Quotes about sunshine
page 3

“Here comes the sunshine
Here comes that son of mine
Here comes the everything
Here's a song and a song for him.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sea of Honey (Disc 1)

“A person obsessed with the need to be happy will never be so. The obsession is the obstruction. He does not really seek happiness, rather he seeks for a condition which matches his personal idea regarding the nature of happiness. But happiness is not a mere idea, for one idea will always have competition from another idea. The is why the unhappy man chases for ever from one attraction to another. Happiness will come when he stops chasing, that is, when he stops thinking that an idea about happiness is the same as happiness. A man enjoying the sunshine does so without analysing it.”

Vernon Howard (1918–1992) American writer

Esoteric Encyclopedia of Eternal Knowledge

Happiness, Idea, Nature, Thinking

“Instead of the glorious and ever-memorable year 1759, as the newspapers call it, I call it this ever-warm and victorious year. We have not had more conquest than fine weather: one would think we had plundered East and West Indies of sunshine. Our bells are worn threadbare with ringing for victories. I believe it will require ten votes of the House of Commons before people believe it is the Duke of Devonshire that has done this, and not Mr. Pitt.”

Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician

Letter to George Montagu (21 October 1759)

People, Thinking, Victory, Housing

“The chief duty of government is to keep the peace and stand out of the sunshine of the people.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

Letter to H. N. Eldridge (12 December 1869) as quoted in Garfield (1978) by Allen Peskin, Ch. 13
1860s
Variant: The chief duty of government is to keep the peace and stand out of the sunshine of the people.

People, Peace

“Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine; —& they are the life, the soul of reading; — take them out of this book for instance, — you might as well take the book along with them.”

Laurence Sterne book The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman

Book I, Ch. 22.
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1760-1767)

Life, Books, Soul, Reading

“Of course I see both the things. For an actor you don’t have as many years to work as others do. I cannot work from 18 – 50 years of age. No doubt now there are different genres that are giving equally importance to older woman. It’s like make hay when there’s sunshine. I don’t take up a show for money, I take it up for the concept and then I see if the money is good or not.”

Drashti Dhami (1985) Indian television actress and model

First offer money or character? http://www.bollywoodlife.com/news-gossip/drashti-dhami-i-dont-take-weight-criticism-negatively-because-i-know-i-need-to-cut-down-a-few-kilos/

Money, Age

“I opened the door, and there he stood, a telegraph boy. I signed for the telegram, sat on the bed, and wondered if the wine had finally got the Old Man's heart. The telegram said: your book accepted mailing contract today. Hackmuth. That was all. I let the paper float to the carpet. I just sat there. Then I got down on the floor and began kissing the telegram. I crawled under the bed and just lay there. I did not need the sunshine anymore. Nor the earth, nor heaven. I just lay there, happy to die. Nothing else could happen to me. My life was over.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Life, Happiness, Books, Boy

“The sunshine of thine eyes,
(O still celestial beam!)
Whatever it touches it fills
With the life of its lambent gleam.

The sunshine of thine eyes,
Oh, let it fall on me!
Though I be but a mote of the air,
I could turn to gold for thee.”

George Parsons Lathrop (1851–1898) United States novelist and poet

"The Sunshine of thine Eyes" in Dreams and Days (1892).

Life

“How fast has brother followed brother,
From sunshine to the sunless land!”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“A cloudy day or a little sunshine have as great an influence on many constitutions as the most real blessings or misfortunes.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 162 (5 September 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“The sunshine of the morning
Is abroad upon the hills,
With the singing of the green-wood leaves,
And of a thousand rills.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

One Day
The Golden Violet (1827)

Singing

“Some of the colonizers do understand and quickly retreat, while some, because they are stupid, continue colonizing others, increasing the suffering, deaths, injuries, defeat and humiliation. The people colonized by Abyssinia will be free. Eritrea will be free, and they cannot refuse to let them be free. Western Somalia will be free, and they cannot refuse to grant it freedom. The numerous Abo will be free because this is history, and no one can prevent the sunshine from reaching us.”

Siad Barre (1919–1995) Head of State of Somalia

Mogadiscio Domestic Service in Somali http://www.biyokulule.com/1978_coup.htm, 0448 GMT (1 May 1978).

Death, People, Stupidity, History

“There are no uncharted isles here where we can run away to sunshine and sparkling white beaches. We have just this one world, and on these pages we're beginning to get a feeling for the gigantic physical project confronting us. Our awakening is touched with dismay; we must come to terms with this world or it will terminate us. When we speak of defending the environment, we are speaking of defending our own lives.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

"Introduction" to New World or No World (1970)
General sources

World, Feeling

“We have been friends together
In sunshine and in shade.
Since first beneath the chestnut-tree
In fancy we played
But coldness dwells within thine heart
A cloud is on thy brow.
We have been friends together,—
Shall a light word part us now?”

Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton (1808–1877) English feminist, social reformer, and author

We have been Friends.

Tree, Light, Heart, Parting

“[…] Because the Egoist is to himself the warder of the human, and has nothing to say to the state except: "Get out of my sunshine!"”

Max Stirner book The Ego and Its Own

Tucker 1907, p. 307
The Ego and Its Own (1844)

“God gave me a soul / And your rock 'n' roll
In and out my brain / And running through my vein / You're my sunshine / You're my rain”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

The Hindu Times
Heathen Chemistry (2002)

God, Soul

“He had a sense that the old man meant to be good-natured and neighbourly; but the kindness fell on him as sunshine falls on the wretched — he had no heart to taste it, and felt that it was very far off him.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Source: Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861), Chapter 10 (at page 79)

Nature, Sense, Heart

“Just step aside for me to enjoy the sunshine.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Actually said by his namesake Diogenes of Sinope, when asked by Alexander the Great if there was anything he wanted.
Plutarch, Parallel Lives, "Alexander", ch. 14, section 4.
Misattributed

“What a duty it is to cultivate a pleasant manner! how many a meeting does it make cheerful which would otherwise have been stupid and formal! We do not mean by this the mere routine of polite observance, but we mean that general cheerfulness which, like the sunshine lights up whatever it touches, that attention to others which discovers what subject is most likely to interest them, and that information which, ready for use, is easily laid under contribution by the habit of turning all resources to immediate employ. In short, a really pleasant manner grows out of benevolence, which can be as much shown in a small courtesy as in a great service.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Traits and Trials of Early Life (1836)

Stupidity, Light

“I need Thy presence every passing hour;
What, but Thy grace, can foil the tempter's power?
Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, oh, abide with me!”

Henry Francis Lyte (1793–1847) Anglican priest, hymn-writer and poet

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 276.

“I can conceive no punishment so dreadful as keeping perpetual watch on our words, lest they betray what they mean to conceal; to know no unguarded moment — no careless gaiety — to pine for the confidence which yet we dare not bestow — to tremble, lest that some hidden meaning lurk in a phrase which only our own sickly fancy could torture into bearing such — to have suspicion become a second nature — and to shrink every morning from the glad sunshine, for we know not what a day may bring forth : the wheel of Ixion were a tender mercy compared to such a state.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

No.12. The Heart of Mid Lothian — EFFIE DEANS.
Literary Remains

Confidence, Nature

“Let us not forget that the sunlight is God's smile of benediction; that the sunshine is Heaven's light and life and glory, the true Shekinah, the real presence with which the temple needs most to be filled; that the cooling breeze is the breath of heaven, a veritable messenger of life, carrying healing on its wings.”

John Harvey Kellogg (1852–1943) American physician

Source: The Living Temple, p. 412

Life, God, Smile, Light

“One and all we felt that the holy calm that lay like sunshine over the wasted face and form was only an earthly token and symbol of the calm that was to reign for ever.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Dr. Seward of Lucy Westenra
Dracula (1897)

“Why worry? There should be laughter after pain.
There should be sunshine after rain.
These things have always been the same.
So why worry now?”

Mark Knopfler (1949) English guitarist

Why Worry
Song lyrics, Brothers in Arms (1985)

Pain, Laughter

“In my mind I'm goin' to Carolina.
Can't you see the sunshine?
Can't you just feel the moonshine?
Ain't it just like a friend of mine
To hit me from behind?
Yes, I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind.”

James Taylor (1948) American singer-songwriter and guitarist

"Carolina in My Mind" · BBC performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXmgkvIgc0w <br class="br">Song lyrics, James Taylor (1968)

Feeling

“In this base world, full of poverty and misery, for the first time I thought a ray of sunshine had shone on my life. But alas, it was not a sunbeam, rather it was only a transient beam, a shooting star, which appeared to me in the likeness of a woman or an angel.”

Sadegh Hedayat book The Blind Owl

The Blind Owl

Life, World, Angels, Star

“And the jocund rebecks sound
To many a youth, and many a maid,
Dancing in the checkered shade.
And young and old come forth to play
On a sunshine holiday.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Source: L'Allegro (1631), Line 94

Youth, Holiday, Dance

“We are introduced to Iraq, "a sovereign nation"…In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore's flabbergasting choice of film shots, children are flying little kites, shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then—wham! From the night sky come the terror weapons of American imperialism. Watching the clips Moore uses, and recalling them well, I can recognize various Saddam palaces and military and police centers getting the treatment. But these sites are not identified as such. In fact, I don't think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic. You would also be led to think that the term "civilian casualty" had not even been in the Iraqi vocabulary until March 2003…the "insurgent" side is presented in this film as justifiably outraged, whereas the 30-year record of Baathist war crimes and repression and aggression is not mentioned once.That this—his pro-American moment—was the worst Moore could possibly say of Saddam's depravity is further suggested by some astonishing falsifications. Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know whether Moore is as ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible…Baghdad was the safe house for the man whose "operation" murdered Leon Klinghoffer…In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time. After that same invasion was repelled—Saddam having killed quite a few Americans and Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime and having threatened to kill many more—the Iraqi secret police were caught trying to murder former President Bush during his visit to Kuwait. Never mind whether his son should take that personally…Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country…And it was after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi moved from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very open and lethal design for a holy and ethnic civil war.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2004-06-21
Unfairenheit 9/11
Slate
1091-2339
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2004/06/unfairenheit_911.html: On Michael Moore
2000s, 2004

Life, War, Children, Secret

“Fate steals along with silent tread,
Found oftenest in what least we dread,
Frowns in the storm with angry brow,
But in the sunshine strikes the blow.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

"A Fable" (or "The Raven"), line 36.

Fate

“If South Koreans want a league with the North, we Americans can only wish them well. The problem is that the current military alliance may embolden them to take this step without proper thought — and then embolden them to nullify the framework as soon as they sour on it. How the North is likely to respond can be imagined, considering the two deadly acts of aggression that followed the South’s abandonment of the Sunshine Policy in 2008.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Confederation Again (July 2018)

Imagination, Problem

“Immeasurable at every hour:
He first taught lovers how to kiss,
He brings down sunshine after shower,
Thunder and hate are his also,
He is YES and he is NO.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"The God Called Poetry"
Country Sentiment (1920)

Hate, Lovers, Kiss

“So extravagant is Nature with her choicest treasures, spending plant beauty as she spends sunshine, pouring it forth into land and sea, garden and desert. And so the beauty of lilies falls on angels and men, bears and squirrels, wolves and sheep, birds and bees,….”

John Muir book My First Summer in the Sierra

Terry Gifford, EWDB, page 224
1860s, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1869

Men, Beauty, Angels, Nature

“The tale survives of two men
Who fell in love "at first sight";
Who shared everything
In unbounded intimacy
Including the pillow
And the red embroidered coverlet
Which had been in the family
For generations.
Whether they had bad days,
Domestic arguments
Or inappropriate dreams
We do not know –
No doubt such burrs
Were worked away by time
Polishing its story;
How they found each other
And lived together all their lives,
And died on the same day,
And were buried by the grieving town
On Mount Luofo's peak
With their pillow and red coverlet;
And a pine tree grew
Out of the grave
Like the character for longevity
And true love.Such is the legend.
I like to think of them,
Pan Zhang and Wang Zhangxian,
In the crowd of well-wishers
Waiting in the April sunshine,
Yes, under white cherry trees
In full bloom, for us
Here and now, on this day
Early in the century,
In our very best suits and ties,
With our new rings
Growing warm on our fingers
Like keepsakes of light
Saved from the stars.”

Nick Drake (poet) (1961) British writer

From the Song Dynasty

Love, Men, Family, Dreams

“I believe in some blending of hope and sunshine sweetening the worst lots. I believe that this life is not all; neither the beginning nor the end. I believe while I tremble; I trust while I weep.”

Charlotte Brontë book Villette

Source: Villette (1853), Chapter XXXI: The Dryad

Life, Hope

“You are the sunshine of my life,
That's why I'll always be around,
You are the apple of my eye,
Forever you'll stay in my heart.”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

You Are The Sunshine of My Life
Song lyrics, Talking Book (1972)

Life, Heart

“This is just an ordinary day
Wipe the insecurities away
I can see that the darkness will erode
Looking out the corner of my eye
I can see that the sunshine will explode
Far across the desert in the sky
Beautiful girl
Won't you be my inspiration?
Beautiful girl
Don't you throw your love around
What in the world, what in the world
Could ever come between us?”

Dolores O'Riordan (1971–2018) Irish singer

"Ordinary Day"
Are You Listening? (2007)

Love, World, Beauty, Girl

“I think right now is the moment. This is the beginning. We don’t know what is it the moment of, and maybe something much crazier will happen. But really, we see the sunshine coming in. It was clouded for maybe a hundred years. Our whole condition was very sad, but we still feel warmth, and the life in our bodies can still tell that there is excitement in there, even though death is waiting. We had better not enjoy the moment, but create the moment.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

Tinari, Philip, and Angie Baecker, eds. Hans Ulrich Obrist: The China Interviews. Beijing: Office for Discourse Engineering, 2009.
2000-09, 2009

Life, Death, Sadness, Feeling

“Will ye believe
The wonders of the ocean? how its shoals
Sprang from the wave, like flashing light;.. took wing,
And, twinkling with a silver glitterance,
Flew through the air and sunshine? yet were they
To sight less wondrous than the tribe who swam,
Following like fowlers, with uplifted eye,
Their falling quarry:.. language cannot paint
Their splendid tints! though in blue ocean seen,
Blue, darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,
In all its rich variety of shades,
Suffus'd with glowing gold.”

Robert Southey (1774–1843) British poet

Madoc in Wales http://olivercowdery.com/texts/1805sout.htm#pg001, Part I, Sec. V - 48 (1805). Compare: "'Darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,' As some one somewhere sings about the sky", Lord Byron, Don Juan, canto iv. stanza 110.

Light, Painting

“Tara: No more talk of gloomy Angel, though. Only happy thoughts. Sunshine, picnic, that spell we did last night. With the oil?”

Amber Benson (1977) actress from the United States

Seeing Red [6.19]
Willow & Tara (2000-2002)

Happiness, Angels, Night

“You'll eat hamburgers year after year and live in dusty, vermin-infested apartments and hotels, but every morning you'll see the mighty sun, the eternal blue of the sky, and the streets will be full of sleek women you never will possess, and the hot semitropical nights will reek of romance you'll never have, but you'll still be in paradise, boys, in the land of sunshine.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Women, Boy, Sun, Night

“At the word I turned hastily to another column and found the news that had stirred him. And even in the midst of world-shaking events it stirred me too. For a brief moment I forgot the war and was back in that cheerful world where we used to be happy, where we greeted the rising sun with light hearts and saw its setting without fear. In that cheerful world I can hardly recall a time when a big man with a black beard was not my King … I owe more undiluted happiness to him than to any man that ever lived. For he was the genial tyrant in a world that was all sunshine.”

Alfred George Gardiner (1865–1946) British journalist and writer

On being told in 1915 that W. G. Grace had died. From Pebbles on the Shore (1916)

War, Happiness, World, Fear

“How beautiful, how buoyant, and glad is morning! The first sunshine on the leaves: the first wind, laden with the first breath of the flowers-that deep sigh with which they seem to waken from sleep; the first dew, untouched even by the light foot of the early hare; the first chirping of the rousing birds, as if eager to begin song and flight; all is redolent of the strength given by rest, and the joy of conscious life.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Life, Beauty, Flowers, Bird

“As sunshine broken in the rill,
Though turned astray, is sunshine still.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Lalla Rookh http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/lallarookh/index.html (1817), Part V-VIII: The Fire-Worshippers

“A long, soft sigh, one of those very Italian sighs that express so much, that say "Ah, signor, if only this world were an ideal world, what would I not give to be able to do as you ask, we should sit together in the Tuscan sunshine, you and I, just two men together, and we should drink a bottle of the good red wine, and we should sing, ah, how we should sing."”

Alan Coren (1938–2007) humorist and writer from the United Kingdom

"Let Us Now Phone Famous Men".
The Sanity Inspector (1974)

Men, World, Drink, Wine

“Understanding sometimes is not enough to explain something. Only faith is sufficient. The Führer in Nuremberg said: 'Woe to him who does not believe!' He who does not believe has no soul. He is empty. He has no ideals. He has nothing to live for. He has no sunshine, no light, no joy in life. He is a poor, poor man. What is wealth? What are possessions? What does it all mean? Problems come despite them, only faith is left. Woe to him who does not believe!”

Robert Ley (1890–1945) Nazi politician

Speech given on November 3, 1936. Quoted in Wir alle helfen dem Führer "Schicksal — ich glaube!" (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1937), pages 103-114

Life, Faith, Soul, Understanding

“A light wind swept over the corn; and all nature laughed in the sunshine.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XV : An Encounter and its Consequences; Gilbert Markham

Nature, Light

“With a smile of joy and gladness, with a look of exultation, as of one who in a vision what is to be, but it is not, stood and waited Hiawatha. Toward the sun his hands were lifted both the palms spread out toward it and, between departed fingers, felt the sunshine on his features. Flecked with light his naked shoulders, as it falls and flecks an oak-tree through the rifted leaves and branches.”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Incantations (1978)

Smile, Tree, Light, Waiting

“Dad, are we scared?' said Sunshine. 'No, honey. It's an adventure.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 51

“Against the background of this luminous and sparkling stage Bond stood in the sunshine and felt his mission to be incongruous and remote and his dark profession an affront to his fellow actors.”

Ian Fleming book Casino Royale

Source: Casino Royale (1953), Ch. 5 : The Girl From Headquarters

“Looking eastward from the summit of Pacheco Pass one shining morning, a landscape was displayed that after all my wanderings still appears as the most beautiful I have ever beheld. At my feet lay the Great Central Valley of California, level and flowery, like a lake of pure sunshine, forty or fifty miles wide, five hundred miles long, one rich furred garden of yellow Compositae. And from the eastern boundary of this vast golden flower-bed rose the mighty Sierra, miles in height, and so gloriously colored and so radiant, it seemed not clothed with light but wholly composed of it, like the wall of some celestial city…. Then it seemed to me that the Sierra should be called, not the Nevada or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light. And after ten years of wandering and wondering in the heart of it, rejoicing in its glorious floods of light, the white beams of the morning streaming through the passes, the noonday radiance on the crystal rocks, the flush of the alpenglow, and the irised spray of countless waterfalls, it still seems above all others the Range of Light.”

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

The Yosemite http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/the_yosemite/ (1912), chapter 1: The Approach to the Valley <br class="br">1910s

Beauty, Color, Flowers, Light

“I'd like to combine melancholy and sunshine... There's a sadness in Provence which no one has expressed; Poussin would have shown it in terms of some tomb, underneath the poplars of the Alyscamps... I'd like to put reason in the grass and tears in the sky, like Poussin... You really need to see and feel your subject very clearly, and then If I express myself with distinction and power, there's my Poussin, there's my classicism..”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 211 in: 'What he told me – III. The Studio'

Sadness, Feeling, Tear, Grass

“As the great eye of heaven, shyned bright,
And made a sunshine in the shady place.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 3, stanza 4
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book I

“The shade fell darker from the clustering vine,
Whose green boughs twined the lattice like a wreath;
The lark had ceased the musical glad laugh
With which he hails the morning; note by note
The matin song had died upon the wind;
The dew which hung upon the cypresses
Had turned to sunshine on the waving leaves;”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(14th February 1829) Lines on Newton’s Picture of the Disconsolate
The London Literary Gazette, 1829

Music

“Our intimacy was like a minuet, simply because on every possible occasion and in every possible circumstance we knew where to go, where to sit, which table we unanimously should choose; and we could rise and go, all four together, without a signal from any one of us, always to the music of the Kur orchestra, always in the temperate sunshine, or, if it rained, in discreet shelters.”

Ford Madox Ford book The Good Soldier

Part One, Ch. I (p. 6)
The Good Soldier (1915)

Music

“Perhaps if we had realized they are birds, with all the wonderful characteristics of birds, we would have paid closer attention to the ways in which chickens can enchant us. Take dust-bathing, for example. We call it a bath because the chicken finds a small indentation of dry earth and then proceeds to immerse herself in it as into a warm bath. The earth cleans her feathers. The first time I saw a chicken taking a dust bath, stretching out one iridescent wing and holding it up to the sunshine, then settling into the warmth of the afternoon only to fly effortlessly to a tree to roost in the evening, I was astonished.”

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (1941) American writer and activist

Source: The Pig Who Sang to the Moon (2003), Ch. 2, p. 59

Way, Bird, Tree, Time

“I got one entire song from fortune cookies (Land of Sunshine). On another one, I took words from different Frank Sinatra songs and pasted them together. Another one, I was just driving around and there was a piece of paper on the ground, so I stole it.”

Mike Patton (1968) American singer

Guitar Magazine, September 1992.

Past

“What another being is life when we have found out our Father; and if we work, it is beneath His eye, and if we play, it is in the light and encouragement of His smile. Earth's sunshine is heaven's radiance, and the stars of night as if the beginning of the beatific vision; so soft, so sweet, so gentle, so reposeful, so almost infinite have all things become, because we have found our Father in our God.”

Frederick William Faber (1814–1863) British hymn writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 260.

Life, God, Smile, Star

“Through violence, you may 'solve' one problem, but you sow the seeds for another.
…
One has to try to develop one's inner feelings, which can be done simply by training one's mind. This is a priceless human asset and one you don't have to pay income tax on!
…
First one must change. I first watch myself, check myself, then expect changes from others.
…
Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.
…
I myself feel, and also tell other Buddhists that the question of Nirvana will come later.
There is not much hurry.
If in day to day life you lead a good life, honesty, with love,
with compassion, with less selfishness,
then automatically it will lead to Nirvana.
…
The universe that we inhabit and our shared perception of it are the results of a common karma. Likewise, the places that we will experience in future rebirths will be the outcome of the karma that we share with the other beings living there. The actions of each of us, human or nonhuman, have contributed to the world in which we live. We all have a common responsibility for our world and are connected with everything in it.
…
If the love within your mind is lost and you see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education or material comfort you have, only suffering and confusion will ensue.
…
It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.
…
Whenever Buddhism has taken root in a new land, there has been a certain variation in the style in which it is observed. The Buddha himself taught differently according to the place, the occasion and the situation of those who were listening to him.
…
Samsara - our conditioned existence in the perpetual cycle of habitual tendencies and nirvana - genuine freedom from such an existence- are nothing but different manifestations of a basic continuum. So this continuity of consciousness us always present. This is the meaning of tantra.
…
According to Buddhist practice, there are three stages or steps. The initial stage is to reduce attachment towards life.
The second stage is the elimination of desire and attachment to this samsara. Then in the third stage, self-cherishing is eliminated.
…
The creatures that inhabit this earth-be they human beings or animals-are here to contribute, each in its own particular way, to the beauty and prosperity of the world.
…
To develop genuine devotion, you must know the meaning of teachings. The main emphasis in Buddhism is to transform the mind, and this transformation depends upon meditation. in order to meditate correctly, you must have knowledge.
…
Anything that contradicts experience and logic should be abandoned.
…
The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.
…
From one point of view we can say that we have human bodies and are practicing the Buddha's teachings and are thus much better than insects. But we can also say that insects are innocent and free from guile, where as we often lie and misrepresent ourselves in devious ways in order to achieve our ends or better ourselves. From this perspective, we are much worse than insects.
…
When the days become longer and there is more sunshine, the grass becomes fresh and, consequently, we feel very happy. On the other hand, in autumn, one leaf falls down and another leaf falls down. The beautiful plants become as if dead and we do not feel very happy. Why? I think it is because deep down our human nature likes construction, and does not like destruction. Naturally, every action which is destructive is against human nature. Constructiveness is the human way. Therefore, I think that in terms of basic human feeling, violence is not good. Non-violence is the only way.
…
We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are "news"; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and, therefore, largely ignored.
…
The fundamental philosophical principle of Buddhism is that all our suffering comes about as a result of an undisciplined mind, and this untamed mind itself comes about because of ignorance and negative emotions. For the Buddhist practitioner then, regardless of whether he or she follows the approach of the Fundamental Vehicle, Mahayana or Vajrayana, negative emotions are always the true enemy, a factor that has to be overcome and eliminated. And it is only by applying methods for training the mind that these negative emotions can be dispelled and eliminated. This is why in Buddhist writings and teachings we find such an extensive explanation of the mind and its different processes and functions. Since these negative emotions are states of mind, the method or technique for overcoming them must be developed from within. There is no alternative. They cannot be removed by some external technique, like a surgical operation."”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great Perfection, Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, 2004

Love, Life, War, Happiness

“We all know India has a huge competitive advantage -- we have the largest arable land, focused sunshine, sensible utilisation of water in 30% of land. The question is what should we do to make the US market -- the most difficult market in the world -- accept our produce. For that, we need traceability. It is a simple technology, which we are giving the farmers. It needs certification and verification processes -- to us it is like a process plant. You can then get the output, sort it and grade it.”

Mukesh Ambani (1957) Indian business magnate

Mukesh Ambani on retail and SEZ plans

World, Question, Water

“I drug your ghost across the country, and we plotted out my death.
Every city and memory we whispered "Here is where you rest."
Well I was determined in Chicago but I dug my teeth into my knees
And I settled for a telephone, sang into your machine:
"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine."”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

The Calendar Hung Itself
Fevers and Mirrors (2000)

Death, Memory, Country

“Be it understood, then, that what we have to do, as students of phenomenology, is simply to open our mental eyes and look well at the phenomenon and say what are the characteristics that are never wanting in it, whether that phenomenon be something that outward experience forces upon our attention, or whether it be the wildest of dreams, or whether it be the most abstract and general of the conclusions of science.
The faculties which we must endeavor to gather for this work are three. The first and foremost is that rare faculty, the faculty of seeing what stares one in the face, just as it presents itself, unreplaced by any interpretation, unsophisticated by any allowance for this or for that supposed modifying circumstance. This is the faculty of the artist who sees for example the apparent colors of nature as they appear. When the ground is covered by snow on which the sun shines brightly except where shadows fall, if you ask any ordinary man what its color appears to be, he will tell you white, pure white, whiter in the sunlight, a little greyish in the shadow. But that is not what is before his eyes that he is describing; it is his theory of what ought to be seen. The artist will tell him that the shadows are not grey but a dull blue and that the snow in the sunshine is of a rich yellow. That artist's observational power is what is most wanted in the study of phenomenology. The second faculty we must strive to arm ourselves with is a resolute discrimination which fastens itself like a bulldog upon the particular feature that we are studying, follows it wherever it may lurk, and detects it beneath all its disguises. The third faculty we shall need is the generalizing power of the mathematician who produces the abstract formula that comprehends the very essence of the feature under examination purified from all admixture of extraneous and irrelevant accompaniments.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

Lecture II : The Universal Categories, § 1 : Presentness, CP 5.41 - 42
Pragmatism and Pragmaticism (1903)

Dreams, Color, Nature, Study

“Our predecessors, the Druids of Britain, tho' left in the extremest west to the improvement of their own thoughts, yet advanc'd their inquiries, under all disadvantages, to such heights, as should make our moderns asham'd, to wink in the sunshine of learning and religion.”

William Stukeley (1687–1765) English antiquarian

Stonehenge: A Temple Restor'd to the British Druids, Preface. (1740).

Religion, Learning

“No philosophy that he had ever heard or read gave any reasonable purpose for man's existence, nor any rational clue to his proper conduct. Basking in the sunshine might be as good a thing to do with one's life as any other — but it was not for him and he knew it, even if he could not define how he knew it.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Methuselah's Children

Methuselah's Children (1958)

Life, Reading

“The buttercups across the field
Made sunshine rifts of splendor.”

Dinah Craik (1826–1887) English novelist and poet

"A Silly Song"

“He had come there dissatisfied with his work, even though his multi-kinetic work was admired and winning him professional recognition. However, at that moment, other ideas were gestating and he wanted to add what he called a "fifth dimension" to his art - that of artificial intelligence. […] : [At the colony, ] he was able to turn his thoughts inward, hoping to discover the new methods and direction that would more deeply satisfy his creative needs. It was at this point, while watching the motions and patterns of sun on leaves in the New Hampshire woods one morning, that Tsai finally achieved the revelatory breakthrough that changed his art and liberated his creative energies. As he put it, he wanted to create "natural movements in dynamic equilibrium, with intelligence," and he found his solution in an unlikely combination of natural phenomenon, the precedent of Gabo's singular (and unrepeated) kinetic sculpture, and the new resource of contemporary analog and digital technology. Speaking of this moment of revelation, Tsai said that he had quite deliberately turned himself into "a sort of plant": facing his chair into the sunshine in the morning, he turned his body in stages throughout the day, mulling over ways of make an "art that presented the observer with natural movements in dynamic equilibrium, and art that could convey the awe I felt while watching sunbeams shimmer through forest leaves." But a work that would "shimmer" simply did not do enough either for the artist or viewer, Tsai concluded. It must also respond in some way to the observer; it would have to work on a new feedback principle and actually engage the observer directly. In short, a cybernetic sculpture was required. To create such radically participatory works, he understood, would require that he draw on his engineering skills rather than suppress them, as he had been trying to do in his period of oil painting.”

Sam Hunter (1923–2014) American art historian

Source: The Cybernetic Sculpture of Tsai Wen-Ying, 1989, p. 67

Hope, Art, Way, Intelligence

“Grieve not the Christ of God, who redeems us; and remember that we grieve Him most when we will not let Him pour His love upon us, but turn a sullen, unresponsive unbelief towards His pleading grace, as some glacier shuts out the sunshine from the mountain-side with its thick-ribbed ice.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 82.

Love, God, Mountain, Christ

“If you have faith in that one treasure which is God, His truth, and the wealth of His grace, if you assume His good qualities and His actions, God will always be with you. Whether you feel happy or sad, in sickness or in health, in sunshine or in rain, His wealth will always be yours and will always give you peace, happiness, and comfort any time you need it. This is the only thing which can protect you and take care of you. Nothing else is of any use. You must, therefore, have faith in God, the One Treasure, who is always with you, who always takes care of you. He is your shade in the heat of the sun. He is an umbrella in the rain and the happiness in your sorrow. He is always there to help you in any situation.”

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (1900–1986) Sri Lankan Sufi leader

God, Happiness, Health, Truth

“Only a moment; a moment of strength, of romance, of glamour — of youth!… A flick of sunshine upon a strange shore, the time to remember, the time for a sigh, and — goodbye!”

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer

Night — Goodbye! <br class="br"> Youth, A Narrative http://www.gutenberg.org/files/525/525.txt (1902)

Youth, Time, Night

“Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come; and, like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again; and we bear to go on with our labour, what it may be.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula (1897), Chapter XIV, Dr. Seward's Diary entry for 22 September
Context: Van Helsing and I came on here. The moment we were alone in the carriage he gave way to a regular fit of hysterics. He has denied to me since that it was hysterics, and insisted that it was only his sense of humour asserting itself under very terrible conditions. He laughed till he cried, and I had to draw down the blinds lest any one should see us and misjudge; and then he cried, till he laughed again; and laughed and cried together, just as a woman does. I tried to be stern with him, as one is to a woman under the circumstances; but it had no effect. Men and women are so different in manifestations of nervous strength or weakness! Then when his face grew grave and stern again I asked him why his mirth, and why at such a time. His reply was in a way characteristic of him, for it was logical and forceful and mysterious. He said:—
“Ah, you don't comprehend, friend John. Do not think that I am not sad, though I laugh. See, I have cried even when the laugh did choke me. But no more think that I am all sorry when I cry, for the laugh he come just the same. Keep it always with you that laughter who knock at your door and say, ‘May I come in?’ is not the true laughter. No! he is a king, and he come when and how he like. He ask no person; he choose no time of suitability. He say, ‘I am here.’ Behold, in example I grieve my heart out for that so sweet young girl; I give my blood for her, though I am old and worn; I give my time, my skill, my sleep; I let my other sufferers want that so she may have all. And yet I can laugh at her very grave — laugh when the clay from the spade of the sexton drop upon her coffin and say ‘Thud, thud!’ to my heart, till it send back the blood from my cheek. My heart bleed for that poor boy — that dear boy, so of the age of mine own boy had I been so blessed that he live, and with his hair and eyes the same. There, you know now why I love him so. And yet when he say things that touch my husband-heart to the quick, and make my father-heart yearn to him as to no other man — not even you, friend John, for we are more level in experiences than father and son — yet even at such a moment King Laugh he come to me and shout and bellow in my ear, ‘Here I am! here I am!’ till the blood come dance back and bring some of the sunshine that he carry with him to my cheek. Oh, friend John, it is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles; and yet when King Laugh come, he make them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall — all dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him. And believe me, friend John, that he is good to come, and kind. Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come; and, like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again; and we bear to go on with our labour, what it may be.”

Women, Men, Way, Tear

“Nature repairs her ravages, — repairs them with her sunshine, and with human labor.”

George Eliot book The Mill on the Floss

The Mill on the Floss (1860)
Context: Nature repairs her ravages, — repairs them with her sunshine, and with human labor. The desolation wrought by that flood had left little visible trace on the face of the earth, five years after. The fifth autumn was rich in golden cornstacks, rising in thick clusters among the distant hedgerows; the wharves and warehouses on the Floss were busy again, with echoes of eager voices, with hopeful lading and unlading.
And every man and woman mentioned in this history was still living, except those whose end we know.

Nature

“I've been sleeping through my life
Now I'm waking up
And I want to stand in the sunshine”

Juliana Hatfield (1967) American guitarist/singer-songwriter and author

Sunshine
In Exile Deo (2004)
Context: I've been sleeping through my life
Now I'm waking up
And I want to stand in the sunshine
I have never been ecstatic
Had a flower but it never bloomed
In the darkness of my wasted youth
It was hiding in the shadows
Learning to become invisible
Uncover me

Life, Sleep

“Don't fear the nighttime, cause the monsters know that you're divine. Don't fear the sunshine, cause everything's better in the summertime”

Michael Franti (1966) American rapper

Never Too Late, Everyone Deserves Music (2003)

Fear

“No gilded dome swells from the lowly roof to catch the morning or evening beam; but the love and gratitude of united America settle upon it in one eternal sunshine.”

Edward Everett (1794–1865) American politician, orator, statesman

Oration on the Character of Washington (1856); as published in A Library of American Literature from the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time Vol. V (1888) by Edmund Clarence Stedman and Ellen Mackay Hutchinson.
Context: No gilded dome swells from the lowly roof to catch the morning or evening beam; but the love and gratitude of united America settle upon it in one eternal sunshine. From beneath that humble roof went forth the intrepid and unselfish warrior, the magistrate who knew no glory but his country’s good; to that he returned, happiest when his work was done. There he lived in noble simplicity, there he died in glory and peace. While it stands, the latest generations of the grateful children of America will make this pilgrimage to it as to a shrine; and when it shall fall, if fall it must, the memory and the name of Washington shall shed an eternal glory on the spot.

Love, Gratitude

“You should watch the wise bee and do as it does. It dwells in unity, in the congregation of its fellows, and goes forth, not in the storm, but in calm and still weather, in the sunshine, towards all those flowers in which sweetness may be found.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Spiritual Espousals (c. 1340)
Context: You should watch the wise bee and do as it does. It dwells in unity, in the congregation of its fellows, and goes forth, not in the storm, but in calm and still weather, in the sunshine, towards all those flowers in which sweetness may be found. It does not rest on any flower, neither on any beauty nor on any sweetness; but it draws from them honey and wax, that is to say, sweetness and light-giving matter, and brings both to the unity of the hive, that therewith it may produce fruits, and be greatly profitable. Christ, the Eternal Sun, shining into the open heart, causes that heart to grow and to bloom, and it overflows with all the inward powers with joy and sweetness. So the wise man will do like the bee, and he will fly forth with attention and with reason and with discretion, towards all those gifts and towards all that sweetness which he has ever experienced, and towards all the good which God has ever done to him. And in the light of love and with inward observation, he will taste of the multitude of consolations and good things; and will not rest upon any flower of the gifts of God, but, laden with gratitude and praise, will fly back into the unity, wherein he wishes to rest and to dwell eternally with God.

Flowers, Bee, Weather

“That we shall probably never know the whole "truth" about the universe does not really matter very much; the fun comes in trying to find out. The natural pattern of current astronomy … is provided by the cryptic unity of nature itself (belief in which is the chief act of faith of the scientist) and by questions astronomers ask today, as their predecessors have done for centuries:
Whence comes the fire of the Sun and the stars?
What is the explanation of unusual phenomena in the sky (in former days, comets and supernovae; nowadays quasars and pulsars)?
How is the universe constructed and what is our place in it?
How did the universe begin and what is its fate (and ours)?
If we were all-seeing supermen, these might appear naive and self-centred questions: there may be more significant ones which have not even occurred to us. But the human brain is itself a part of nature, fanned into existence by billions of years of sunshine acting on the molecules of the Earth. It is not perfectible in the immediate future, even if biologists should wish to alter the brain — which is a questionable ambition. What men make of the universe at large is a product of what they can see of it and of their own human nature.”

Nigel Calder (1931–2014) British science writer

Source: Violent Universe (1969), p. 25

Men, Fate, Truth, Faith

“I think there's a lot of people out there who say we must not have horror in any form, we must not say scary things to children because it will make them evil and disturbed… That offends me deeply, because the world is a scary and horrifying place, and everyone's going to get old and die, if they're that lucky. To set children up to think that everything is sunshine and roses is doing them a great disservice.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

Said to Michael Silverberg of NPR; quote featured in the Buffy Monster Book (2000)
Context: I think there's a lot of people out there who say we must not have horror in any form, we must not say scary things to children because it will make them evil and disturbed... That offends me deeply, because the world is a scary and horrifying place, and everyone's going to get old and die, if they're that lucky. To set children up to think that everything is sunshine and roses is doing them a great disservice. Children need horror because there are things they don't understand. It helps them to codify it if it is mythologized, if it's put into the context of a story, whether the story has a happy ending or not. If it scares them and shows them a little bit of the dark side of the world that is there and always will be, it's helping them out when they have to face it as adults.

Children, People, World, Thinking

“He did not feel that he was stealing, for the cleaver, the radio, the money, and the typewriter were all on the same level of value, all meant the same thing to him. They were the serious toys of the men who lived in the dead world of sunshine and rain he had left, the world that had condemned him, branded him guilty.”

Richard Wright (1908–1960) African-American writer

Eight Men (1961)

Men, Money, World, Feeling

“Sunshine came softly through my a-window today
Could've tripped out easy a-but I've a-changed my ways”

Donovan (1946) Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist

"Sunshine Superman"
Sunshine Superman (1966)
Context: Sunshine came softly through my a-window today
Could've tripped out easy a-but I've a-changed my ways
It'll take time, I know it but in a while
You're gonna be mine, I know it, we'll do it in style
'Cause I made my mind up you're going to be mine.

Way, Change

“What makes a poet is, surely, the love of these things, a desperate search for the tiny ray of sunshine which used to flicker on the floor of a child’s bedroom.”

Francois Mauriac (1885–1970) French author

Love, Making love, Search

“Dismal and fearsome to view was this strong place of Carcë, most like to the embodied soul of dreadful night brooding on the waters of that sluggish river: by day a shadow in broad sunshine, the likeness of pitiless violence sitting in the place of power, darkening the desolation of the mournful fen; by night, a blackness more black than night herself.”

Eric Rücker Eddison book The Worm Ouroboros

Source: The Worm Ouroboros (1922), Chapter 4, "Conjuring in the Iron Tower"

Soul, Strong, Water, Night

“Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the A. M. heat: shattercane, lamb’s-quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtail, muscadine, spinecabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie, butter-print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in a morning breeze like a mother’s soft hand on your cheek. An arrow of starlings fired from the windbreak’s thatch. The glitter of dew that stays where it is and steams all day. A sunflower, four more, one bowed, and horses in the distance standing rigid and still as toys. All nodding. Electric sounds of insects at their business. Ale-colored sunshine and pale sky and whorls of cirrus so high they cast no shadow. Insects all business all the time. Quartz and chert and schist and chondrite iron scabs in granite. Very old land. Look around you. The horizon trembling, shapeless. We are all of us brothers.”

David Foster Wallace book The Pale King

The Pale King (2011)

Color, Business, Tree, Grass

“It has been called a problem of adaptation. There is a subjective and there is an objective, a self and a not-self. And between this self and the not-self there is incessant irrelation. That which is not-self is a process, always changing. It never tires of adopting new attitudes toward the self. The self also is a process, and hence is continually losing joint, or is in continual danger of losing joint, with its environment. Life, therefore, at best, since in the nature of things it is a struggle and a search, is an enterprise with exasperating lack of sunshine.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Social Problem, pp. 74–75

Life, Search, Nature, Problem

“I marvel at the complacency of Ministers in the face of the frightful experiences through which we have all so newly passed. I look with wonder upon our thoughtless crowds disporting themselves in the summer sunshine, and upon this unfocused, unheeding House of Commons, which seems to have no higher function than to cheer a Minister. But what is happening across the narrow seas? A terrible process is astir. Germany is arming.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

That mighty race who fought and almost vanquished the whole world is on the march again. The whole nation is inspired with the idea of retrieving and avenging their defeat in the Great War. They have arisen from the pit of disaster in monstrous guise. ... And we are still pestering France to disarm, and we are still disarmed ourselves!
'How I Would Procure Peace', Daily Mail (9 July 1934), quoted in Martin Gilbert, The Churchill Documents, Volume 12: The Wilderness Years, 1929–1935 (Michigan: Hillsdale Press, 2012), p. 825, n. 3
The 1930s

Summer, Housing, Sea

“To take such generous contracts and screw them up so dramatically must suggest that these are the most probably the worst business people ever assembled in one place to run anything. … the civil servants were taken to the cleaners and on the face of it you still end up with a £750 million overspend based on your mismanagement of them. I think they should be sacked, hung drawn and quartered, thrown out of the country and the whole thing (the London Underground) returned to public ownership. I saw that they (Metronet management) wanted to talk to the Mayor about this — wasting their breath sunshine!”

Ken Livingstone (1945) Mayor of London between 2000 and 2008

they can go out and raise the money amongst their shareholders who came here to get their snout in the trough — they screwed it up; they are not getting any of our money!
Remarks made regarding the management of Metronet and the PPP of the London Underground during a Mayor's press conference (13 March 2007)

People, Business, Thinking, Country