Quotations about Light

Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light? ~Maurice Freehill


Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. ~Chinese Proverb


There are two kinds of light - the glow that illumines, and the glare that obscures. ~James Thurber


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


Moonlight is sculpture. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne


Firelight will not let you read fine stories but it's warm and you won't see the dust on the floor. ~Irish Proverb


We cannot hold a torch to light another's path without brightening our own. ~Ben Sweetland


Light gives of itself freely, filling all available space. It does not seek anything in return; it asks not whether you are friend or foe. It gives of itself and is not thereby diminished. ~Michael Strassfeld


Lethargics are to be laid in the light, and exposed to the rays of the sun for the disease is gloom. ~Aretaeus


Live in rooms full of light. ~Cornelius Celsus


We are each gifted in a unique and important way. It is our privilege and our adventure to discover our own special light. ~Evelyn Dunbar


You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in. ~Arlo Guthrie


There are two ways of spreading light; to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. ~Edith Wharton


People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within. ~Elisabeth Kübler-Ross


Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you. ~Maori Proverb


The hero is the one who kindles a great light in the world, who sets up blazing torches in the dark streets of life for men to see by. The saint is the man who walks through the dark paths of the world, himself a light. ~Felix Adler


Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine. ~Anthony J. D'Angelo


A sensible man will remember that the eyes may be confused in two ways - by a change from light to darkness or from darkness to light; and he will recognize that the same thing happens to the soul. ~Plato


When you possess light within, you see it externally. ~Anaïs Nin


You can owe nothing, if you give back its light to the sun. ~Antonio Porchia


Dare to reach out your hand into the darkness, to pull another hand into the light. ~Norman B. Rice


How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! ~John Muir


The windows of my soul I throw
Wide open to the sun.
~John Greenleaf Whittier


The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. ~Vladimir Nabokov


Let us dance in the sun, wearing wild flowers in our hair... ~Susan Polis Shutz


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


Ever since we crawled out of that primordial slime, that's been our unifying cry, "More light." Sunlight. Torchlight. Candlelight. Neon, incandescent lights that banish the darkness from our caves to illuminate our roads, the insides of our refrigerators. Big floods for the night games at Soldier's Field. Little tiny flashlights for those books we read under the covers when we're supposed to be asleep. Light is more than watts and footcandles. Light is metaphor. Light is knowledge, light is life, light is light. ~Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider


In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary. ~Aaron Rose


Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships. ~Charles Simic


A smile is the light in the window of your face that tells people you're at home. ~Author Unknown


His high endeavors are an inward light
That makes the path before him always bright.
~William Wordsworth


They may as well have called the sun a ball of flaming joy. ~Terri Guillemets


Light, when suddenly let in, dazzles and hurts and almost blinds us: but this soon passes away, and it seems to become the only element we can exist in. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


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. ~Ellen DeGeneres



Light is good from whatever lamp it shines. ~Author Unknown


Light can be gentle, dangerous, dreamlike, bare, living, dead, misty, clear, hot, dark, violet, springlike, falling, straight, sensual, limited, poisonous, calm and soft. ~Sven Nykvist


Someday perhaps the inner light will shine forth from us, and then we'll need no other light. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


What is to give light must endure burning. ~Viktor Frankl


A sensitive plant in a garden grew,
And the young winds fed it with silver dew,
And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light,
and closed them beneath the kisses of night.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Sensitive Plant," 1820


Love is not consolation. It is light. ~Friedrich Nietzsche


In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't. ~Blaise Pascal


For light I go directly to the Source of light, not to any of the reflections. ~Peace Pilgrim


A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind. ~Annie Dillard


Joy requires one to be awake,
Adjusting the heart's ambience to bright.
Some prefer the dark, as is their right,
On grounds of agony, and to forsake
Not only bliss, but all that's blessed by light.
~Nicholas Gordon, poemsforfree.com


I think you might dispense with half your doctors if you would only consult Dr. Sun more. ~Henry Ward Beecher


Where there is sunshine the doctor starves. ~Flemish Proverb


Sun spreads through the treetops like an epidemic. ~Dave Bonta, from The Morning Porch blog at www.morningporch.com/post/96792742/orange-tabby


Light comes to us unexpectedly and obliquely. Perhaps it amuses the gods to try us. They want to see whether we are asleep. ~H.M. Tomlinson


Sunshine is my quest. ~Winston Churchill


Light, God's eldest daughter... ~Thomas Fuller


Alas! must it ever be so?
Do we stand in our own light, wherever we go,
And fight our own shadows forever?
~Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton


We all walk in the dark and each of us must learn to turn on his or her own light. ~Earl Nightingale


Do not anticipate trouble or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight. ~Benjamin Franklin


Into my heart's night
Along a narrow way
I groped; and lo! the light,
An infinite land of day.
~Rumi


Sometimes just looking up and seeing the light is enough. ~Terri Guillemets


Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in. ~Alan Alda


Keep your flame lit, and you will never feel darkness. ~J. Parker


What is true by lamplight is not always true by sunlight. ~Joseph Joubert


There they stand, the innumerable stars, shining in order like a living hymn, written in light. ~N.P. Willis


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


Your path is illuminated by the light
Yet darkness lets the stars shine bright.
~J.L.W. Brooks


I'll tell you how the sun rose a ribbon at a time. ~Emily Dickinson


Auld Daddy Darkness...
See him in the corners hidin' frae the licht,
See him at the window gloomin' at the nicht...
~James Ferguson


No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it. ~Terry Pratchett


Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy. ~John Denver, "Sunshine on My Shoulders"


Nothing in the universe can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow's speed. ~Howard Nemerov


Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark. ~Rabindranath Tagore


The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light. ~Matthew Arnold


The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light. ~Joseph Campbell


Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything,
That's how the light gets in.
~Leonard Cohen


Lighthouses are more helpful than churches. ~Benjamin Franklin


Nothing travels faster than light, with the possible exception of bad news, which follows its own rules. ~Douglas Adams


It's a cruel season that makes you get ready for bed while it's light out. ~Calvin


He that has light within his own clear breast
May sit i' the centre, and enjoy bright day:
But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun;
Himself his own dungeon.
~John Milton


If there is one spot of sun spilling onto the floor, a cat will find it and soak it up. ~Jean Asper McIntosh


I will love the light for it shows me the way. Yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars. Og Mandino


Though my soul may set in darkness,
It will rise in perfect light,
I have loved the stars too fondly
To be fearful of the night.
~Sarah Williams


The stars are the street lights of eternity. ~Author Unknown


Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart. ~Kahlil Gibran


Wine is sunlight, held together by water. ~Galileo


Your life is something opaque, not transparent, as long as you look at it in an ordinary human way. But if you hold it up against the light of God's goodness, it shines and turns transparent, radiant and bright. And then you ask yourself in amazement: Is this really my own life I see before me? ~Albert Schweitzer


An age is called "dark," not because the light fails to shine but because people refuse to see it. ~James Michener


For sleep, one needs endless depths of blackness to sink into; daylight is too shallow, it will not cover one. ~Anne Morrow Lindbergh


Sadness flies on the wings of the morning and out of the heart of darkness comes the light. ~Jean Giraudoux


How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light. ~Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams