“It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.”
“Can anything harm us, mother, after the night-lights are lit?”
Nothing, precious,” she said; “they are the eyes a mother leaves behind her to guard her children.”
“All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely preambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils.”
“Perhaps without the lows, the highs could not be reached. Were the souls the exception to that rule? Could they have the light without the darkness of the world?”
“The secret and the sacred are sisters. When the secret is not respected, the sacred vanishes. Consequently, reflection should not shine too severe or aggressive a light on the world of the soul.”
“It is in this light that the good works of the disciples are meant to be seen. Men are not to see the disciples but their good works, says Jesus. And these works are none other than those which the Lord Jesus himself has created in them by calling them to be the light of the world under the shadow of his cross.”
“Mine eagle is awake, and like me honoureth the sun. With eagle-talons doth it grasp at the new light. Ye are my proper animals; I love you. But still do I lack my proper men!”
“God said, ‘Let there be light.’ I like to imagine that light replied, saying, ‘God, I have to wait for my twin brother, darkness, to be with me. I can’t be there without the darkness.’ God asked, ‘Why do you need to wait? Darkness is there.’ Light answered, ‘In that case, then I am also already there.”
“The prison-house is the world of sight, the light of the fire is the sun, and you will not misapprehend me if you interpret the journey upwards to be the ascent of the soul into the intellectual world according to my poor belief, which, at your desire, I have expressed—whether rightly or wrongly God knows.”
“He will require to grow accustomed to the sight of the upper world. And first he will see the shadows best, next the reflections of men and other objects in the water, and then the objects themselves; then he will gaze upon the light of the moon and the stars and the spangled heaven; and he will see the sky and the stars by night better than the sun or the light of the sun by day?”
“We are commanded to study His Torah! We are commanded to sit in the light of the Presence! It is for this that we were created! . . . Not the world, but the people of Israel!”
“If you are the light, if your enemies are darkness, then there’s nothing that you cannot justify. There’s nothing you can’t survive, because there’s nothing that you will not do.”
“‘The flu,’ the prophet said, ‘the great cleansing that we suffered twenty years ago, that flu was our flood. The light we carry within us is the ark that carried Noah and his people over the face of the terrible waters, and I submit that we were saved’—his voice was rising—‘not only to bring the light, to spread the light, but to be the light. We were saved because we are the light. We are the pure.’”
“To seek freedom is the only driving force I know. Freedom to fly off into that infinity out there. Freedom to dissolve; to lift off; to be like the flame of a candle, which, in spite of being up against the light of a billion stars, remains intact, because it never pretended to be more than what it is: a mere candle.”
“I must say this about that first fire. It was magic. Out of dead tinder and grass and sticks came a live warm light. It cracked and snapped and smoked and filled the woods with brightness. It lighted the trees and made them warm and friendly. It stood tall and bright and held back the night”
“Fortunately, the sun has a wonderfully glorious habit of rising every morning. When the sky lightened, when the birds awoke, I knew I would never again see anything so splendid as the round red sun coming up over the earth.”
“Every time the light shines through the window we built, or any window at all, you’ll know I’m right there with you, okay? That’s going to be me. I’ll be the light in the window.”
“It is not so incomprehensible as you pretend, sweet pea. Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about and hold in high regard. It can be light as the hug we give a friend or heavy as the sacrifices we make for our children.”
“You alone are the life which never dies and the wisdom that needs no light besides itself, but illumines all who need to be enlightened, the wisdom that governs the world, down to the leaves that flutter on the trees.”
“I am an act of kneading, of uniting and joining that not only has produced both a creature of darkness and a creature of light, but also a creature that questions the definitions of light and dark and gives them new meanings.”
“I did not know that he had put into my hands the secret that would open far darker rooms than this- places where there was not, on a human level, anything to love at all.”
“That place of true healing is a fierce place. It’s a giant place. It’s a place of monstrous beauty and endless dark and glimmering light. And you have to work really, really, really hard to get there, but you can do it.”
“Suddenly some force struck him in the chest and side, making it still harder to breathe, and he fell through the hole and there at the bottom was a light.”
“He sought his former accustomed fear of death and did not find it. ‘Where is it? What death?’ There was no fear because there was no death.
In place of death there was light.”
“It’s like you have all this light inside of you, but you can’t see it. It chases away the darkness in people and draws them in closer to you. It’s one of things I love most about you”
“His words replayed in my mind like the music score to Shakespearean tragedy. I decided I wasn’t going to focus on the big, fat it. I was going to dig through the smothering darkness and hold onto that tiny fragment of light.”
“When the lights were off, as they were between nine at night and six in the morning, the city was so dark that people might as well have been wearing blindfolds.”
″‘But Ember is not prospering!’ he cried. ‘Everything is getting worse and worse!’ [...] ‘The blackouts!’ cried Doon. ‘The lights go out all the time now! And the shortages, there’s shortages of everything! If no one does anything about it, something terrible is going to happen!‘”
“They stared at each other in the flickering light, realized what this meant. There was no tunnel leading out of Ember. The way out was the river. To leave Ember, they must go on the river.”
″‘The city of Ember was made for us long ago by the Builders,’ the book said. ‘It is the only light in the dark world. Beyond Ember, the darkness goes on forever in all directions.‘”
“Take a lamp, for instance. When you plug it in, it comes alive, in a way. It lights up. That’s because it’s connected to a wire that’s connected to the generator, which is making electricity, though don’t ask me how. But a bean seed isn’t connected to anything. Neither are people. We don’t have plugs and wires that connect us to generators. What makes living things go is inside them somehow.”
″‘I been working on the generator for twenty years. it’s always managed to chug along, but this year...I don’t know. The thing seems to break down every couple minutes.’ He cracked a wry smile. ‘Of course, I hear we might run out of light bulbs before that, and then it won’t matter if the generator works or not.‘”
″‘Doon!’ cried Lina. ‘More lights!’ She pointed at the sky. He looked up and saw them—hundreds and hundreds of tiny flecks of light, strewn like spilled salt across the blackness. ‘Oh!’ he whispered. There was nothing else to say. The beauty of these lights made his breath stop in his throat.”
“God, do not lose your equilibrium.
Even he who loves you and discerns your face
in darkness, when he trembles like a light
you breathe upon, — he cannot own you quite.”
“The woman who is truly self-aware knows that her self is a light from beyond this world, a spiritual essence that has nothing to do with the physical world.”
“God or the universe or whatever one chooses to label the great systems of balance and order does not recognize Earth-time. To the universe, four days is no different than four billion light years. I try to keep that in mind.”
“As every schoolboy knows, comics do not stand alone at microphones in the dark. Indeed, we cannot even read them in the dark. We need light, the more, the better.”
“The past rests, breathing faintly in the darkness. It no longer holds me as it used to; now I must reach back to touch it. It is night and I am alone and there is still time, a moment more. I am standing on a long black stage, with a circle of light on me, which is my love for you, enduring.”
“Lost in a spiritual mist, the target will feel light and uninhibited. Deepen the effect of your seduction by making its sexual culmination seem like the spiritual union of two souls.”
“Because you, mouse, can tell Gregory a story. Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Tell Gregory a story. Make some light.”
“It is true. Despereaux’s eyes should not have been open. But they were. He was staring at the sun reflecting off his mother’s mirror. The light was shining on the ceiling in an oval of brilliance, and he was smiling up at the sight.”
“He spent his days as he wanted: He wandered through the rooms of the castle, staring dreamily at the light streaming in through the stained-glass windows. He went to the library and read over and over again the story of the fair maiden and the knight who rescued her. And he discovered, finally, the source of the honey-sweet sound.
The sound was music.”
“She was so sure, so present, so easy, so light and gold, while I was all gray and shadow. I was not ugly or monstrous. That might have been better. Monsters always command attention, if only for their freakishness. My parents would have wrung their hands and tried to make it up to me, as parents will with a handicapped or especially ugly child. Even Call, his nose too large for his small face, had a certain satisfactory ugliness.”
“But there is a difference now, he thought—there really is a difference. I might be hit but I’m not done. When the light comes I’ll start to rebuild. I still have the hatchet and that’s all I had in the first place.”
“Toad blinked in the bright sun. ‘Help!‘, said Toad. ‘I cannot see anything.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Frog. ‘What you see is the clear warm light of April.’ ”
“Toad found some rope in the cellar. ‘I will pull Frog out of the hole with this,’ said Toad. Toad found a lantern in the attic. ‘Frog will see this light. I will show him the way out of the woods,’ said Toad. Toad found a frying pan in the kitchen. ‘I will hit that big animal with this,’ said Toad. ‘All of his teeth with fall out. Frog, do not worry,’ cried Toad. ‘I am coming to help you!’ “
“The light appeared to have the power to hold him and draw him into a perilous other world; it was so compelling. To his horror, he found that he was unable to resist.”
“I only know that learning to believe in the power of my own words has been the most freeing experience of my life. It has brought me the most light. And isn’t that what a poem is? A lantern glowing in the dark.”
“And every year, folk come from all over Cornwall at Christmas time, to see Mousehole lit up with a thousand lights, shining their message of hope and a safe haven to all those who pass in peril of the sea.”
“They removed their raincoats to reveal robes of all colors, all textures. It was a rainbow that summoned forth anything but thoughts of death. This, Citra realized, was intentional. Scythes wished to be seen as the many facets of light, not of darkness.”
“But at that moment, I felt beautiful. Natural and cold and clean and crisp, I threw open the front door and called out for my mother. It was the last time in my life I remember feeling so light.”
“His mind and heart were flooded with extraordinary light; all torment, all doubt, all anxieties were relieved at once, resolved in a kind of lofty calm, full of serene, harmonious joy and hope, full of understanding and the knowledge of the ultimate cause of things.”
“Another postmodern sunset, rich in romantic imagery. Why try to describe it? It’s enough to say that everything in our field of vision seemed to exist in order to gather the light of this event.”
“She felt a great commotion in the air around her--a great excitement, muted, waiting on the Lord. And the air seemed to tremble, as before a storm. A light seemed to hang--just above, and all around them--about to burst into revelation.”
“Yes, he had heard it all his life, but it was only now that his ears were opened to this sound that came from darkness, that could only come from darkness, that yet bore such sure witness to the glory of the light.”
“I will tell you only this: that you are one of the Old Ones, the first to have been born for five hundred years, and the last. And like all such, you are bound by nature to devote yourself to the long conflict between the Light and the Dark.”
“Who scatters snowflakes? Who melts the ice? Who spoils the weather? Who makes it nice? Who grows the four-leaf clovers in June? Who dims the daylight? Who lights the moon? Four little field mice who live in the sky. Four little field mice…like you and I.”
“Did you ever hear of Mickey, how he heard a racket in the night and shouted, ‘Quiet down there!’ and fell through the dark, out his clothes, past the moon & his mama & papa sleeping tight into the light of the night kitchen?”
“And at night by the light of the Mulberry Moon, they danced to the Flute of the Blue Baboon on the broad green leaves of the Crumpetty Tree and all were happy as happy could be with the Quangle Wangle Quee.”
“Everything in the world has two handles. Didn’t you know that? One is a smooth handle. If you take hold of it, the thing comes up lightly and easily, but if you seize the rough handle, it hurts your hand and the thing is hard to lift. Some people always manage to get hold of the wrong handle.”
“There was a light in one window that looked friendly. As long as he could see that, Diamond did not feel quite alone or lonely. But all at once, the light went almost out. Then indeed, he felt that it was dreadful to be out in the night alone, when every body else was gone to bed! That was more than he could bear and it was not strange that he burst out crying.”
“Perhaps she too felt the loneliness that came with the wind as it passed the cabin outside, and the closeness of the world whose farthest border in the night was the place where the lamp light ended, at the edge of the cabin walls.”
“Way off in the distance she could see the lights of the city. The Little House was curious about the city and wondered what it would be like to live there.”
“This is the way I used to feel in Barbados, Kit thought with surprise. Light as air somehow. Here I’ve been working like a slave, much harder than I’ve ever worked in the onion fields, but I feel as though nothing mattered except just to be alive right at this moment.”
“The diamond ring was very, very sparkly indeed. My little sister turned it and turned it, and lots of shiny lights came out of it in all directions. Sometimes the lights were white and sometimes they had colours in them. My sister couldn’t stop looking at it.”
″‘Little brother, where is your light?’
‘Am I brother of yours, bridge?’ wondered the lighthouse. ‘Your light was so bright that I thought mine was needed no more.‘”
“Like a great glaring eye, then, the light searched about.
It flashed past the trees down the steep rocky bluff
And it searched high and low, but not quite high enough.”
“I was his and he was mine, and we were the beginning and middle and end. We were a song that had been sung from the very first ember of light in the world.”
“Find the light that makes your lantern shine,” she used to say. “hold on to it, even when the dark surrounds you. Not even the strongest wind will blow out the flame.”
“Learn from my mistakes, [...] and learn from my joys. Surround yourself with those who’ll love you always, through your mistakes and your faults. Make a family that will find you more beautiful every day, even when your hair is white with age. Be the light that makes someone’s lantern shine.”
“Find the light that makes your lantern shine,” she used to say. “hold on to it, even when the dark surrounds you. Not even the strongest wind will blow out the flame.”
“There are darknesses in life, and there are lights; you are one of the lights. You will have happy life and good life, and your husband will be blessed in you.”