Light quotes
8.9K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside light — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The sculptor must paint with his chisel; half his touches are not to realize, but to put power into, the form. They are touches of light and shadow, and raise a ridge, or sink a hollow, not to represent an actual ridge or hollow, but to get a line of light, or a spot of darkness."
"At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed like devout worshippers waiting to be blessed."
"I recall an August afternoon in Chicago in 1973 when I took my daughter, then seven, to see what Georgia O’Keeffe had done with where she had been. One of the vast O’Keeffe ‘Sky Above Clouds’ canvases floated over the back stairs in the Chicago Art Institute that day, dominating what seemed to be several stories of empty light, and my daughter looked at it once, ran to the landing, and kept on looking. "Who drew it," she whispered after a while. I told her. "I need to talk to her," she said finally."
"I am absorbed in the magic of movement and light. Movement never lies. It is the magic of what I call the outer space of the imagination."
"Everything is full of sacramental substance, everything. Each thing and each function is ever ready to light up into a sacrament."
"A rocket won't fly unless somebody lights the fuse!"
"As slippery as smooth grapes, words exploding in the light like dormant seeds waiting in the vaults of vocabulary, alive again, and giving life: once again the heart distills them."
"Where, except in uncreated light, can the darkness be drowned?"
"The Spirit of God, I realized, is exhaustless Bliss; His body is countless tissues of light."
"Just as your hand has the power to hide the sun, mediocrity has the power to hide your inner light. Do not blame others for your own incompetence."
"The light of love drives away the darkness of guilt."
"For, in the language of Heraclitus, the virtuous soul is pure and unmixed light, springing from the body as a flash of lightning darts from the cloud. But the soul that is carnal and immersed in sense, like a heavy and dank vapor, can with difficulty be kindled, and caused to raise its eyes heavenward."
"I was thinking about time, how on a movie set the shot is maintained in the same time no matter how many takes and hours pass. Reflectors and lights are added, footprints are smoothed away, so that there are no telltale clues as the day wears on. When the shot is finished and the plugs are pulled, time seems to leap forward in a matter of seconds. Perhaps making movies is a step toward being able to move backward and forward and in and out of linear time."
"Yes, I answered you last night; No, this morning, sir, I say: Colors seen by candle-light Will not look the same by day."
"Will that light come again, As now these tears come...falling hot and real!"
"God keeps a niche In Heaven, to hold our idols; and albeit He brake them to our faces, and denied That our close kisses should impair their white,-- I know we shall behold them raised, complete, The dust swept from their beauty, glorified, New Memnons singing in the great God-light."
"I love thee to the level of everyday's most quiet need, by sun and candle light...I love thee with the breath,smiles,t ears,of all my life."
"There are two ways to spread happiness; either be the light who shines it or be the mirror who reflects it."
"Astrology is of particular interest to the psychologist, since it contains a sort of psychological experience which we call projected - this means that we find the psychological facts as it were in the constellations. This originally gave rise to the idea that these factors derive from the stars, whereas they are merely in a relation of synchronicity with them. I admit that this is a very curious fact which throws a peculiar light on the structure of the human mind."
"The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir."
