quotations about light
As the eye is the best composer, so light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful; and the stimulus it affords to the sense, and a sort of infinitude which it hath like space and time, make all matter gay.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
"Nature", Essays and Lectures
Light is a thing that can be measured. It has a speed of 186,000 miles per second, and it can be investigated in a number of different ways. It has physical properties. It does not have mass -- you cannot hold onto it -- but nonetheless it can be studied by physicists. It is really there. It is a real thing. Darkness, on the other hand, is nothing. It does not exist. There is nothing to count, nothing to measure, nothing to evaluate.
HARRY LEE POE
See No Evil: The Existence of Sin in an Age of Relativism
There is strong shadow where there is much light.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Gotz von Berlichingen
It is not necessary to light a candle to the sun.
ALGERNON SIDNEY
Discourses on Government
Corruption springs from light: 'tis one same power
Creates, preserves, destroys; matter whereon
It works, on e'er self-transmutative form,
Common to now the living, now the dead.
PHILIP JAMES BAILEY
Festus
An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.
JAMES A. MICHENER
Space
To every man, even though he be a slave, the light of heaven is sweet.
EURIPIDES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Every light is not the sun.
ALEXANDER
attributed, Day's Collacon
He that has light within his own clear breast
May sit i' th' centre and enjoy bright day;
But he that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun.
JOHN MILTON
Comus
Every man as well as every day has its lights and shades.
WINFIELD SCOTT
attributed, Day's Collacon
There are dead stars that still shine because their light is trapped in time. Where do I stand in this light, which does not strictly exist?
DON DELILLO
Cosmopolis
The tapers in a church are but emblems of a desire for the light of God's presence therein.
ST. ZOSIMUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
She was bendable light: she shone around every corner of my day.
JERRY SPINELLI
Stargirl
For this queen of colours, the light, bathing all which we behold, wherever I am through the day, gliding by me in varied forms, soothes me when engaged on other things, and not observing it. And so strongly doth it entwine itself, that if it be suddenly withdrawn, it is with longing sought for, and if absent long, saddeneth the mind.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The Confessions
In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary.
AARON ROSE
attributed, Reader's Digest, 1998
Every light has its shadow, and every shadow hath a succeeding morning.
COPERNICUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Light, whether it be material or moral, is the best reformer; for it prevents those disorders which other remedies sometimes cure, but sometimes confirm.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words
Light is a fluid of sunbeams.
AT-TUNIKHI
attributed, Day's Collacon
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Merchant of Venice
You may wonder why daylight is relevant to our modern building culture. Consider that human beings lived in close relationship to sunlight well into the 20th century. We woke to a reddish sunrise, spent the day in blueish light, with the peak intensity at midday, and fell asleep to the reddish sunset or the warm red glow of firelight. Given centuries of this primordial pattern, it's no coincidence that the shifts in color during the day regulate our physiology, at all scales, even at cellular levels.
ED CLARK & MARTY BRENNAN
"Why Light Matters: Designing with Circadian Health in Mind", Metropolis Mag, June 13, 2016