Quotes & Sayings About Light Short

And I knew what I wanted: I would settle in a hill station and write my novel. I had visions of myself at a table on a large veranda, my notes spread out in front of me next to a steaming cup of tea. Green hills heavy with mists would lie at my feet and the shrill cries of monkeys would fill my ears. The weather would be just tight, requiring a light sweater mornings and evenings, and something short-sleeved midday. Thus set up, pen in hand, for the sake of greater truth, I would turn Portugal into a fiction. That's what fiction is about, isn't it, the selective transforming the reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence? What need did I have to go to Portugal? — Yann Martel

The light over the whole hill was pure, pale, of an exaggerated clarity, as if all the good days of his youth had been distilled down into this one day, and the whole coltish ascendant time when he was 18, 19, 20, had been handed back to him briefly, intact and precious. That was the time when there had been more hours in the day, and every hour precious enough so that it could be fooled away. By the time a man got into the high 30s, the hours became more frantic and less precious, more needed and more carefully hoarded and more fully used, but less loved and less enjoyed. -Beyond the Glass Mountain (short story) — Wallace Stegner

Now, there is a tendency at a point like this to look over one's shoulder at the cover artist and start going on at length about leather, tightboots and naked blades.
Words like 'full', 'round' and even 'pert' creep into the narrative, until the writer has to go and have a cold shower and a lie down.
Which is all rather silly, because any woman setting out to make a living by the sword isn't about to go around looking like something off the cover of the more advanced kind of lingerie catalogue for the specialized buyer.
Oh well, all right. The point that must be made is that although Herrena the Henna-Haired Harridan would look quite stunning after a good bath, a heavy-duty manicure, and the pick of the leather racks in Woo Hun Ling's Oriental Exotica and Martial Aids on Heroes Street, she was currently quite sensibly dressed in light chain mail, soft boots, and a short sword.
All right, maybe the boots were leather. But not black. — Terry Pratchett

At 13:57 local time, a low yield nuclear warhead exploded in the city of Chongjin, North Korea.
A long standing military target. Chongjin is home to some 532,000 men, women, and children.
This city has survived a number of wars. It will not survive this.
But her people will.
As 13:57 and .00001 microseconds, half a million Koreans seemed to materialize on a hilltop 35 miles away from the blast.
They were carried there ...
One at a time, sometimes two ...
At a hair's breadth short of the speed of light ...
By one man ...
The Flash. The Fastest Man Alive. — Joe Kelly

As populations crowd toward the ocean's edge and the sea encroaches menacingly toward the land, John R. Gillis looks at the history of the world from a fresh perspective and enables readers to see it in a new light. That he has managed to do so in a single conceptual work is nothing short of astounding. — Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

Maybe nothingness is to be without your presence,
without you moving, slicing the noon
like a blue flower, without you walking
later through the fog and the cobbles,
without the light you carry in your hand,
golden, which maybe others will not see,
which maybe no one knew was growing
like the red beginnings of a rose.
In short, without your presence: without your coming
suddenly, incitingly, to know my life,
gust of a rosebush, wheat of wind:
since then I am because you are,
since then you are, I am, we are,
and through love I will be, you will be, we will be. — Pablo Neruda

The long and short of it is that I am now in a position in England to green light movies, and that's really excellent - not high-budget movies, but movies none the less. — Idris Elba

As the sun rules the day and the moon governs the night, so too, we are connected by: the air that we breathe, light that we see and the darkness that follows. Life is too short to waste it on disagreements. Surely, we can all agree to disagree. So let us find a common ground, form a union and spread joy, happiness and freedom around the world for the benefit of you, me and the future generations to come. — Raymond Beresford Hamilton

To stop short in any research that bids fair to widen the gates of knowledge, to recoil from fear of difficulty or adverse criticism, is to bring reproach on science. There is nothing for the investigator to do but go straight on, 'to explore up and down, inch by inch, with the taper his reason;' to follow the light wherever it may lead, even should it at times resemble a will-o'-the-wisp. — William Crookes

People know that Mr. Ellison had a tough beginning, they are aware of a little boy who strived for acceptance, who wished to be like all the other little boys on the block, but found himself always falling short. Unlike majority of children who are carried in the arms and guidance of a father; that separate the dark skies to let you see the light of encouragement and a future glimpse of what they believe you can be. He rather grew up drawing in the sands his own image of what he thought he should be. People are determined to make him into a motivational speech, but remove the essence that still remains of the tragedy that brought everything into play. — Avra Amar Filion

Nothing but the natural ignorance of the public, countenanced by the inoculated erroneousness of the ordinary general medical practitioners, makes such a barbarism as vaccination possible ... Recent developments have shown that an inoculation made in the usual general practitioner's light-hearted way, without previous highly skilled examination of the state of the patient's blood, is just as likely to be a simple manslaughter as a cure or preventive. But vaccination is nothing short of attempted murder. A skilled bacteriologist would just as soon think of cutting his child's arm and rubbing the contents of the dustpan into the wound, as vaccinating it in the same. — George Bernard Shaw

I wake up.
Immediately I have to figure out who I am. It's not just the body - opening my eyes and discovering whether the skin on my arm is light or dark, whether my hair is long or short, whether I'm fat or thin, boy or girl, scarred or smooth. The body is the easiest thing to adjust to, if you're used to waking up in a new one each morning. It's the life, the context of the body, that can be hard to grasp.
Every day I am someone else. I am myself - I know I am myself - but I am also someone else.
It has always been like this. — David Levithan

Methinks I am a prophet new inspired And thus, expiring, do foretell of him: His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last, For violent fires soon burn out themselves; Small show'rs last long, but sudden storms are short; He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes; With eager feeding doth choke the feeder; Light vanity, insatiate cormorant, Consuming means, soon preys upon itself. — William Shakespeare

Nature's purpose in relation to the visual arts is to provide stimulus not imitation ... From its ceaseless urge to create springs all Life all movement and rhythm time and light, color and mood in short, all reality in Form and Thought. — Hans Hofmann

He also had deep brown eyes, light brown skin and an infectious grin, even in the middle of a grueling SWAT workout. In short, exactly her type. If only he wasn't a teammate, making him off-limits. And if only she didn't have baggage from her past that weighed more than he did. — Elizabeth Heiter

Also marvelous in a room is the light that comes through the windows of a room and that belongs to the room. The sun does not realize how beautiful it is until after a room is made. A man's creation, the making of a room, is nothing short of a miracle. Just think, that a man can claim a slice of the sun. — Louis Kahn

The receipt to make a speaker, and an applauded one too, is short and easy. Take common sense quantum sufficit; add a little application to the rules and orders of the House [of Commons], throw obvious thoughts in a new light, and make up the whole with a large quantity of purity, correctness and elegancy of style. Take it for granted that by far the greatest part of mankind neither analyze nor search to the bottom; they are incapable of penetrating deeper than the surface. — Lord Chesterfield

Whether I will live a long time or a short time, I'm alive now, at this moment. What I want is to know that there are other things to hope for besides length of life. What I want to know is that it isn't necessary to turn away from thoughts of suffering or death but neither is it necessary to give these thoughts too much time and space. What I want is to be intimate with the knowledge that life is temporary. And then, in the light (or shadow) of that knowledge, to know how to live. How to live now. — Irvin D. Yalom

I began directing episodes, which was a great light every couple of months. We never short-changed our audience, but it became something that you had to work at rather than something that was a pleasure. — Patrick Stewart

Up, up, my soul, the long-spent time redeeming;
Sow thou the seeds of better deeds and thought;
Light other lamps while yet thy lamp is beaming
The time is short.
Think of the good thou might'st have done when brightly
The suns to thee life's choicest season brought;
Hours lost to God in pleasure passing lightly
The time is short.
If thou hast friends, give them thy best endeavor,
Thy warmest impulse, and thy purest thought,
Keeping in mind and words and action ever
The time is short. — Elizabeth Payson Prentiss

Here in the deep powder snow you don't hear yourself ski. You don't hear your long turns or your short turns. You just float. The faster you go, the better. The less you struggle, the better. You move through the deep light snow, through the deep snow with some crust on it, through the deep snow with some wind in it. — Jacques Labrie

The Light of the Lord's Transfiguration does not come into being or cease to be, nor is it circumscribed or perceptible to the senses, even though for a short time on the narrow mountain top it was seen by human eyes. Rather, at that moment the initiated disciples of the Lord 'passed', as we have been taught, 'from flesh to spirit' by the transformation of their senses, which the Spirit wrought in them, and so they saw that ineffable light, when and as much as the Holy Spirit's power granted them to do so. — Gregory Palamas

But I never cleaned thoroughly enough, my reorganization proved to be haphazard, the disgraces came unfailingly to light, and it was clear how we failed, how disastrously we fell short of that ideal of order and cleanliness, household decency which I as much as anybody else believed in. — Alice Munro

Horne Fisher had in him something of the aristocrat, which is very near to the anarchist. It was characteristic of him that he turned into this dark and irregular entry as casually as into his own front door, merely thinking that it would be a short cut to the house. He made his way through the dim wood for some distance and with some difficulty, until there began to shine through the trees a level light, in lines of silver, which he did not at first understand. The next moment he had come out into the daylight at the top of a steep bank, at the bottom of which a path ran round the rim of a large ornamental lake. — G.K. Chesterton

In short, superheroes balance the forces of light and dark, rage and serenity, and the sacred and the profane within themselves and from it forge an identity that is powerful and purposeful. — Deepak Chopra

Those who professed themselves unable to believe in the reality of human progress ought to cheer themselves up, as the students under examination had conceivably been cheered up, by a short study of the Middle Ages. The hydrogen bomb, the South African Government, Chioang Kaidick, Senator McCarthy himself, would then seem a light price to pay for no longer being in the Middle Ages — Kingsley Amis

She told us about the goddess called Persephone, who was forced to spend half a year in the darkness deep underground. Winter happened when she was trapped inside the earth. The days shrank, they became cold and short and dark. Living things hid themselves away. Spring came when she was released and made her slow way up to the world again. The world became brighter and bolder in order to welcome her back. It began to be filled with warmth and light. The animals dared to wake, they dared to have their young. Plants dared to send out buds and shoots. Life dared to come back. — David Almond

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

She strode across the McGraney boundary without a backward glance, legs cutting twin swatches in the green-black grass. Dawn sunlight simmered on the tip of each blade, and Holly's passage set a surging ripple of light flashing across the meadow.
Extraordinary, thought Artemis. What have I lost? — Eoin Colfer

Lines
I die but when the grave shall press
The heart so long endeared to thee
When earthy cares no more distress
And earthy joys are nought to me.
Weep not, but think that I have past
Before thee o'er the sea of gloom.
Have anchored safe and rest at last
Where tears and mouring can not come.
'Tis I should weep to leave thee here
On that dark ocean sailing drear
With storms around and fears before
And no kind light to point the shore.
But long or short though life may be
'Tis nothing to eternity.
We part below to meet on high
Where blissful ages never die. — Emily Bronte

You might prove doctrine from the Bible till doomsday, and it would merely convince a people, but would not convert them. You might read the Bible from Genesis to Revelations, and prove every iota that you advance, and that alone would have no converting influence upon the people. Nothing short of a testimony by the power of the Holy Ghost would bring light and knowledge to them
bring them in their hearts to repentance. Nothing short of that would ever do. — Brigham Young

A perkier bit at the beginning of a Three Stooges comedy, Restless Knights (February 20, 1935), has Brennan playing their father, decked out in a large night cap and a fake white beard, lying on his deathbed calling for his sons. He confesses in tremolo that they are of royal blood: "Years ago I was the royal chamberlain of the Kingdom of Anesthesia." Now, he urges them to offer their swords in service of their imperiled queen. The quality of the writing is best exemplified in Brennan's telling Curly that his title is "Baron of Grey Matter." Brennan then says, "Come close my sons so that I may bless you," and rises enough to give them a sweeping triple slap, as the light fades on his 120-second part in this sixteen minute short. — Carl Rollyson

I'm uncontrollably in love with Vivian. In such a short amount of time she's infiltrated my thoughts, cast a spell over my body, and wormed her way into the deepest part of my heart. A day without her would feel like a lifetime without breath, an eternity without light. — Jewel E. Ann

What can an artist use but materials, such as they are? What can he light but the short string of his gut, and when that's burnt out, any muck ready to hand? — Annie Dillard

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

Life is too short for constant struggle and pain. LET IT GO and move on to the beauty and light. — Mandy Hale

With the evolution of Us came the evolution of Them.

The original Them was anyone who wasn't blood related - Them was pretty much everyone. Over time, as the number of people in Us got bigger, Them got smaller. Them now might mean anyone in any other country. This is a common Them in America, and a Them that only (light use of this word) consists of 95% of the world. Another common Them in America is anyone who isn't Christian, which is a measly 68% of the world, or roughly 4.8 Billion Thems.

In a relatively short amount of time, Us went from being a fraction of a percent of humanity and Them the rest, to some people experiencing an Us of more than two billion other people, far more than were ever alive at the onset of Us and Them. — Sam Killermann

Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it. Your problem is, you just can't let this one go. It's over, Groceries. David's purpose was to shake you up, drive you out of that marriage that you needed to leave, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light could get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you had to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master and beat it. That was his job, and he did great, but now it's over. Problem is, you can't accept that this relationship had a real short shelf life. You're like a dog at the dump, baby - you're just lickin' at an empty tin can, trying to get more nutrition out of it. And if you're not careful, that can's gonna get stuck on your snout forever and make your life miserable. So drop it. — Elizabeth Gilbert

At some point your candle will go out, so make use of the light. — Shaun Hick

His cell-phone rang. Dominic fumbled for it on the nightstand next to the couch, the dim lights not helping his endeavour. He had piercing, generic, banal fluorescent lights on his face all the time at work and at University, it was so bad it made him loathe even natural sunlight. Lucky this apartment's living room light had a dimmer. He flipped open his phone and said hello. 'Hey Dom, how you doin'?' a voice boomed. It was Ben. They proceeded to talk about the upcoming exams, which were deceptively close as it was week 10 at the moment. Yes, they would be alright. Yes, they would meet up afterwards. No, he hadn't studied more than Ben had. As he clapped the phone closed after the genial conversation reached its natural nadir, he had forgotten most of what had been said — T.P. Grish

before I got to the shore, which I conjectured was about eight o'clock in the evening. I then advanced forward near half a mile, but could not discover any sign of houses or inhabitants; at least I was in so weak a condition, that I did not observe them. I was extremely tired, and with that, and the heat of the weather, and about half a pint of brandy that I drank as I left the ship, I found myself much inclined to sleep. I lay down on the grass, which was very short and soft, where I slept sounder than ever I remembered to have done in my life, and, as I reckoned, about nine hours; for when I awaked, it was just day-light. I attempted to rise, but was not able to stir: for, as I happened to lie on my back, I found my arms and legs were strongly fastened on each side to the ground; and my hair, which was long — Jonathan Swift

Roppongi is an interzone, the land of gaijin bars, always up late. I'm waiting at a pedestrian crossing when I see her. She's probably Australian, young and quite serviceably beautiful. She wears very expensive, very sheer black undergarments, and little else, save for some black outer layer - equally sheer, skintight, and micro-short - and some gold and diamonds to give potential clients the right idea. She steps past me, into four lanes of traffic, conversing on her phone in urgent Japanese. Traffic halts obediently for this triumphantly jaywalking gaijin in her black suede spikes. I watch her make the opposite curb, the brain-cancer deflector on her slender little phone swaying in counterpoint to her hips. When the light changes, I cross, and watch her high-five a bouncer who looks like Oddjob in a Paul Smith suit, his skinny lip beard razored with micrometer precision. There's a flash of white as their palms meet. Folded paper. Junkie origami. — William Gibson

Souls, like rays of light, exist in perfect, parallel equality, always. But for when infinitely short a time they pass through the rough and delaying mechanism of life, they separate and disentangle, encountering different obstacles, traveling at different rates, like light refracted by the friction of things in its path. Emerging on the other side, they run together once more, in perfection. For the short and difficult span when confounded by matter and time they are made unequal, they try to bind together as they always were and eventually will be. The impulse to do so is called love. The extend to which they exceed is called justice. And the energy lost in the effort is called sacriface. On the infinite scale of things, this life is to a spark what a spark is to all the time man can imagine, but still, like a sudden rapids or bend in the river, it is that to which the eye of God may be drawn from time to time out of interest in happenstance. — Mark Helprin

Alas! What is man? Whether he be deprived of that light which is from on high, of whether he discard it, a frail and trembling creature; standing on time, that bleak and narrow isthmus between two eternities, he sees nothing but impenetrable darkness on the one hand, and doubt, distrust, and conjecture, still more perplexing, on the other. Most gladly would he take an observation, as to whence he has come, or whither he is going; alas, he has not the means: his telescope is too dim, his compass too wavering, his plummet too short. — Charles Caleb Colton

Satori is a brief flash. Suddenly the light breaks through. For a short timeless time we experience eternity in its unmanifest form. It's comparable to salvikalpa samadhi. — Frederick Lenz

May the cheering contemplation of the glorious hope set before us - support and animate us to improve our short interval on earth, and fill us with a holy ambition of shining as lights in this evil world, to the praise and glory of His grace - who has called us out of darkness, into His glorious light! — John Newton

So now you know that, as dark as the depths of the sea may be, as dark as the night gets without a moon, it is not really true darkness. It's just waiting for light to return. There are places that are truly dark in this world, Ven, but this place here, this open stretch of sea where you are floating, is not one of them. It's not really dark here - it's just night. If you hang on and stay awake, in a short while the edges of the sky will start to turn gray, then pink, and the sun will rise, and there will be blue above and all around you again. — Elizabeth Haydon

when you have a lovely but bitter past with someone and happens to meet them. Keep it light. Keep it short. Most of all, keep them, away. — Adhitya Mulya

She stands in the doorway to our room, blue sundress rumpled, the rosy light of sunset slanting through the wide widows and illuminating the gold of her hair. I'm struck speechless, my breath cutting short. I am not a poetic man, but I want to be one now. I want to do justice to her beauty and the way she fills me with a strange mixture of utter peace and demanding need. — Kristen Callihan

When the deaths finally came to light, my elementary school put a strict ban on teachers and staff talking to us about what was then called Everheart's disease, after Micheal Everheart, the first know kid to have died of it. Soon, someone somewhere decided to give it a proper name: Idiopathic Adolescent Acute Neurodegeneration-- IAAN for short. And then it wasn't just Micheal's disease. It was all of ours. — Alexandra Bracken

We cannot wait for great visions from great people, for they are in short supply. It is up to us to light our own small fires in the darkness. — Charles Handy

The short story is the art form that deals with the individual when there is no longer a society to absorb him, and when he is compelled to exist, as it were, by his own inner light. — Frank O'Connor

Oh well, all right. The point that must be made is that although Herrena the Henna-Haired Harridan would look quite stunning after a good bath, a heavy-duty manicure, and the pick of the leather racks in Woo Hun Ling's Oriental Exotica and Martial Aids on Heroes Street, she was currently quite sensibly dressed in light chain mail, soft boots and a short sword. — Terry Pratchett

Paul says that our troubles are "light." Granted I may not see them as light in the midst of trauma, but looking back on them, they may seem light. He also says they are "momentary." They only last for a short time. — Lisa Bedrick

In her white dress she was like a cold light coming into the room. Stoner started involuntarily toward her and felt Finch's hand on his arm, restraining him. Edith was pale, but she gave him a small smile. Then she was beside him, and they were walking together. A stranger with a round collar stood before them; he was short and fat and he had a vague face. He was mumbling words and looking at a white book in his hands. William heard himself responding to silences. He felt Edith trembling beside him.
Then there was a long silence, and another murmur, and the sound of laughter. Someone said, Kiss the bride! — John Edward Williams

Our senses perceive no extreme. Too much sound deafens us; too much light dazzles us; too great distance or proximity hinders ourview. Too great length and too great brevity of discourse tends to obscurity; too much truth is paralyzing ... In short, extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them. — Blaise Pascal

If you can't see the sun you will be impressed with a street light. If you've never felt thunder and lightning you'll be impressed with fireworks. And if you turn your back on the greatness and majesty of God you'll fall in love with a world of shadows and short-lived pleasures. — John Piper

The deep self has been referred to by many names over the ages. You may know it as Essence, Spirit, Soul, Source...or, perhaps by no name at all. I prefer to call it The Inner Shaman...The Inner Shaman simply waits for your sanity, that glimmer of light or recognition on your part. In short, it is waiting for your readiness to be aware of it. — Jose Luis Stevens

While I don't believe in love at first sight, because I think it takes more work than that, I do believe that one soul can speak to another and find an inexplicably deep connection over a short period of time, unimaginably short, and know that it will never forget that soul, that moment, or the light it emits forever. — Katherine Reay

..."the unpredictability of war - that once the first shots are fired or first bombs fall, as Churchill said, the political leader loses control. Events are in the saddle. It seems that every war is begun with the assumptions it will be short. In nearly every instance, going back far into history, that assumption has been wrong. And so it happened again in Iraq and Afghanistan, as swift and successful regime changes gave way to long and bloody conflicts. In light of history, how could anyone have been surprised that our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan took unanticipated turns? — Robert M. Gates

When an object impacts the Moon at high speed, it sets the Moon slightly wobbling. Eventually the vibrations die down but not in so short a period as eight hundred years. Such a quivering can be studied by laser reflection techniques. The Apollo astronauts emplaced in several locales on the Moon special mirrors called laser retroreflectors. When a laser beam from Earth strikes the mirror and bounces back, the round-trip travel time can be measured with remarkable precision. This time multiplied by the speed of light gives us the distance to the Moon at that moment to equally remarkable precision. Such measurements, performed over a period of years, reveal the Moon to be librating, or quivering with a period (about three years) and amplitude (about three meters), consistent with the idea that the crater Giordano Bruno was gouged out less than a thousand years ago. — Carl Sagan

Life is too short to live that way. Learn to travel light. Every morning when you first get up, forgive the people that did you wrong the day before. Forgive your spouse for what they said. At the start of the day, let go of the disappointments, the set backs from yesterday. Start every morning fresh and new. God did not create you to carry around all that baggage. Let it go and move forward in the life of blessing He has in store for you! — Joel Osteen

We'd known each other over a very short period of time. He left France in June of 1964, and I'm writing this in April 1992. I never received word from him and I don't know if he's dead or alive. The memory of him had remained dormant, but now it has suddenly come flooding back this early spring of 1992. Is it because I came across the picture of my girlfriend and me, on the back of which a blue stamp says Photo by Jansen. All rights reserved? Or for the simple reason that every spring looks the same? Today the air was light, the buds had burst on the trees in the gardens of the Observatoire, and the month of April 1992 merged by an effect of superimposition with the month of April 1964. — Patrick Modiano

Somehow, in the relatively short time I'd known Serena, she had wiggled her way into my cold body. She was my light, my warmth, and I wasn't ready to let her go. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

"Hence," goes on the professor, "definitions of happiness are interesting." I suppose the best thing to do with that is to let is pass. Me, I never saw a definition of happiness that could detain me after train-time, but that may be a matter of lack of opportunity, of inattention, or of congenital rough luck. If definitions of happiness can keep Professor Phelps on his toes, that is little short of dandy. We might just as well get on along to the next statement, which goes like this: "One of the best" (we are still on definitions of happiness) "was given in my Senior year at college by Professor Timothy Dwight: 'The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts.'" Promptly one starts recalling such Happiness Boys as Nietzche, Socrates, de Maupassant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Blake, and Poe."
-Review of the book, Happiness, by (Professor) William Lyon Phelps. Review title: The Professor Goes in for Sweetness and Light; November 5, 1927 — Dorothy Parker

With Matthew at her side, Daisy browsed the row of wooden stalls that had been erected along High Street, filled with fabrics, toys, millinery, silver jewelry, and glassware. She was determined to see and do as much as possible in a short time, for Westcliff had strongly advised them to return to the manor well before midnight.
"The later the hour, the more unrestrained the merrymaking tends to become," the earl had said meaningfully. "Under the influence of wine - and behind the concealment of masks - people tend to do things they would never think of doing in the light of day."
"Oh, what's a little fertility ritual here or there?" Daisy had scoffed cheerfully. "I'm not so innocent that I - "
"We'll be back early," Matthew had told the earl. — Lisa Kleypas

Third tale (aka short stories) - His name is Sun and Adultery. My husband's is Elias. My children are named Enilson and Joaquim. I want them all to die. Except him. (That first one, light and bed.) I'm very sorry, my God, but there it is. Signed: Lazinha. — Hilda Hilst

Time alone can bring the just man to light - the criminal you can spot in just one short day. — Sophocles

You know, an idea is just an idea. There seems to ... the kind of epiphanies that you have, like the little sudden bursts of light, they're very small and they're very short and it's the pursuit of the idea that's the important thing ... I know a lot of people who have way better ideas than I do that-much more frequently than I do that just can't sit down and actually do it. Ideas are such are a little overrated really; it's the work behind the idea that's the important thing. — Nick Cave

Let man then contemplate the whole of nature in her full and grand majesty, and turn his vision from the low objects which surround him. Let him gaze on that brilliant light, set like an eternal lamp to illumine the universe; let the earth appear to him a point in comparison with the vast circle described by the sun; and let him wonder at the fact that this vast circle is itself but a very fine point in comparison with that described by the stars in their revolution round the firmament. But if our view be arrested there, let our imagination pass beyond; it will sooner exhaust the power of conception than nature that of supplying material for conception. The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. It is an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere. In short it is the greatest sensible mark of the almighty power of God, that imagination loses itself in that thought. — Blaise Pascal

Reth reached out and took my fingers in his own, his touch light but comforting. "I've found that sacrifice is called that for a reason. We have all lost much of what we were or could have been because of the mistakes of my people. We'll yet lose some things to set it right. But when you join eternity, you will not feel the sting of this life with such intensity."
"You mean I wouldn't feel at all?"
"I feel, my love. Simply not in the same way you do. And thank heavens for that, because you are quite an embarrassment at times. Your inconsistent and flailing passions will no longer be a concern."
Leave it to Reth to go from comforting me to insulting me in the course of one short conversation. — Kiersten White

We awoke to a fabulation of ice, the sun shining like a weapon, light rocketing off every surface except the surfaces of the Army's clean streets and walks. — Stephanie Vaughn

The sun was already behind the western hills, and the light was failing. Two of Maggot's sons and his three daughters came in, and a generous supper was laid on the large table. The kitchen was lit with candles and the fire was mended. Mrs. Maggot bustled in and out. One or two other hobbits belonging to the farm-household came in. In a short while fourteen sat down to eat. There was beer in plenty, and a mighty dish of mushrooms and bacon, besides much other solid farmhouse fare. The — J.R.R. Tolkien

So after some instruction, Joseph put on the apron and started carefully polishing the clean dishes even though it made no sense to him.
Over the course of the day, he learned how to wash the floors and clean the windows and empty out the iron stove. Soon the kitchen smelled of lemons and spices, fresh bread and soap.
There was a short break for lunch before resuming work. The light shifted during the afternoon and cascaded through the clean windows, burnishing the room with gold.
Joseph was so focused on the work, on the patters of the silverware and the curve of the handles on the ancient pitchers and measuring cups, that he forgot for a little while about his parents, and St. Anthony's, and the fire, and losing Blink. He felt a kind of pride in being allowed to touch all the delicate glassware, plates, and bowls, and he hadn't broken a single thing. — Brian Selznick

And a real, undoubted grief is sometimes capable of making a solid and steadfast man even out of a phenomenally light-minded one, if only for a short time; moreover, real and true grief has sometimes even made fools more intelligent, also only for a time, of course; grief has this property. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Your intention is for readers to benefit from your experiences and avoid the costly and time consuming mistakes you may have made. You want to help your readers know the short cuts and what you would have avoided, and why. As you write, keep a clear sense of why writing this is important to you, but also share your why within the body of the book. Why do your readers need to take the steps you describe? Are you saving them time, money, resources? Why did you start your journey to begin with? Did you want to change the world or get from point "A" to point "B"? Why did you keep going even when it was difficult? Was there a light at the end of the tunnel, a reward at the end? Why should they hang in there? All of these things will work magically if implemented correctly and consistently. — Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

Short fiction is like low relief. And if your story has no humor in it, then you're trying to look at something in the pitch dark. With the light of humor, it throws what you're writing into relief so that you can actually see it. — Elizabeth McCracken

These examples, and those that surround us every day, are why creational thinking, not critical thinking, should be our ultimate goal in education. Critical thinking is a skill that allows us to steer a valuable course through a known problem. It engages a problem-solving skill set but stops short of what is possible. If problem solving and critical thinking are the goals of education, the bar is too low. Creational thinking, the use of content while branching into the unknown, leads to the possibility of truly elegant solutions. That is where the bar needs to be, particularly in light of the challenges that lie ahead for us. — Grant Lichtman

It was nothing I hadn't thought of, plenty, and in far less taxing circumstances; the urge shook me grandly and unpredictably, a poisonous whisper that never wholly left me, that on some days lingered just on the threshold of my hearing but on others roared up uncontrollably into a sort of lurid visionary frenzy, why I wasn't sure, sometimes even a bad movie or a gruesome dinner party could trigger it, short term boredom and long term pain, temporary panic and permanent desperation striking all at once and flaring up in such an ashen desolate light — Tartt

Writing a short story is a little like walking into a dark room, finding a light and turning it on. The light is the end of the story. — Dan Chaon

Brother,you who have the light, tell me mine.
I am like a blind man. I go without direction and fumble along.
I go under tempests and storms,
blind with fantasy and crazy with harmony.
That is my malady. Dreaming. Poetry
is the iron jacket with a thousand bloody points
I wear upon my soul. The bloodstained thorns
spill the drops of my melancholy.
And so I go, blind and crazy, through this bitter world;
at times it seems to me that the path is very long,
and at times that it's very short ...
And in this back-and-forth between eagerness and agony,
I am full of woes I can hardly bear.
Don't you hear the drops of my melancholy falling? — Ruben Dario

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

In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my mortality, and of what I wished and wanted for my life, however short it might be, priorities and omissions became strongly etched in a merciless light and what I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid? To question or to speak as I believed could have meant pain, or death. But we are all hurt in so many different ways, all the time, and pain will either change or end. Death on the other hand, is the final silence. And that might be coming quietly now, without regard for whether I had ever spoken what needed to be said or had only betrayed myself into small silences, while I planned someday to speak, or waited for someone Else's words ... I was going to die, if not sooner then later whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. — Audre Lorde

The demon kept pulling him unconscious, and in those short bursts of blackness, the dreamer snatched at light, and when he swam back to consciousness, he thrust the dream into reality. He shaped them into flapping creatures and earthbound stars and flaming crowns and golden notes that sang by themselves and mint leaves scattered across the blood-streaked pavement and scraps of paper with jagged handwriting on them: Unguibus et rostro.
But he was dying. — Maggie Stiefvater

LINA's RULES OF SCOOTER RIDING:

1. Never ride a scooter sopping wet.

2. Never ride a scooter wearing a short skirt.

3. Try to pay attention to the light signals. Otherwise, every time the driver accelerates you'll smash into him and you'll have this awkward untangling moment and then you'll worry he's thinking you're doing it on purpose.

4. If by chance you aren't abiding by rule number two, be sure to avoid eye contact with male drivers. Otherwise they'll honk enthusiastically every time your skirt flies up. — Jenna Evans Welch

Casting my eyes on Mr. Wemmick as we went along, to see what he was like in the light of day, I found him to be a dry man, rather short in stature, with a square wooden face, whose expression seemed to have been imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel. There were some marks in it that might have been dimples, if the material had been softer and the instrument finer, but which, as it was, were only dints. The chisel had made three or four of these attempts at embellishment over his nose, but had given them up without an effort to smooth them off. — Charles Dickens

Get into the arena, forget about the critics and play big with the gifts of your days. If you listen to your critics, you will never do anything great with your life. Life is short and the years will slip away very quickly, like grains of sand passing through your fingers on a hot day at the beach. You were meant to shine and let your talents see the light of day. — Robin S. Sharma

The light of artistic creation is also blinding.
The artist can't see the suffering he causes
to those around him. And the'll never
understand the purity of his goal, how the heat
of his invention won't melt the ice in his heart.
He must be ruthless!
No religion, no purpose except this:
Make something perfect before you die.
Life is short, art is for all time — Ian McEwan

Do right! and thou hast naught to fear;Right hath a power that makes thee strong.The night is dark, but light is near;The grief is short, the joy is long. — Thomas Cogswell Upham

However, people need to understand that it ain't that deep to try and convince people of what your persona is. You are who you are, and what you are will show in time. What you aren't can be hidden, but eventually it will come to light. Long story short: rappers should never take themselves too seriously. — Wale

Our lives are a flicker of light in the shadowy darkness of eternity. Disease, famine, war, death, sorrow... Life is a cycle of pain, perhaps the one thing we should do with our short lives is to try to leave the world a better place than we entered it?'"

~Vexis Zaelwarsh - Low Priestess to Avanti
-Deathsworn Arc 4: Rise of the Archmage — Martyn Stanley

Gloaming," Dad said. "What?" "That word I couldn't remember. Gloaming. That short, murky time between half-light and dark. — Laurie Halse Anderson

He walked to the exit, skirting the pools of vapor light purely out of habit, but he saw that the last lamp was unavoidable, because it was set directly above the exit gate. So he saved himself a further perimeter diversion by walking through the next-to-last pool of light, too. At which point a woman stepped out of the shadows. She came toward him with a distinctive burst of energy, two fast paces, eager, like she was pleased to see him. Her body language was all about relief. Then it wasn't. Then it was all about disappointment. She stopped dead, and she said, "Oh." She was Asian. But not petite. Five-nine, maybe, or even five-ten. And built to match. Not a bone in sight. No kind of a willowy waif. She was about forty, Reacher guessed, with black hair worn long, jeans and a T-shirt under a short cotton coat. She had lace-up shoes on her feet. He said, "Good evening, ma'am." She was looking past his shoulder. He said, "I'm the only passenger. — Lee Child

Ah,the pure shine of a few moments of heroism, high courage, and derring-do! In its light we genuflect before the Hero, we bask inthe warmth of his Deeds, we tout him, shout him praises, deify him, and, in short, make of him what no mortal could ever be. — Oakley Hall

The iambic line, with its characteristic forward movement from short to long, or light to heavy, or unstressed to stressed, is the quintessential measure of English verse. — James Fenton

Scarlett activated the viola and it came down like short shimmering curtain that covered her eyes with a band of violet light. It dilated her eyes, increasing her binocular summation so that everything in her field of vision was magnified and clear. It also protected her retinas from any sort of laser fire or plasma flash. — April Adams

In the isolation of his clear, cold intellect, the sceptic abides in a glacial and spectral universe. No glow from the affections lights up the frost and shadow of the grave. He feels no prophecy in the thrill of the human heart-in the incompleteness of nature. He believes merely in things tangible, and sees only in the daytime. He will not confess the authenticity of that paler light of faith which was meant to shine when the sunshine of reason falls short, and the firmament of mystery is over our heads. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

We go outside.
We rake the leaves.
We pile them way up high.
We jump on top.
We toss them up and watch the colors fly.
What can we do with all these leaves?
I know. I have a plan.
We run inside and find old clothes.
We'll make a pumpkin man.
We button all the buttons.
We tie up legs and sleeves.
We fill and stuff the body with lots of crunchy leaves.
We give him gloves.
We give him boots.
We're having so much fun.
It's time to pick a pumpkin head.
We'll find the nicest one.
Some are short and some are tall.
Some are bumpy.
Some are small.
We look around the pumpkin patch.
We find the best of all!
We cut the top to get inside.
We scoop out all the seeds.
We draw a face and cut it out.
A light is all it needs.
We go outside at sunset, put the pumpkin head in place.
Our pumpkin man smiles back at us with a happy, glowing face. — Judith Moffatt

It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make Man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May
Although it fall and die that night;
It was the plant and flower of Light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures life may perfect be (Ben Jonson) — Aidan Chambers

Time is short. Eternity is long. It is only reasonable that this short life be lived in the light of eternity. — Charles Spurgeon