Brightening Quotes & Sayings

It is not strange that that early love of the heart should come back, as it so often does when the dim eye is brightening with its last light. It is not strange that the freshest fountains the heart has ever known in its wastes should bubble up anew when the lifeblood is growing stagnant. It is not strange that a bright memory should come to a dying old man, as the sunshine breaks across the hills at the close of a stormy day; nor that in the light of that ray, the very clouds that made the day dark should grow gloriously beautiful. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

A flash of harmless lightning,
A mist of rainbow dyes.
The burnished sunbeams brightening
From flower to flower he flies;
While wakes the nodding blossom
But just too late to see
What lip hath touched her bosom
And drained her rosary. — John B. Tabb

We ought not to raise expectations which it is not in our power to satisfy.-It is more pleasing to see smoke brightening into flame, than flame sinking into smoke. — Samuel Johnson

In the strangeness of the brightening day it seemed presumptuous that with this feeble, broken instrument of his mind he had ever tried to think. — F Scott Fitzgerald

The dream Dreamed by a happy man, when the dark East, Unseen, is brightening to his bridal morn. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

O Hope! Dazzling, radiant Hope! What a change thou bringest to the hopeless; brightening the darkened paths, and cheering the lonely way. — Aimee Semple McPherson

This time, after a moment, he called her bluff.

"Perhaps Philippa and I should be thrown together a little more. She might become attached to me if she knew me better." Kate, brightening visibly, ignored the gleam in his eye.

"That would make her sorry for you?"

"It might. The object of any sort of clinical study deserves compassion, don't you think?"

"Snakes don't," said Katherine inconsequently. "I hate snakes."

"And yet you feed them on honey cakes and forbid them to defend themselves."

"Defencelessness is not a noted characteristic of serpents. Anyhow, I can't have them lying rattling about the house. It gets on the nerves."

"It does if you handle it by rattling back. — Dorothy Dunnett

Experience says you just can't do it. Pride will say it's just not worth it. Reason says it's just too difficult, and logic says it's too expensive. All while aspiration quickens our heartbeat, faith whispers, "you can do it," inspiration says you will find a way, and hope fills our soul with the songs of never giving up. The satisfaction of even small success spurs us on, and the fear and thrill of it all fuels the flames of our dreams, ever brightening our path. — Connie Kerbs

It's best to lay out your makeup as you would when planning your outfit. If you're using a brightening primer, then be judicious with your use of shimmer and sparkly things. I like to play with texture a bit, so you can always find a balance. — Tim Quinn

Reality surpasses imagination; and we see, breathing, brightening, and moving before our eyes sights dearer to our hearts than any we ever beheld in the land of sleep. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The sun rose on the flawless brimming sea into a sky all brazen-all one brightening for gods immortal and for mortal men on plowlands kind with grain. — Homer

A merrier baby than he had never been seen. Everything he glimpsed around him roused his interest and stirred him to joy. He looked with delight at the threads of rain outside the window, as if they were confetti and multicolored streamers. And if, as happens, the sunlight reached the ceiling indirectly and cast the shadows of the street's morning bustle, he would stare as it fascinated, refusing to abandon it, as if he were watching an extraordinary display of Chinese acrobats, given especially or him. You would have said, to tell the truth, from his laughter, from the constant brightening of his little face, that he didn't see things only in their usual aspects, but as multiple images of other things, varying to infinity. Otherwise, there was no explaining why the wretched, monotonous scene the house offered every day could afford him such diverse, inexhaustible amusement. — Elsa Morante

I drove out of Dartmouth and after a while Start Bay emerged out of the brightening gloom like the end of a set of parentheses in a book about the natural world. Inside the parentheses was a story about the sea. Outside them, the land: green, red and brown fields, and hills curling over the landscape. I saw small, delicate clumps of snowdrops, big rough patches of gorse, and along the thin road, houses with yellow roses and mimosa growing in their gardens. — Scarlett Thomas

When you enter a room, all eyes turn to you. You blaze like a torch, lighting the darkest corners, brightening even those who thought they were already well lit. You bring joy and mirth and leave behind a glow that gives hope to those you left."
"And you, Mr. Makepeace? Are you one of those who thought themselves well lit?"
"I am as dark as a pit." Now he was glad her back was turned. "Even your torch will have difficulty lighting my depths. — Elizabeth Hoyt

To awaken each morning with a smile brightening my face; to greet the day with reverence for the opportunities it contains; to approach my work with a clean mind; to hold ever before me, even in the doing of little things, the Ultimate Purpose toward which I am working; to meet men and women with laughter on my lips and love in my heart; to be gentle, kind, and courteous through all the hours; to approach the night with weariness that ever woos sleep and the joy that comes from work well done
this is how I desire to waste wisely my days. — Thomas Dekker

Again, now, now, again Plashes the rain in heavy gouts, The crinkled lightning Seems ever brightening ... And loud and long Again the thunder shouts His battle-song, - One quivering flash, One wildering crash, Followed by silence dead and dull, As if the cloud, let go, Leapt bodily below To whelm the earth in one mad overthrow, And then a total lull ... — James Russell Lowell

The afternoon light brightening the green in her eyes, her tan skin the last memory of fall — John Green

She's like a light, unwittingly brightening up the darkest corners of a man's soul. — Colleen Hoover

What are you?' She asked. He shot her a brief glance and looked away. He stared at the scenery of the pastures and distant rows of trees. She knew he was not going to answer the question.

In the brightening daylight, she could see that most of the blood on him was restricted to his mouth and hands. It dawned on her that it wasn't his blood, but the blood of something he had caught and eaten. — Shirley A. Martin

Selfishness makes Christmas a burden;
Love makes it a delight.
The joy of brightening a child's heart creates the magic of Christmas. — William Carey Jones

The technologies that raise the fewest ethical problems are those that work on a human scale, brightening the lives of individual people. — Freeman Dyson

It occurred to him that, much in the way one experiences a brightening when walking beneath a cherry tree in bloom,so too did Klara generate and throw light. — Patrick DeWitt

You're wrong, Miss Midwinter. Though I may not have approved of everything you've done, it wasn't because I didn't admire you, but because I did."
She looked up then, a tentative smile brightening her face. — Julie Klassen

Cricket needs brightening up a bit. My solution is to let the players drink at the beginning of the game, not after. It always works in our picnic matches. — Paul Hogan

We don't have an address," I said, "but we do know where he works."
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Vee asked, eyes brightening briefly through the haze of chemical sedation.
"Based on past experience, I hope not. — Becca Fitzpatrick

While Resignation gently slopes away, And all his prospects brightening to the last, His heaven commences ere the world be past. — Oliver Goldsmith

The river - with the sunlight flashing from its dancing wavelets, gilding gold the grey-green beech-trunks, glinting through the dark, cool wood paths, chasing shadows o'er the shallows, flinging diamonds from the mill-wheels, throwing kisses to the lilies, wantoning with the weirs' white waters, silvering moss-grown walls and bridges, brightening every tiny townlet, making sweet each lane and meadow, lying tangled in the rushes, peeping, laughing, from each inlet, gleaming gay on many a far sail, making soft the air with glory - is a golden fairy stream. — Jerome K. Jerome

I like looking at a future where we're expanding our creativity and brightening our lives. I believe that eventually we'll get to a point where we'll be able to live indefinitely through our technology. — Steve Aoki

You're right. Maybe it wouldn't change anything." His gaze shifted from the brightening ocean to me. I didn't need to look into his eyes to feel their intensity. "But maybe it would change everything. — Nicole Williams

The brightening he detected in the room around him might just be the whites of dozens of eyes as they widened [upon him] — Julie Anne Long

On the brightening air drifts a scent of refreshed stone, moistened soil. She feels the earthy fingerprint of the cold morning air spread over her skin as if she is in the act of undressing. Her body has an early morning weightlessness about it. She might almost be a memory of herself. Conjured up by the sleeping city. — Glenn Haybittle

Descartes, in his Third Meditation, said that God re-created the body at each successive moment. So that time was a form of sustenance. On earth time was marked by the sun and moon, by rotations that distinguished day from night, that had led to clocks and calendars. The present was a speck that kept blinking, brightening and diminishing, something neither alive nor dead. How long did it last? One second? Less? It was always in flux; in the time it took to consider it, it slipped away. In one of her notebooks from Calcutta were jottings in Udayan's hand, on the laws of classical physics. Newton's theory that time was an absolute entity, a stream flowing at a uniform rate of its own accord. Einstein's contribution, that time and space were intertwined. He'd described it in terms of particles, velocities. A system of relations among instantaneous events. Something called time — Jhumpa Lahiri

Outside, he stretches up his arms beneath the brightening sky. His breath and heartbeat like a gift newly restored to him. — Glenn Haybittle

Education, human education, is the leading out and lifting up of the soul into the ripe, full enjoyment of all its powes potential. To educate men and women is to put them in full command of themselves, to completely possess them of their faculties, which are only half possessed until they are educated. Education imparts nothing but discipline and development. It does not increase the number of man's original talents; it adds nothing to the sum of his inherent capabilities; but it improves those talents, it develops and strengthens those capabilities, brightening what is dull, making the crude fine, the clumsy skillful, the small great, and the great still greater. Education supplements creation, and moves next to it in the order of infinite progression. — Orson F. Whitney

Kenzie's head jerked up, her eyes brightening. "Irland?"
"Yay!" Razor crowed, bouncing up and down on Kierran shoulder. "Sheep! — Julie Kagawa

But illness does not always write itself upon the body, the sickness I search for is hidden deep within the brain. Sometimes it rises to the surface. Sometimes the face betrays what the body conceals. But there moments, these betrayals, last no longer than an instant. They come, they go, they pass over the patient, darkening and brightening his face like clouds gusting over a meadow. How is it possible, then, to tell what he is suffering when the visible signs of his inner disorder appear so fleetingly upon his face? — Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skilfully wrought out, brightening at every step, and crowning the final development of a work of fiction, may add an artistic glory, but is never
any truer, and seldom any more evident, at the last page than at the first. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

We cannot hold a torch to light another's path without brightening our own. — Ben Sweetland

What we are, in fact, are electronic ape-men. We woke up just now in the electronic dawn and there, looming against the brightening sky, is this huge black rectangle. And we're reaching out and touching it and saying, "Is it WAP enabled? Can we have sex with it? Can you get it in a different colour? Is it being sold cheap because the Monolith2 is being released next month and has a built-in PDA for the same price? — Terry Pratchett

Since the foundation of the world man has had nearly all the forces on his side, working with him and for him; his intellect has been stimulated, while that of woman has been abased; he has had the run of the world and all quickening and brightening things, while she has sat in the cinders, and until of late been illumined only by his reflected light. — Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance? — W.B.Yeats

The sound of my voice brought the life back to her limbs, and the colour to her face. She advanced, on her side, still without speaking. Slowly, as if acting under some influence independent of her own will, she came nearer and nearer to me; the warm dusky colour flushing her cheeks, the light of reviving intelligence brightening every instant in her eyes. I forgot the object that had brought me into her presence; I forgot the vile suspicion that rested on my good name; I forgot every consideration, past, present, and future, which I was bound to remember. I saw nothing but the woman I loved coming nearer and nearer to me. She trembled; she stood irresolute. I could resist it no longer--I caught her in my arms, and covered her face with kisses. — Wilkie Collins

Therefore it is to a practical mysticism that the practical man is here invited: to a training of his latent faculties, a bracing and brightening of his languid consciousness, an emancipation from the fetters of appearance, a turning of his attention to new levels of the world. Thus he may become aware of the universe which the spiritual artist is always trying to disclose to the race. This amount of mystical perception - this "ordinary contemplation," as the specialists call it - is possible to all men: without it, they are not wholly conscious, nor wholly alive. It is a natural human activity, no more involving the great powers and sublime experiences of the mystical saints and philosophers than the ordinary enjoyment of music involves the special creative powers of the great musician. — Evelyn Underhill

You are the sunshine of my life! Thanks for brightening my world with the warmth of your Love ... — Jennie Garth

Two angels guide
The path of man, both aged and yet young.
As angels are, ripening through endless years,
On one he leans: some call her Memory,
And some Tradition; and her voice is sweet,
With deep mysterious accords: the other,
Floating above, holds down a lamp with streams
A light divine and searching on the earth,
Compelling eyes and footsteps. Memory yields,
Yet clings with loving check, and shines anew,
Reflecting all the rays of that bright lamp
Our angel Reason holds. We had not walked
But for Tradition; we walk evermore
To higher paths by brightening Reason's lamp. — George Eliot

The first egg is white. I move the eggcup a little, so it's now in the watery sunlight that comes through the window and falls, brightening, waning, brightening again, on the tray. The shell of the egg is smooth but also grained; small pebbles of calcium are defined by the sunlight, like craters on the moon. It's a barren landscape, yet perfect; it's the sort of desert the saints went into, so their minds would not be distracted by profusion. I think that this is what God must look like: an egg. The life of the moon may not be on the surface, but inside. The egg is glowing now, as if it had an energy of its own. To look at the egg gives me intense pleasure. The sun goes and the egg fades. I — Margaret Atwood

Good daughters are fortunate lamps, brightening the family's name. Wicked daughters are firebrands, blackening the family's fame. — Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily.
"So it is."
"And freezing."
"Is it?"
"Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately. — A.A. Milne

Hope emanates from you, like a warm fire brightening an otherwise depressing room. — K.S. Ruff

You rose into my life like a promised sunrise, brightening my days with the light in your eyes. I've never been so strong. Now I'm where I belong. — Maya Angelou

In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun O'er which clouds are brightening, Thou dost float and run Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Bible teaching about the Second Coming of Christ was thought of as "doomsday" preaching. But not anymore. It is the only ray of hope that shines as an ever brightening beam in a darkening world. — Billy Graham

Ablaze with alabaster one must admit
as long as there is near music kicking around
nowhere more winsome than in the outlandish passage
from April to California, Sunday to Jose, March to French
and all the wilderness and Septembers in between.
Slow ghost thicket, a tempo of someone's own,
please please the quintessentially readymade
and risen stranger, the tremor in the house,
rather than some unfinished crime without dragon
or alibi in the drowsy garden.
O savage, O brightening Niagara,
O briefest, fussy thing in ruffled light,
wait, I am a stranger here myself. — Paul Vangelisti

The sun goes down and the sky reddens, pain grows sharp,
light dwindles. Then is evening
when jasmine flowers open, the deluded say.
But evening is the great brightening dawn
when crested cocks crow all through the tall city
and evening is the whole day
for those without their lovers. — Preeta Samarasan

And the more they asked, the more they wondered. And the more they wondered, the more they hoped. And the more they hoped, the more the clouds of sorrow lifted, drifted, and burned away in the heat of a brightening sky. — Kelly Barnhill

I saw it from that hidden, silent place
Where the old wood half shuts the meadow in.
It shone through all the sunset's glories - thin
At first, but with a slowly brightening face.
Night came, and that lone beacon, amber-hued,
Beat on my sight as never it did of old;
The evening star - but grown a thousandfold
More haunting in this hush and solitude.
It traced strange pictures on the quivering air -
Half-memories that had always filled my eyes -
Vast towers and gardens; curious seas and skies
Of some dim life - I never could tell where.
But I knew that through the cosmic dome
Those rays were calling from my far, lost home. — H.P. Lovecraft

The joy of brightening other lives, bearing each others' burdens, easing other's loads and supplanting empty hearts and lives with generous gifts becomes for us the magic of Christmas. — William Carey Jones