Being A Light In The Dark Quotes & Sayings

Memory revises me.
Even now a letter
comes from a place
I don't know, from someone
with my name
and postmarked years ago,
while I await
injunctions from the light
or the dark;
I wait for shapeliness
limned, or dissolution.
Is paradise due or narrowly missed
until another thousand years?
I wait
in a blue hour
and faraway noise of hammering,
and on a page a poem begun, something
about to be dispersed,
something about to come into being. — Li-Young Lee

My solo travels in Paris have brought many perfect hours of being alone but not a moment of loneliness. People who depend on other people are often in hiding from themselves. Two and a quarter million people live in the City of Light: you will see many of them and you will pass them in the street, but when you see Notre Dame after dark and walk home and perhaps stop to have a drink in the Marais, you can feel that the only thing that is missing from your experience is the common dependence on someone to distract your attention. You are living without it: you are on vacation. — Andrew O'Hagan

He thought for a moment. About puppets.
About being controlled.
Everyone was controlled by something, the Impressionist knew. By a spouse. A parent. A boss. A friend. By one's own impulses, be they dark or light.
Everyone was a puppet to something.
Most people just couldn't see the strings, is all. And so they didn't believe they were puppets in the first place. — Barry Lyga

At the core of love is validation. It is what gives love power.
For when love is given away, validation seeps in and expands in the heart of the recipient, filling up every empty, dark corner. It is a wonderful, light, consuming feeling we long for, and once found, we hope - even expect - it will forever remain. But there are times when that most precious love is revoked, and a hard scab forms over the empty hole. Though this scab is both healing and protective, it is the reason why validation from future love may not seep in so easily, no matter how wanting the heart. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Look for it in the wintertime, if you want to find The Light Of The Season - the real light, not the Hallmark one. Look for the location of resistance. Look for the darkness in which you can be a spark. Look for the opportunity to be bright, to light someone else's way, to warm their hands, to shuttle them safely through the dark. Look for the crack you can fill or the shadow you can dispel by bringing a little bit of the light of resistance, carefully and precisely, to just the place where it is needed. Look for the place of being bright - of being bright and present outside your own house, or in the window, on the opposite side to the mezuzah, letting anyone who passes know. We are here. — S. Bear Bergman

It is only when we are truly alone, without someone else to lean on, left with our own inner solitude that we can undergo a process of change.The introspection that is needed to bring out the light that has dwindled down to ash and reignite the fire of our being. So let the darkness shape you, let it reform you, let it cradle you and birth you into a new life. Let the spark flame again, in the darkness is where you will find it. — L.J. Vanier

Darkness is a defining characteristic of Rotters. But it's worthy to remember that darkness is just that - it's dark - and what is being concealed in the dark is not just the horrible and fearsome, it's also the inspirational and moving. Horror means nothing without happiness; dark means nothing without light. Rotters may make you feel scared, but hopefully it will also make you simply feel. It's that kind of book, or at least I hope it is. — Daniel Kraus

But then, she wonders,just what kind of man would ever give her the courage to marry at all- to overcome that dreadful fear of death that seemed always to accompany the very thought of love? It was illogical, idiotic and childish. And yet the child was with her always; and always she would be afraid unless someone could place a light down there inside that dark and chilly heart of hers and chase all the ghosts away - the ghosts of Katherine Howard, of Jane Seymour and, not least, that of her own poor mother. They accompanied her always, those spirits - especially at this kind of time, a time of being alone, of being feminine and reflective. They would all gather round to whisper in her ear and warn her - so that even as she looks up once more into her mirror she almost expects to see them there, ranged behind her shoulders, their faces full of concern and anxiety. Never trust them - never trust the men, for they will betray you always the moment you surrender to them! — Robert Stephen Parry

The only exercise that Tess took at this time was after dark; and it was then, when out in the woods, that she seemed least solitary.She knew how to hit to a hair's-breadth that moment of evening when the light and the darkness are so evenly balanced that the constraint if day and the suspense of night neutralize each other, leaving absolute mental liberty.It is then that the plight of being alive becomes attenuated to its least possible dimensions. — Thomas Hardy

What do you want me to say?" he asked, his voice sharp and moody.
"That I had a moment of weakness when I saw it?That for an instant I felt the pang of being homesick? Yeah, I did. There, you now know the Dark-Hunter who has no soul has a heart. Are you happy? "
"I already knew you had a heart. "
He stopped at a red light and looked at her. A fierce frown creased his brow as if he were trying to figure her out.
"Believe it or not," she continued,
"it shows in everything you do. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

More like a door being opened a tiny crack to let a sliver of light in. It wasn't enough to see clearly by, but from then on, we would never be fully in the dark again. — Sarah Dessen

He looked up and I realised how close we were, both of us leaning in together. I blinked a few times, suddenly light-headed, but not like before when I'd passed out. Being so close to the smooth dark skin of his face, getting lost in the shifting shades of his green eyes, it felt like my insides were fluttering and melting. — Heather Anastasiu

Left alone, I am overtaken by the northern void-no wind, no cloud, no track, no bird, only the crystal crescents between peaks, the ringing monuments of rock that, freed from the talons of ice and snow, thrust an implacable being into the blue. In the early light, the rock shadows on the snow are sharp; in the tension between light and dark is the power of the universe. This stillness to which all returns, this is reality, and soul and sanity have no more meaning than a gust of snow; such transience and insignificance are exalting, terrifying, all at once ... Snow mountains, more than sea or sky, serve as a mirror to one's own true being, utterly still, utterly clear, a void, an Emptiness without life or sound that carries in Itself all life, all sound. — Peter Matthiessen

On its third rising only a portion of the drawing-room was disclosed; the rest being concealed by a screen, hung with some sort of dark and coarse drapery. The marble basin was removed; in its place, stood a deal table and a kitchen chair: these objects were visible by a very dim light proceeding from a horn lantern, the wax candles being all extinguished. — Charlotte Bronte

Home is the center of my being where I can hear the voice that says: 'You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests' - the same voice that gave life to the first Adam and spoke to Jesus, the second Adam; the same voice that speaks to all the children of God and sets them free to live in the midst of a dark world while remaining in the light. — Henri Nouwen

down with Bart for a few hours and sleep as best I could. Chapter 12 I was as tired as I could ever remember being as I pulled the station wagon up the narrow driveway and came to a stop twenty-five feet from my front door. I liked my simple house with two bedrooms and an attic a hobbit couldn't fit in. My front porch light was on a timer and illuminated the pathway, but the inside was pitch-black. That wasn't good. I always left one light on in my kitchen. Normally, I could see it through the front window, and it cast a little light across the whole house. I didn't want Bart walking into a wall in the dark. Someone had turned it off. The only defense I had was my Navy knife, which I dug out of my front pocket and flipped open. I use it as a tool, but its original purpose was as a weapon. The door was still locked, and I wondered if — James Patterson

The Silver Samarsanda stood above the Jardeen, behind a line of tall pencil cypress: an irregular bulk of masonry, plastered and whitewashed, with a wide, many-slanted roof of mossy tiles. Beside the entrance five colored lanterns hung in a vertical line: deep green, a dark, smoky scarlet, a gay light green, violet, and once more dark scarlet; and at the bottom, slightly to the side, a small, steady yellow lamp, the purport of all being: Never neglect the wonder of conscious existence, which too soon comes to an end! — Jack Vance

The test of civilization is the estimate of woman. Among savages she is a slave. In the dark ages of Christianity she is a toy and a sentimental goddess. With increasing moral light, and greater liberty, and more universal justice, she begins to develop as an equal human being. — George William Curtis

The light from the moon shone along the door casing and spread across the walls a few inches inside, far enough for her to suddenly notice that the phases-of-the-moon wallpaper she'd been living with all week was gone. It was a now curious dark color she couldn't quite make out, punctuated by long strips of yellow. It looked almost like dark doors and windows opening, letting in light. The wallpaper was usually some reflection of her mood or situation, but what did this mean? Some new door was opening? Something was being set free? — Sarah Addison Allen

There are major revolutions every few hundred years--humanity seems to depend on things being shaken up from time to time, to remind them of what is the most important. During those periods of conflict, in addition to the chaos which is inevitable, there is also a thread of great enlightenment. The light at the end of the tunnel, as it were. You don't ignore the dark side of truth, but you don't dwell on it to the detriment of forward movement. You have to also focus on what is best in humanity--those aspects of who we are which is luminescent, and perhaps even moreso in contrast to those dark moments. Showing both sides is what becomes incredibly important. — K.J. Wetherholt

Those who turn the day into night, the young, the drug addict, the profligate, the drunken and that most miserable, the lover who watches all night long in fear and anguish. These can never again live the life of the day. When one meets them at high noon they give off, as if it were a protective emanation, something dark and muted. The light does not become them any longer. They begin to have an unrecorded look. It is as if they were being tried by the continual blows of an unseen adversary. — Djuna Barnes

Breaking our silence is powerful. Whether it comes as a whisper or a squeak at first, allow that sense of spaciousness, of opening, allow yourself to trust the bottomlessness, and lean into the dark roar which will light up every cell.

Though it may start softly, we build in confidence and skills, we realise we do not need to wait for permission before we open our mouths. We do not need to wait for others to make space for us, we can take it. We do not need to read from others' scripts or style ourselves in weak comparison. We do not need to look to another's authority because we have our own. Down in our cores. We have waited so long for permission to know that it was our time, our turn on stage. That time is now. Our voices are being heard into being. They are needed. — Lucy H. Pearce

Ultimately, I see the Goddess as incorporating the full spectrum of existence, not just what we call 'the feminine.' The latter is actually a construct of a culture that divides existence into compartments, and in particular into the dualities with which we are so familiar: light/dark, female/male, mind/body, earth/spirit and so on.

The true nature of existence, including true human nature, I believe, is not so split. Acting and living from the integration of all these components is what I call spirituality. Thus, the Goddess represents a unity and wholeness which is the birthright and potential of every human being. All of us, all of existence, are the Divine. In order to complete this whole by bringing back that which has been denied, I name the Divine the Goddess. — Hallie Iglehart Auste

This was how you wound up in the Inquisition. When you stopped being able to see any difference between Light Ones and Dark Ones. When for you, people weren't even a flock of sheep, but just a handful of spiders in a glass jar. When you stopped believing in the future, and all you wanted to do was preserve the status quo. For yourself. For those few individuals who were still dear to you. — Sergei Lukyanenko

Nobody's all good or bad, and nobody's all light or dark. Every human being has so many different aspects and facets to them. And there can be something noble and something really dark and dangerous going on in a person all at the same time. — Anna Gunn

Decebel pulled Jen close in a show of gentleness that she was beginning to notice he only displayed to her. "You don't always have to be the strong one."
"That's where you're wring, Dec. I do, for them. Sally, Lilly, and at times even Fane. I have to be the one who believes so strongly that we will get her back that I can be sarcastic. That I have the luxury of bringing humor be it light or dark into this majorly messed up situation. And not that we will just get her back, but that we will get her back whole. There are worse things than death to a woman, Decebel. — Quinn Loftis

There is a struggle inside you between these two parts. It's as if at times your heart becomes a battlefield! The secret part, full of light, seems so small and weak in the face of the discouraging and morbid part, which seems enormous and overwhelming. However, if you light a small candle in a dark room, everything is lit up. It is a matter of trusting in this little light in the deepest part of your being which can gradually chase away the darkness. — Jean Vanier

It's strange," I say to Day later, as we both curl up on the floor. Outside, the hurricane rages on. In a few hours we'll need to head out. "It's strange being here with you. I hardly know you. But ... sometimes it feels like we're the same person born into two different worlds."
He stays quiet for a moment, one hand absently playing with my hair. "I wonder what we would've been like if I'd been born into a life more like yours,and you had been born into mine. Would we be just like we are now? Would I be one of the Republic's top soldiers? And would you be a famous criminal?"
I lift my head off his shoulder and look at him. "I never did ask you about your street name.Why 'Day'?"
"Each day means a new twenty-four hours. Each day means everything's possible again.You live in the moment, you die in the moment,you take it all one day at a time." He looks toward the railway car's open door, where streaks of dark water blanket the world. "You try to walk in the light. — Marie Lu

Chess worked for a wholesale grocery firm. He had thought of being a history teacher, but his father had persuaded him that teaching was no way to support a wife and get on in the world. His father had helped him get this job but told him that once he got in he was not to expect any favors. He didn't. He left the house before it was light, during this first winter of our marriage, and came home after dark. He worked hard, not asking that the work he did fit in with any interests he might have had or have any purpose to it that he might have once honored. No purpose except to carry us both toward that life of lawnmowers and freezers which we believed we had no mind for. I might marvel at his submission, if I thought about it. His cheerful, you might say gallant, submission.
But then, I thought, it's what men do. — Alice Munro

Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees anyone whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter life, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den. — Daniel Keyes

From up above, in a plane passing over, you'd just see one little light in all this dark, with no idea of the lives that were being lived within it, and in the house beside, and beside that one. So much happening in the world, night and day, hour by hour. It was no wonder we were meant to sleep, if only to check out of it for a little while. — Sarah Dessen

Greta knows that for me there are no good parties. I'm okay with one or two people, but more than that and I turn into a naked mole rat. That's what being shy feels like. Like my skin is too thin, the light too bright. Like the best place I could possibly be is in a tunnel far under the cool, dark earth. Someone asks me a question and I stare at them, empty-faced, my brain jammed up with how hard I'm trying to find something interesting to say. And in the end, all I can do is nod or shrug, because the light of their eyes looking at me, waiting for me, is just too much to take. And then it's over and there's one more person in the world who thinks I'm a complete and total waste of space. — Carol Rifka Brunt

Was it a doubt - a fear - a wandering uncertainty seeking rest, but finding none - so tear-blinded were its eyes - Mr. Thornton, instead of being shocked, seemed to have through that very stage of thought himself, and could suggest where the exact ray of light was to be found, which should make the dark places plain. Man of action as he was, busy in the world's great battle, there was a deeper religion binding him to God in his heart, in spite of his strong willfulness, through all his mistakes, than Mr. Hale ever dreamed. — Elizabeth Gaskell

I was a very solitary, introverted child who got punished by being sent to a dark room quite frequently. But you cannot imagine how much I enjoyed myself in that room, and how I would look forward to being punished, because it was there that I discovered the light of darkness. — Ana Maria Matute

Essentially, this extra structure covering our life has no reality. It has come to be there because of the misuse of our minds. It's not a question of getting rid of it, since it has no reality; but it is a question of seeing its nature. And as we see its nature, instead of it being so thick and dark, the covering becomes more transparent: we see through it. Enlightenment (bringing in more light) is what happens in practice. Actually we're not getting rid of a structure, we're seeing through it as the dream it is, and as we realize its true nature its whole function in our life weakens; and at the same time we can see more accurately what is going on in our daily life. It's as if we have to go full circle. Our life is always all right. There's nothing — Charlotte Joko Beck

Grace strikes us when we are in great pain and restlessness. It strikes us when we walk through the dark valley of a meaningless and empty life. It strikes us when our disgust for our own being, our indifference, our weakness, our hostility, and our lack of direction and composure have become intolerable to us. It strikes us when, year after year, the longed-for perfection of life does not appear, when the old compulsions reign within us as they have for decades, when despair destroys all joy and courage. Sometimes at that moment a wave of light breaks into our darkness, and it is as though a voice were saying: You are accepted. — Paul Tillich

In an ideal world we would all learn in childhood to love ourselves. We would grow, being secure in our worth and value, spreading love wherever we went, letting our light shine. If we did not learn self-love in our youth, there is still hope. The light of love is always in us, no matter how cold the flame. It is always present, waiting for the spark to ignite, waiting for the heart to awaken and call us back to the first memory of being the life force inside a dark place waiting to be born - waiting to see the light. — Bell Hooks

I have always cultivated a feeling of humane indulgence for foreigners. They do not possess our blessings and advantages, and they are, for the most part, brought up in the blind errors of Popery. It has also always been my precept and practice, as it was my dear husband's precept and practice before me (see Sermon XXIX. in the Collection by the late Rev. Samuel Michelson, M.A.), to do as I would be done by. On both these accounts I will not say that Mrs. Rubelle struck me as being a small, wiry, sly person, of fifty or thereabouts, with a dark brown or Creole complexion and watchful light grey eyes. Nor — Wilkie Collins

I only like the live audience. I don't even like to do standup where it's being filmed. Because it affects the way the audience responds to what you say, because it makes them uncomfortable. You have to perform in a light room, and I prefer a dark room. But I love to perform, and I don't really see myself doing any television at all. — Ron White

Never run upstairs when someone's chasing you. Don't try to quick-draw a man who already has his gun out. Never light a match in the dark in a strange building. Half of staying safe is just keeping your head and being prudent. — Mark Zero

Life is the greatest gift that could ever be conceived ... A daffodil pushing up through the dark earth to the spring, knowing somehow deep in its roots that spring and light and sunshine will come, has more courage and more knowledge of the value of life than any human being I've met. — Madeleine L'Engle

As your consciousness becomes more settled, all your life patterns change. What religions have called sin will disappear from your life, and what they have called virtue will automatically flow from your being, from your actions. But they have been doing just vice versa: first change the acts ... It is as if you are in a dark house, and you are stumbling over furniture and over things, and you are told that unless you stop stumbling, light is not possible. — Rajneesh

Plato would hardly need to change a single word of his myth of the cave. Our knowledge would not be able to furnish an answer to his anxiety, his disquietude, his "premonitions." The world would remain for him, "in the light" of our "positive" sciences, what it was - a dark and sorrowful subterranean region - and we would seem to him like chained prisoners. Life would again have to make superhuman efforts, "as in a battle," to break open for himself a path through the truths created by the sciences which "dream of being but cannot see it in waking reality." [1] In brief, Aristotle would bless our knowledge while Plato would curse it. — Lev Shestov

That in the end, my sin will never outweigh God's love. That the Prodigal can never outrun the Father. That I am not measured by the good I do but by the grace I accept. That being lost is a prerequisite to being found. That living a life of faith is not lived in the light, it is discovered in the dark. That not being a saint here on earth will not necessarily keep you from being in that number when the march begins. — Brennan Manning

But why should the soul take to itself a body? For the same reason that I take a looking-glass - to see myself. Thus, in the body, the soul is reflected. The soul is God, and every human being has a perfect divinity within himself, and each one must show his divinity sooner or later. If I am in a dark room, no amount of protestation will make it any brighter - I must light a match. — Swami Vivekananda

There was some kind of scuffle two hundred yards down the street, again strangely noiseless, and a huddled knot of men opened up to reveal two brawlers being separated and pulled away from their fight. What I saw next gave me a fright: in the farther distance, beyond the listless crowd, the body of a lynched man dangling from a tree. The body was slender, dressed from head to toe in black, reflecting no light. It soon resolved itself, however, into a less ominous thing: dark canvas sheeting on a construction scaffold, twirling in the wind. — Teju Cole

When we recognize that our personal good coincides with the Good of everyone, our inner light is turned on: at this point, when a human being becomes a Human Angel, their light, like a beacon, shines all around.
The more lights are lit, the more humanity will be enlightened in these dark times, when the world of the ego, driven to its extreme, has begun its dramatic collapse. — Human Angels

That's what being shy feels like. Like my skin is too thin, the light too bright. Like the best place I could possibly be is in a tunnel far under the cool, dark earth. Someone asks me a question and I stare at them, empty-faced, my brain jammed up with how hard I'm trying to find something interesting to say. And in the end, all I can do is nod or shrug, because the light of their eyes looking at me, waiting for me, is just too much to take. And then it's over and there's one more person in the world who thinks I'm a complete and total waste of space.
The worst thing is the stupid hopefulness. Every new party, every new bunch of people, and I start thinking that maybe this is my chance. That I'm going to be normal this time. A new leaf. A fresh start. But then I find myself at the party, thinking, Oh, yeah. This again.
So I stand on the edge of things, crossing my fingers, praying nobody will try to look me in the eye. And the good thing is, they usually don't. — Carol Rifka Brunt

I feel like I'm waiting here. Waiting for something that hasn't happened yet. Something that isn't yet. But that's all I feel and nothing else. I don't know if I even exist. And then someone flips a switch and the light is gone, the room is gone, the weightlessness is gone. I want to ask to wait, because I wasn't finished yet, but I don't have a chance. There is no gentle pulling. No coaxing. No choice. I'm wrenched out. Yanked, as if my head is being snapped back. I'm in the dark and everything is pain. There are too many sensations at once. Every nerve ending is on fire. Like the shock of being born. And then, there are flashes of everything. Color, voices, machines, harsh words. The pain doesn't flash. The pain is constant, steady, never-ending. It's the only thing I know. I don't want to be awake anymore. — Katja Millay

"Wait." I grab his tie. Even through his shirt, I feel the strong curve of his collarbone beneath my fingers. It takes me back to how he looked in my bedroom: shirtless and perfect - wings spread high like those of some sort of celestial being - elegant power and pulsing light. Unabashed, unashamed, and confident. All the things that I crave to be.
My pulse beats rapidly against the bite on my neck. "There's something I want you to do, before Jeb wakes enough to know what's going on."
Morpheus kneels again. "What? You want I should kiss your ouchies?" The dark purr of his voice is more teasing than seductive. — A.G. Howard

As day gradually turns to night, Nadia then lifts her naked body from the floor, and like a goddess, she moves across the room with a stride that gives complement to every curve of her figure. She now leans over the coffee table to strike a match that breaks the light of night that clings to her. One by one, Nadia lights each candle in perfect form as the glowing contrast of light and dark dances around the edges of her beautiful body. She then looks at me again, she being this magical creature who has given me life to every body and realm; and oh how grateful I am that she has found me. — Luccini Shurod

And as to being in a fright,
Allow me to remark
That Ghosts have just as good a right
In every way, to fear the light,
As Men to fear the dark. — Lewis Carroll

What a man finds circa se or sub se is overwhelming in amount, what he finds in se is embarassing in its obscurity, but when from his own being he would obtain light as to what is supra se, then indeed he finds himself face to face with a dark and somewhat terrifying mystery. The trouble is that he is himself involved in the mystery. If, in any true sense, man is an image of God, how should he know himself without knowing God? But if it is really of God that he is an image, how should he know himself? — Etienne Gilson

There is nothing left to seek for in this world when it can be exchanged for another one. No thought of gain or loss, winning or losing, success or failure ever had any meaning. Fantasy is not real and dreaming is not Being One. You are ready to Awaken to Oneness. And as you awaken the whole world awakens as well. For the world was never more than a misperception. As perception becomes whole, the single mind sees only wholeness. At last you are ready to see with Inner Vision, and you realize that physical sight was nothing but the illusion of being in the dark. The Light has come and it is time to rejoice! It is time! — David Hoffmeister

19-21 "Don't hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and corroded by rust or - worse! - stolen by burglars. Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it's safe from moth and rust and burglars. It's obvious, isn't it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being. 22-23 "Your eyes are windows into your body. If you open your eyes wide in wonder and belief, your body fills up with light. If you live squinty-eyed in greed and distrust, your body is a dank cellar. If you pull the blinds on your windows, what a dark life you will have! 24 "You can't worship two gods at once. Loving one god, you'll end up hating the other. Adoration of one feeds contempt for the other. You can't worship God and Money both. — Eugene H. Peterson

Though nothing much had happened, he felt that he had seen and experienced enough that day - thus securing his tomorrow. For today he required no more, no sight or conversation, and above all nothing new. Just to rest, to close his eyes and ears; just to inhale and exhale would be effort enough. He wished it was bedtime. Enough of being in the light and out of doors; he wanted to be in the dark, in the house, in his room. But he had also had enough of being alone; he felt, as time passed, that he was experiencing every variety of madness and that his head was bursting. He recalled how, years ago, when it had been his habit to taken afternoon walks on lonely bypaths, a strange uneasiness had taken possession of him, leading him to believe that he had dissolved in the air and ceased to exist. — Peter Handke

you have too good a mind to throw away. I don't quite know what we're doing on this insignificant cinder spinning aay in a dark corner of the universe. That is a secret which the high gods have not confided in me. Yet one thing I believe and I believe it with every fibre of my being. A man must live by his light and do what little he can and do it as best he can. In this world goodness is destined to be defeated. But a man must go down fighting. That is the victory. To do anything less is to be less than a man.'
She is right. I will say yes. I will say yes even though I do not really know what she is talking about. — Walker Percy

The path to true happiness is one of integrating and fully accepting all aspects of our experience. This integration is represented in the Taoist symbol of yin/yang, a circle which is half dark and half light. In the midst of the dark area is a spot of light, and in the midst of the light area is a spot of darkness. Even in the depths of darkness, the light is implicit. Even in the heart of light, the dark is understood, acknowledged, and absorbed. If things are not going well for us in life and we are suffering, we are not defeated by the pain or closed off to the light. If things are going well and we are happy, we are not defensively trying to deny the possibility of suffering. This unity, this integration, comes from deeply accepting darkness and light, and therefore being able to be in both simultaneously. — Sharon Salzberg

I wish I could protect you from the world. It's a cold, dark place. It has very little light, where it used to abound in it, but alas, I am one lone candle. I cannot speak for the world. Just for what I've seen and felt. Being in the world means you could very well realize how lost you are. You find out, you cannot find yourself all alone. However, as long as a light shines, all hope is not lost. One day we'll all know for certain which paths are best traveled, and which were left narrow. — Jennifer Megan Varnadore

To nurture a resilient human being, or a resilient city, is to build in an expectation of adversity, a capacity for inevitable vulnerability. As a word and as a strategy, resilience honors the unromantic reality of who we are and how we are, and so becomes a refreshingly practical compass for the systems and societies we can craft. It's a shift from wish-based optimism to reality-based hope. It is akin to meaningful, sustained happiness - not dependent on a state of perfection or permanent satisfaction, not an emotional response to circumstances of the moment, but a way of being that can meet the range of emotions and experiences, light and dark, that add up to a life. Resilience is at once proactive, pragmatic, and humble. It knows it needs others. It doesn't overcome failure so much as transmute it, integrating it into the reality that evolves. Such — Krista Tippett

Both the fanatical believers and the fixed attitude people are loud in their scorn of what they call "woolly minds." ... [But it] is the woolly mind that combines scepticism about everything with credulity about everything. Being woolly it has no hard edges. It is easy, pliant, yet it has its own toughness. Because it bends, it does not break. ... The woolly mind realizes that we live in an unimaginable gigantic, complicated, mysterious universe. To try to stuff the vast bewildering creation into a few neat pigeon-holes is absurd. We don't know enough, and to pretend we do is mere intellectual conceit. ... The best we can do is keep looking out for clues, for anything that will light us a step or two in the dark. — J.B. Priestley

It was great but intense to try to go back into a character's mind, a mind that is filled with self-loathing and a mind that is male. It is fun to try to psychoanalyze why a character acts and feels the way he/she does, and doing it as a different gender lends itself to many challenges. My desire to delve into the male psyche comes from many years of being drawn to men that seem to have a darker side. But there is also light in them, and it is that duality and intensity that makes me feel alive. Thorne is very much that man as is my first male protagonist, Michael, from the Natalie's Edge series. Each man, while plagued with a dark past and demons, has this glorious light within them, fighting noble causes. I picture them as true anti-heroes, like the likes of Batman, the Dark Knight. — R.B. O'Brien

The reindeer are immortal. They are, in fact, the eight demiurges of reindeer-kind, and this accounts for their flying. Their names might sound whimsical, but they are the closest the human tongue can come to approximating the true names of the caribou lords. Rudolph, far from being the adorable, earnest fellow of the tale, is in fact Ruyd-al-Olafforid, the All-Destroying Flame of the Yukon. His mother was Kali and his father was an ice floe. His nose appears red because his body is full of coals, and his eyes flare with a terrible conflagration of the soul. The tips of his antlers are like candles in the snowy wind. He is not vengeful, but he is the light in the dark of winter, consuming and giving life at the same time. Your carrots only make the lord of flame stronger. — Catherynne M Valente

A person must be in tune with the light and dark forces of their nature and remain in harmony with the bands of their own multivariate being. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I call the high and light aspects of my being SPIRIT and the dark and heavy aspects SOUL.
Soul is at home in the deep shaded valleys.
Heavy torpid flowes saturated with black grow there.
The rivers flow like arm syrup. They empty into huge oceans of soul.
Spirit is a land of high,white peaks and glittering jewel-like lakes and flowers.
Life is sparse and sound travels great distances.
There is soul music, soul food, and soul love.
People need to climb the mountain not because it is there
But because the soulful divinity need to be mated with the Spirit.
Deep down we must have a rel affection for each other, a clear recognition of our shared human status. At the same time we must openly accept all ideologies and systems as means of solving humanity's problems. No matter how strong the wind of evil may blow, the flame of truth cannot be extinguished. — Dalai Lama XIV

A naked woman was amazing.

He'd never seen it this way, in full light, without half-off clothes or a beach blanket across the lap or sex in a dark car. This was her whole body naked in light, standing and lying and front and back and open and showing and then different when she walked, surer than he was, unclunky and smooth-moving, with parts that didn't bounce. She knew how to be naked. She looked like she'd been raised naked in this room, a skinny girl when she was a girl, probably, and skinny in a certain way, with a little bulgy belly and ashamed of her feet, but grown out of shyness and wrong proportions now, and being married of course, used to being seen, and she didn't have curves and swerves but was good looking naked and stuck to him when they fucked like a thing fighting for light, a great wet papery moth. — Don DeLillo

I was so anxious to make him believe me that I leaned towards him, across the table. He looked at me, right into my eyes. That queer, veiled expression in his
that I fear I used to call his daft look
was suddenly not there; there seemed to be a light in them and yet I have never seen them look so dark. And they were do direct that it was more like being touched than being looked at. It only lasted a second, but for that second he was quite a different person
much more interesting, even a little bit exciting. — Dodie Smith