne on the Navy Register. He was a participant in the War of 1812, and during his long career in the Navy had many important commands. On March 4, 1879, he was promoted from a Commodore to a Rear-Admiral on the retired list, from August 15, 1876, under the law authorizing such promotion, where an officer, being at the outbreak of the Rebellion, a citizen of a State engaged in such rebellion, exhibited marked fidelity to the Union in adhering to the flag of the United States. In respect to his memory it is hereby ordered, that, on the day after the receipt hereof, the flags of the Navy Yards and Stations, and vessels in commission, be displayed at half mast, from sunrise to sunset, and thirteen minute guns be fired at noon from the Navy Yards and Stations, flagships, and vessels acting singly.”

Charles Boarman (1795–1879) US Navy Rear Admiral

William N. Jeffers, Acting Secretary of the Navy 1879
Historical Records and Studies, Vol. VI (1911)

Death , War , Age , Law

“This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

page 438
Last lines of the documentary film series " The National Parks: America's Best Idea http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/" by Ken Burns.
John of the Mountains, 1938

Sea

“The appearance presented by the streets of London an hour before sunrise, on a summer’s morning, is most striking even to the few whose unfortunate pursuits of pleasure, or scarcely less unfortunate pursuits of business, cause them to be well acquainted with the scene. There is an air of cold, solitary desolation about the noiseless streets which we are accustomed to see thronged at other times by a busy, eager crowd, and over the quiet, closely-shut buildings, which throughout the day are swarming with life and bustle, that is very impressive.”

Charles Dickens book Sketches by Boz

Source: Sketches by Boz (1836-1837), Ch. 1 : The Streets — Morning

Life , Pleasure , Business , Appearance

“The Chishtiyya school was foisted on India by Muin-ud-din who had settled down in Ajmer before the Second Battle of Tarain. According to the sufi lore, he had made a few converts from among the local Hindus and started issuing orders to Prithivi Raj Chauhan, the Hindu king, for the benefit of these converts. When the king ignored him, he invited Muhammad Ghuri to invade the Chauhan Kingdom. Sir-ul-Awliya, the most famous history of the Chishtiyya school written by Khwaja Amir Khurd, another disciple of Nizam-ud-din Awliya, tells the following story:
“His [Muin-ud-din’s] blessed tongue uttered spontaneously, ‘We have handed over Pithora alive to the army of Islam.’ In those very days, Sultan Muiz-ud-din Sam arrived in Ajmer from Ghazni. Pithora had to face the army of Islam. He was captured alive by Sultan Muiz-ud-din… The Khwaja [Muinud-din] was a worker of great wonders. Before he reached Hindustan, all its cities right upto the point of sunrise were sunk in tumult and infidelity and were involved with idols and idolatry. Everyone among the rabble [Gods] of Hindustan claimed to be the great God and a co-sharer in the divinity of Allah. The people paid homage to stones, sods of clay, trees, quadrupeds, cows and bulls and their dung. The darkness of infidelism had made still more firm the seals on their hearts… Muin-ud-din was indeed the very sun of the true faith. As a result of his arrival, the darkness that had spread over this country was dispelled. It became bright and glowed in the light of Islam… Anyone who has become a Musalman in this country will stay a Musalman till the Day of Dissolution. His progeny will also remain Musalman… The people [of Hindustan] will be brought out of dAr-ul-harb into dAr-ul-IslAm by means of many wars."”

Moinuddin Chishti (1142–1236) Sufi saint

Amir Khurd, Siyar-ul-Awliya, New Delhi, 1985, pp. 111-12. Quoted in S.R.Goel, The Calcutta Quran Petition (1999) ISBN 9788185990583

God , War , People , School

“Unbelievably, there is still here [in Los Angeles] one of my most favorite places—the home of Henry and Ruth Denison at the very top of the hill, at the end of a road going nowhere, hanging above a reservoir-lake surrounded with pines. They have a sundeck under a eucalyptus tree where I have slept some memorably deep sleeps, and awakened very early in the morning, before sunrise, with stars still showing through the branches. In this house I have made some of my greatest friendships, so much so that I cannot think of it without that curious pleasure-pain which the Japanese call aware—the sense of echoes in the courtyards of the mind after the sun has left and the people have gone their ways forever.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

Source: In My Own Way: An Autobiography 1915-1965 (1972), p. 224

Pain , Friendship , People , Pleasure

“I have designed a decorative and monumental work as a group of subjects representing the three ages of sacred and profane mythology: the Golden Age, the Silver Age and the Iron Age. I have symbolised these different ages by dividing each one into compositions representing the three phases of the day: morning, noon and evening.
The Golden Age comprises three compositions (Adam and childhood):
:1. Prayer at sunrise.
:2. A walk in Paradise or the ecstasy before nature.
:3. All nature asleep.
The Silver Age. The second phase is taken from pagan mythology (Orpheus and youth):
:1. The dream nature is revealed to the senses of the inspired poet.
:2. The song.
: 3. Orpheus in the forest, his lyre broken and he longs for unknown countries and immortality.
The Iron Age (Cain and the maturity of man):
:1. The Sower making the earth productive (production).
:2. The Ploughman (work).
:3. Death (Cain and Abel).
Fourth panel:
The Triumph of Christ.
These three periods of humanity also correspond to the three periods in the life of a man:
The purity of childhood: Adam –
The poetic and unhappy aspirations of youth: Orpheus –
The grievous sufferings and death of mature age: Cain with the redemption of Christ.
D— thought it was an extremely ingenious and intelligent device to have used a figure from pagan antiquity for the cycle of youth and poetry instead of a Biblical figure, because intelligence and poetry are far better personified in these periods which were devoted to art and the imagination than in the Bible which is all sentiment and religiosity.
The Golden Age: the beginning of the world, naïveté, candour, purity. The morning: prayer. Noon: ecstasy and evening: sleep. No passion, nothing but elementary feelings. —
The Silver Age, corresponding to the civilization of humanity, already begins to feel emotion; it is the age of poets. I can only find this cycle in Greece. The morning: inspiration. Noon: song. Evening: tears. —
The Iron Age. Decadence and fall of humanity. I shall represent Cain ploughing and Abel sowing. Noon: Cain rests while Abel tends the altar of the Lord from which smoke, a symbol of purity, rises straight to the heavens. The evening: death at the hands of Cain.
The first death corresponds to the other deaths in the two other paintings: sleep and death of the senses; tears and the death of the heart. Do you understand the progression?
Sleep, though sad, is gentler than tears which, though painful, are gentler than death. Ecstasy is more delightful than song, which is gentler than work. Prayer is superior to dreaming which is more elevated than manual work.”

Gustave Moreau (1826–1898) French painter

Notes to his mother, on The Life of Humanity (1884-6) http://www.wikiart.org/en/gustave-moreau/humanity-the-golden-age-depicting-three-scenes-from-the-lives-of-adam-and-eve-the-silver-age-1886, his composition of a ten image polyptych, p. 48 · Photo of its exhibition on the 3rd Floor of Musée National Gustave Moreau http://en.musee-moreau.fr/house-museum/studios/third-floor
Gustave Moreau (1972)

Life , Death , Pain , Youth

“I behold the light of a dawn whose sunrise I shall never see. It only remains for me to sit down at the edge of my grave; then I shall descend boldly, crucifix in hand, into eternity.”

François-René de Chateaubriand book Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe

Book XLII: Ch. 18: A summary of the changes which have occurred around the globe in my lifetime
Mémoires d'outre-tombe (1848 – 1850)
Context: New storms will arise; one can believe in calamities to come which will surpass the afflictions we have been overwhelmed by in the past; already, men are thinking of bandaging their old wounds to return to the battlefield. However, I do not expect an imminent outbreak of war: nations and kings are equally weary; unforeseen catastrophe will not yet fall on France: what follows me will only be the effect of general transformation. No doubt there will be painful moments: the face of the world cannot change without suffering. But, once again, there will be no separate revolutions; simply the great revolution approaching its end. The scenes of tomorrow no longer concern me; they call for other artists: your turn, gentlemen!
As I write these last words, my window, which looks west over the gardens of the Foreign Mission, is open: it is six in the morning; I can see the pale and swollen moon; it is sinking over the spire of the Invalides, scarcely touched by the first golden glow from the East; one might say that the old world was ending, and the new beginning. I behold the light of a dawn whose sunrise I shall never see. It only remains for me to sit down at the edge of my grave; then I shall descend boldly, crucifix in hand, into eternity.

Light

“What though our eyes with tears be wet?
The sunrise never failed us yet.The blush of dawn may yet restore
Our light and hope and joy once more.”

Celia Thaxter (1835–1894) American writer

"The Sunrise Never Failed Us Yet" in Drift-Weed (1878), p. 64.
Context: What though our eyes with tears be wet?
The sunrise never failed us yet.The blush of dawn may yet restore
Our light and hope and joy once more.
Sad soul, take comfort, nor forget
That sunrise never failed us yet!

Hope , Tear , Light , Joy

“Philosophy and Art both render the invisible visible by imagination. Where Sense observes two isolated objects, Imagination discloses two related objects. This relation is the nexus visible. We had not seen it before; it is apparent now. Where we should only see a calamity the poet makes us see a tragedy. Where we could only see a sunrise he enables us to see
"Day like a mighty river flowing in."”

George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher

Lewes here quotes from Paracelsus by Robert Browning
The Principles of Success in Literature (1865)

Art , Quotes , Imagination , Sense

“The ruby and the sunrise are one.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

As quoted in Head and Heart : A Personal Exploration of Science and the Sacred (2002) by Victor Mansfield
Context: He says, "There’s nothing left of me.
I’m like a ruby held up to the sunrise.
Is it still a stone, or a world
made of redness? It has no resistance
to sunlight." This is how Hallaj said, I am God,
and told the truth!The ruby and the sunrise are one. Be courageous and discipline yourself.
Completely become hearing and ear, and wear this sun-ruby as an earring.

“I have seen a thousand sunsets and sunrises, on land where it floods forest and mountains with honey coloured light, at sea where it rises and sets like a blood orange in a multicoloured nest of cloud, slipping in and out of the vast ocean. I have seen a thousand moons: harvest moons like gold coins, winter moons as white as ice chips, new moons like baby swans’ feathers.”

Gerald Durrell (1925–1995) naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter

Letter to his fiancée Lee, (31 July 1978), published in Gerald Durrell: An Authorized Biography by Douglas Botting (1999)
Context: I have seen a thousand sunsets and sunrises, on land where it floods forest and mountains with honey coloured light, at sea where it rises and sets like a blood orange in a multicoloured nest of cloud, slipping in and out of the vast ocean. I have seen a thousand moons: harvest moons like gold coins, winter moons as white as ice chips, new moons like baby swans’ feathers.
I have seen seas as smooth as if painted, coloured like shot silk or blue as a kingfisher or transparent as glass or black and crumpled with foam, moving ponderously and murderously. … I have known silence: the cold earthy silence at the bottom of a newly dug well; the implacable stony silence of a deep cave; the hot, drugged midday silence when everything is hypnotised and stilled into silence by the eye of the sun; the silence when great music ends.
I have heard summer cicadas cry so that the sound seems stitched into your bones. … I have seen hummingbirds flashing like opals round a tree of scarlet blooms, humming like a top. I have seen flying fish, skittering like quicksilver across the blue waves, drawing silver lines on the surface with their tails. I have seen Spoonbills fling home to roost like a scarlet banner across the sky. I have seen Whales, black as tar, cushioned on a cornflower blue sea, creating a Versailles of fountain with their breath. I have watched butterflies emerge and sit, trembling, while the sun irons their winds smooth. I have watched Tigers, like flames, mating in the long grass. I have been dive-bombed by an angry Raven, black and glossy as the Devil’s hoof. I have lain in water warm as milk, soft as silk, while around me played a host of Dolphins. I have met a thousand animals and seen a thousand wonderful things… but —
All this I did without you. This was my loss.
All this I want to do with you. This will be my gain.
All this I would gladly have forgone for the sake of one minute of your company, for your laugh, your voice, your eyes, hair, lips, body, and above all for your sweet, ever surprising mind which is an enchanting quarry in which it is my privilege to delve.

Mountain , Light , Winter , Baby

“And Freedom rear'd in that august sunrise
Her beautiful bold brow,
When rites and forms before his burning eyes
Melted like snow.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson Lady Clara Vere de Vere

The Poet (1830)
Context: p>Thus truth was multiplied on truth, the world
Like one great garden show'd,
And thro' the wreaths of floating dark up-curl'd,
Rare sunrise flow'dAnd Freedom rear'd in that august sunrise
Her beautiful bold brow,
When rites and forms before his burning eyes
Melted like snow.</p

Beauty , Freedom

“They killed the flirt whom folks called Life for leading them on. Making them think the next sunrise would be worth it; that another stroke of time would do it at last. Only when she was dead would they be safe. The successful ones — the ones who had been there enough years to have maimed, mutilated, maybe even buried her — kept watch over the others who were still in her cock-teasing hug, caring and looking forward, remembering and looking back.”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Beloved (1987)

Time , Dead , Success , Thinking

“Given Greater Sunrise falls within Timor Leste, why does Australia get any (oil royalties)? It was 50-50 when there were no (sea) boundaries. After they agreed on the boundaries everything was different.”

Mari Alkatiri (1949) Prime Minister of East Timor

Mari Alkatiri (2019) cited in: " Timor’s former PM: Australia’s spies didn’t fool me https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/timors-former-pm-australias-spies-didnt-fool-me/news-story/d684911f8a2e1d41bc8ec38685d22e91" in The Australian, 28 August 2019.

Sea

“Aryabhatiya, an improved work, is product of mature intellect, which he wrote when he was 23 years old. Unlike in the Aryabhata siddhanta, the civil days are reckoned from one sunrise to the next, a practice which is still prevalent among the followers of Hindu calendar.”

Aryabhata (476–550) Indian mathematician-astronomer

In, p. 244.
Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures

“If I needed you, would you come to me?
Would you come to me and ease my pain?
If you needed me, I would come to you
I'd swim the seas for to ease your pain
Well, in the night forlorn, oh, the morning's born
And the morning shines with the lights of love
And you will miss sunrise if you close your eyes
And that would break my heart in twoThe lady's with me now since I showed her how
To lay her lily hand in mine
Loop and Lil agree, she's a sight to see
A treasure for the poor to find”

Townes Van Zandt (1944–1997) singer-songwriter

If I Needed You (1972)

Pain , Love , Night , Light

“Plato was synthesis of Europe and Asia, and a decidedly Oriental element pervades his philosophy, giving it a sunrise color.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Source: Abhedananda, Swami India and her people, a study in the social. political, educational and religious conditians of India. [6th ed.] Calcutta, Ramakrishna Vedanta Math [1945]

Color

“Sunrise and sunset are all the same from an observer's point of view. As life is the same at birth and at death. The true Self continues.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Death , Life , Birth

“I see foreboding and foreshadowing… Sunrise to sunset in your eyes.”

A.E. Samaan

Source: SHADES OF VANITY: Shades and Shadows of Eroticism