Darkness Over Light Quotes & Sayings

By and large over time, pain turns to grief, grief turns to silence, and silence turns to lonesomeness, as vast and bottomless as the dark oceans ... You think you cannot live anymore. You think that the light of your soul has been put out and that you will stay in the dark forever. But when you are engulfed by such solid darkness, when you have both eyes closed to the world, a third eye opens in your heart. And only then do you come to realize that eyesight conflicts with inner knowledge. No eye sees so clear and sharp as the eye of love. After grief comes another season, another valley, another you. And the lover who is nowhere to be found, you start to see everywhere. — Elif Shafak

I'm choosing good over evil, light over darkness. I choose humanity. — Stark

I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness. — George Fox

Be the light you want to attract, and darkness will have no spell over you. Darkness is dispelled by light. — Rebecca Rosen

He'd placed a stake in my heart the first time he told me loved me, and since then I've been his. I don't think I could've been anyone else's, no matter how much time we spent apart or how much time I spent with the other. Where there was darkness, he filled me up and I spilled over with light. He was my light. My sanity. My world. — Shanora Williams

Abstractedly speaking, government, as well as liberty, is good; yet could I, in common sense, ten years ago, have felicitated France on her enjoyment of a government (for she then had a government) without inquiry what the nature of that government was, or how it was administered? Can I now congratulate the same nation upon its freedom? Is it because liberty in the abstract may be classed amongst the blessings of mankind, that I am seriously to felicitate a mad-man, who has escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell, on his restoration to the enjoyment of light and liberty? Am I to congratulate a highwayman and murderer, who has broke prison, upon the recovery of his natural rights? This would be to act over again the scene of the criminals condemned to the galleys, and their heroic deliverer, the metaphysic knight of the sorrowful countenance. — Edmund Burke

Oh goodness infinite, goodness immense!
That all this good of evil shall produce,
And evil turn to good; more wonderful
Than that which by creation first brought forth
Light out of darkness! Full of doubt I stand,
Whether I should repent me now of sin
By me done, and occasioned; or rejoice
Much more, that much more good thereof shall spring;
To God more glory, more good-will to men
From God, and over wrath grace shall abound. — John Milton

Banks watched the sun creep over the forest of oak trees and a crack of light broke through the night and grew longer and wider and ate the black like a fungus until the darkness was gone and there was light and it was day. — Matthew McBride

Acquainted with the Night
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night. — Robert Frost

She sat at the window of the train ... The window frame trembled with the speed of the motion, the pane hung over empty darkness, and dots of light slashed across the glass as luminous streaks, once in a while ... She sat listening to the music. It was a symphony of triumph. The notes flowed up ... It was a sunburst of sound, breaking out of hiding and spreading open. It had the freedom of release and the tension of purpose. It swept space clean, and left nothing but the joy of an unobstructed effort. Only a faint echo within the sounds spoke of that from which the music had escaped, but spoke in laughing astonishment at the discovery that there was no ugliness or pain, and there never had had to be. It was the song of an immense deliverance. She thought: For just a few moments
while this lasts
it is all right to surrender completely
to forget everything and just permit yourself to feel. She thought: Let go
drop the controls
this is it. — Ayn Rand

It was an unusual sunset. Having sat behind opaque drapery all day, I had not realized that a storm was pushing in and that much of the sky was the precise shade of old suits of armor one finds in museums. At the same time, patches of brilliance engaged in a territorial dispute with the oncoming onyx of the storm. Light and darkness mingled in strange ways both above and below. Shadows and sunshine washed together, streaking the landscape with an unearthly study of glare and gloom. Bright clouds and black folded into each other in a no-man's land of the sky. The autumn trees took on the appearance of sculptures formed in a dream, their leaden-colored trunks and branches and iron-red leaves all locked in an infinite and unliving moment, unnaturally timeless. The gray lake slowly tossed and tumbled in a dead sleep, nudging unconsciously against its breakwall of numb stone. A scene of contradiction and ambivalence, a tragicomedic haze over all. A land of perfect twilight. — Thomas Ligotti

Lunar Paraphrase
The moon is the mother of pathos and pity.
When, at the wearier end of November,
Her old light moves along the branches,
Feebly, slowly, depending upon them;
When the body of Jesus hangs in a pallor,
Humanly near, and the figure of Mary,
Touched on by hoar-frost, shrinks in a shelter
Made by the leaves, that have rotted and fallen;
When over the houses, a golden illusion
Brings back an earlier season of quiet
And quieting dreams in the sleepers in darkness
The moon is the mother of pathos and pity. — Wallace Stevens

Darkness attracted him as much as light. He knew that these days turning out the light before making love was considered laughable, and so he always left a small lamp burning over the bed. At the momemnt he penetrated sabina, however, he closed his eyes. The pleasure suffusing his body called for darkness. The darkness was pure, perfect, thoughtless, vision less; that darkness was without end, without borders; that darkness was the infinite we each carry within us. — Milan Kundera

Clary shut her eyes. You didn't say no to an angel, no matter what it had in mind. Her heart pounding, she sat floating in the darkness behind her eyelids, resolutely trying not to think of Jace. But his face appear against the blank screen of her closed eyelids anyway - not smiling at her but looking sidelong, and she could see the scar at his temple, the uneven curl at the corner of his mouth, and the silver line on his throat where Simon had bitten him - all the marks and flaws and imperfections that made up the person she loved most in the world. Jace. A bright light lit her vision to scarlet, and she fell back against the sand, wondering if she was going to pass out - or maybe she was dying - but she didn't want to die, not now that she could see Jace's face so clearly in front of her. She could almost hear his voice, too, saying her name, the way he'd whispered it at Renwick's, over and over again. Clary. Clary. Clary.
"Clary," Jace said. "Open your eyes. — Cassandra Clare

Queer, how her own desperate need of light seemed to throw such brilliance over the affairs of the members of her family. She carried her need like a many-batteried pocket spotlight, illuminating emotional corners in other people, but she walked in darkness behind it. Her wrist wouldn't bend to turn it on herself. — Helen R. Hull

not the end of the world, just darkness over everything," Charlie cheerfully said. "it gets dark - turn on a light. — Christopher Moore

When I wake, the sun is just climbing above the clouds, beginning its daily journey. A never-ending journey, one that will continue long after humanity is extinct. For ages it has shone its light over wars and miseries, piercing through the deepest darkness, and yet never able to penetrate the human heart and fill it with its light. — Henry Martin

In the beginning God created a the heavens and the earth. 2The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit b of God was moving over the face of the waters. 3 And God said, "Let there be light"; — Anonymous

What am I doing? Perhaps the evil witch had a point.
No, I refuse to believe that. She's so cold and cruel. I shake my head. She's wrong. I am right for Christian. I am what he needs. And. In that moment of stunning clarity, I don't question how he's lived his life until recently - but why. His reasons for doing what he's done to countless girls - I don't even want to know how many. The how isn't wrong. They were all adults. They were all - How did Flynn put it? - in safe, sane, consensual relationships. It's the why. The why was wrong. The why was from his place of darkness.
I close my eyes and drape my arm over them. But now he's move on, left it all behind, and we are both in the light. — E.L. James

Beware, Underlanders, time hangs by a thread.
The hunters are hunted, white water runs red.
The Gnawers will strike to extinguish the rest.
The hope of the hopeless resides in a quest.
An Overland warrior, a son of the sun,
May bring us back light, he may bring us back none.
But gather your neighbors and follow his call
Or rats will most surely devour us all.
Two over, two under, of royal descent,
Two flyers, two crawlers, two spinners assent.
One gnawer beside and one lost up ahead.
And eight will be left when we count up the dead.
The last who will die must decide where he stands.
The fate of the eight is contained in his hands.
So bid him take care, bid him look where he leaps,
As life may be death and death life again reaps. — Suzanne Collins

Don't cry, you crybaby! When you think things are hard, that's the time you are maturing as a person. If you get over the darkness, a wonderful new day will come. The bright morning will be filled with light and the birds will be singing . There'll be white roses with a lovely fragrance ... — Aya Kito

In the midst of the darkness of loss, I found light. Admittedly, in those first weeks, it might have been but a single small spark I sensed deep inside of me, but that spark guided me in the twisted, dark journey of grief. As I stumbled over the roots of hopelessness and despair, that light grew to illuminate my path, a path I sometimes felt very alone on. At some point in the journey I'd turned around, and there was God.
That is grace. — Mary Potter Kenyon

My Promise lives within each of you for you are the hope of all who seek light from within the darkness. No matter the misery of those who have given themselves over to evil, the fate of each man in his own hands: divergence from the path of Righteousness comes in many forms but the price of my eternal Peace is paid in compassion and humility. It is upon your Faith that wickedness will be vanquished, and suffering expelled eternally into the depths of the Pit so that all who seek it may dwell eternally in my House. Despair not of what is to come for your place is forever at my table. — Nicholas DeAntonio

You can lose yourself a million times over, but your heart will always know who you are. In every wound and place of emptiness, love provides a light that guides you through the darkness. It relentlessly seeks you out and stops at nothing to find you. Love always finds you. And when it does, it will bring you home. — Christine Brae

Now since you are celebrating the holy Pascha, you should know, brethren, what the Pascha is. Pascha means the crossing-over, and so the Festival is called by this name. For it was on this day that the Children of Israel crossed over out of Egypt, and the Son of God crossed over from this world to His Father. What gain is it to celebrate unless you imitate Him Whom you worship; that is, unless you cross over from Egypt, that is, from the darkness of evildoing to the light of virtue, from the love of this world to the love of your heavenly home? — Ambrose

I see I have this patience to wait it out, and the truth is no matter how dark I feel I would never take my own life, because when the darkness is over, then what a blessing is the feeblest ray of light! — Valerie Martin

Dusk settled down into this neck of the great valley. Coyotes barked out in the open. From the heights pealed down the mournful blood-curdling, yet beautiful, bay of a wolf. The rosy afterglow of sunset lingered a long time. The place was shut in, closed about by brushy steeps, redolent of sage. A tiny stream of swift water sang faintly down over rocks. And before darkness had time to enfold hollow and slope and horizon, the moon slid up to defeat the encroaching night and blanch the hills with silvery light. — Zane Grey

Love's Prayer If Heaven would hear my prayer, My dearest wish would be, Thy sorrows not to share But take them all on me; If Heaven would hear my prayer. I'd beg with prayers and sighs That never a tear might flow From out thy lovely eyes, If Heaven might grant it so; Mine be the tears and sighs. No cloud thy brow should cover, But smiles each other chase From lips to eyes all over Thy sweet and sunny face; The clouds my heart should cover. That all thy path be light Let darkness fall on me; If all thy days be bright, Mine black as night could be; My love would light my night. For thou art more than life, And if our fate should set Life and my love at strife, How could I then forget I love thee more than life? — John Hay

Four wings, two hearts, but only one soul. They connect in the middle, but are separated by a thin line of ash. Its what brings them together, yet rips their feathers apart. They can never truly be together as light and dark. Unless one makes the ultimate sacrifice. Blows out their candle, and joins the other in the dark. Or if the other dares to fly across the line and steals the others light And force them to cross over the line and join the darkness of life. Im not gone, princess. I will come back for you until you give in. — Jessica Sorensen

The stone basin was crusted with ice now. The courtyard security light illuminated its depths, and as he leaned over it he could make out the fiery glints of goldfish beneath the surface. There, beneath the cover of the ice, their flickering lives went on. He wanted to know how they did it, how they withstood the slowing of their hearts, the chilling of their blood, through the long darkness of winter. — Julie Orringer

The Nelazan believed that there was beauty in darkness, and that the daylight was more profane. They saw the stars as the Thousand Eyes of Trell watching them. The sun was the single, jealous eye of Trell's brother, Nalt. Since Nalt only had one eye, he made it blaze brightly to outshine his brother. The Nelazan, however, were not impressed, and preferred to worship the quiet Trell, who watched over them even when Nalt obscured the sky. — Brandon Sanderson

Each human being has significant potential for light and darkness," Grandpa continued. "Over a lifetime, we get a lot of practice leaning toward one or the other. Having made different choices, a renowned hero could have been a wretched villain. — Brandon Mull

Of course there always will be darkness but I realize now something inhabits it. Historical or not. Sometimes it seems like a cat, the panther with its moon mad gait or a tiger with stripes of ash and eyes as wild as winter oceans. Sometimes it's the curve of a wrist or what's left of romance, still hiding in the drawer of some long lost nightstand or carefully drawn in the margins of an old discarded calendar. Sometimes it's even just a vapor trail speeding west, prophetic, over clouds aglow with dangerous light. Of course these are only images, my images, and in the end they're born out of something much more akin to a Voice, which though invisible to the eye and frequently unheard by even the ear still continues, day and night, year after year, to sweep through us all. — Mark Z. Danielewski

I first believed without any hesitation in the existence of the soul, and then I wondered about the secret of its nature. I persevered and strove in search of the soul, and found at last that I myself was the cover over my own soul. I realized that that in me which believed and that in me that wondered, that which was found at last, was no other than my soul. I thanked the darkness that brought me to the light, and I valued this veil that prepared for me the vision in which I saw myself reflected, the vision produced in the mirror of my soul. Since then, I have seen all souls as my soul, and realized my soul as the soul of all. And what bewilderment it was when I realized that I alone was, if there were anyone, that I am whatever and whoever exists, and that I shall be whoever there will be in the future. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

When darkness settles over the city two prongs of light suddenly reach high up into the night sky. The searchlights remain fixed, two bright smoking fingers lighting up the underside of clouds and providing a canopy of light over the city. She feels enchantment forging a ring around the moment. — Glenn Haybittle

We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light a candle that can guide us through the darkness to a safe and sure future. For the world is changing. The old era is ending. The old ways will not do.
The problems are not all solved and the battles are not all won and we stand today on the edge of a New Frontier - a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats.
It has been a long road to this crowded convention city. Now begins another long journey, taking me into your cities and towns and homes all over America.
Give me your help. Give me your hand, your voice and your vote. — John F. Kennedy

RUSTY watched the dawn blossom into light. At first everything was dark, then gradually objects began to take shape - the desk and chair, the walls of the room - and the darkness lifted like the raising of a veil, and over the tree-tops the sky was streaked with crimson. It was like this for some time, while everything became clearer and more distinguishable; and then, when nature was ready, the sun reached up over the trees and hills, and sent one tentative beam of warm light through the window. Along the wall crept the sun, across to the bed, and up the boy's bare legs, until it was caressing his entire body and whispering to him to get up, get up, it is time to get up ... — Ruskin Bond

It was by this time about nine in the morning, and the first fog of the season. A great chocolate-colored pall lowered over heaven, but the wind was continually charging and routing these embattled vapors; so that as the cab crawled from street to street, Mr. Utterson beheld a marvelous number of degrees and hues of twilight; for here it would be dark like the black end of evening; and there would be a glow of a rich, lurid brown, like the light of some strange conflagration; and here for a moment, the fog would be quite broken up and a haggard shaft of daylight would glance in between the swirling wreaths. The dismal quarter of Soho seen under these changing glimpses, with its muddy ways, and slatternly passengers, and its lamps, which had never been extinguished or had been kindled afresh to combat this mournful reinvasion of darkness, seemed, in the lawyer's eyes, like a district of some city in a nightmare. — Robert Louis Stevenson

I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light. — Barbara Brown Taylor

Sam started to move away, and she pulled him closer.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"Shhh," he said. "I'm just going to grab the blanket and turn out the light. I'll be right back."
Bella chuckled sleepily and waved her right hand. The blanket lifted off the back of the chair where she'd left it and came slowly sailing across the room to drape itself over their entwined bodies. A snap of her fingers and the single lamp in the kitchen went out.
Sam blinked in the sudden darkness. "You're a very handy woman to have around," he said.
"You have no idea," she replied, and proceeded to demonstrate that she wasn't quite as tired as he'd thought. — Deborah Blake

The baby. Deep, deep inside of her the baby was moving. It was just a flutter. So curious. So light. Then it came again. She gasped. "What is it?" He was over her instantly. She shook her head. "The baby." "My God!" His voice was harsh, rasping. "Is it all right? Did - " "No, no! It's fine. He's moving! I can feel the baby. It's so strange!" His palm moved over her abdomen. "I can't feel it!" he said. She shook her head again. The darkness cast shadows over them both. "No, you can't feel him, not yet. It's just inside. I think it takes time to feel the movement from the outside. But - oh, there again! He's alive, he's moving, he's kicking, he's ... " "He's what?" Jeremy said. His palm still lay gently against her flesh. "He's real!" she breathed. "He's real, he's going to be born, he's going to live. — Heather Graham

There is something about nature out of control that touches a primal terror. We are used to believing that we're the masters of our domain, and that God has given us this earth to rule over. We need this illusion like a good night-light. The truth is more fearsome: we are as frail as young trees in tornadoes, and our beloved homes are one flood away from driftwood. We plant our roots in trembling earth, we live where mountains rose and fell and prehistoric seas burned away in mist. We and the towns we have built are not permanent; the earth itself is a passing train. When you stand in muddy water that is rising toward your waist and you hear people shouting against the darkness and see their figures struggling to hold back the currents that will not be denied, you realize the truth of it: we will not win, but we cannot give up. — Robert McCammon

Living in the moment works sometimes, but when alone, it clouds over your memories and dreams, and those are what I need to survive. — D.S. Mixell

In the beginning, there was the earth, formless and empty. Darkness hung over the surface of the deep. And then there was light. It spilled over the waters, vast and powerful, and its creation severed the unity that had come before. This light was a separate entity from the darkness. Something novel and cruelly different. The spirits called it "day." Its opposite was called "night." Between them was evening and morning - the First Day. This division marked the end of peace in the universe. Everything has been pretty much fucked up since then. — S.M. Reine

She waited for so long that something strange happened. She started to be able to see. There wasn't any more light to see by. It was just that her eyes decided to give her more information. She'd been told in a lesson once about something called accommodation. The rods and cones of the eye, especially the rods, change their zone of sensitivity so that they can see details and distinctions in what previously looked like total darkness. But there are functional limits to that process, and the resulting picture is mostly black and white because rods aren't good at gradations of colour. This was different. It was like an invisible sun came up in the room, and Melanie could see by its light as well as she could see by day. Or like the space below her went from black ocean to dry land over the space of a few minutes. She wondered if this was something only hungries could do. She — M.R. Carey

They were full of light, of fire and starlight and sunshine. They over-flowed with it as they snapped the final tether on the king's power and cleaved his darkness away, burning it up until it was nothing. — Sarah J. Maas

And when he ran the blades over her she felt light as a feather, floating happily into that place where pain and pleasure walked hand in hand, fully clear and conscious and she looked out to the darkness that lay outside of their artificial day. All too soon it was gone, her vision dimming and her breaths evening as she found somewhere darker which centred around the golden light of her Master's voice as he spoke to her. — Astrid Knowles

Saving You
The darkness takes him over,
the sickness pulls him in;
his eyes - a blown out candle,
I wish to go with him.
Sometimes I see a flicker
a light that shone from them;
I hold him to me tightly,
before he's gone again. — Lang Leav

Origins and History of Consciousness
III.
It's simple to wake from sleep with a stranger,
dress, go out, drink coffee,
enter a life again. It isn't simple
to wake from sleep into the neighborhood
of one neither strange nor familiar
whom we have chosen to trust. Trusting, untrusting,
we lowered ourselves into this, let ourselves
downward hand over hand as on a rope that quivered
over the unsearched ... . We did this. Conceived
of each other, conceived each other in a darkness
which I remember as drenched in light.
I want to call this, life.
But I can't call it life until we start to move
beyond this secret circle of fire
where our bodies are giant shadows flung on a wall
where the night becomes our inner darkness, and sleeps
like a dumb beast, head on her paws, in the corner. — Adrienne Rich

This is our world. Aye, there's more than enough of darkness in it. But over everything there's all this joy, Kit. There's all this lovely, lovely light. — David Almond

A law which excludes all dialectic and all reconciliation; which establishes, consequently, both the flawless unity of knowledge and the uncompromising division of tragic existence; it rules over a world without twilight, which knows no effusion, nor the attenuated cares of lyricism; everything must be either waking or dream, truth or darkness, the light of being or the nothingness of shadow. — Michel Foucault

What we have here, min skat, exists solely because of the two of us. I told you that we burn; well the radiance of that great conflagration is like a shield banishing darkness. This little bubble of perfection into which we've brought these few select people is the perfect world I tried but failed to create when I was a child. So ask me if I think it was an earthquake, and for once I'll tell you what I really think. I see the manifestation of evil growing across the whole world, Ben. The lights of our civilisation are going out one by one, and we will be extinguished, engulfed by what is coming. Except here, under our shield, in the light of our fire." He turned Ben's hand over and stroked across the creases. "We hold the whole world in the palm of our hands." He folded Ben's fingers into a fist. "And we are mighty. — John Wiltshire

I tear down Baxter, which loops around the last mile down to Back Cove.
And then I stop short. The buildings have fallen away behind me, giving way to ramshackle sheds, sparsely situated on either side of the cracked and run-down road. Beyond that, a short strip of tall, weedy grass slants down toward the cove.
The water is an enormous mirror, tipped with pink and gold from the sky. In that single, blazing moment as I come around the bend, the sun - curved over the dip of the horizon like a solid gold archway - lets out its final winking rays of light, shattering the darkness of the water, turning everything white for a fraction of a second, and then falls away, sinking, dragging the pink and the red and the purple out of the sky with it, all the color bleeding away instantly and leaving only dark.
Alex was right. It was gorgeous - one of the best I've ever seen. — Lauren Oliver

It is really a miracle how you have managed to be so miserable, so thirsty, when it is raining all over. You have really done the impossible! Everywhere it is light and you live in darkness. Death is nowhere and you are constantly dying; life is a benediction and you are in hell. — Osho

One is in 'Waiting'
Even after it's over
Grief comes to stay
Never up for closure
...
There is no escape ever
One is always yearning
Grief envelops those
Left behind in 'waiting'
...
'Staying stuck' in pain
Hiding deep in the heart
'Let go' ! Yes, but how
To make a new start
...
One has to live in the
Dark blind 'Black-hole'
Until Light would grace
Rekindling a 'Whole'
(Page 49) — Neena Verma

God has so ordered, that in pressing on in duty we shall find the truest, richest comfort for ourselves. Sitting down to brood over our sorrows, the darkness deepens about us and creeps into our heart, and our strength changes to weakness. But, if we turn away from the gloom, and take up the tasks and duties to which God calls us, the light will come again, and we shall grow stronger. — Lettie Cowman

It is, once again, fatally easy to misunderstand, to draw the lines wrong, to see "our present system" as automatically good, so that anyone who disturbs it - as Jesus was disturbing the system of the scribes and Pharisees - must be "satanic," must be from the dark side. That road leads to the "war of the sons of light against the sons of darkness," as at Qumran: the overbright light of an overrealized eschatology, enabling "us" to see ourselves as "children of light," casting a surreal, overdramatized shadow over "them," the "children of darkness. — N. T. Wright

Boast of Quietness
Writings of light assault the darkness, more prodigious than meteors.
The tall unknowable city takes over the countryside.
Sure of my life and death, I observe the ambitious
and would like to understand them.
Their day is greedy as a lariat in the air.
Their night is a rest from the rage within steel, quick to attack.
They speak of humanity.
My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty.
They speak of homeland.
My homeland is the rhythm of a guitar, a few portraits, an old sword,
the willow grove's visible prayer as evening falls.
Time is living me.
More silent than my shadow, I pass through the loftily covetous multitude.
They are indispensable, singular, worthy of tomorrow.
My name is someone and anyone.
I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away
he doesn't expect to arrive. — Jorge Luis Borges

She loves most the wet colours of his neck when he bathes. And his chest with with its sweat which her fingers grip when he is over her, and the dark, tough arms in the darkness of his tent, or one time in her room when light from the valley's city, finally free of curfew, rose among them like twilight and lit the colour of his body. — Michael Ondaatje

Oh but the gods do so love me," I shared softly. "To give me a man who would allow his soul to be taken over by the darkness of night, for he's a man who loves so deeply, he lost those who had his love, was cast into the shadows, and he refuses to crawl to the light. — Kristen Ashley

I guess he'll have to figure out someday that he is supposed to have this dark side, that it is part of what it means to be human, to have the darkness just as much as the light- that in fact the dark parts make the light visible; without them, the light would disappear. But I guess he has to figure other stuff out first, like how to keep his neck from flopping all over the place and how to sit up. — Anne Lamott

When the pages are in the typewriter, I can't see his face.
In that way i am choosing you over him.
I don't need to see him.
I don't need to know if he is looking up at me.
It's not even that I trust him not to leave.
I know this won't last.
I'd rather be me than him.
The words are coming so easily.
The pages are coming easily.
At the end of my dream, Eve put the apple back on the branch. The tree went back into the ground. It became a sapling, which became a seed.
God brought together the land and the water, the sky and the water, the water and the water, evening and morning, something and nothing.
He said, Let there be light.
And there was darkness. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Then it was she saw him again. On the upper reaches of the scaffolding, a sheerness of presence, no more. It was as if he took the space from the air about him and against the darkness was etched, like the brightness which seeps through a door ajar, hinting at nameless, fathomless brilliances beyond, the slightest margin of light. Impossible to look too closely, but some way below, beneath where the long feet might have rested, she made out the girl's huddled shape, her arms folded over her head like some small broken-winged, storm-tossed bird. — Salley Vickers

And I saw a light-filled man emerge from the aforesaid dawn and pour his brightness over the aforementioned darkness; it repulsed him; he turned blood-red and pallid, but struck back against the darkness with such force that the man who was lying in the darkness became visible and resplendent. — Hildegard Of Bingen

Science is a match that man has just got alight. He thought he was in a room - in moments of devotion, a temple - and that his light would be reflected from and display walls inscribed with wonderful secrets and pillars carved with philosophical systems wrought into harmony. It is a curious sensation, now that the preliminary splutter is over and the flame burns up clear, to see his hands lit and just a glimpse of himself and the patch he stands on visible, and around him, in place of all that human comfort and beauty he anticipated - darkness still.'The Rediscovery of the Unique' Fortnightly Review (1891) — H.G.Wells

Ozzie Boone ... insists that I keep the tone light in these biographical manuscripts. He believes that pessimism is strictly for people who are over-educated and unimaginative. Ozzie counsels me that melancholy is a self-indulgent form of sorrow.
By writing in an unrelievedly dark mode, he warns, the writer risks culturing darkness in his heart, becoming the very thing that he decries. — Dean Koontz

My painting represents the victory of the forces of darkness and peace over the powers of light and evil. — Ad Reinhardt

Even when light fades and darkness falls--as it does every single day, in every single life--God does not turn the world over to some other deity...Here is the testimony of faith; darkness is not dark to God; the night is as bright as the day. — Barbara Brown Taylor

During the few minutes it took Kovner to tell of the help that had come from a German sergeant, a hush settled over the courtroom; it was as though the crowd had spontaneously decided to observe the usual two minutes of silence in honor of the man named Anton Schmidt. And in those two minutes, which were like a sudden burst of light in the midst of impenetrable, unfathomable darkness, a single thought stood out clearly, irrefutably, beyond question--how utterly different everything would be today in this courtroom, in Israel, in Germany, in all of Europe, and perhaps in all countries of the world, if only more such stories could have been told. — Hannah Arendt

There was freedom, there was peace, there was, most welcome of all, a summoning together, a resting on a platform of stability. Not as oneself did one find rest ever, in her experience (she accomplished here something dexterous with her needles) but as a wedge of darkness. Losing personality, one lost the fret, the hurry, the stir; and there rose to her lips always some exclamation of triumph over life when things came together in this peace, this rest, this eternity; and pausing there she looked out to meet that stroke of the Lighthouse, the long steady stroke, the last of the three, which was her stroke, for watching them in this mood always at this hour one could not help attaching oneself to one thing especially of the things one saw; and this thing, the long steady stroke, was her stroke. Often she found herself sitting and looking, sitting and looking, with her work in her hands until she became the thing she looked at - that light, for example. — Virginia Woolf

The inkstand is full of ink, and the paper lies white and unspotted, in the round of light thrown by a candle. Puffs of darkness sweep into the corners, and keep rolling through the room behind his chair. The air is silver and pearl, for the night is liquid with moonlight.
See how the roof glitters, like ice!
Over there, a slice of yellow cuts into the silver-blue, and beside it stand two geraniums, purple because the light is silver-blue, to-night. — Amy Lowell

It is true the Shining Isle is smoke and ashes and that darkness is wide over the land. But your long memories have failed you. Of all creatures, you should know that the darkness is seldom complete, and even when it is, the pinprick of light is not long in coming
and finer for the great shroud that surrounds it. — Andrew Peterson

Here, day was not the decorous successor to night known to us at home, lazily resuming sway over a drowsy world when the darkness thins and dies, bequeathing its lost kingdom to the unwilling light. This struggling, sun-born life in forest, swamp and teeming air was too urgent and too ephemeral to wait for the going of night before resuming its unchanging day-labor of growth, fruition and exhaustion once more. Day extended its reign into the darkness, stealing precious time from the night, and when the sky paled perceptibly at last the feeling of full day was already abroad on this impatient earth. — E. Arnot Robertson

At the very least i should fear you. some would say that I should hate you."
"Many would say that."
"Yet i neither fear nor hate you."
"You-you are comforting me. Giving me sanctuary. Why, Grandma?" Aurox asked.
"Because I believe in the power of love. I believe in chosing Light over Darkness-happiness over hatred-trust over skeptism, — P.C. Cast

All the suffering and torment wrought at places of execution, in torture chambers, madhouses, operating theatres, under the arches of bridges in late autumn - all these are stubbornly imperishable, all these persist, are inaccessible but cling on, envious of everything that is, stuck in their own terrible reality. People would like to be allowed to forget much of it, their sleep gliding softly over these furrows in the brain, but dreams come and push sleep aside and fill the picture again. And so they wake up breathless, let the light of a candle dissolve the darkness as they drink the comforting half-light as if it was sugared water. But, alas, the edge on which this security is balancing is a narrow one. Given the slightest little turn and their gaze slips away from the familiar and the friendly, and the contours that had so recently been comforting take the sharp outlines of an abyss of horror. — Rainer Maria Rilke

She sat at the window of the train, her head thrown back, one leg stretched across to the empty seat before her. The window frame trembled with the speed of the motion, the pane hung over empty darkness, and dots of light slashed across the glass as luminous streaks, once in a while. — Ayn Rand

Oh, it's mysterious lamplit evenings, here in the galaxy, one after the other. It's one of those nights when I wander from window to window, looking for a sign. But I can't see. Terror and a beauty insoluble are a ribband of blue woven into the fringes of garments of things both great and small. No culture explains, no bivouac offers real haven or rest. But it could be that we are not seeing something. Galileo thought that comets were an optical illusion. This is fertile ground: since we are certain that they're not, we can look at what scientists are saying with fresh hope. What if there are really gleaming castellated cities hung upside-down over the desert sand? What limpid lakes and cool date palms have our caravans passed untried? Until, one by one, by the blindest of leaps, we light on the road to these places, we must stumble in darkness and hunger. — Annie Dillard

It is hard to imagine the World Series being held in the sweet hazy sunshine of late September rather than the sour night air of late October, but that is precisely what has transpired in baseball over the past 50 years, a deterioration from light to darkness. — George Vecsey

When night falls over Washington, D.C., memorials, public buildings, and broad avenues become ethereal shapes in soft light and shadow. Floodlights, piercing the darkness, etch familiar landmarks in silver against a velvet sky. Unsuspected definition of form and contour is revealed. — Volkmar Wentzel

Autumn is the time of balance and of
sacrifice, a time when the light is defeated by darkness, a time
when night takes over and brings the coming winter. The
ancient wisdom says that those who long for light must face
their inner darkness and overcome it. — Tony Riches

There are some who would vow that life isn't fair. They believe the worst is yet to come, that evil will always conquer good, and that we have no control over our fate. It's true, there are storms that shake our foundations and monsters that threaten to tear us limb from limb. We will make terrible mistakes. We will fall short of our expectations. No one is exempt from pain and fear. But life, and what comes after, is a beautiful mixture of darkness and light, sacrifice and salvation. There is no fine line between the two, for both are needed. Where there is grief, there will be joy. Where there is heartbreak, love will follow. — Rebecca Harris

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

When people have light in themselves, it will shine out from them. Then we get to know each other as we walk together in the darkness, without needing to pass our hands over each other's faces, or to intrude into each other's hearts. — Albert Schweitzer

... When you're in the darkness, know that the light will come. We are light and dark, sun and moon, male and female, yin and yang; life is composed of opposites, in a continuing cycle of change ... . When you are in the light, don't step back into the darkness. Live in that light, and breathe it in fully. I've spent so much of my life going over and over the sadness and fear of the past. But we don't need to go there when we're not there. When we are in the light, be here, now. — Kathryn E. Livingston

For now, oh my God, it is to You alone that I can talk, because nobody else will understand. I cannot bring any other man on this earth into the cloud where I dwell in Your light, that is, Your darkness, where I am lost and abashed. I cannot explain to any other man the anguish which is Your joy nor the loss which is the Possession of You, nor the distance from all things which is the arrival in You, nor the death which is the birth in You because I do not know anything about it myself and all I know is that I wish it were over - I wish it were begun. — Thomas Merton

The flame of the diya, or lamp, reminds us that light will ultimately triumph over darkness — Barack Obama

You want to grab something here, Brycin? he asked, bending over again.
Um ... yeah. Your ass. — Stacey Marie Brown

Without being bound to the fulfillment of promises, we would never be able to keep our identities; we would be condemned to wanderhelplessly and without direction in the darkness of each man's lonely heart, caught in its contradictions and equivocalities
a darkness which only the light shed over the public realm through the presence of others, who confirm the identity between the one who promises and the one who fulfills, can dispel. — Hannah Arendt

I am the Maker of all things. By my word were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of my mouth. I spread out the northern skies over empty space; I suspend the earth over nothing. I clothe you with skin and flesh and knit you together with bones and sinews. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster. — Zhang Yun

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
because the mass man will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.
In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you,
when you see the silent candle burning.
Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher love-making
sweeps you upward.
Distance does not make you falter.
Now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.
And so long as you haven't experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

We were also born," Line said abruptly. Mendel questioned her with a look, and Line tried to clarify her thought: "Born, expelled. Russia conceived us, nourished us, made us grow in her darkness, as in a womb; then she had labor pains, contractions, and threw us out; and now here we are, naked and new, like babies just born. Isn't it the same for you?"
"Narische meidele, vos darst do freden?" Mendel rebutted, feeling on his lips and affectionate smile and a light veil over his eyes. — Primo Levi

My darling, my child, my connoisseur of sesquipedalian words and convoluted ideas and meandering sentences and baroque images, while the sun is asleep and the moon somnambulant, while the stars bathe us in their glow from eons ago and light-years away, while you are comfortably nestled in your blankets and I am hunched over in my chair by your bed, while we are warm and safe and still for the moment in this bubble of incandescent light cast by the pearl held up by the mermaid lamp, you and I, on this planet spinning and hurtling through the frigid darkness of space at dozens of miles per second, let's read. — Ken Liu

Darkness has no hold over one who shines his inner light. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Your good spirit moved over the waters. But he was not upheld by them as though he rested upon them, for when he is said to rest upon a man, it is he who gives that man rest in himself. It was your incorruptible and immutable will, which is sufficient in itself and to itself, that moved over the life which you had created. To that life living and living in happiness are not one and the same, because it lives even in its state of fluidity and darkness. To gain happiness it must still be turned from that state towards God, its Creator. It must live ever closer to the Fountain of life. In his light it must see the light; in him it must be given perfection, splendor, and bliss. — Augustine Of Hippo

As they dashed into the kitchen the light seemed to vanish, as if blown out by some mighty breath; the awful cloud rolled over the sun and a darkness as of late twilight fell across the world. — L.M. Montgomery

So know this name. Shout it back at the enemy when he attacks. Comfort yourself and others with it. When the bills pile up and the money isn't there to pay them, Jehovah Shammah! When your spouse leaves you and the loneliness surrounds like a fog, Jehovah Shammah! When affliction strikes and the pain is so intense you think you will die, Jehovah Shammah! When you weep silently in the midnight hour over things you cannot tell your family or friends, Jehovah Shammah! And when the final hour of this life comes, and the darkness of death closes in around you, look for the light. In just a little while, you will stand face to face with Jehovah Shammah, The Lord who is there. — Terri Lynn Main

We sat back and let the moon shine itself all over her, and we saw that Tia was full of light. Billy said that when we die the darkness leaves us.
'We're pure and perfect then,' he said, 'the way we are when we're born. — Glenda Millard

When he came down, he was slower, and clutching something his hand. He leapt down the last 5 feet or so and came over to me, uncurling his fingers. In his palm was something trembling and silky and the bright, delicious pale gold of apples; in the gloom of the jungle it looked like light itself. Uva nudged the thing with a finger and it turned over, and I could see it was a monkey of some sort, though no monkey I had ever seen before; it was only a few inches larger than one of the mice I had once been tasked with killing, and his face was a wrinkled black heart, its features pinched together but its eyes large and as blankly blue as a blind kitten's. It had tiny, perfectly formed hands, one of which was gripping its tail, which it had wrapped around itself and which was flamboyantly furred, its hair hanging like a fringe. — Hanya Yanagihara

Prayer: Father God, I can't thank You enough for all that You have given me. I have so much to be thankful for. My barns are overflowing, and grain is spilling out over the top. Thank You. Thank You. Amen. Action: Take a risk and say "Thank You" in God's presence. Today's Wisdom: For three things I thank God every day of my life: thanks that he has vouchsafed me knowledge of his works; deep thanks that he has set in my darkness the lamp of faith; deep, deepest thanks that I have another life to look forward to - a life joyous with light and flowers and heavenly song. - HELEN KELLER — Emilie Barnes

You first."
"No, you."
"Why?"
"I'm afraid."
"Of what, my Sassenach?" The darkness was rolling in over the fields, filling the land and rising up to meet the night. The light of the new crescent moon marked the ridges of brow and nose, crossing his face with light.
"I'm afraid if I start I shall never stop."
He cast a glance at the horizon, where the sickle moon hung low and rising. "It's nearly winter, and the nights are long, mo duinne." He leaned across the fence, reaching, and I stepped into his arms, feeling the heat of his body and the beat of his heart.
"I love you. — Diana Gabaldon