Sunless Quotes & Sayings

God is a creed outworn, Ill-wrought from a mirage fair, And life is an image pale That faces a sunless morn. — Kenneth Rand

Death has a body like a model, the clothes of a poet and the smile of your best friend. She wears a top hat for fun, her ankh necklace for power, and carries a big black umbrella for travelling to the 'sunless lands.' I wonder what she smells like? I'm sure it's fresh and clean and her laugh must be rinkly or maybe it's warm and chuckly, but whatever it is, Death laughs a lot.
We talk about the 'miracle of birth' but what about the 'miracle of death'? We have the science of death pretty much figured out, but death's magic and inevitability have been feared and ignored for a long time now.
What if Death is a person? — Neil Gaiman

He read of the Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde that weeps tears of granite in its lonely sunless exile and longs to be back by the hot, lotus-covered Nile. — Oscar Wilde

The widower reviewed his past in a sunless light which was intensified by the greyness of the November twilight, whilst the bells subtly impregnated the surrounding atmosphere with the melody of sounds that faded like the ashes of dead years. — Georges Rodenbach

As down in the sunless retreats of the ocean Sweet flowers are springing no mortal can see, So deep in my soul the still prayer of devotion, Unheard by the world, rises silent to Thee. As still to the star of its worship, though clouded, The needle points faithfully o'er the dim sea, So dark when I roam in this wintry world shrouded, The hope of my spirit turns trembling to Thee. — Charles Lamb

In these silent sunless galleries he'd come to feel that another went before him and each glade he entered seemed just quit by a figure who'd been sitting there and risen and gone on. Some doublegoer, some othersuttree eluded him in these woods and he feared that should that figure fail to rise and steal away and were he therefore to come to himself in this obscure wood he'd neither be mended nor made whole but rather set mindless to dodder drooling with his ghosty clone from sun to sun across a hostile hemisphere forever. — Cormac McCarthy

If God could do things like that, the world wouldn't look the way it does. He can't reach down and change things. He can't stop any of us doing what we choose to do.'

"What use is he then?"

Oenone shrugged. 'He sees. He understands. He knows how you're feeling. He knows how Theo felt. He knows how it feels to die. And when we die, we go to him.'

'To the Sunless Country, you mean? Like ghosts?"'

Oenone shook her head patiently. 'Like children. Do you remember what it was like to be a tiny child? When everything was possible and everything was given to you, and you knew that you were safe and loved, and the days went on forever? When we die, it will be like that again. That's how it is for Theo now, in heaven. — Philip Reeve

Far away, to an infinite world I escape. I'm clear and calm, I'm unafraid. Sunless days, in my sheltered milkyway. In Saturn's rings I feel no pain. — Paula Cole

I will not debate with you Dark Elf. By the swords of the Noldor alone are your sunless woods defended. Your freedom to wander there wild you owe to my kin and but for them long since you would have laboured in thraldom in the pits of Angband. And here I am King and whether you will it or will it not my doom is law. This choice is given to you: abide here or to die here and so also for your son. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Through our sunless lanes creeps Poverty with her hungry eyes, and Sin with his sodden face follows close behind her. Misery wakes us in the morning and Shame sits with us at night. — Oscar Wilde

Spring's an expansive time: yet I don't trust
March with its peck of dust,
Nor April with its rainbow-crowned brief showers,
Nor even May, whose flowers
One frost may wither thro' the sunless hours. — Christina Rossetti

The lamp hummed:
'Regard the moon,
La lune ne garde aucune rancune,
She winks a feeble eye,
She smiles into corners.
She smoothes the hair of the grass.
The moon has lost her memory.
A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,
Her hand twists a paper rose,
That smells of dust and old Cologne,
She is alone
With all the old nocturnal smells
That cross and cross across her brain.
The reminiscence comes
Of sunless dry geraniums
And dust in crevices,
Smells of chestnuts in the streets,
And female smells in shuttered rooms,
And cigarettes in corridors
And cocktail smells in bars. — T. S. Eliot

Here ensued a pause, filled up by the producing and lighting of a cigar; having placed it to his lips and breathed a trail of Havannah incense on the freezing and sunless air, he went on - — Charlotte Bronte

The late-afternoon sky, in Paul's peripheral vision, panoramic and mostly unobstructed, appeared rural or suburban, more indicative of forests and fields and lakes - of nature's vast connections, through the air and the soil, to more of itself - than of outer space, which was mostly what Paul thought of when beneath an urban sky, even in daytime, especially in Manhattan, between certain buildings, framing sunless zones of upper atmosphere, as if inviting space down to deoxygenate a city block. — Tao Lin

A life without love is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. So, keep love in your heart if not your best friend today will turn to your worst enemy tomorrow. — Osunsakin Adewale

The mountains are so cold
not just now but every year
crowded ridges breathe in snow
sunless forests breathe out mist
nothing grows until Grain Ears
leaves fall before Autumn Begins
a lost traveler here
looks in vain for the sky — Han-shan

Maybe I should stop while I'm ahead

Nay, I swim with sea-demons

no sweet summer tuned radio

over my sunless desertscape

how does it burn without the sun? — Moonshine Noire

Granddad once told me that to truly love this life, you need to know its darkest corners. But if you can bring a bit of sunshine to the sunless, it can only be for the good. I mean, what else are we really here for on this earth? Think about it some day, when the spring mornings look so golden and green. — Gareth Thompson

Rainy, gloomy, drab, sunless day. There are times when hope seems entirely clouded over, when looking for the blessings in your circumstances feels like trying to catch a ray of sunshine from six feet under. — Richelle E. Goodrich

And as I stare at the girl of my dreams, staring back at me, I marvel at how the universe can know better than we know. How everything can change in one moment, one second, one blink of an eye. How that everything can be all we ever hoped for and more.
Our very own crystal clearness after a long stretch of sunless cold. — Katie Klein

Written in support of abolishing the Corn Laws, it became Elliott's most famous poem. The Peoples Anthem When wilt thou save the people Oh, God of mercy! When? Not kings and lords, but nations! Not thrones and crowns, but men! Flowers of thy heart, of God they are. Let them not pass like weeds, away Their heritage a sunless day! God save the people! When wilt thou save the people? Oh, God of mercy! When? The people Lord the people! Not thrones and crowns, but men! God save the people! Thine they are, Thy children, as thy angels fair, Save them from bondage and despair. God save the people! — Ebenezer Elliott

DEATH: "Mostly they aren't too keen to see me. They fear the sunless lands. But they enter your realm each night without fear."
MORPHEUS: "And I am far more terrible than you, sister. — Neil Gaiman

Then I got to my feet, and, taking my arms, he drew me out of my picture frame, into the darkness and the heat, to a place where the ground was frighteningly, thrillingly far away, and the sunless sky was burning and trembling all around us. — Rinsai Rossetti

Oh, how beautiful is the summer night, which is not night, but a sunless, yet unclouded, day, descending upon earth with dews and shadows and refreshing coolness! How beautiful the long mild twilight, which, like a silver clasp, unites today with yesterday! — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Agnes Shay had the true spirit of a maid. Moistened with dishwater and mild eau de cologne, reared in narrow and sunless bedrooms, in back passages, back stairs, laundries, linen closets, and in those servants' halls that remind one of a prison, her soul had grown docile and bleak...Agnes loved the ceremonies of a big house. She drew the curtains in the living room at dark, lighted the candles on the table, and struck the dinner chimes like an eager altar boy. On fine evenings, when she sat on the back porch between the garbage pails and the woodbins, she liked to recall the faces of all the cooks she had known. It made her life seem rich. — John Cheever

There was now a distinct manifestation of morning in the air, and presently the bleared white visage of a sunless winter day emerged like a dead-born child. — Thomas Hardy

How fast has brother followed brother, From sunshine to the sunless land! — William Wordsworth

It was dark and dim all day. From the sunless dawn until evening the heavy shadow had deepened, and all hearts in the City were oppressed. Far above a great cloud streamed slowly westward from the Black Land, devouring light, borne upon a wind of war; but below the air was still and breathless, as if all the Vale of Anduin waited for the onset of a ruinous storm. — J.R.R. Tolkien

One day many years ago a man walked along and stood in the sound of the ocean on a cold sunless shore and said, "We need a voice to call across the water, to warn ships; I'll make one. I'll make a voice like all of time and all of the fog that ever was; I'll make a voice that is like an empty bed beside you all night long, and like an empty house when you open the door, and like trees in autumn with no leaves. A sound like the birds flying south, crying, and a sound like November wind and the sea on the hard, cold shore. I'll make a sound that's so alone that no one can miss it, that whoever hears it will weep in their souls, and hearths will seem warmer, and being inside will seem better to all who hear it in the distant towns. I'll make me a sound and an apparatus and they'll call it a Fog Horn and whoever hears it will know the sadness of eternity and the briefness of life."
The Fog Horn blew. — Ray Bradbury

When trees shall fall and starless night devour the sunless day; When wind is in the deadly East, then in the bitter rain I'll look for thee, and call to thee; I'll come to thee again! ENTWIFE. When Winter comes, and singing ends; when darkness falls at last; When broken is the barren bough, and light and labour past; I'll look for thee, and wait for thee, until we meet again: Together we will take the road beneath the bitter rain! BOTH. Together we will take the road that leads — J.R.R. Tolkien

Twas twilight, and the sunless day went down Over the waste of waters; like a veil, Which, if withdrawn, would but disclose the frown Of one whose hate is mask'd but to assail. — Lord Byron

Trees shall fall and starless night devour the sunless day; When wind is in the deadly East, then in the bitter rain I'll look for thee, and call to thee; I'll come to thee again! ENTWIFE. When Winter comes, and — J.R.R. Tolkien

And now he was dead, his soul fled down to the Sunless Country and his body lying cold in the cold mud, somewhere in the city's wake. — Philip Reeve

In a place like this, there would be petty despots. Factions. This was a sunless world where madness and depravity reigned. — Ann Aguirre

I could see tongues of dense fog licking over the ridge in the distance, where this world ended and the next one began, cold, damp, and sunless. — Ransom Riggs

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. — Oscar Wilde

For it is the fate of a woman
Long to be patient and silent, to wait like a ghost that is speechless,
Till some questioning voice dissolves the spell of its silence.
Hence is the inner life of so many suffering women
Sunless and silent and deep, like subterranean rivers
Runnng through caverns of darkness ... — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

O wandering graves! O restless sleep!
O silence of the sunless day!
O still ravine! O stormy deep!
Give up your prey! Give up your prey! — Oscar Wilde

The real weakness of England lies, not in incomplete armaments or unfortified coasts, not in the poverty that creeps through sunless lanes, or the drunkenness that brawls in loathsome courts, but simply in the fact that her ideals are emotional and not intellectual. — Oscar Wilde