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“May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.” J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
“Only light, or other waves that have no intrinsic mass, can move at the speed of light.” Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time
“He who tries to shine dims his own light.” Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.” John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent
“Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.” John Milton, Paradise Lost
“The moonlight lay everywhere with the natural peace that is granted to no other light.” Franz Kafka, The Trial
“The eye which turns from a white object in the light of the sun and goes into a less fully lighted place will see everything as dark.” Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci
“A bright light is not necessary, a taper is all one needs to live in strangeness, if it faithfully burns.” Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies
“Thus the sun which possesses light perfectly, can shine by itself; whereas the moon which has the nature of light imperfectly, sheds only a borrowed light.” Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
“That's the light that makes everything better, everything prettier, and today, everything just seemed to be in that light.” John Green, Looking for Alaska
“They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.” Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
“They say that rather than cursing the darkness, one should light a candle. They don't mention anything about cursing a lack of candles.” George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops?
“There is always light behind the clouds.” Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
“There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Growth is life, and life is for ever destined to make for light.” Jack London, White Fang
“It is impossible to travel faster than light, and certainly not desirable, as one's hat keeps blowing off.” Woody Allen, Side Effects
“in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.” J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
“The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it... and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.” John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address
“But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!” William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
“This was the alpenglow, to me one of the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed and waiting like devout...” John Muir, The Mountains of California
“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” Edith Wharton, Vesalius in Zante
“A blinding sunlight drowned all this at times in a sudden recrudescence of glare.” Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
“There are darknesses in life, and there are lights. You are one of the lights.” Bram Stoker, Dracula
“I believe in low lights and trick mirrors.” Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
“How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world.” William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
“It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.” Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles
“that seems as if a man could not see his own hand by means of the candle which he holds, and which shows him every other object in the apartment.” Walter Scott, Quentin Durward
“Beyond the range I saw the so-called Mono Desert, lying dreamily silent in thick purple light—a desert of heavy sun-glare beheld from a desert of ice-burnished granite.” John Muir, The Mountains of California
“'Can anything harm us, mother, after the night-lights are lit?' 'Nothing, precious . . . they are the eyes a mother leaves behind her to guard her children.'” J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan
“Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.” Albert Camus, The Fall
“All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.” Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
“Life —that means for us constantly transforming all that we are into light and flame” Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
“If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.” C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
“Let us render the tyrant no aid; let us not hold the light by which he can trace the footprints of our flying brother.” Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
“To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées
“Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star . . . It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn't even exist anymore. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything.” Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun
“Obscurity, indeed, is painful to the mind as well as to the eye; but to bring light from obscurity, by whatever labour, must needs be delightful and rejoicing.” David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
“The sun—the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but new life, and hope, and freshness to man—burst upon the crowded city in clear and radiant glory. Through costly-coloured glass and paper-mended window, through cathedral dome and...” Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
“The sun was a toddler insistently refusing to go to bed: It was past eight thirty and still light.” John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
“I liked the area, it had great shade trees, and since some people had told me that I was ugly, I always preferred shade to the sun, darkness to light.” Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
“desire just cheats you. It's like a sunbeam skipping here and there about a room. It stops and gilds some inconsequential object, and we poor fools try to grasp it—but when we do the sunbeam moves on to something else, and you've got the...” F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned
“Paris blacked out. Paris. As if the light of the world were to be blacked out.” Erich Maria Remarque, Arch of Triumph
“Poetry uses the rainbow tints for special effects, but always keeps its essential object in the purest white light of truth.” Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table
“But the emptiness and the darkness are gone; when I turn back into myself now I'm like a child going at night into a room where there's always a light.” Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
“A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid any more.” John Steinbeck, East of Eden
“Let us gather together in the great cities, and light huge bonfires of a million gas-jets, and shout and sing together, and feel brave.” Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat
“A fragile, unearthly prettiness has come out in Laura: she is like a piece of translucent glass touched by light, given a momentary radiance, not actual, not lasting.” Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
“the cloud of caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the light within him.” Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
“The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's own, and God willingly favours such a confidence.” Michel de Montaigne, The Essays of Michel de Montaigne

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Related topics

darkness sunlight sun life truth God beauty hope speed obscurity prettiness love fear evil pain good nature bravery desire virtue

Related authors

William Shakespeare (2)
J. R. R. Tolkien (2)
John Steinbeck (2)
Charles Dickens (2)
Blaise Pascal (2)
John Green (2)
Edith Wharton (2)
Samuel Beckett (2)
John Muir (2)
Andy Warhol (1)
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1)
Friedrich Nietzsche (1)
Albert Camus (1)
Haruki Murakami (1)
Lao Tzu (1)
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1)
Leo Tolstoy (1)
C. S. Lewis (1)
Michel de Montaigne (1)
Louisa May Alcott (1)

Related sources

The Mountains of California (2)
Pensées (2)
Tao Te Ching (1)
Romeo and Juliet (1)
The Fall (1)
East of Eden (1)
Little Women (1)
Anna Karenina (1)
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1)
The Trial (1)
The Merchant of Venice (1)
The Fault in Our Stars (1)
Dracula (1)
A Brief History of Time (1)
Mere Christianity (1)
The Essays of Michel de Montaigne (1)
The Age of Innocence (1)
The Fellowship of the Ring (1)
Paradise Lost (1)
Ham on Rye (1)