Sorrowful words become the sorrowful; angry words suit the passionate; light words a playful expression; serious words suit the grave.
[Lat., Tristia maestum
Vultum verba decent; iratum, plena minarum;
Ludentem, lasciva: severum, seria dictu.]
The truth is revealed by removing things that stand in its light, an art not unlike sculpture, in which the artist creates, not by building, but by hacking away.
Love brings to light the lofty and hidden characteristics of the lover--what is rare and exceptional in him: to that extent it caneasily be deceptive with respect to what is normal in him.
It is sound statesmanship to add two battleships every time our neighbour adds one and two stories to our skyscrapers every time he piles a new one on top of his to threaten our light. There is no limit to this soundness but the sky.
He was handsome then if never before, bound for one of those immortal moments which come so radiantly that their remembered light is enough to see by for years.
In the far upper corner of my altar is a photo of Joan Crawford in her most fierce Mommy Dearest mode, just to remind me of some of the cost of everyone's hard-earned sweetness and light.
Your world is all these elements. Of light and sound, of taste, smell, and touch, woven together in many dimensions on the fabulous loom of your brain. Your brain; the most complicated thing in the world, which you yourself grew...without even thinking about it.
Seeing the small is called Clarity.
Keeping flexible is called Strength.
Using the shining Radiance,
You enter the Light,
Where no harm can come to you.
This is called Enlightenment.
I can again thy former light restore, Should I repent me: but once put out thy light, Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature, I know not where is that Promethean heat That can thy light relume.
For the poet is a light winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses and the mind is no longer with him. When he has not attained this state he is powerless and unable to utter his oracles.
People who comprehend a thing to its very depths rarely stay faithful to it forever. For they have brought its depths into the light of day: and in the depths there is always much that is unpleasant to see.
Hail, holy light! offspring of heaven firstborn! Or of th' eternal co-eternal beam, May I express thee unblam'd? since God is light And never but in unapproached light Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee, Bright effluence of bright essence increate!
All poets have signalized their consciousness of rare moments when they were superior to themselves, -when a light, a freedom, a power came to them which lifted them to performances far better than they could reach at other times.
It was odd, she thought, how if one was alone, one leant to inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers; felt they expressed one; felt they became one; felt they knew one, in a sense were one; felt an irrational tenderness thus (she looked at that long steady light) as for oneself.
Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness, nor regret having been deaf. For in that day you shall know the hidden purposes in all things. And you shall bless darkness as you would bless light.