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Quote by Randall Jarrell

“Here where North, the night, the berg of death Crowd me out of the ignorant darkness, I see at last that all the knowledge I wrung from the darkness—that the darkness flung me— Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing, The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness And we call it wisdom. It is pain.”

Quote by Randall Jarrell

Author

Randall Jarrell
Randall Jarrell

Randall Jarrell was an influential American poet, born on May 6, 1914, and died on October 14, 1965. His poetry is known for its profound emotion and unique style, considered a significant representative of American poetry in the 20th century. more

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“That is the truth, my boy. All we have left of our ancestors' great covenant with the Everlasting, who brought them out of nothingness, is darkness and wrath. With every day that passes, Horeb's wrath feeds on our sins. He demands justice and righteousness. He watches us, impatiently. He knows our past, but he also knows the future that awaits us. He sees that we are advancing into darkness. In his impatience, he rumbles to shake us our of our torpor. But all he obtains in return is fear, even though what he wants is a little courage and dignity!”

“Christmas is not a reminder that the world is really quite a nice old place. It reminds us that the world is a shockingly bad old place, where wickedness flourishes unchecked, where children are murdered, where civilized countries make a lot of money by selling weapons to uncivilized ones so they can blow each other apart. Christmas is God lighting a candle, and you don't light a candle in a room that's already full of sunlight. You light a candle in a room that's so murky that the candle, when lit, reveals just how bad things really are. The light shines in the darkness, says St. John, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

“I have always liked mornings when light brightens without warming, instrumental but not distracting. Seiya, on the other hand, prefers afternoons when energies run high and you are most easily engaged in what happens around you.” She paused to take a deep breath. “I had forgotten, but now that I remember, it seems just like yesterday. I remember Bowe telling me that she liked nights the most. She described them as the most forgiving time of day, the time when she felt most free to be herself…despite the fact that she was my best friend, I think I never quite understood Bowe as well as I thought. I remember she once told me that she felt like she did not belong to the world. It shocked me. I thought that she was exaggerating. Though I knew that she suffered from depression, I thought she was exaggerating…. I knew about the cutting but I thought it was just a phase and that she would soon grow out of it…but seeing Bowe again, finding her so thin and grey, I can’t help but wonder whether I was wrong…” she added absently. “Don’t be too hard on yourself, Sam. You know the people in your life better than you think. I have always thought that in life, at times, it is as if we were watching things through a pair of binoculars. Our vision is limited to what we see through the lenses. So much might be missed. Things that are actually quite small may appear disproportionately large. When in doubt, Shane and I have often turned towards the stars. They put our lives in perspective and remind us that measured on the scale of the universe our problems are not as big as they seem to be…. It helps us approach them more calmly.”