Quotes
Quotes about Light
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have only shifted it to another shoulder.
The air grows cool and darkles, The Rhine flows calmly on; The mountain summit sparkles In the light of the setting sun.
Truth, 'tis supposed, may bear all lights; and one those principal lights or natural mediums by which things are to be viewed in order to a thorough recognition is ridicule itself.
No nation, no matter how enlightened, can endure criminal violence. If we cannot control it, we are admitting to the world and to ourselves that our laws are no more than a facade that crumbles when the winds of crisis rise.
Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they live in the grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.
On fair Britania's isle, bright bird, A legend strange is told of thee,-- 'Tis said thy blithesome song was hushed While Christ toiled up Mount Calvary, Bowed 'neath the sins of all mankind; And humbled to the very dust By the vile cross, while viler men Mocked with a crown of thorns the Just. Pierced by our sorrows, and weighed down By our transgressions,--faint and weak, Crushed by an angry Judge's frown, And agonies no word can speak,-- 'Twas then, dear bird, the legend says That thou, from out His crown, didst tear The thorns, to lighten the distress And ease the pain that he must bear, While pendant from thy tiny beak The gory points thy bosom pressed, And crimsoned with thy Saviour's blood The sober brownness of thy breast! Since which proud hour for thee and thine. As an especial sign of grace God pours like sacramental wine Red signs of favor o'er thy race!
He loved the twilight that surrounds The border-land of old romance; Where glitter hauberk, helm, and lance, And banner waves, and trumpet sounds, And ladies ride with hawk on wrist, And mighty warriors sweep along, Magnified by the purple mist, The dusk of centuries and of song.
This guelder rose, at far too slight a beck Of the wind, will toss about her flower-apples.
We will ourself in person to this war; And, for our coffers, with too great a court And liberal largess, are grown somewhat light, We are enforced to farm our royal realm, The revenue whereof shall furnish us For our affairs in hand.
Yet looks he like a king. Behold, his eye, As bright as is the eagle's lightens forth Controlling majesty.
In that fierce light which beats upon a throne.
I will be gone, That pitiful rumor may report my flight To consolate thine ear.
Unless a love of virtue light the flame, Satire is, more than those he brands, to blame; He hides behind a magisterial air He own offences, and strips others' bare.
But beyond the bright searchlights of science, Out of sight of the windows of sense, Old riddles still bid us defiance, Old questions of Why and of Whence.
There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
A glory gilds the sacred page, Majestic like the sun, It gives a light to every age, It gives, but borrows none.
Starres are poore books, and oftentimes do misse; This book of starres lights to eternal blisse.
Vainly the fowler's eye Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, Thy figure floats along.
But that I am forbid To tell the secrets of my prison house, I could a tale unfold whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, Make thy two eyes like stars start from their spheres, Thy knotted and combined locks to part, And each particular hair to stand on end Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.
Where secrecy reigns, carelessness and ignorance delight to hide while skill loves the light.
We wait all these years to find someone who understands us, I thought, someone who accepts us as we are, someone with a wizard's power to melt stone to sunlight, who can bring us happiness in spite of trials, who can face our dragons in the night, who can transform us into the soul we choose to be. Just yesterday I found that magical Someone is the face we see in the mirror: It's us and our homemade masks. -Richard Bach.
A light, tender, sensitive touch is worth a ton of brawn.
When I have attempted to join myself to others by services, it proved an intellectual trick,--no more. They eat your service like apples, and leave you out. But love them, and they feel you, and delight in you all the time.
Thus shadow owes its birth to light.
