Light Quotes

The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.

George Santayana

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

William Butler Yeats

When an American says that he loves his country, he... means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self - Respect.

Adlai Ewing Stevenson

The Night has a thousand eyes, And the Day but one; Yet the light of the bright world dies With the dying sun. The mind has a thousand eyes, And the heart but one; Yet the light of a whole life dies When love is done.

Francis William Bourdillon

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

During these periods of relaxation after concentrated intellectual activity, the intuitive mind seems to take over and can produce the sudden clarifying insights which give so much joy and delight.

Fritjof Capra, physicist

True greatness consists in the use of a powerful understanding to enlighten oneself and others.

Voltaire

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace Where there is hatred let me sow love Where there is injury, pardon Where there is doubt, faith Where there is despair, hope Where there is darkness, light Where there is sadness, joy.

Saint Francis of Assisi

I never saw an ugly thing in my life for let the form of an object be what it may - Light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.

John Constable

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace! Where there is hatred let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy.

Saint Francis of Assisi, "Prayer of St Francis" (attributed)

In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary.

Aaron Rose

There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.

Carl Jung

Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow. Delay may give clearer light as to what is best to be done.

Aaron Bu

We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.

Maya Angelou

Beauty is excrescence, superabundance, random ebulience, and sheer delightful waste to be enjoyed in its own right.

Donald Culross Peattie

In order to deserve, we must pay our dues and steadily work for perfection. We must relish in struggle, and relinquish pride. We must dispel fear and seek enlightenment. We must shun division and honor love. We must know our hearts and seek to understand others. We must try, live, create, feel, grow and love.

Bryant McGill, Stanford Lectures on Poetry, 1990

I was astonished at the effect my successful landing in France had on the nations of the world. To me, it was like a match lighting a bonfire.

Charles A. Lindbergh

Danger and delight grow on one stalk.

English Prove

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because dawn has come.

Rabindranath Tagore

Children are entitled to their otherness, as anyone is and when we reach them, as we sometimes do, it is generally on a point of sheer delight, to us so astonishing, but to them so natural.

Alastair Reid

The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.

Bertrand Russell

True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.

Erich Segal

The heavy is the root of the light. The tranquil is the ruler of the hasty.

Lao Tzu

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

Carl Jung, "Memories, Dreams, Reflections", 1962

It is not growing like a tree in bulk doth make man better be Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere, A lily of a day is fairer in May Although it fall and die that night, It was the plant of flower and light, In small proportions we just beauties see And in short measures, life may perfect be.

Benjamin Johnson

Intelligence is nothing without delight.

Paul Claudel

Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.

Immanuel Kant

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly... it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated.

Thomas Paine

She is not fair to outward view As many maidens be; Her loveliness I never knew Until she smiled on me; Oh! then I saw her eye was bright, A well of love, a spring of light.

Hartley Coleridge

Life is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain.

Robert Jordan, The Great Hunt, Book 2 of The Wheel of Time

What more felicity can fall to creature, Than to enjoy delight with liberty.

Spenser, Fate of the Butterfly

He who would travel happily must travel light.

Antoine de Saint - Exupery

One kernel is felt in a hogshead; one drop of water helps to swell the ocean; a spark of fire help to give light to the world. None are too small, too feeble, too poor to be of service. Think of this and act.

Hannah More

To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world sparkles with light.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light.

Maurice Freehill

You have delighted us long enough.

Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

There is no place more delightful than home.

Marcus Tullius Cicero