139 Light Quotes

The Mediterranean has the color of mackerel, changeable I mean. You don't always know if it is green or violet, you can't even say it's blue, because the next moment the changing reflection has taken on a tint of rose or gray.

Praise the invisible sun burning beyond the white cold sky, giving us light and the chimney's shadow.

Work a great deal at evening effects, lamplight, candlelight, etc. The intriguing thing is not to show the source of the light but the effect of the lighting.

In the beginning there was nothing. God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better.

Flowers rejoice when night is done, Lift their heads to greet the sun; Sweetest looks and odours raise, In a silent hymn of praise.

There are many kinds of love, as many kinds of light, And every kind of love makes a glory in the night. There is love that stirs the heart, and love that gives it rest, But the love that leads life upward is the noblest and the best.

Bright, white coming alive jumping off of the aerial All the time it's a changing, like now...

Monarch of earth, I shall confess my secret craft: I've always fought to purify wild flame to light, and kindle whatever light I found to burst in flame.

The pale stars are gone! For the sun, their swift shepherd, To their folds them compelling, In the depths of the dawn, Hastes, in meteor-eclipsing array, and the flee Beyond his blue dwelling, As fawns flee the leopard.

True Love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away. Love is like understanding, that grows bright, Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light, Imagination! which from earth and sky, And from the depths of human phantasy, As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills The Universe with glorious beams, and kills Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow Of its reverberated lightning.

When all the dark clouds roll away And the sun begins to shine I see my freedom from across the way And it comes right in on time Well it shines so bright and it gives so much light And it comes from the sky above Makes me feel so free makes me feel like me And lights my life with love.

O light! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.

I believe in one Gnostic and Catholic Church of Light, Life, Love and Liberty, the Word of whose Law is THELEMA.

The splendour falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story: The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.

An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.

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.

I can see lights in the distance Trembling in the dark cloak of night Candles and lanterns are dancing, dancing A waltz on All Souls Night.

I live and love in God's peculiar light.

Delusion will vanish as the light becomes more and more effulgent, load after load of ignorance will vanish, and then will come a time when all else has disappeared and the sun alone shines.

Rain-diamonds, this winter morning, embellish the tangle of unpruned pear-tree twigs; each solitaire, placed, it appearrs, with considered judgement, bears the light beneath the rifted clouds - the indivisible shared out in endless abundance.

A picture must possess a real power to generate light ... for a long time now I've been conscious of expressing myself through light or rather in light.

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

I saw Eternity the other night Like a great ring of pure and endless light. All calm, as it was bright; And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years, Driv'n by the spheres Like a vast shadow moved; in which the world And all her train were hurled.

The pursuit of the perfect, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.

O little town of Bethlehem, How still we see thee lie! Above thy deep and dreamless sleep The silent stars go by; Yet in thy dark streets shineth The everlasting Light; The hopes and fears of all the years Are met in thee to-night.

We say God and the imagination are one... How high that highest candle lights the dark. Out of this same light, out of the central mind, We make a dwelling in the evening air, In which being there together is enough.

There were no clouds, the sun was going down in a limpid, gold-washed sky. Just as the lower edge of the red disk rested on the high fields against the horizon, a great black figure suddenly appeared on the face of the sun. We sprang to our feet, straining our eyes toward it. In a moment we realized what it was. On some upland farm, a plough had been left standing in the field. The sun was sinking just behind it. Magnified across the distance by the horizontal light, it stood out against the sun, was exactly contained within the circle of the disk; the handles, the tongue, the share - black against the molten red. There it was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun.

Both read the Bible day and night, But thou read'st black where I read white.

If I were a painter I would paint my reverie If that's the only way for you to be with me

The moon is at her full, and riding high, Floods the calm fields with light. The airs that hover in the summer sky Are all asleep to-night.

lovers alone wear sunlight

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

If the answer is infinite light, why do we sleep in the dark?

Beyond the shadow of the ship, I watched the water-snakes: They moved in tracks of shining white, And when they reared, the elfish light Fell off in hoary flakes.

The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves; Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves.

Come out into the universe of Light. Everything in the universe is yours, stretch out your arms and embrace it with love. If you every felt you wanted to do that, you have felt God.

Please put out the light, James.

In fact, precisely at this transitional point of its nightly roll into darkness the great and particular glory of the Egdon waste began, and nobody could be said to understand the heath who had not been there at such a time. It could best be felt when it could not clearly be seen, its complete effect and explanation lying in this and the succeeding hours before the next dawn; then, and only then, did it tell its true tale.

I walked in my greatcoat Down through the days of the leaves. No before after, yes after before We were shining our light into the days of blooming wonder In the eternal presence, in the presence of the flame.

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.

First one beam, then another, then A thousand are radiant in the sky. Each is both star and orb; and day Is the riches of their atmosphere.

A candle is enough to light the world. It makes it clear. Even at noon It glistens in essential dark. At night, it lights the fruit and wine, The book and bread, things as they are...

The fluctuations of certainty, the change Of degrees of perception in the scholar's dark.

Oh, sun! that o'er the western mountains now Goest down in glory! ever beautiful And blessed is thy radiance, whether thou Colourest the eastern heaven and night-mist cool, Till the bright day-star vanish, or on high Climbest and streamest thy white splendours from mid-sky.

And once again the scene was chang'd, New earth there seem'd to be, I saw the Holy City Beside the tideless sea; The light of God was on its streets, The gates were open wide, And all who would might enter, And no one was denied. No need of moon or stars by night, Or sun to shine by day, It was the new Jerusalem, That would not pass away.

Yesterday, a funny thing happened to me on my way to the Conclave.

The buttercups across the field Made sunshine rifts of splendor.

Put out the lights now! Look at the Tree, the rough tree dazzled In oriole plumes of flame, Tinselled with twinkling frost fire, tasselled With stars and moons

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.

This is where the shadows come to play twixt the day And night Dancing and skipping Along a chink of light

There never was night that had no morn.

no sunbeam ever lies

You get to the point where you can feel a certain sensation of light.

'By the Lion's Mane, a strange device,' said King Peter, 'to set a lantern here where the trees cluster so thick about it and so high above it that if it were lit it should give light to no man!' (ch. 17)

To man, that was in th' evening made, Stars gave the first delight; Admiring, in the gloomy shade, Those little drops of light.

For that mist may break when the sun is high And this soul forget its sorrow And the rose ray of the closing day May promise a brighter morrow.

Du grosses Gestirn! Was ware dein Gluck, wenn du nicht Die hattest, welchen du leuchtest!

'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.'

If you could see the earth illuminated when you were in a place as dark as night, it would look to you more splendid than the moon.

Wine is 'light held together by moisture.'

The changing of bodies into light, and light into bodies, is very conformable to the course of Nature, which seems delighted with transmutations.

One naked star has waded through The purple shadows of the night, And faltering as falls the dew It drips its misty light.

There is strong shadow where there is much light.

For see, the dapple-grey coursers of the morn Beat up the light with their bright silver hoofs, And chase it through the sky.

Yo quiero salir del mundo por la puerta natural: en un carro de hojas verdes a morir me han de llevar. No me pongan en lo oscuro a morir como un traidor: yo soy bueno, y como bueno morire de cara al sol.

There the Unstruck Music eddies around the Infinite One; There in the midst the Throne of the Unheld is shining, whereon the great Being sits - Millions of suns are shamed by the radiance of a single hair of His body.

It was Toto that made Dorothy laugh, and saved her from growing as gray as her other surroundings. Toto was not gray; he was a little black dog, with long silky hair and small black eyes that twinkled merrily on either side of his funny, wee nose.

The light came through the window, Straight from the sun above, And so inside my little room There plunged the rays of Love. In streams of light I clearly saw The dust you seldom see, Out of which the Nameless makes A Name for one like me.

All busy in the sunlight The flecks did float and dance, And I was tumbled up with them In formless circumstance.

Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.

Turn up the lights - I don't want to go home in the dark.

Hope, like the gleaming taper's light, Adorns and cheers our way; And still, as darker grows the night, Emits a brighter ray.

I feel the hot winds of karma driving me. Nevertheless I remain here. My training was correct: I must not shrink from the clear white light, for if I do, I will once more re-enter the cycle of birth and death, never knowing freedom, never obtaining release. The veil of maya will fall once more.

Daytime, short as it may be, is better than night.

Awake, my heart, to be loved, awake, awake! The darkness silvers away, the morn doth break, It leaps in the sky.

Awake! the land is scattered with light, and see, Uncanopied sleep is flying from field and tree.

As night is withdrawn From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May, Dream, while the innumerable choir of day Welcome the dawn.

I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the star-less night, blown and flared by passion's storm, and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains.

It is the artist's business to create sunshine when the sun fails.

But I will turn my eyes from you As women turn to put away The jewels they have worn at night And cannot wear in sober day.

The window-lights, myriads and myriads, Bloom from the walls like climbing flowers.

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

A light here required a shadow there.

Poor indeed must thou be, if around thee Thou no ray of light and joy canst throw-

Each strand of her hair Is really insect eyes And each hole in her tongue Is always occupied By the milk of the sun

Mozart is sweet sunshine. ~ Antonin Dvorak

And now, by some transition, which he did not notice, it seemed that what had begun as speech was turned into sight, or into something that can be remembered only as if it were seeing. He thought he saw the Great Dance. It seemed to be woven out of the intertwining undulation of many cords or bands of light, leaping over and under one another and mutually embraced in arabesques and flower-like subtleties. Each figure as he looked at it became the master-figure or focus of the whole spectacle, by means of which his eye disentangled all else and brought it into unity--only to be itself entangled when he looked to what he had taken for mere marginal decorations and found that there also the same hegemony was claimed, and the claim made good, yet the former pattern thereby disposed but finding in its new subordination a significance greater than that which it had abdicated. He could see also ( but the word 'seeing' is now plainly inadequate)wherever the ribbons or serpents of light intersected minute corpuscles of momentary brightness: and he knew somehow that these particles were the secular generalities of which history tells--people, institutions, climates of opinion, civilizations, arts, sciences and the like--ephemeral coruscations that piped their short song and vanished. The ribbons or cords themselves, in which millions of corpuscles lived and died, were the things of some different kind. At first he could not say what. But he knew in the end that most of them were individual entities. If so, the time in which the Great Dance proceeds is very unlike time as we know it. Some of the thinner more delicate cords were the beings that we call short lived: flowers and insects, a fruit or a storm of rain, and once (he thought) a wave of the sea. Others were such things we think lasting: crystals, rivers, mountains, or even stars. Far above these in girth and luminosity and flashing with colours form beyond our spectrum were the lines of personal beings, yet as different from one another in splendour as all of them from the previous class. But not all the cords were individuals: some of them were universal truths or universal qualities. It did not surprise him then to find that these and the persons were both cords and both stood together as against the mere atoms of generality which lived and died in the clashing of their streams: But afterwards, when he came back to earth, he wondered. And by now the thing must have passed together out of the region of sight as we understand it. For he says that the whole figure of there enamored and inter -inanimate circling was suddenly revealed as the mere superficies of a far vaster pattern in four dimensions, and that figure as the boundary of yet others in other worlds: till suddenly as the movement grew yet swifter, the interweaving yet more ecstatic, the relevance of all to all yet more intense, as dimension was added to dimension and tat part of him which could reason and remember was dropped further and further behind that part of him which saw, even then, at the very zenith of complexity, complexity was eaten up and faded, as a thin white cloud fades into the hard blue burning of sky, and all simplicity beyond all comprehension, ancient and young as spring, illimitable, pellucid, drew him with cords of infinite desire into it's own stillness. He went up into such a quietness, a privacy, and a freshness that at the very moment when he stood farthest from our ordinary mode of being he had the sense of striping off encumbrances and awaking from a trance, and coming to himself. With a gesture of relaxation he looked about him:

Mehr licht.

Baltimore lectures on molecular dynamics and the wave theory of light (1904)