Dark Quotes - Page 21

• Ah! What would the world be to us If the children were no more? We should dread the desert behind us Worse than the dark before.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Children, Desert, World

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1871). “The Poetical Works”, p.285

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• I think nighttime is dark so you can imagine your fears with less distraction.

  Bill Watterson

  Thinking, Imagine, Distraction

  "The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes: A Calvin and Hobbes Treasury". Book by Bill Watterson, October 1992.

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• We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Ends, Abyss, Luminous

  Nikos Kazantzakis (2012). “Saviors of God”, p.29, Simon and Schuster

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• I can tell by my own reaction to it that this book is harmful." But let him only wait and perhaps one day he will admit to himself that this same book has done him a great service by bringing out the hidden sickness of his heart and making it visible.— Altered opinions do not alter a man’s character (or do so very little); but they do illuminate individual aspects of the constellation of his personality which with a different constellation of opinions had hitherto remained dark and unrecognizable.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Book, Heart, Character

  Friedrich Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale (1996). “Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits”, p.227, Cambridge University Press

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• It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe. To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I'd been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.

  Albert Camus

  Lonely, Stars, Philosophy

  L'Etranger (The Stranger) pt. 2, ch. 5 (1942)

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• The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking it is necessary to go through dark and deeper dark and not to turn

  Stanley Kunitz

  Heart, Break, Live By

  Stanley Kunitz (1974). “The terrible threshold: selected poems, 1940-1970”, Harvill Secker

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• If I die," he whispered in the dark, "dinna follow me. The bairns will need ye. Stay for them. I can wait.

  Diana Gabaldon

  Waiting, Needs, Follow Me

  Diana Gabaldon (2015). “The Outlander Series Bundle: Books 5, 6, 7, and 8: The Fiery Cross, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, An Echo in the Bone, Written in My Own Heart's Blood”, p.1253, Delacorte Press

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• Felicity and I watch the dancers moving as one. They spin about like the earth on it's axis, enduring the dark, waiting for the sun.

  Libba Bray

  Moving, Axes, Dancer

  Libba Bray (2010). “The Sweet Far Thing”, p.524, Simon and Schuster

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• Music at its best...is the grand archeology into and transfiguration of our guttural cry, the great human effort to grasp in time our deepest passions and yearnings as prisoners of time. Profound music leads us--beyond language--to the dark roots of our scream and the celestial heights of our silence.

  Cornel West

  Passion, Roots, Profound

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• Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them?

  William Hazlitt

  Water, Trying, Teeth

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1100, Delphi Classics

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• The malicious have a dark happiness.

  Victor Hugo

  Bullying, Malicious

  Victor Hugo (2000). “Les Mis??rables”, p.158, Modern Library

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• There was something I needed to say. “Sorry. About before.” Fang shot a sideways glance at me, his eyes dark and inscrutable, as always. He looked back out at the water. I didn’t expect any more acknowledgment than that. Fang never- “You almost gave me a heart attack,” he said quietly. “When I saw you, and all that blood . . .” He threw a small rock as hard as he could down the beach. “I’m sorry.” “Don’t do it again,” he said. I swallowed hard. “I won’t.” Something changed right then, but I didn’t know what.

  James Patterson

  Beach, Sorry, Heart

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• ...and a dream away in space with neither her nor there where all the footsteps ever fell can never fare nearer to anywhere nor from anywhere further away. Nor for in the end again by degrees or as though switched on dark falls there again that certain dark that alone certain ashes can. Through it who knows yet another end beneath a cloudless sky of a last end if ever there had to be another absolutely had to be.

  Samuel Beckett

  Dream, Fall, Sky

  Samuel Beckett, Edward Bond, Nikolai Bokov (1976). “New Writing and Writers”

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• Books, books, books! I had found the secret of a garret room Piled high with cases in my father’s name; Piled high, packed large,--where, creeping in and out Among the giant fossils of my past, Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there At this or that box, pulling through the gap, In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, The first book first. And how I felt it beat Under my pillow, in the morning’s dark, An hour before the sun would let me read! My books!

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Morning, Father, Book

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1998). “Aurora Leigh”, p.103, OUP Oxford

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• As science pushes forward, ignorance and superstition gallop around the flanks and bite science in the rear with big dark teeth.

  Philip Jose Farmer

  Ignorance, Superstitions, Teeth

  "Riders of the Purple Wage or The Great Gavage". Book by Philip Jose Farmer, 1967.

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• They were gone and I missed them but even so I was very happy. For the rest of my life no matter where on this planet earth I went and no matter how scared or confused I got, I could wait until dark and look up into the night sky and see my three friends again and my heart would swell with love of them and make me strong and clearheaded.

  Russell Banks

  Strong, Confused, Heart

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• The jungle is dark but full of diamonds, Willy.

  Arthur Miller

  Diamond, Salesman, Jungle

  Arthur Miller (2009). “Miller Plays: 1: All My Sons; Death of a Salesman; The Crucible; A Memory of Two Mondays; A View from the Bridge”, p.218, A&C Black

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• From time to time it's fun to close our eyes, and in that dark say to ourselves, 'I am the sorcerer, and when I open my eyes I shall see a world that I have created, and for which I and only I am completely responsible.' Slowly then, eyelids open like curtains lifting stage-center. And sure enough, there's our world, just the way we've built it.

  Richard Bach

  Fun, Eye, Our World

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• A tale is told of twin boys born to different mothers. One is dark by nature, the other light. One is rich, the other poor. One is harsh, the other gentle. One is forever youthful, the other old before his time. One is mortal. They share no bond of blood or sympathy, but they are twins nonetheless. They each live without ever knowing that they are brothers. They each die fighting the blind god.

  Matthew Woodring Stover

  Mother, Brother, Fighting

  Matthew Woodring Stover (2008). “Blade of Tyshalle”, p.1046, Del Rey

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• The rooms of his apartment were full with the dog home again, convalescing. He was satisfied to know, even when she was out of sight, that somewhere in the apartment she was sleeping or eating or sitting watchfully. It was family, he guessed, more or less. Did most people want a house of living things at night, to know that in the dark around them other warm bodies slept? Such a house could even be the whole world.

  Lydia Millet

  Dog, Home, Sleep

  Lydia Millet (2009). “How the Dead Dream”, p.185, Counterpoint Press

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• The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  World, Lord Of The Ring, Galadriel

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Lord of the Rings: One Volume”, p.246, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• you're an insomniac, you tell yourself: there are profound truths revealed only to the insomniac by night like those phosphorescent minerals veined and glimmering in the dark but coarse and ordinary otherwise; you have to examine such minerals in the absence of light to discover their beauty, you tell yourself.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Night, Light, Profound

  Joyce Carol Oates (1991). “Heat and other stories”, E P Dutton

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• There is this cave In the air behind my body That nobody is going to touch: A cloister, a silence Closing around a blossom of fire. When I stand upright in the wind, My bones turn to dark emeralds.

  James Wright

  Fire, Air, Wind

  James Wright (2011). “Collected Poems”, p.114, Wesleyan University Press

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• If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Passion, Men, Despair

  Soren Kierkegaard (2005). “Fear and Trembling”, p.18, Penguin UK

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• I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you needed to look at the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when you knew that that was all there was, and the strange excitement of waking and not knowing who it was with you, and the world all unreal in the dark and so exciting that you must resume again unknowing and not caring in the night, sure that this was all and all and all and not caring.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Wall, Caring, Night

  Ernest Hemingway (1997). “A Farewell to Arms”, p.19, Simon and Schuster

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