Be plain in dress, and sober in your diet; In short, my dear, kiss me and be quiet.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) English Aristocrat, Poet, Novelist, Writer
Let your light shine. Shine within you so that it can shine on someone else. Let your light shine.
—Oprah Winfrey (b.1954) American TV Personality
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
—Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) Swiss Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Philosopher
Firelight will not let you read fine stories but it’s warm and you won’t see the dust on the floor.
—Irish Proverb
From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Hope, like the gleaming taper’s light
Adorns and cheers our way;
And still, as darker grows the night,
Emits a brighter ray.
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) Irish Novelist, Playwright, Poet
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
—Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.
—Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French Theologian, Musician, Philosopher, Physician
The warrior of the light has a destiny to fulfill.
—Paulo Coelho (b.1947) Brazilian Songwriter, Novelist
Alas! must it ever be so?
Do we stand in our own light, wherever we go,
And fight our own shadows forever?
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (1803–73) British Novelist, Poet, Politician
Sadness flies on the wings of the morning and out of the heart of darkness comes the light.
—Jean Giraudoux (1882–1944) French Novelist, Playwright, Essayist
We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won’t need to tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don’t fire cannons to call attention to their shining- they just shine.
—Dwight L. Moody (1837–99) Christian Religious Leader, Publisher
Mysticism is: a. An advanced state of inner enlightenment. b. Union with Reality. c. A state of genuinely satisfying success. d. Insight into an entirely new world of living. e. An intuitive grasp of Truth, above and beyond intellectual reasoning. f. A personal experience, in which we are happy and healthy human beings.
—Vernon Howard (1918–92) American Spiritual Teacher, Philosopher
The reason angels can fly is because they take themselves lightly.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Only he who handles his ideas lightly is master of his ideas, and only he who is master of his ideas is not enslaved by them.
—Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese Author, Philologist
Fear grows in darkness; if you think there’s a bogeyman around, turn on the light.
—Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American Journalist, Radio Personality
The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
The film of evening light made the red earth lucent, so that its dimensions were deepened, so that a stone, a post, a building, had greater depth, and more solidity than in any daytime light; and these objects were curiously more individual- a post was more essentially a post, set off from the earth it stood in and the field of corn it stood out against. All plants were individuals, not the mass of crop; and the ragged willow tree was itself, standing free of all other willow trees. The earth contributed a light to the evening. The front of the gray, paintless house, facing the west, was luminous as the moon is. The gray dusty truck, in the yard before the door, stood out magically in this light, in the overdrawn perspective of a stereopticon.
—John Steinbeck (1902–68) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Journalist
Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.
—Desiderius Erasmus (c.1469–1536) Dutch Humanist, Scholar
Light came to me when I realized that I did not have to consider any racial group as a whole. God made them duck by duck and that was the only way I could see them.
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) American Novelist
With all your science can you tell me how it is, and when it is, that light comes into the soul?
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
What is true by lamplight is not always true by sunlight.
—Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French Writer, Moralist
There are two kinds of light—the glow that illumines, and the glare that obscures.
—James Thurber
Light is good from whatever lamp it shines.
—Unknown
Never are we nearer the Light than when the darkness is deepest.
—Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu Monk, Mystic
A smile is the light in the window of your face that tells people you’re at home.
—Unknown
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
—Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) Swiss Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Philosopher
An age is called “dark,” not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.
—James A. Michener (1907–97) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Historian
Love is not consolation. It is light.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German Philosopher, Scholar, Writer
We all walk in the dark and each of us must learn to turn on his or her own light.
—Earl Nightingale (1921–89) American Motivational Speaker, Author
The light shines in the darkness and the darkness comprehended it not.
—The Holy Bible Scripture in the Christian Faith
Only in silence the word,
only in dark the light,
only in dying life:
bright the hawk’s flight
on the empty sky.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b.1929) American Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer
Should we continue to look upwards? Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished? The ideal is terrifying to behold, lost as it is in the depths, small, isolated, a pin-point, brilliant but threatened on all sides by the dark forces that surround it nevertheless, no more in danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds.
—Victor Hugo (1802–85) French Novelist
Come forth into the light of things. Let Nature be your teacher.
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Poet
You are goodness and mercy and compassion and understanding. You are peace and joy and light. You are forgiveness and patience, strength and courage, a helper in time of need, a comforter in time of sorrow, a healer in time of injury, a teacher in times of confusion. You are the deepest wisdom and the highest truth; the greatest peace and the grandest love. You are these things. And in moments of your life you have known yourself to be these things. Choose now to know yourself as these things always.
—Neale Donald Walsch (b.1943) American Spiritual Writer
Every luminary in the constellation of human greatness, like the stars, comes out in the darkness to shine with the reflected light of God.
—Mary Baker Eddy (1821–1910) American Christian Science Religious Leader, Humanitarian, Writer
Into my heart’s night
Along a narrow way
I groped; and lo! the light,
An infinite land of day.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207–73) Persian Muslim Mystic
The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
The first creation of God, in the works of the days, was the light of sense; the last was the light of reason; and his Sabbath work, ever since, is the illumination of the spirit.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
You can owe nothing, if you give back its light to the sun.
—Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Poet
Everything that is, desires to be. As we act, we unfold our being. Enjoyment naturally follows, for a thing desired always brings delight.
—Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) Italian Poet, Philosopher
If the world is to be understood, if we are to avoid such logical paradoxes when traveling at high speeds, there are some rules, commandments of Nature, that must be obeyed. Einstein codified these rules in the special theory of relativity. Light (reflected or emitted) from an object travels at the same velocity whether the object is moving or stationary: Thou shalt not add thy speed to the speed of light. Also, no material object may move faster than light: Thou shalt not travel at or beyond the speed of light. Nothing in physics prevents you from traveling as close to the speed of light as you like; 99.9 percent of the speed of light would be just fine. But no matter how hard you try, you can never gain that last decimal point. For the world to be logically consistent there must be a cosmic speed limit. Otherwise, you could get to any speed you wanted by adding velocities on a moving platform.
—Carl Sagan (1934–96) American Astronomer
The windows of my soul I throw
Wide open to the sun.
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–92) American Quaker Poet, Abolitionist
I’ll tell you how the sun rose a ribbon at a time.
—Emily Dickinson (1830–86) American Poet
In a profound sense every man has two halves to his being; he is not one person so much as two persons trying to act in unison. I believe that in the heart of each human being there is something which I can only describe as a “child of darkness” who is equal and complementary to the more obvious “child of light”.
—Laurens van der Post (1906–96) South African-born British Political leader, Author, Educator, Journalist, Humanitarian
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–68) American Civil Rights Leader, Clergyman
There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.
—Annie Dillard (b.1945) Essayist, Novelist, Poet, Naturalist, Mystic
Each stone, each bend cries welcome to him. He identifies with the mountains and the streams, he sees something of his own soul in the plants and the animals and the birds of the field.
—Paulo Coelho (b.1947) Brazilian Songwriter, Novelist
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