darkness

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that yeshould shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.

—Bible (NewTestament)

Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life.

—Book of Common Prayer

But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

—Bible (NewTestament)

   In retrospect it always seems as if everything had to develop just the way it did. I call this view the fallacy of retrospective determinismöwhich looks at the modern world as a victory of the children of light over the children of darkness if we approve of the development, and of darkness over light if we condemn it.

—Bendix, Reinhard

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.

—Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

When awful darkness and silence reign Over the great Gromboolian plain, Through the long, long wintry nights, When the angry breakers roar As they beat on the rocky shoreö When storm-clouds brood on the towering heights Of the Hills of the Chankly Bore.

—Lear, Edward

Death has made His darkness beautiful with thee.

—Tennyson

Darkness came down on the field and city: and Amelia was praying for George, who was lying on his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart.

—Thackeray,William Makepeace

In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

—Bible (NewTestament)

The darkness crumbles awayö It is the same old druid Time as ever.

—Rosenberg, Isaac

The dayThou gavest, Lord, is ended, The darkness falls at Thy behest.

—Ellerton,John

Darkness falls like a wet sponge.

—Ashbery,John Lawrence

For I say, this is death and the sole death, When a man's loss comes to him from his gain, Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance, And lack of love from love made manifest.

—Browning, Robert

And God called the light Dayand the darkness he called Night. And the evening and morning were the first day.

—Bible (Old Testament)

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

—Millay, Edna St Vincent

In that sharp light the fields did lie Naked and stone-like; each tree stood Like a tranced woman, bound and stark, Far off the wood With darkness ridged the riven dark. 336

—Freeman,John

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the hope and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought, So the darkness shall be the light and the stillness the dancing.

—Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)

If we turn to early Irish literature, as we naturally may, to see what sort of people the Irish were in the infancy of the race, we find ourselves wandering in delighted bewilderment through a darkness shot with lightning and purple flame.

—O'Faolain, Sean

And it is the colour of sand, The darkness, as it sifts through your hand.

—Ashbery,John Lawrence

   Hence loathe'  d Melancholy, Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born, In Stygian cave forlorn 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy, Find out some uncouth cell, Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings, And the night-raven sings.

—Milton,John

Earth's axle creeks; the year jolts on; the trees begin to slip their brittle leaves, their flakes of rust; and darkness takes the edge off daylight, not because it wants toönever that. Because it must.

—Motion, Andrew

A dungeon horrible, on all sides round As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible Served only to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell, hope never comes That comes to all.

—Milton,John

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

—Bible (Old Testament)

Brightest and best of the sons of the morning! Dawn on our darkness and lend usThine aid!

—Heber, Reginald

Shall not the day of the L be darkness, and not light? even very dark, and no brightness in it?

—Bible (Old Testament)

   What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to appall?ö If design govern in a thing so small.

—Frost, Robert Lee

I was with you in the days of glory. At the head of the Government, I shall remain with you during the days of darkness. Stay by my side.

—Pe¤  tain, (Henri) Philippe

Fromthefirst place of liquid darkness, within thesecond place of air and light, I set down the following record with itsmixture of fact and truths and memories oftruths and its direction always toward theThird Place, where the starting point is myth.

—Frame,Janet Paterson also known as Jean PatersonFrame

You will see Coleridgeöhe who sits obscure In the exceeding lustre and the pure Intense irradiation of a mind, Which, through its own internal lighting blind, Flags wearily through darkness and despairö A cloud-encircled meteor of the air, A hooded eagle among blinking owlsö You will see Huntöone of those happy souls Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom This world would smell like what it isöa tomb.

—Shelley, Percy Bysshe

By this also ye must know that women have dominion over you: doye not labourand toil, and give and bring all to the woman? Yea, a man taketh his sword, and goeth his way to rob and to steal, to sail upon the sea and upon rivers; And looketh upon a lion, and goeth in the darkness; and when he hath stolen, spoiled, and robbed, he bringeth it to his love.

—Bible (Apocrypha)

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year: 'Givemea lightthat Imay tread safely intotheunknown.' Hawking And he replied: 'Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.'

—Haskins, Minnie Louise

For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin and glaring eyes. For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life. For in his morning orisons he loves the sun and the sun loves him. For he is of the tribe of Tiger.

—Smart, Christopher

Heaven's splendour over his head, Hell's darkness under his feet.

—Carlyle,Thomas

Most true it is, as a wise man teaches us, that 'doubt of anysort cannot be removed except by Action.'Onwhich ground, too, let him who gropes painfully in darkness or in uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this other precept well to heart, which to me was of invaluable service: 'Do the Duty which lies nearest thee', which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second duty will already have become clearer.

—Carlyle,Thomas

   A little season of love and laughter, Of light and life, and pleasure and pain, And horror of outer darkness after, And dust returneth to dust again. Then the lesser life shall be as the greater, And the lover of life shall join the hater, And the one thing cometh sooner or later, And no one knoweth the loss or gain.

—Gordon, Adam Lindsay

The deeps are cold: In that darkness camaraderie does not hold: Nothing touches but, clutching, devours.

—Hughes,Ted (Edward James)

And all that I could thinkof, in the darkness and the cold, Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old.

—Stevenson, Robert Louis

One Ring to rule them all,One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

—Tolkien,J(ohn) R(onald) R(euel)

For the crown of our life as it closes Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; No thorns go as deep as a rose's, And love is more cruel than lust. Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives.

—Swinburne, Algernon Charles

Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee,O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.

—Book of Common Prayer

O 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!

—Milton,John

He brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; he canbring thysummerout of winter, though thou have no spring† God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noontoillustrateall shadows,asthesheavesinharvestto fill all penuries. All occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons.

—Donne,John

'Let there be Licht,'said God, and there was A little: but He lacked poo'er To licht up mair than pairt o'space at aince, And there is lots o'darkness that's the same Asgin He'd never spoken

—Grieve

   What a misfortune it isto be bornawoman!† Why seek for knowledge, which can prove only that our wretchedness is irremediable? If a ray of light break in upon us, it is but to make darkness more visible; to show usthenew limits, the Gothic structure, theimpenetrable barriers of our prison.

—Edgeworth, Maria

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

—Bible (NewTestament)

To burn a book is not to destroy it.One minute of darkness will not make us blind.

—Rushdie, (Ahmed) Salman

The knowledge that you can have is inexhaustible, and what is inexhaustible is benevolent. The knowledge that you cannot have is of the riddles of birth and death, of our future destinyand the purposes of God. Here there is no knowledge, but illusions that restrict freedom and limit hope. Accept the mystery behind knowledge: It is not darkness but shadow.

—Frye, Northrop

How sweetly did they float upon the wings Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night At every fall smoothing the raven down Of darkness till it smil'd.

—Milton,John

   That night, that year Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

—Hopkins, SirAnthony

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.

—Bible (Old Testament)

The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat intheregion and shadow of death light is sprung up.

—Bible (NewTestament)

Science has 'explained'nothing: the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.

—Huxley, Aldous Leonard

   While the cock with lively din Scatters the rear of darkness thin, And to the stack or the barn door, Stoutly struts his dames before. 576

—Milton,John

Ring out the want, the care, the sin, The faithless coldness of the times; Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes, But ring the fuller minstrel in. Ring out false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite; Ring in the love of truth and right, Ring in the common love of good. Ring out old shapes of foul disease; Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; Ring out the thousand wars of old, Ring in the thousand years of peace. Ring in the valiant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring out the darkness of the land; 844 Ring in the Christ that is to be.

—Tennyson

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.

—Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam

Close your bodily eye, so that you may see your picture first with the spiritual eye. Then bring to the light of day that which you have seen in the darkness so that it may react on others from the outside inwards.

—Friedrich, Caspar David

When I lie where shades of darkness Shall no more assail mine eyes.

—de la Mare,Walter

Death devours all lovely things; Lesbia with her sparrow Shares the darknessöpresently Every bed is narrow.

—Millay, Edna St Vincent

   Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If Isay, Surely the darknessshall cover me; even thenight shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.

—Bible (Old Testament)

Signs are taken for wonders.'We would see a sign!' The word within the word, unable to speak a word, Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year Came Christ the tiger.

—Eliot,T(homas) S(tearns)

When we had given our bodies to the wind, And all the shadowy banks on either side Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still The rapid line of motion, then at once Have I, reclining back upon my heels, Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs Wheeled by meöeven as if the earth had rolled With visible motion her diurnal round!

—Wordsworth,William

And, in the isolation of the sky, At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make Ambiguous undulations as they sink, Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

—Stevens,Wallace

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees, The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor, And the highwayman came ridingö Ridingöridingö The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

—Noyes, Alfred

   The power to learn is present in everyone's soul, and the instrument with which each learns is like an eye that cannot be turned around from darkness to light without turning the whole body.

—Plato

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.

—Nabokov,Vladimir

Lo! thy dread empire,Chaos! is restored; Light dies before thy uncreating word: Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall; And universal darkness buries all.

—Pope, Alexander

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy. O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console; To be understood as to understand; To be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

—Franklin, Benjamin