88 Darkness Quotes

Your quest is for darkness only. This sea is not your sea. The myths of men are not your myths. Men's treasures are not yours.

Delacroix, Wagner, Baudelaire - all great theorists, bent on dominating other minds by sensuous means. Their one dream was to create the irresistible effect - to intoxicate, or overwhelm. They looked to analysis to provide them with the keyboard on which to play, with certainty, on man's emotions, and they sought in abstract meditation they key to sure and certain action upon their subject - man's nervous and psychic being.

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day. What hours, O what black hours we have spent This night!

Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse.

As the moral gloom of the world overpowers all systematic gaiety, even so was their home of wild mirth made desolate amid the sad forest.

A black star appears, a point of darkness in the night sky's clarity. Point of darkness and gateway to repose. Reach out, pierce the fine fabric of the sheltering sky, take repose.

When we don't allow ourselves to hope, we don't allow ourselves to have purpose. Without purpose, without meaning, life is dark. We've no light within, and we're just living to die.

By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule - From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, Out of SPACE - out of TIME.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

Hence, loathed Melancholy, Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born, In Stygian cave forlorn, 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy.

She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellow'd to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out: At one stride comes the dark; With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea. Off shot the spectre-bark.

If America was a person,- and it sat down,- Lancaster town would be plunged into a Darkness unbreathable.

Madam, there's no such thing as a tough child- if you parboil them first for seven hours, they always come out tender.

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

One trembles to think of that mysterious thing in the soul, which seems to acknowledge no human jurisdiction, but in spite of the individual's own innocent self, will still dream horrid dreams, and mutter unmentionable thoughts.

A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now. It is too late. The Evacuation still proceeds, but it's all theatre. There are no lights inside the cars. No light anywhere. Above him lift girders old as an iron queen, and glass somewhere far above that would let the light of day through. But it's night. He's afraid of the way the glass will fall soon it will be a spectacle: the fall of a crystal palace. But coming down in total blackout, without one glint of light, only great invisible crashing.

Like a fiend in a cloud, With howling woe, After night I do crowd, And with night will go; I turn my back to the east, From whence comforts have increased; For light doth seize my brain With frantic pain.

We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others.

Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom, Far from all resort of mirth, Save the cricket on the hearth.

Do not speak to us of the greatness of poetry, Of the torches wisping in the underground, Of the structure of vaults upon a point of light. There are no shadows in our sun, Day is desire and night is sleep. There are no shadows anywhere. The earth, for us, is flat and bare. There are no shadows.

Light shines in darkness because what else could it shine in?

Once at the croak of a Raven who crost it, A barbarous people, Blind to the magic, And deaf to the melody, Snarl'd at and cursed me. A demon vext me, The light retreated, The landskip darken'd, The melody deaden'd, The Master whisper'd 'Follow The Gleam.'

Tell me how bad I am... it makes me feel so good. [Last line]

Events cast long shadows before. One such event would be a war. But how are shadows to be seen When total darkness fills the screen?

Bientot nous plongerons dans les froides tenebres; Adieu, vive clarte de nos etes trop courts!

O toi, le plus savant et le plus beau des Anges, Dieu trahi par le sort et prive de louanges, O Satan, prends pitie de ma longue misere! O Prince de l'exil, a qui l'on a fait tort Et qui, vaincu, toujours te redresses plus fort, O Satan, prends pitie de ma longue misere! Toi qui sais tout, grand roi des choses souterraines, Guerisseur familier des angoisses humaines, O Satan, prends pitie de ma longue misere! Toi qui, meme aux lepreux, aux parias maudits, Enseignes par l'amour le gout du Paradis, O Satan, prends pitie de ma longue misere!

Je ne concois guere (mon cerveau serait-il un miroir ensorcele?) un type de Beaute ou il n'y ait du Malheur. Appuye sur - d'autres diraient: obsede par - ces idees, on concoit qu'il me serait difficile de en pas conclure que le plus parfait type de Beaute virile est Satan, - a la maniere de Milton.

'I will ask them all, I will ask them all their dreams, I will hold my light above them and seek their faces. I will hear them whisper, invisible in their veins . . .' The eternal asker of answers becomes as the darkness, Or as a wind blown over a myriad forest, Or as the numberless voices of long-drawn rains.

Once I loved, and she I loved was darkened. Again I loved, and love itself was darkened. Vainly we follow the circle of shadowy days. The screen at last grows dark, the flutes are silent. The doors of night are closed. We go our ways.

Even as the moon grows queenlier in mid-space When the sky darkens, and her cloud-rapt car Thrills with intenser radiance from afar,- So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace When the drear soul desires thee.

They're also a valuable supplement to the daily press, but like any new breakthrough, there is a dark side. (February 2005)

Come, blessed Darkness, come and bring thy balm For eyes grown weary of the garish day! Come with thy soft, slow steps, thy garments gray, Thy veiling shadows, bearing in thy palm The poppy-seeds of slumber, deep and calm.

When that feeling of meaninglessness sets in, Go blowing my mind on God: The light in the dark, with the neon arms, The meek He seeks, the beast He calms, The head of the good soul department.

I said 'Lily, Oh Lily I'm so afraid I fear I am walking in the Veil of Darkness' And she said 'Child, take what I say With a pinch of salt And protect yourself with fire'

After a good, successful torture, she was as happy as I ever saw her. I guess everyone needed a hobby.

Though deepest dark our efforts should enfold, Unwearied mine to find the vein of gold; Forget not oft to lift the hope on high; The rosy dawn again shall fill the sky. And by that lovely light, all truth-revealed, The cherished forms which sad distrust concealed, Transfigured, yet the same, will round us stand, The kindred angels of a faithful band; Ruby and ebon cross both cast aside, No lamp is needed, for the night has died.

Still nursing the unconquerable hope, Still clutching the inviolable shade, With a free, onward impulse brushing through, By night, the silver'd branches of the glade.

I am not the light, I am the night; but a flame stabs through my entrails and consumes me. I am the night devoured by light.

Nocte latent mendae, vitioque ignoscitur omni, Horaque formosam quamlibet illa facit.

At Tara today in this fateful hour I place all Heaven with its power, And the sun with its brightness, And the snow with its whiteness, And fire with all the strength it hath, And lightning with its rapid wrath, And the winds with their swiftness along their path, And the sea with its deepness, And the rocks with their steepness, And the earth with its starkness All these I place, By God's almighty help and grace, Between myself and the powers of darkness.

Iron sleet of arrowy shower Hurtles in the darkened air.

'If the U.S. was a person,' he later became fond of saying, 'and it sat down, Columbus, Ohio would instantly be plunged into darkness'

My candle burned alone in an immense valley. Beams of the huge night converged upon it, Until the wind blew. Then beams of the huge night Converged upon its image, Until the wind blew.

The sea returns upon the men, The fields entrap the children, brick Is a weed and all the flies are caught, Wingless and withered, but living alive. The discord merely magnified. Deeper within the belly's dark Of time, time grows upon the rock.

Rintrah roars and shakes his fires in the burdened air; Hungry clouds swag on the deep.

Perhaps I was addicted to the dark-side/somewhere inside my childhood, witness my heart die

My wife was afraid of the dark. Then she saw me naked and now she's afraid of the light.

There is in God, some say, A deep but dazzling darkness.

Fate sits on these dark battlements and frowns, And as the portal opens to receive me, A voice in hollow murmurs through the courts Tells of a nameless deed.

But I found in a song And in the people I love, They will lift me up out of darkness.

That inescapable animal walks with me, Has followed me since the black womb held, Moves where I move, distorting my gesture, A caricature, a swollen shadow, A stupid clown of the spirit's motive, Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness, The secret life of belly and bone.

Los caballos negros son. Las herraduras son negras. Sobre las capas relucen manchas de tinta y de cera. Tienen, por eso no lloran, de plomo las calaveras. Con el alma de charol vienen por la carretera.

'Je mehr er hinauf in die Hohe und Helle will, um so starker streben seine Wurzeln erdwarts, abwarts, in's Dunkle, Tiefe, - in's Bose.'

O'er folded blooms On swirls of musk, The beetle booms adown the glooms And bumps along the dusk.

Howling in the shadows, living in a lunar spell, he finds his heaven, spewing from the mouth of hell.

Doctor Labyrinth, like most people who read a great deal and who have too much time on their hands, had become convinced that our civilization was going the way of Rome. He saw, I think , the same cracks forming that had sundered the ancient world, the world of Greece and Rome; and it was his conviction that presently our world, our society, would pass away as theirs did, and a period of darkness would follow.

Far in the pillared dark Thrush music went - Almost like a call to come in To the dark and lament. But no, I was out for stars; I would not come in. I meant not even if asked; And I hadn't been.

If this uncertain age in which we dwell Were really as dark as I hear sages tell, And I convinced that they were really sages, I should not curse myself with it to hell.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me, Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbours.'

The town knew about darkness. It knew about the darkness that comes on the land when rotation hides the land from the sun, and about the darkness of the human soul.

These are the town's secrets, and some will later be known and some will never be known. The town keeps them all with the ultimate poker face. The town cares for devil's work no more than it cares for God's or man's. It knew darkness. And darkness was enough.

The good horror tale will dance its way to the center of your life and find the secret door to the room you believed no one but you knew of-as both Albert Camus and Billy Joel have pointed out, The Stranger makes us nervous... but we love to try on his face in secret.

C'est ici le combat du jour ou de la nuit... Je vois de la lumiere noire.

Dark as pitch.

It was a face which darkness could kill in an instant

The darkness. Goddamn the darkness. It seemed to Garraty they had been buried alive in it. Immured in it. Dawn was a century away. Many of them would never see the dawn. Or the sun. They were buried six feet deep in the darkness. All they needed was the monotonous chanting of the priest, his voice muffled but not entirely obscured by the new-packed darkness, above which the mourners stood. The mourners were not even aware that they were here, they were alive, they were screaming and scratching and clawing at the coffin-lid darkness, the air was flaking and rusting away, the air was turning into poison gas, hope fading until hope itself was darkness, and above all of it the nodding chapel-bell voice of the priest and the impatient, shuffling feet of mourners anxious to be off into the warm May sunshine. Then, overmastering that, the sighing, shuffling chorus of the bugs and the beetles, squirming their way through the earth, come for the feast...I could go crazy, Garraty thought. I could go right the fuck off my rocker.

Heart of Darkness (1902)