Quotes & Sayings About Light Beams

I was walking in a meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before setting, after a cold, gray day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon, and the softest, brightest morning sunlight fell on the dry grass and on the stems of the trees in the opposite horizon and on the leaves of the shrub oaks on the hillside, while our shadows stretched long over the meadow east-ward, as if we were the only motes in its beams. It was such a light as we could not have imagined a moment before, and the air also was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to make a paradise of that meadow. — Henry David Thoreau

Star-watching: at night the stars of Alastor Cluster blaze in profusion. The atmosphere refracts their light; the sky quivers with beams, glitters, and errant flashes. The Trills go out into their gardens with jugs of wine; they name the stars and discusses localities. For the Trills, for almost anyone of Alastor, the night sky was no abstract empyrean, but rather a view across prodigious distances to known places: a vast luminous map. — Jack Vance

Up ahead are a forest of searchlights. A thicket of long thin smoking beams pivoting back and forth. Stabbing at the darkness. Making of the sky a kind of dome as though V Victor is about to enter some supernatural cathedral of light. — Glenn Haybittle

How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world. — William Shakespeare

The little light he possessed spread its beams so narrowly, that frustrated belief was a curtain broad enough to create for him the blackness of night. — George Eliot

I am exalted over all the nations, my glory above the heavens. Splendor and majesty are before me; strength and glory are in my sanctuary. I wrap myself in light as with a garment; I stretch out the heavens like a tent and lay the beams of my upper chambers on their waters. I make the clouds my chariot and ride on the wings of the wind. I make winds my messengers, flames of fire my servants. The heavens declare my glory; the skies proclaim the work of my hands. — Zhang Yun

We know there is a sun in heaven, yet we cannot see what matter it is made of, but perceive it only by the beams, light and heat. Election is a sun, the eyes of eagles cannot see it, yet we may find it in the heat of vocation, in the light of illumination, in the beams of good works. — Thomas Adams

The Nile, draining out into the Mediterranean. The bright lights of Cairo announce the opening of the north-flowing river's delta, with Jerusalem's answering high beams to the northeast. This 4,258 mile braid of human life, first navigated end-to-end in 2004, is visible in a single glance from space. — Chris Hadfield

We can be the light of the world without leaving our high beams on and annoying everybody. — Bob Goff

The shovel worked in and out of the light beams as the dirt hit him in the stomach, on his back, fell into his ears, his eyes, as I covered him along with the things that had made him: his walks, his rest, his eating when hungry, the stars he watched sometimes, the first day I brought him home, the first time he saw snow, and every second of his friendship, what he took with him into silence and stillness ... — Gerard Donovan

When the starry sky, a vista of open seas, or a stained-glass window shedding purple beams fascinate me, there is a cluster of meaning, of colors, of words, of caresses, there are light touches, scents, sighs, cadences that arise, shroud me, carry me away, and sweep me beyond the things I see, hear, or think, The "sublime" object dissolves in the raptures of a bottomless memory. It is such a memory, which, from stopping point to stopping point, remembrance to remembrance, love to love, transfers that object to the refulgent point of the dazzlement in which I stray in order to be. — Julia Kristeva

My parents kept a small cabin the mountains. It was a simple thing, just four walls, and very dark inside. A heavy felt curtain blotted out whatever light made it through the canopy of huge pines and down into the cabin's only window. There was a queen-size bed in there, an armchair, and a wood-burning stove. It wasn't an old cabin. I think my parents built it in the seventies from a kit. In a few spots the wood beams were branded with the word HOME-RITE. But the spirit of the place me think of simpler times, olden days, yore, or whenever it was that people rarely spoke except to say there was a store coming or the berries were poisonous or whatnot, the bare essentials. It was deadly quiet up there. You could hear your own heart beating if you listened. I loved it, or at least I thought I ought to love it - I've never been very clear on that distinction. — Ottessa Moshfegh

There is an Eye that never sleeps, Beneath the wind of night. There is an ear that never shuts, When sinks the beams of light. There is an Arm that never tires, When human strength gives way. There is a Love that never fails, When earthly loves decay. — George Matheson

She turned to him, shook her head. Her black hair tossed, and the beams of the late-afternoon sunlight played upon it, sending brief ripples of red and green and blue through it the same way that light, shimmering on the black surface of oil, creates short-lived, wriggling rainbows. — Dean Koontz

Let the brickwork of ignorance be thrown down, and let not spiritual sunshine be shut out from the self-deceived heart. Pride, Self-love, cowardly Mistrust of God's wisdom and goodness, are natural to our fallen nature; but the entrance of His Word into the heart is as that of the glorious beams of the day, - joy, brightness, and holiness follow the admission into its deepest recesses of the pure, life-giving light of Heaven! — A.L.O.E.

Some people are beams of light in this world. Some are shadows. They don't always feel like they belong, or don't know how, so they stand in the back of the crowd, out of sight and off to the edge somewhere. — David Sayre

He emerged out of the lake, the declining sun drenching him with aureate light, the droplets on his body iridescent in their beams. He walked confidently toward her, almost every inch of his sculptured body exposed in his black swimsuit. Each sharp contour of muscle glistened, each limb unfolded with lithe grace as he approached, his eyes riveted on her. Coral watched spellbound, a yearning surging up within her, eager and expectant. The air around them trembled with infinite anticipation. — Hannah Fielding

My darling,
My day's sweetest moments are at dawn, for I awake with dreams of you still in my head. As the light touches my lips, I can almost feel yours upon mine. I imagine your footsteps coming up the walk, but today is the same as the day before. It is only fanciful thinking.
As the first beams of morning sunlight dance across my weary shoulders I cry out, "How can you be so cheery and bright with so much sorrow across our land?"
I know I must be strong and face another day, but tears fill my eyes. Suddenly, a white dove lands upon my window sill. Surely this be the omen that peace is near at hand. Just like the breath of the coming Spring, this little dove now brings me new hope. God has heard our prayers and our Southland will flower again. — Nancy B. Brewer

Truth, holiness, joy, knowledge, love, these are all beams of the sacred light, but we cannot give them forth unless in private we receive oil from God the Holy Ghost. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Man was made of a little mud and water. Could not a woman be made of dew, earthen mists and beams of light, condensed remnants of a rainbow? — Jacques Cazotte

Lord, end my winter, and let my spring begin. I cannot with all my longings raise my soul out of her death and dulness, but all things are possible with thee. I need celestial influences, the clear shinings of thy love, the beams of thy grace, the light of thy countenance, these are the Pleiades to me. I suffer much from sin and temptation, these are my wintry signs, my terrible Orion. Lord, work wonders in me, and for me. Amen. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

As the moon rose before her very eyes, the first beams hit the pond, sending sparkles of light bouncing off the water. "It's beautiful."
"So are you." His voice seemed to brush across her, like soft, smooth silk. — Cat Johnson

It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The soul of a true christian, as I then wrote my meditations, appeared like such a little white flower as we see in the spring of the year; low and humble on the ground, opening its bosom
to receive the pleasant beams of the sun's glory; rejoicing, as it were, in a calm rapture; diffusing around a sweet fragrancy; standing peacefully and lovingly, in the midst of other
flowers round about; all in like manner opening their bosoms to drink in the light of the sun. — Jonathan Edwards

Tolstoy went on to observe,"This little incident proves how largely the name of Lincoln is worshipped throughout the world and how legendary his personality has become. Now, why was Lincoln so great that he overshadows all other national heroes? He really was not a great general like Napoleon or Washington; he was not such a skillful statesman as Gladstone or Frederick the Great; but his supremacy expresses itself altogether in his peculiar moral power and in the greatness of his character.
"Washington was a typical American. Naopoleon was a typical Frenchmen, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country
bigger than all the Presidents t,ogether. We are still too near to his greatness, " Tolstoy concluded, "but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and too powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when it's light beams directly on us. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Where perfumed rivers flow,
Is the home of my beloved.
Where passing breezes halt,
Is the home of my beloved.

Where dawn arrives on bare toes,
Where night paints henna-beams on feet,
Where fragrance bathes in moonlight,
Is the home of my beloved.

Where rays of light roam nakedly,
In green forests of sandalwood.
Where the flame seeks the lamp,
Is the home of my beloved.

Where sunsets sleep on wide waters,
And the deer leap.
Where tears fall for no reason,
Is the home of my beloved.

Where the farmer sleeps hungry,
Even though the wheat is the color of my beloved,
Where the wealthy ones lie in hiding,
Is the home of my beloved.

Where perfumed rivers flow,
Is the home of my beloved.
Where passing breezes halt,
Is the home of my beloved. — Shiv Kumar Batalvi

Local esteem is far more conducive to happiness than general reputation. The latter may be compared to the fixed stars which glimmer so remotely as to afford little light and no warmth. The former is like the sun, each day shedding his prolific and cheering beams. — William Benton Clulow

Our safest bet is that the era of high-technology communication, in the beginning of which we are now immersed, will continue to develop and amplify. We may look forward to more numerous and more versatile communications satellites, laser beams replacing microwaves in space and providing millions of times as many audio and video channels, optical fibers carrying light replacing copper wires carrying electricity, and elaborate computerization making the world more responsive to our needs. — Isaac Asimov

The sun was slowly setting in the west, casting golden beams of light into the somber old room. — Eleanor Porter

The rising sun complies with our weak sight, First gilds the clouds, then shows his globe of light At such a distance from our eyes, as though He knew what harm his hasty beams would do. — Edmund Waller

His true Being comes to light and even penetrates his clothing. We should not limit ourselves to Jesus. We have to recognize ourselves, our own true form ... Life would be so simple if we could always see what we are; if we could recognize what our neighbors are. If we could see the beams of light that pass through their clothing; if we could not only see their external form, but also experience their true being ... — Willigis Jager

It is light that cheers us when we are downhearted, it is light that brings us solace out of suffering, it is light that beams upon us when we discover some new hidden truth of the universe - it is light that first greets us when we emerge into this world. — Eric P. Kelly

Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust,
And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things!
Grow rich in that which never taketh rust:
Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings.
Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might
To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be;
Which breaks the clouds, and opens forth the light,
That doth both shine, and give us sight to see. — Philip Sidney

There wanted not some beams of light to guide men in the exercise of their Stocastick faculty. — John Owen

Washington was a typical American. Napoleon was a typical Frenchman, but Lincoln was a humanitarian as broad as the world. He was bigger than his country - bigger than all the Presidents together.
We are still too near to his greatness,' (Leo) Tolstoy (in 1908) concluded, 'but after a few centuries more our posterity will find him considerably bigger than we do. His genius is still too strong and powerful for the common understanding, just as the sun is too hot when its light beams directly on us.' (748) — Doris Kearns Goodwin

As if, with beasts' eyes, angels led
The way, I slip back to your bed,
Quiet as a hooded light,
Hushed by the shadows of the night.

And then, my dark one, you shall soon
Embrace the cold beams of the moon,
Around a fresh grave, the chilling hiss
Of serpent coiled shall be my kiss.

When morning shows his livid face
Your bed shall feel my empty place,
As cold as death, till fall of night.

Others take tenderness to wife:
Dread gives away your youth and life
To me, to be the bride of fright. — Charles Baudelaire

The Chinese considered the moon to be yin, feminine and full of negative energy, as opposed to the sun that was yang and exemplified masculinity. I liked the moon, with its soft silver beams. It was at once elusive and filled with trickery, so that lost objects that had rolled into the crevices of a room were rarely found, and books read in its light seemed to contain all sorts of fanciful stories that were never there the next morning. — Yangsze Choo

As interference of two beams of light can strengthen or weaken each other,
then so does religious differences can be truly productive or a total setback. — Toba Beta

There's no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it's far too late to start making a fuss about it now. ... What do you mean you've never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh, for heaven's sake, mankind, it's only four light years away, you know. I'm sorry, but if you can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that's your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams. — Douglas Adams

He said focus. The word focus. I hear angels singing. Everything goes dark except for a light that beams down on Sean. It is a God-given sign- like when people see the Virgin Mary in their grilled cheese, except this isn't religious and I'm actually not a big fan of dairy. I stare at the back of his head. His HEAD. Something I see every day but never really see because it's been there forever. Since the first day of third grade.
I crumple up my web. I don't need it. Praise be, the Focus Gods have spoken.
I am going to write about Sean Griswold's Head. — Lindsey Leavitt

As the flower turns to the sun, that the bright beams may aid in perfecting its beauty and symmetry, so should we turn to the Sun of Righteousness, that Heaven's light may shine upon us, that our character may be developed in to the likeness of Christ. — Ellen G. White

And God said: Let there be light, and there was light. Lena opened her eyes, feeling as if someone had been reading this verse out loud in the room. She looked around. Another morning dawned, and the sky glowed. Why did God say the word light out loud? Wasn't it enough for him just to think of light for there to be light? And did he summon the light to one specific place? Or only to some places? Perhaps he summoned the light everywhere. Her eyes followed the sun's beams that poured through the shutter slats, creating luminous flecks of gold that sparkled against the cabinet across from her. Tiny motes floated in the light and disappeared in the dark. Who did God created the light for? — Gala.J

Early June, Providence, Rhode Island, the sun up for almost two hours already, lighting up the pale bay and the smokestacks of the Narragansett Electric factory, rising like the sun on the Brown University seal emblazoned on all the pennants and banners draped up over campus, a sun with a sagacious face, representing knowledge. But this sun
the one over Providence
was doing the metaphorical sun one better, because the founders of the university, in their Baptist pessimism, had chosen to depict the light of knowledge enshrouded by clouds, indicating that ignorance had not yet been dispelled from the human realm, whereas the actual sun was just now fighting its way through cloud cover, sending down splintered beams of light and giving hope to the squadrons of parents, who'd been soaked and frozen all weekend, that the unseasonable weather might not ruin the day's activities. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Ode to Love
Lin Huiyin

I think you are the April of this world,
Sure, you are the April of this world.
Your laughter has lit up all the wind,
So gently mingling with the spring.

You are the clouds in early spring,
The dusk wind blows up and down.
And the stars blink now and then,
Fine rain drops down amid the flowers.

So gentle and graceful,
You are crowned with garlands.
So sublime and innocent,
You are a full moon over each evening.

The snow melts, with that light yellow,
You look like the first budding green.
You are the soft joy of white lotus
Rising up in your fancy dreamland.

You're the blooming flowers over the trees,
You're a swallow twittering between the beams;
Full of love, full of warm hope,
You are the spring of this world! — Lin Huiyin

Laser beams slid around them, spurts of light sinking through the darkness, eventually touching the stars or lighting the water for a moment on their death ride to the murky bottom. — Dean Koontz

The sun appears to pour itself down, and indeed its light pours in all direction, but the stream does not run out. This pouring is linear extension: that is why its beams are called rays, because they radiate in extended lines. You can see what a ray is if you observe the sun's light entering a dark room through a narrow opening. It extends in a straight line and impacts, so to speak, on any solid body in its path which blocks passage through the air on the other side: it settles there and does not slip off or fall. — Marcus Aurelius

Light is the only connection we have with the Universe beyond our solar system, and the only connection our ancestors had with anything beyond Earth. Follow the light and we can journey from the confines of our planet to other worlds that orbit the Sun without ever dreaming of spacecraft. To look up is to look back in time, because the ancient beams of light are messengers from the Universe's distant past. — Brian Cox

When I was on acid, I would see things like beams of light and I would hear sounds that sounded an awful lot like car horns. — Mitch Hedberg

Take your clothes off."
"What?"
"You heard me."
Evelyn forced her mouth shut.
She looked around the room, buying time. The faded brown curtains hung limply over the windows, not quite touching, and the afternoon light filtered through the gaps, its beams turning the dust in the air into diamonds. She could hear the rattle of a wagon on the street below and the regular rhythm of squeaking bedsprings in the adjacent room.
"So? What are you waiting for?"
She stared at the man on the moth eaten chaise longue in front of her. He was serious. — Molly Ann Wishlade

Throughout his life, Albert Einstein would retain the intuition and the awe of a child. He never lost his sense of wonder at the magic of nature's phenomena-magnetic fields, gravity, inertia, acceleration, light beams-which grown-ups find so commonplace. He retained the ability to hold two thoughts in his mind simultaneously, to be puzzled when they conflicted, and to marvel when he could smell an underlying unity. "People like you and me never grow old," he wrote a friend later in life. "We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born. — Walter Isaacson

Lost in the wasteland, Ashbery was found by a light flickering up from between the fractured paving stones. Its beams were bitterly cold, and sticky in a way light had no right to be, adhering to his sleeve and hand before fading away. Intrigued, he tracked its source from one eruption to another, each point brighter than the one before. — Clive Barker

Colored lights shone right across the northern sky, leaping and flaring, spreading in rainbow hues from horizon to zenith: blood red to rose pink, saffron yellow to delicate primrose, pale green, aquamarine to darkest indigo. Great veils of color swathed the heavens, rising and falling as light seen through cascading curtains of water. Streamers shot out in great shifting beams as if God had put his thumb across the sun. — Celia Rees

If thou indeed derive thy light from Heaven,
Then, to the measure of that heaven-born light,
Shine, Poet! in thy place, and be content:
The stars pre-eminent in magnitude,
And they that from the zenith dart their beams,
(Visible though they be to half the earth,
Though half a sphere be conscious of their brightness)
Are yet of no diviner origin,
No purer essence, than the one that burns,
Like an untended watch-fire on the ridge
Of some dark mountain; or than those which seem
Humbly to hang, like twinkling winter lamps,
Among the branches of the leafless trees.
All are the undying offspring of one Sire:
Then, to the measure of the light vouchsafed,
Shine, Poet! in thy place, and be content. — William Wordsworth

The world is not made up of particles and waves and beams of light with a definite existence. Instead, the world works in a much more exploratory way. It is aware of all the possibilities at once and trying them out all the time. That is a hard thing to picture. — Neil Turok

You could see the roads crisscrossing over the fields. When cars went by, far away, the beams were so bright they seemed to be ropes of light pulling the cars behind. — Cynthia Kadohata

Days Pass By Somehow But Nights Now Are Wagon Of Pain Injuries May Heal With Time But Marks Will Always Remain Restless On My Comfortable Bed I Toss And Turn And Try To sleep But Thoughts Are Walking My Head And Formed A Huge Heap The Past Is Flashing Its Scorching Light Beams Tearing Me Apart, Breaking Me At The Seams The Darkness Of My Life Is More Visible In The Dark !! — Ravinder Singh

Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau! Mock on, mock on: 'Tis all in vain! You throw the sand against the wind, And the wind blows it back again. And every sand becomes a gem Reflected in the beams divine; Blown back they blind the mocking eye, But still in Israel's paths they shine. The atoms of Democritus And Newton's particles of light Are sands upon the Red Sea shore, Where Israel's tents do shine so bright. — William Blake

The beams and bridges cut the light on the ground into little triangles and the rails run round — Suzanne Vega

Light beams became alive, and became not only alive, but self-aware, and acquired the ability to wonder. The wonder is not whether this genesis took six days or fourteen billion years or even eternity. — Gerald Schroeder

The gifts of microscopes to our understanding of cells and organisms is so profound that one has to ask: What are the gifts of the microscopist? Here is my opinion. The gift of the great microscopist is the ability to Think with the eyes and see with the brain. Deep revelations into the nature of living things continue to travel on beams of light. — Daniel Mazia

The darkness is like a black canvas punctured by a blunt knife, with beams of light peeking through. — Tahereh Mafi

Now the moon is high; and the great house, needing habitation more than ever, is like a body without life. Now it is even awful, stealing through it, to think of the live people who have slept in the solitary bedrooms, to say nothing of the dead. Now is the time for shadow, when every corner is a cavern and every downward step a pit, when the stained glass is reflected in pale and faded hues upon the floors, when anything and everything can be made of the heavy staircase beams excepting their own proper shapes, when the armour has dull lights upon it not easily to be distinguished from stealthy movement, and when barred helmets are frightfully suggestive of heads inside. But of all the shadows in Chesney Wold, the shadow in the long drawing-room upon my Lady's picture is the first to come, the last to be disturbed. At this hour and by this light it changes into threatening hands raised up and menacing the handsome face with every breath that stirs. — Charles Dickens

The closer the source of light is to a subject, the broader the beams are. — Conrad Hall

The car drives through, stops while the man closes and fastens the prickly gate behind it. The bell shuts off; the stillness is deafening by contrast. The car goes on until the outline of a house suddenly uptilts the searching headlight-beams, log-built, sprawling, resembling a hunting-lodge. But there's no friendliness to it. There is something ominous and forbidding about its look, so dark, so forgotten, so secretive-looking. The kind of a house that has a maw to swallow with - a one-way house, that you feel will never disgorge any living thing that enters it. Leprous in the moonlight festering on its roof. And the two round sworls of light played by the heads of the car against its side, intersecting, form a pear-shaped oval that resembles a gleaming skull. ("Jane Brown's Body") — Cornell Woolrich

An Exhortation

Chameleons feed on light and air:
Poets' food is love and fame:
If in this wide world of care
Poets could but find the same
With as little toil as they,
Would they ever change their hue
As the light chameleons do,
Suiting it to every ray
Twenty times a day?

Poets are on this cold earth,
As chameleons might be,
Hidden from their early birth
In a cave beneath the sea;
Where light is, chameleons change:
Where love is not, poets do:
Fame is love disguised: if few
Find either, never think it strange
That poets range.

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power
A poet's free and heavenly mind:
If bright chameleons should devour
Any food but beams and wind,
They would grow as earthly soon
As their brother lizards are.
Children of a sunnier star,
Spirits from beyond the moon,
O, refuse the boon! — Percy Bysshe Shelley

As soon as he had disappeared Deborah made for the trees fringing the lawn, and once in the shrouded wood felt herself safe.
She walked softly along the alleyway to the pool. The late sun sent shafts of light between the trees and onto the alleyway, and a myriad insects webbed their way in the beams, ascending and descending like angels on Jacob's ladder. But were they insects, wondered Deborah, or particles of dust, or even split fragments of light itself, beaten out and scattered by the sun?
It was very quiet. The woods were made for secrecy. They did not recognise her as the garden did. ("The Pool") — Daphne Du Maurier

But it is already light. How long has it been light? All this while, light has come percolating in, along with the cold morning air flowing now across his nipples: it has begun to reveal an assortment of drunken wastrels, some in uniform and some not, clutching empty or near-empty bottles, here draped over a chair, there huddled into a cold fireplace, or sprawled on various divans, un-Hoovered rugs and chaise longues down the different levels of the enormous room, snoring and wheezing at many rhythms, in self-renewing chorus, as London light, winter and elastic light, grows between the faces of the mullioned windows, grows among the strata of last night's smoke still hung, fading, from the waxed beams of the ceiling. All these horizontal here, these comrades in arms, look just as rosy as a bunch of Dutch peasants dreaming of their certain resurrection in the next few minutes. — Thomas Pynchon

Dim as the borrowed beams of moons and stars
To lonely, weary, wandering travelers,
Is Reason to the soul; and, as on high
Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Not light us here, so Reason's glimmering ray
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day. — John Dryden

The memory of an absent being kindles in the darkness of the heart; the more it has disappeared, the more it beams; the gloomy and despairing soul sees this light on its horizon; the star of the inner night. — Victor Hugo

Ah, when shall all men's good
Be each man's rule, and universal peace
Lie like a shaft of light across the land,
And like a lane of beams athwart the sea,
Thro' all the circle of the golden year? — Alfred Lord Tennyson