Browse 15740 quotes about Light.
“By arts, sails, and oars, ships are rapidly moved; arts move the
light chariot, and establish love.
[Lat., Arte citae veloque rates remoque moventur;
Arte levis currus, arte regendus Amor.]”
“A light breath fans the flame, a violent gust extinguishes it.”
“Riches are oft by guilt and baseness earn'd;
Or dealt by chance to shield a lucky knave,
Or throw a cruel sunshine on a fool.
But for one end, one much-neglected use,
Are riches worth your care; (for nature's wants
Are few, and without opulence supplied;)
This noble end is, to produce the soul;
To show the virtues in their fairest light;
To make humanity the minister
Of bounteous Providence; and teach the breast
The generous luxury the gods enjoy.”
“What the light of your mind, which is the direct inspiration of the Almighty, pronounces incredible, that, in God's name, leave uncredited. At your peril do not try believing that!”
Source: Life of Friedrich Schiller (1825): Life of John Sterling (1851)
“Is not light grander than fire?”
Source: Past and Present
“Superstition! that horrid incubus which dwelt in darkness, shunning the light, with all its racks, and poison chalices, and foul sleeping draughts, is passing away without return. Religion cannot pass away. The burning of a little straw may hide the stars of the sky; but the stars are there and will reappear.”
Source: The Carlyle Anthology
“The germs of all truth lie in the soul, and when the ripe moment comes, the truth within answers to the fact without as the flower responds to the sun, giving it form for heat and color for light.”
Source: Essays in Literary Interpretation
“Light is snow sifted / To an abstraction.”
“Human relations just are not fixed in their orbits like the planets -- they're more like galaxies, changing all the time, exploding into light for years, then dying away.”
Source: Crucial Conversations: A Novel
“Hair is the most delicate and lasting of our materials, and survives us, like love. It is so light, so gentle; so escaping from the idea of death, that, with a lock of hair belonging to a child or friend, we may almost look up to heaven and compare notes with the angelic nature,--may almost say, "I have a piece of thee here not unworthy of thy being now.”
Source: Men, Women, and Books: A Selection of Sketches, Essays, and Critical Memoirs from His Uncollected Prose Writings
“Light is, perhaps, the most wonderful of all visible things.”
Source: Table-talk: To which are added Imaginary conversations of Pope and Swift
“Love is the light that you see by.”
Source: A Lantern in Her Hand
“All I can say about my mind is that, like a fire carefully laid by a good housemaid, it is one that any match will light.”
Source: More Memories
“Like earth, awake, and warm, and bright
With joy the spirit moves and burns;
So up to thee! O Fount of Light!
Our light returns.”
Source: The Poetical Works of John Sterling
“Give me Thy light, and fix my eyes on Thee!”
“Hand
Grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship,
And great hearts expand
And grow one in the sense of this world's life.”
Source: Selections from Robert Browning
“... not only is life put in new patterns from the air, but it is somehow arrested, frozen into form. (The leaping hare is caught in a marble panel.) A glaze is put over life. There is no flaw, no crack in the surface; a still reservoir, no ripple on its face. Looking down from the air that morning, I felt that stillness rested like a light over the earth. The waterfalls seemed frozen solid; the tops of the trees were still; the river hardly stirred, a serpent gently moving under its shimmering skin.”
“Humility is the light of the understanding.”
“If a man offend a harmless, pure, and innocent person, the evil falls back upon that fool, like light dust thrown up against the wind.”
Source: The Dhammapada
“Virtue without success is a fair picture shown by an ill light; but lucky men are favorites of heaven; all own the chief, when fortune owns the cause.”
“There is no figure more common in scripture, and none more beautiful, than that by which Christ is likened unto light. Incomprehensible in its nature, itself the first visible, and that by which all things are seen, light represents to us Christ. Whose generation none can declare, but Who must shine upon us ere we can know aught aright, whether of things Divine or human.”
“If cities were built by the sound of music, then some edifices would appear to be constructed by grave, solemn tones,--others to have danced forth to light fantastic airs.”
Source: Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Letters, Diaries, Reminiscences and Extensive Biographies: Autobiographical Writings of the Renowned American Novelist, Author of
“It is not strange that that early love of the heart should come back, as it so often does when the dim eye is brightening with its last light. It is not strange that the freshest fountains the heart has ever known in its wastes should bubble up anew when the lifeblood is growing stagnant. It is not strange that a bright memory should come to a dying old man, as the sunshine breaks across the hills at the close of a stormy day; nor that in the light of that ray, the very clouds that made the day dark should grow gloriously beautiful.”
“Armour is light at table.”
Source: The Poetical Works of G. H. and R. Heber. With Memoir
“The pure and benign light of revelation has had a meliorating influence on mankind.”
Source: Maxims of Washington: Political, Social, Moral and Religious
“A Christian's wit is offensive light,
A beam that aids, but never grieves the sight;
Vig'rous in age as in the flush of youth,
'Tis always active on the side of truth.”
“If I freely may discover
What should please me in my lover,
I would have her fair and witty,
Savouring more of court than city;
A little proud, but full of pity;
Light and humorous in her toying,
Oft building hopes, and soon destroying,
Long, but sweet in the enjoying;
Neither too easy nor to hard;
All extremes I would have barr'd.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Ben Jonson (Illustrated)
“Every love has a poetic relevance of its own; each love brings to light only what to it is relevant. Outside lies the junk-yard of what does not matter.”
“And you, my Critics! in the chequer'd shade,
Admire new light thro' holes yourselves have made.”
Source: The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq: ...
“The Book, this Holy Book, on every line,
Mark'd with the seal of high divinity,
On every leaf bedew'd with drops of love
Divine, and with the eternal heraldry
And signature of God Almighty stamp'd
From first to last; this ray of sacred light,
This lamp, from off the everlasting throne,
Mercy took down, and in the night of time
Stood, casting on the dark her gracious bow;
And evermore beseeching men With tears
And earnest sighs, to read, believe and live.”
“Hear all ye angels, progeny of light, Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers.”
“What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, Of Attic taste?”
Source: Paradise regained, Samson Agonistes, etc
“A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, As one great furnace, flamed; yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible Serv'd only to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell, hope never comes That comes to all; but torture without end.”
“Morn, Wak'd by the circling hours, with rosy hand Unbarr'd the gates of light.”
Source: The Poetical Works of John Milton: With Notes of Various Authors; and with Some Account of the Life and Writings of Milton, Derived Principally from Original Documents in Her Majesty's State-paper Office
“And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light. There let the pealing organ blow, To the full-voiced choir below, In service high, and anthems clear As may, with sweetness, through mine ear Dissolve me into ecstasies, And bring all heaven before mine eyes.”
“The sacred influence of light appears.”
Source: The First Six Books of Milton's Paradise Lost: Rendered Into Grammatical Construction ... with Notes Grammatical, Geographical, Historical, Critical, and Explanatory. To which are Prefixed Remarks on Ellipsis and Transposition ...
“It often happens that those who spend their time giving light to others, remain in darkness themselves.”
“There are some people who don't conform to the signals. An ordinary well-regulated locomotive slows down or pulls up when it sees the red light hoisted against it. Perhaps I was born color blind. When I see the red signal -- I can't help forging ahead. And in the end, you know, that spells disaster.”
“Every night before I turn out the lights to sleep, I ask myself this question: Have I done everything that I can.... Have I done enough?”
Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965
“The Sahara was a spectacle as alive as the sea. The tints of the dunes changed according to the time of day and the angle of the light: golden as apricots from far off, when we drove close to them they turned to freshly made butter; behind us they grew pink; from sand to rock, the materials of which the desert was made varied as much as its tints.”
Source: Force of circumstance
“The glory of ancestors sheds a light around posterity; it allows neither good nor bad qualities to remain in obscurity.
[Lat., Majorum gloria posteris lumen est, neque bona neque mala in occulto patitur.]”
“Harmonious words render ordinary ideas acceptable; less ordinary, pleasant; novel and ingenious ones, delightful. As pictures and statues, and living beauty, too, show better by music-light, so is poetry irradiated, vivified, glorified', and raised into immortal life by harmony.”
Source: The Works of Walter Savage Landor
“I learned what education really is: the penetrating deeper and rising higher into life, as well as making continually wider explorations; the rounding of the whole human being out of its nebulous elements into form, as planets and suns are rounded, until they give out safe and steady light. This makes the process a infinite one, not possible to be completed at any school.”
Source: A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory
“... people are growing up in the slack flicker of a pale light which lacks the concentrated burn of a candle flame or oil wick or the bulb of a gooseneck desk lamp: a pale, wavering, oblong shimmer, emitting incessant noise, which is to real knowledge or discourse what the manic or weepy protestations of a drunk are to responsible speech. Drunks do have a way of holding an audience, though, and so does the shimmery ill-focused oblong screen.”
“Never yet did there exist a full faith in the Divine Word (by whom light as well as immortality was brought into the world) which did not expand the intellect, while it purified the heart--which did not multiply the aims and objects of the understanding, while it fixed and simplified those of the desires and passions.”
Source: The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poetry, Plays, Literary Essays, Lectures, Autobiography and Letters (Classic Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of the English poet, literary critic and philosopher, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Christabel, Lyrical Ballads, Conversation Poems and Biographia Literaria
“Falsehood is fire in stubble; it likewise turns all the light stuff around it into its own substance for a moment, one crackling blazing moment, and then dies; and all its converts are scattered in the wind, without place or evidence of their existence, as viewless as the wind which scatters them.”
Source: The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poetry, Plays, Literary Essays, Lectures, Autobiography and Letters (Classic Illustrated Edition): The Entire Opus of the English poet, literary critic and philosopher, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Christabel, Lyrical Ballads, Conversation Poems and Biographia Literaria
“With warning hand I mark Time's rapid flight,
From Life's glad morning to its solemn night;
Yet, through the dear Lord's love, I also show
There's light above me by the shade I throw.”
“Love is the great intangible. ... Frantic and serene, vigilant and calm, wrung-out and fortified, explosive and sedate -- love commands a vast army of moods. Hoping for victory, limping from the latest skirmish, lovers enter the arena once again. ... Love is the white light of emotion. ... Everyone admits that love is wonderful and necessary, yet no one can agree on what it is.”
“Morals and lights are our first necessities.”
“Our senses will not admit anything extreme. Too much noise confuses us, too much light dazzles us, too great distance or nearness prevents vision, too great prolixity or brevity weakens an argument, too much pleasure gives pain, too much accordance annoys.”
Source: Thoughts of Blaise Pascal