Absence Of Light Quotes & Sayings

So dark. Endless darkness, eternal. It was not the absence of light that was so frightening as the absence of thought, of knowledge, of comprehension. Our lives, the lives of the living will go on. The sun shines, the moons rise, we will laugh and talk, and he will know nothing, feel nothing. Nothing.
So final. It will come to us all. It will come to me. — Tracy Hickman

Darkness is absence of light. Shadow is diminution of light. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Let the preacher tell the truth. Let him make audible the silence of the news of the world with the sound turned off so that in the silence we can hear the tragic truth of the Gospel, which is that the world where God is absent is a dark and echoing emptiness; and the comic truth of the Gospel, which is that it is into the depths of his absence that God makes himself present in such unlikely ways and to such unlikely people that old Sarah and Abraham and maybe when the time comes even Pilate and Job and Lear and Henry Ward Beecher and you and I laugh till the tears run down our cheeks. And finally let him preach this overwhelming of tragedy by comedy, of darkness by light, of the ordinary by the extraordinary, as the tale that is too good not to be true because to dismiss it as untrue is to dismiss along with it that catch of the breath, that beat and lifting of the heart near to or even accompanied by tears, which I believe is the deepest intuition of truth that we have. — Frederick Buechner

But what happened in Heaven? What did you do there? After a while, didn't you crave flaws? Love and lust and misunderstandings,, and maybe even a little violence to liven things up? Didn't light need shade? Didn't it? Maybe it didn't. Maybe I was missing the point. Maybe the point was to exist with an absence of pain. Yes, to exist with an absence of pain. Yes, maybe that was the only aim you needed in life. It certainly had been, but what happened if you'd never required that aim because you were born after their goal had been met? — Matt Haig

Evil is a word we use to describe the absence of Good, just as we use the word darkness to describe the absence of Light or death to describe the absence of Life. Both evil and darkness can only be understood in relation to Light and Good; they do not have any actual existence. I am Light and I am Good. I am Love and there is no darkness in me. Light and Good actually exist. So, removing yourself from me will plunge you into darkness. Declaring independence will result in evil because apart from me, you can only draw upon yourself. That is death because you have separated yourself from me: Life. — Wm. Paul Young

Real patriotism embraces the wholly immovable belief that without freedom, the essence of the human soul and the life-breath of the human spirit is doomed to perish for lack of space and absence of light. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

In the absence of light, only darkness is left. — Reyna Pryde

Inner silence is not just the absence of thoughts. No! Silence is the blossoming of our indomitable inner will. Silence is our inner wisdom-light. — Sri Chinmoy

Never an illness, nor the absence
of grandeur, no,
nothing is able to kill the best in us,
that kindness, dear sir, we are afflicted with:
beautiful is the flower of man, his conduct,
and every door opens on the beautiful truth
and never hides treacherous whispers.
I always gained something from making myself better,
better than I am, better than I was,
that most subtle citation:
to recover some lost petal
of the sadness I inherited:
to search once more for the light that sings
inside of me, the unwavering light. — Pablo Neruda

A thousand for his love expired each day, And those who saw his face, in blank dismay Would rave and grieve and mourn their lives away- To die for love of that bewitching sight Was worth a hundred lives without his light. None could survive his absence patiently, None could endure this king's proximity- How strange it was that man could neither brook The presence nor the absence of his look! — Farid Al-Din Attar

What resists phenomenology within us--natural being, the 'barbarian' source Schelling spoke of--cannot remain outside phenomenology. The philosopher must bear his shadow, which is not simply the factual absence of future light. — Maurice Merleau Ponty

Somewhere in the universe two black holes collide - as heavy as stars, as small as cities, literally black (the complete absence of light) holes (empty hollows). Tethered by gravity, in their final seconds together the black holes course through thousands of revolutions about their eventual point of contact, churning up space and time until they crash and merge into one bigger black hole, an event more powerful than any since the origin of the universe, outputting more than a trillion times the power of a billion Suns. The black holes collide in complete darkness. None of the energy exploding from the collision comes out as light. No telescope will ever see the event. — Janna Levin

How do we remember to remember? That's a question I've asked myself often since my time on Duma Key, often in the small hours of the morning, looking up into the absence of light, remembering absent friends. Sometimes in those little hours I think about the horizon. You have to establish the horizon. You have to mark the white. A simple enough act, you might say, but any act that re-makes the world is heroic. Or so I've come to believe. — Stephen King

Black is real sensation, even if it is produced by entire absence of light. The sensation of black is distinctly different from the lack of all sensations. — Hermann Von Helmholtz

Why the red letters? Because they are spirit, and they are life - that's why. The entrance of these Words of Christ not only brings knowledge and understanding to the mind but light to the soul. These words bring to us the heart of Christ and His teachings, and they insert into us His opinion, attitude, and Spirit. The absence of these red letters eliminates all the above. — Mark T. Barclay

And for a moment I thought there were no more ghosts there than those of absence and loss, and that the light that smiled on me was borrowed light, only real as long as I could hold it in my eyes, second by second. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

For a long time I searched for the black stone that cleanses the soul of death. — Tahar Ben Jelloun

On into the void he flies, unafraid. There is nothing in mere absence that can cow him. Or loneliness. Or the lack of maps and charts. For he is his own path. And he sees by his own light. We watch him from a great distance. From a vantage point no less subjective, no less absolute. And so it's hard to tell whether he imposes himself on the emptiness, or becomes it. — Mike Carey

Dorrigo, the children, her friends, and her wider family - they all existed for her as a way of divining the world. It was a far larger and more wondrous place with them than it was without them. If she hoped for the same love from Dorrigo, and if she was disappointed in her hope, she did not feel its absence as a reason not to love him. The problem was that she did. Her love was without reason and would never yield to reason. Though it longed for requital, her love in the end did not demand it.
But when he was away at night, she would lie awake, unable to sleep. And she would think of him and her and feel the most overwhelming sadness. She may have been a trusting woman but she was very far from a stupid one. She repeated his words and echoed his opinions not because she was without thoughts of her own, but because her nature was one that wished to live through others. Without love, what was the world? Just objects, things, light, darkness. — Richard Flanagan

God did not create evil. Just as darkness is the absence of light, evil is the absence of God. — Albert Einstein

Where is the absurdity of the world? Is it this resplendent glow or the memory of its absence? With so much sun in my memory, how could I have wagered on nonsense? People around me are amazed; so am I, at times. I could tell them, as I tell myself, that it was in fact the sun that helped me, and that the very thickness of its light coagulates the universe and its forms into a dazzling darkness. — Albert Camus

Plotinus believed that the world is span between two polls. At one end is the divine light which he calls the One. Sometimes he calls it God. At the other end is absolute darkness, which receives none of the light from the One. But Plotinus' point is that this darkness actually has no existence. It simply is the absence of light - in other words, it 'is' not. All that exists is God, or the One, but in the same way that a beam of light grows progressively dimmer and is gradually extinguished, there is somewhere that the divine glow cannot reach. — Jostein Gaarder

Start with a blank surface. It doesn't have to be paper or canvas, but I feel it should be white. We call it white because we need a word, but its true name is nothing. Black is the absence of light, but white is the absence of memory, the color of can't remember. — Stephen King

There is no evil in the darkness, it's just an absence of light. — Robin Jarvis

What if this were Hell, this absence of sleep, this poet's desert, this pain of living, this dying of not dying, this anguish of shadows, this passion over death and light. — Leopold Sedar Senghor

The window is the absence of the wall, and it gives air and light because it is empty. Be empty of all mental content, of all imagination and effort, and the very absence of obstacles will cause reality to rush in. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Light is to darkness what love is to fear; in the presence of one, the other disappears. All the darkness in my life - the fears, neuroses, dysfunctions, and diseases - are not so much things as the absence of things. They represent not the presence of a problem but rather the absence of the answer. And the answer is love. All fearful manifestations disappear in the presence of love. — Marianne Williamson

Richard began to understand darkness: darkness as something solid and real, so much more than a simple absence of light. He felt it touch his skin, questing, moving, exploring: gliding through his mind. It slipped into his lungs, behind his eyes, into his mouth ... — Neil Gaiman

Night is real. Night is not an absence of light, but in fact, it is daytime that is a brief respite from the looming darkness ... — Guillermo Del Toro

When one of them complained of being frightened by the dark, Elon pointed out that "dark is merely the absence of light," which did little to reassure the scared child. — Ashlee Vance

In Pliny I read about the invention of clay modeling. A Sicyonian potter came to Corinth. There his daughter fell in love with a young man who had to make frequent long journeys away from the city. When he sat with her at home, she used to trace the outline of his shadow that a candle's light cast on the wall. Then, in his absence she worked over the profile, deepening, so that she might enjoy his face, and remember. One day the father slapped some potter's clay over the gouged plaster; when the clay hardened he removed it, baked it, and "showed it abroad" (63). — Annie Dillard

These were everyday sounds magnified by darkness. And darkness was nothing - it was not a substance, it was not a presence, it was no more than an absence of light. — Ian McEwan

Ingratitude is the frost that nips the flower even as it opens, that shrivels the generous apple on the branch, that freezes the fountain in mid-flow and numbs the hand, even in the very act of giving. It is a sin of silence, absence and omission, as winter's sin is a lack of light; a sin against charity, which otherwise warms the heart and, in the truest sense, makes the world turn. — Ann Wroe

We pick up our shots and for the first time there's a total absence of sound in the room. From the ceiling, shy silver things blink and wait. Dennis doesn't sit, but hovers at the edge of the table, leaning in with a darkroom perfected slump. His hair hangs like its edges were dipped in lead. Thin spears pointing to the table. I'm looking at his face; we're both serious in a self-aware way, pretending not to notice.

"It doesn't even feel like I left. God, you look fucking terrible. But it's a terrible face that drinks tequila well. Down. And cheers."

We force a dull clash of cups and pour everything down at once. The hard tequila shudders that never happen in the movies. First your head feels light, then it starts receiving the distress signals from throat, lungs, belly. Your shoulders jerk to shake off the snake that wrapped around you and squeezed. It burns. The good burn. — Laurie Perez

Just as darkness is born of the absence of light, the shadow side of our collective experience is born of ignorance of the underlying truth of the unity of life. — John Hagelin

We don't know that we've lost half a minute from our lives but we feel it somehow, we feel its absence. Something is missing, we think. And so we long for the thing we've missed and can't name, and out of that wanting - well, everything else rises, good and bad. What do you think leads us to the windows in the first place? The light in your eyes shines because of the longing in your soul. And the longing in your souls rises because you are looking for the lost half minute. — Adam Gopnik

I am not light nor the absence of it. I am the broad spectrum. Everything that makes you think, want to touch, or taste. Don't box me into that life that you so desperately need to be black and white because that's not me; I won't fit. I am bold, brilliant, and beautiful, I will sparkle and shimmer every hue. Ever changing. Undefinable. So do not give me limits or make me try to fit. There is no containing subtle softness careening into the harsh and dominant, every faucet creating a reaction which will cause you to feel and know you are alive. - Kendal Waller — Kendal Waller

For you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." Those are probably the most famous words ever spoken on the subject of truth. Most of us accept that particular sentence at face value. It certainly resonates with our spirit. It just feels right. But what does it mean, really? And have you ever contemplated the meaning that comes to light by inverting this principle? If it is correct that "you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free," then is it possible that if you don't know the truth, its absence can place you in bondage? — Andy Andrews

We all have one. It is that run. Its physical location may change as we move house, region, country, continent. But it is the run that is always with us. It is the run that we can trust ourselves to. It is the run that is waiting to enfold us back again after injury, absence or discouragement. It is where we go in the cool of the early morning, in the heat of the day, in the fading light of a setting sun. It is a place we go to in all seasons, observing and feeling the changes, until the rhythm of the earth becomes our own, a comforting reminder of the impermanence of all things. It is where we go to seek solace, to seek challenge. It is where we go when we need to push, to hold back. It is where we go when we need to find a fragile peace. — Lizzy Hawker

Darkness surrounded me, a complete absence of light that left me shaking inside. No. It wasn't the darkness that had me shaking. It was him. I could feel him, even if I could not see him. Oh yes, I could feel him. In every pore of my body, every nerve ending I owned, I could feel him. — Lisa Renee Jones

If darkness is really not darkness at all, but rather, the absence of light, then my flaws are not really flaws at all, but rather, the absence of you. ~ Christopher Poindexter — Beth Hyland

But if I've learned anything, it is that goodness prevails, not in the absence of reasons to despair, but in spite of them. If we wait for clean heroes and clear choices and evidence on our side to act, we will wait forever, and my radio conversations teach me that people who bring light into the world wrench it out of darkness, and contend openly with darkness all of their days. [ ... ] They were flawed human beings, who wrestled with demons in themselves as in the world outside. For me, their goodness is more interesting, more genuinely inspiring because of that reality. The spiritual geniuses of the ages and of the everyday simply don't let despair have the last word, nor do they close their eyes to its pictures or deny the enormity of its facts. They say, "Yes, and ... ," and they wake up the next day, and the day after that, to live accordingly. — Krista Tippett

Never make the negative the object of your study, because the negative is not there. You can go on and you will never arrive anywhere. Try to understand what light is, not darkness. Try to understand what life is, not death. Try to understand what love is, not hate.
If you go into hate you will never understand it, because hate is only the absence of love. So is darkness the absence of light. — Osho

They ended up in a amusement arcade on Old Compton Street, where Nora insisted Stephen join her on one of those dance-step machines, and as he stood next to her, stomping out a dance routine on the illuminated dance floor, he had a sudden anxiety that Nora might be one of those kooky, free-spirit types, the kind of irreverent life-force who, in the imaginary romantic comedy currently playing in his head, turns the hero's narrow life upside down, etc., etc. The acid test for free-spirited kookiness is to show the subject a field of fresh snow; if they flop on their backs and make snow-angels, then the test is positive. In the absence of snow, Stephan resolved to keep an eye open for other tell-tale kookiness indicators: a propensity for wacky hats, zany mismatched socks, leaf-kicking, a disproportionate enthusiasm for karaoke, kite - flying and light-hearted shoplifting, the whole Holly Golightly act. — David Nicholls

It turned out to be only our former chauffeur, Tsiganov, who had thought nothing of riding all the way from St. Petersburg, on buffers and freight cars, through the immense, frosty and savage expanse of revolutionary Russia, for the mere purpose of bringing us a very welcome sum of money sent us by good friends of ours. After a month's stay, Tsiganov declared the Crimean scenary bored him and departed
to go all the way back north, with a big bag over his shoulder, containing various articles which we would have gladly given him had we thought he coveted them (such as a tourser press, tennis shoes, a nigthshirt, an alarm clock, a flat iron, several other ridiculous things I have forgotten) and the absence of which only gradually came to light if not pointed out, with vindictive zeal, by an anemic servant girl whose pale charms he had also rifled. — Vladimir Nabokov

Just as darkness is sometimes defined as the absence of light, so age is defined as the absence of youth. — Betty Friedan

For you, at least, are young; 'no hungry generations tread you down,' and the past does not weary you with the intolerable burden of its memories nor mock you with the ruins of a beauty, the secret of whose creation you have lost. That very absence of tradition, which Mr. Ruskin thought would rob your rivers of their laughter and your flowers of their light, may be rather the source of your freedom and your strength. — Oscar Wilde

Parted lovers beguile absence by a thousand chimerical devices, which possess, however, a reality of their own. They are prevented from seeing each other, they cannot write to each other; they discover a multitude of mysterious means to correspond. They send each other the song of the birds, the perfume of the flowers, the smiles of children, the light of the sun, the sighings of the breeze, the rays of stars, all creation. And why not? All the works of God are made to serve love. Love is sufficiently potent to charge all nature with its messages.
Oh Spring! Thou art a letter that I write to her. — Victor Hugo

Meditation is like light: when meditation comes, politics disappears. So you cannot be meditative and political. That is impossible: you are asking for the impossible. Meditation is not one pole: it is the absence of all conflict, all ambition, all ego trips. — Rajneesh

Darkness is merely the absence of light, and fear is merely the absence of love. If we want to be rid of fear, we cannot fight it but must replace it with love. — Marianne Williamson

The most dangerous lie in America isn't a political one," he'd told her, as he stood by the plate glass window, gazing down at the frigid Helsinki skyline. "It's the lie that who we are is some fixed self-determined truth. That there's some absolute us-ness in our character that's unchangeable and real, and that we have an obligation to be true to this us-ness, no matter the cost. As if who we are could exist in the absence of other people. We're no more eternal than a single star, Sadie. Remember that. We shine. We burn out. But together, we can light the sky. — Stephanie Kuehn

One thing I knew about the novelist's task: when in doubt, write; when empty, write; when afraid, write. Nothing is more impenetrable than the blank page. The blank page is the void, the absence of sense and feeling, the white light of literary death. — Philip Sington

Moreover, we have seen enough by now to know that technological changes in our modes of communication are even more ideology-laden than changes in our modes of transportation. Introduce the alphabet to a culture and you change its cognitive habits, its social relations, its notions of community, history and religion. Introduce the printing press with movable type, and you do the same. Introduce speed-of-light transmission of images and you make a cultural revolution. Without a vote. Without polemics. Without guerrilla resistance. Here is ideology, pure if not serene. Here is ideology without words, and all the more powerful for their absence. All that is required to make it stick is a population that devoutly believes in the inevitability of progress. And in this sense, all Americans are Marxists, for we believe nothing if not that history is moving us toward some preordained paradise and that technology is the force behind that movement. — Neil Postman

The remedy for an absence is a presence. Evil is an absence and, therefore, it cannot be healed with an absence. By hating evil, or one who is engaged in evil, you contribute to the absence of Light and not to its presence. Hatred of evil does not diminish evil, it increases it. — Gary Zukav

The shadow's potential to destroy is undeniable. Lightning might strike a house and set it ablaze. But harness the electricity and the same house can be illuminated with the turn of a switch. Consider a vaccine. Included in the serum is a small amount of the disease. Light needs the dark. It is the order of the universe. What would thaw in the spring if we didn't have a winter to endure? Consciousness is conditioned against its absence, Jung wrote. Amputate the serpent's tail and the power to heal lies within. Anna — Jill Alexander Essbaum

The rain comes through their thin cotton clothes against their muscles. Alice sweeps back her wet hair. A sudden flinging of sheet lighting and Clara sees Alice subliminal in movement almost rising up into the air, shirt removed, so her body can meet the rain, the rest of her ascent lost to darkness till the next brief flutter of light when they hold a birch tree in their clasped hands, lean back and swing within the rain.
They crawl delirious together in the blackness. There is no moon. There is the moon flower in its small power of accuracy, like a compass, pointing to where the moon is, so they can bay towards its absence. — Michael Ondaatje

Affiiction makes God appear to be absent for a time, more absent than a dead man, more absent than light in the utter darkness of a cell. A kind of horror submerges the whole soul. During this absence there is nothing to love. What is terrible is that if, in this darkness where there is nothing to love, the soul ceases to love, God's absence becomes final. — Simone Weil

Darkness is the absence of light. Happiness is the absence of pain. Anger is the absence of joy. Jealousy is the absence of confidence. Love is the absence of doubt. Hate is the absence of peace. Fear is the absence of faith. Life is the absence of death. — Jess Bowen

Goodness is not the absence of evil - it's the light that pushes back the darkness ... — John Geddes

It was as if the demise of the owner had lent the flat a physical void it hadn't had before. At the same time he had the feeling that he wasn't alone. Harry believed in the existence of the soul. Not that he was particularly religious as such, but it was one thing which always struck him when he saw a dead body: the body was bereft of something ... the creature had gone, the light had gone,there was not the illusory afterglow that long-since burned-out stars have. The body was missing its soul and it was the absence of the soul that made Harry believe. — Jo Nesbo

Perhaps Eurydice wants to remain marginal, a shade insubstantial ... the mute waste in a limbo without light and without depth are a style of anima fascinations in which the absence of significance is the significance. — James Hillman

We know no fear. It was cut from our souls at birth. We can feel it only as an absence, as an empty shadow cast by the light of annihilation. In the face of a future of atrocity I stand mute, numb to the only feeling that would make me human. But I remember what fear was: its cold pulse in my veins; its echo in my ears. I remember fear, and remember that I was once human. I look towards what must come to pass and I wish that I could meet it as my ancestors did, with fear. The future deserves that, it deserves fear. — John French

I walk in the direction she tells me. I feel my pores opening, sweat and heat radiating out of my body. A firefly dances in the distance, leaving tracers, and if I turn my head from side to side, I see long yellow-green streaks that cut through my vision and burn in front of my retinas even after the light that sparked them has gone.
I emerge from the mango grove into a field. In the distance unseen trucks pass with a sound like the ocean licking the sand. A tracery of darkness curls into a starry sky, a solitary pipal tree making itself known by an absence of light, like a flame caught in a photographer's negative, frozen, calling me. — Mohsin Hamid

I lean over you, your equal, offering you a mirror for your perfect nothingness, for your shadows which are neither light nor absence of light, for this void which contemplates. To all that which you are, and, for our language, are not, I add a consciousness. I make you experience your supreme identity as a relationship, I name you and define you. You become a delicious passivity. — Maurice Blanchot

Giant hogweed is considered extremely dangerous because its sap, in combination with ultraviolet light, can burn human skin. Every year, millions are spent digging up plants and destroying them, without any great success. However, hogweed can spread only because the original forested meadows along the banks of rivers and streams no longer exist. If these forests were to return, it would be so dark under the forest canopy that hogweed would disappear. The same goes for Himalayan balsam and Japanese knotweed, which also grow on the riverbanks in the absence of the forests. Trees could solve the problem if people trying to improve things would only allow them to take over. — Peter Wohlleben

Sometimes the darkness beyond is not glorious at all, it truly is an absolute absence of light. A clawing, needy tar that pulls you down. You drown but you don't. It turns you to lead so you sink faster in its viscous embrace. It robs you of hope and even the memory of hope. It makes you think you've always felt like this, and there's no place to go but down, where it slowly, ravenously digests your will, distilling it into the ebony crude of nightmares.

And you know the darkness beyond despair, just as intimately as you know the soaring heights. Because in this and all universes, there is balance. You can't have the one without facing the other. And sometimes you think you can take it because the joy is worth the despair, and sometimes you know you can't take it and how did you ever think you could? And there is the dance; strength and weakness, confidence and desolation. — Neal Shusterman

Science sent the Hubble telescope out into space, so it could capture light and the absence thereof, from the very beginning of time. And the telescope really did that. So now we know that there was once absolutely nothing, such a perfect nothing that there wasn't even nothing or once. — Kurt Vonnegut

What we call evil is the absence of Light, of love, in all cases. — Gary Zukav

Time wastes too fast : every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen ; the days and hours of it, more precious, my dear Jenny! than the rubies about thy neck, are flying over our heads like light clouds of a windy day, never to return more -- every thing presses on -- whilst thou are twisting that lock, -- see! it grows grey ; and every time I kiss thy hand to bid adieu, and every absence which follows it, are preludes to that eternal separation which we are shortly to make! — Laurence Sterne

And then God gave me insight: this was winter. It would end, in time, but not by my own doing. My responsibility was simply to know the season, and match my actions and inactions to it. It was to learn the slow hard discipline of waiting. It was my season to believe in spite of - to believe in the absence of evidence or emotion, when there's nothing, no bud, no color, no light, no birdsong, to validate belief. It was my time to walk without sight. — Mark Buchanan

evil is nothing else than absence of goodness, just as darkness also is absence of light. For goodness is the light of the mind, and, similarly, evil is the darkness of the mind. Light, therefore, being the work of the Creator and being made good (for God saw all that He made, and behold they were exceeding good(8)) produced darkness at His free-will. — John Damascene

Sometimes it may seem dark, but the absence of the light is a necessary part. — Jason Mraz

Evil needs to be understood for what it is: the dynamic of the absence of Light. It is not something that one should prepare to battle, to run from, or to outlaw. — Gary Zukav

The Gods being good and making all things, there is no positive evil, it only comes by absence of good; just as darkness itself does not exist, but only comes about by absence of light. — Sallust

Darkness is the absence of light. — Kamal Ravikant

One day there will be no more stars. There will be no more darkness. You see, light isn't the absence of darkness. Darkness is the absence of light. — J.W. Lord

In our absence, the violet early evening light pours in the bay window, filling the still room like water poured into a glass. The glass is delicate. The thin, tight surface of the liquid light trembles. But it does not break. Time does not pass. Not yet. — Marya Hornbacher

Separated lovers cheat absence by a thousand fancies which have their own reality. They are prevented from seeing one another and they cannot write; nevertheless they find countless mysterious ways of corresponding, by sending each other the song of birds, the scent of flowers, the laughter of children, the light of the sun, the sighing of the wind, and the gleam of the stars -all the beauties of creation. — Victor Hugo

The absence of any protective measures may simply have been the result of a lapse of attention, with Churchill off in France and Fisher consumed by other matters and seemingly drifting toward madness. It would take on a more sinister cast, however, in light of a letter that Churchill had sent earlier in the year to the head of England's Board of Trade, Walter Runciman, in which Churchill wrote that it was "most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hopes especially of embroiling the United States with Germany." Though no one said it explicitly, Britain hoped the United States would at some point feel moved to join the Allies, and in so doing tip the balance irrevocably in their favor. — Erik Larson

Darkness is an absence of light. Ego is an absence of awareness. — Osho

Darkness is the absence of light. Absences do not exist. Sin does not exist . — Rajneesh

If he closed his eyes he could dwell in the circuit of air that had once held her, he could hold his breath and be inside her again, within the close and burning borders of her- she stood here, washed her hair in this sink, wrote upon this wall, ate roasted chicken at this table. There was no place he could enter where she had not also been, her echoes hanging in the air like pages hung to dry. No place that did not suppurate in her absence, which was not ringed with the light of her old selves, like film burned with a cigarette. — Catherynne M Valente

Intercourse with resuscitated wife for particular number of days, superstitious act designed to insure safe operation of household machinery. Electricity mourns the absence of the energy from (wife) within the household's walls by stalling its flow to the outlets. As such, an improvised friction need to take the place of electricity, to goad the natural currents back to their proper levels. This is achieved with the dead wife. She must be found, revived, and then penetrated until heat fills the room, until the toaster is shooting bread onto the floor, until she is smiling beneath you with black teeth and grabbing your bottom. Then the vacuum rides by and no one is pushing it, it is on full steam. Days flip past in chunks of fake light, and the intercourse is placed in the back of the mind. But it is always there, that moving into a static-ridden corpse that once spoke familiar messages in the morning when the sun was new. — Ben Marcus

Sometimes its not the dark that we are afraid of, but the absence of light. — Carrie Jones

It is a strange phenomenon, how absence is the only authentic vessel of the past, how otherwise it is forgotten, overlooked for its continuity and perdurability - every sensory detail of the past breathes through its emptiness the way the light of a match illuminates the darkness; otherwise all is darkness, all is presence, everything in its place and thus unnoticed, whereas the past is missing, the part cut out of the photograph, the part the present attempts to seal over with the future, seeking to close the hole, pandering to the illusion of movement and change when in reality all of life is in flux, particle for particle, atom for atom, void for void, thought for thought. — John M. Keller

Yes it sometimes happens and will sometimes happen again that I forget who I am and strut before my eyes, like a stranger. Then I see the sky different from what it is and the earth too takes on false colours. It looks like rest, it is not, I vanish happy in that alien light, which must have once been mine, I am willing to believe it, then the anguish of return, I won't say where, I can't, to absence perhaps, you must return, that's all I know, it's misery to stay, misery to go. — Samuel Beckett

She was not unacquainted with these sudden shocking illuminations, but they were among those experiences which are ever-new - like love, orgasms, or barking your shin. You never really got used to them.

This one wasn't the light that cleaves the darkness, the one bright shining truth that slashes through the murk and banishes all doubt, the divine radiance that heals all wounds before plodding Father Time gets his boots on. She had no faith in those counterfeit notions, though it wasn't the thing itself that was false. It was the yearning for it - the yearning that must cleave to something (anything) because it was bright, not because it was true; that confused letting go with running away; that believed healing was the mere dead absence of pain. — Owen R. O'Neill

The idea that the bumps or depressions on a man's head indicate the presence or absence of certain moral characteristics in his mental equipment is one of the absurdities developed from studies in this field that has long since been discarded by science. The ideas of the phrenologist Gall, however ridiculous they may now seem in the light of a century's progress, were nevertheless destined to become metamorphosed into the modern principles of cerebral localization. — Edward Anthony Spitzka

Understanding evil as the absence of Light does not require you to become passive, or to disregard evil actions or evil behavior. If you see a child being abused, or a people being oppressed, for example, it is appropriate that you do what you can to protect the child, or to aid the people, but if there is not compassion in your heart also for those who abuse and oppress - for those who have no compassion - do you not become like them? Compassion is being moved to and by acts of the heart, to and by the energy of love. — Gary Zukav

Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact we can use Newton's prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn't this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present. — Albert Einstein

Before the Dawn
In the darkest night the sun may seem like an extinguished match or an ember drowned by rain.
A light forever lost.
The cold world grows steadily colder and shrinks like the abused, closing in on all sides. Laughter, smiles, the glimmer of dancing eyes, and all else indicative of human brightness is gone. Colors leeched from everything leave shadows and emotion dull-gray in their absence.
Time is a void. A moment feels eternal.
Hope does not blossom in the darkness but withers fast, starving for what only the sun can offer. As its petals turn to dust, fear blows in and sweeps the remnants away. The soul succumbs by degrees to nightmares emboldened by the dead of night.
All is lost! All is lost!
The wretched sun, repulsed by our nothingness,
has abandoned the lives in its care!
And then the eyes open wide,
seeing mountains take shape on the horizon. — Richelle E. Goodrich

For the first time he considers the full emotional dimensions of the day. His life is changing but his parent's lives are changing too. Like a habitat, abruptly deprived of a major species, the household will be wrenched into realignment by his departure. Like all young people, he has no idea who his parents really are. For 18 years he has experienced their existence only in so far as it is related to his own needs. Suddenly his mind is full of questions. What do they talk about when he's not around? What secrets do they hold from each other? What aspirations have been left to languish? What private grievances held in check by the shared project of child rearing will now in his absence, lurch into the light? — Justin Cronin

7. 3. 12. 31. 208: Reckless disrespect of the lightless hours will not be tolerated. — Jasper Fforde

Like all young people, he has no idea who his parents really are; for eighteen years he has experienced their existence only insofar as it has related to his own needs. Suddenly his mind is full of questions. What do they talk about when he's not around? What secrets do they hold from each other, what aspirations have been left to languish? What private grievances, held in check by the shared project of child rearing, will now, in his absence, lurch into the light? They love him, but do they love each other? Not as parents or even husband and wife but simply as people - as surely they must have loved each other at one time? He hasn't the foggiest; he can no more grasp these matters than he can imagine the world before he was alive. — Justin Cronin

Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is not like faith, or love that exist just as does light and heat. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light. — Albert Einstein

You're an insomniac, you tell yourself: there are profound truths revealed only to the insomniac by night like those phosphorescent minerals veined and glimmering in the dark but coarse and ordinary otherwise; you have to examine such minerals in the absence of light to discover their beauty, you tell yourself. — Joyce Carol Oates

Sit and let your body relax. Find the rhythm of deep breathing that has worked best for you so far. Breathe in, breathe out. Be aware of your breath as we continue with this meditation. Close your eyes if you wish. Let the muscles in your face relax. Release the tension in your jaw. To release tension in your neck, let your head hang forward, and then roll it gently around, making sure to stretch your neck muscles often. We are going to empty your mind. Empty it of worries. Empty it of cares. We are going to just let go. With your eyes closed, feel your mind become a void. Let your concerns and stress slip away. You may wish to visualize darkness or light filling your mind. This is not a painful emptiness. It is a soothing absence of thought. Your mind is calm. Become aware of your body. Notice your breathing and heartbeat. Breathe and relax in the silence until you are ready to open your eyes. Repeat again for three minutes later in the — Alexis G. Roldan

Certain coincidence is wonderful. Certain meetings are memorable. Sometimes you meet some people for just a moment and they leave indelible footprints on your mind. They give you the reasons to ponder over and over. They become your food for thought. Though they go, their presence is felt within the innermost of the heart and the soul; especially when such people were a reason for a smile, or they were a perfect fit for a vacuum or probably they were a heavenly sent or maybe they were an epitome of a great union; when their light could shine to brighten the dark side of our lives; when they knew how to arouse interest even in the face of dull atmosphere; when they did understand silence and know the value and power of words; when even their absence is felt more than their presence. You can't just forget about such people. Though they leave, they live within our hearts, mind, body and soul. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah