Dark Quotes - Page 18

• Death is not a reaper, like they say, nor even a friend. It is a dark, fierce water, an inundation.

  Siobhan Dowd

  Water, Fierce, Reaper

  Siobhan Dowd (2015). “Bog Child”, p.189, Random House

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hence the strong attraction which magic and science alike have exercised on the human mind; hence the powerful stimulus that both have given to the pursuit of knowledge. They lure the weary enquirer, the footsore seeker, on through the wilderness of disappointment in the present by their endless promises of the future: they take him up to the top of an exceeding high mountain and show him, beyond the dark clouds and rolling mists at his feet, a vision of the celestial city, far off, it may be, but radiant with unearthly splendour, bathed in the light of dreams.

  James G. Frazer

  Dream, Strong, Powerful

  8 Copy quote

• I know why people die of hopelessness. It comes on like a thick blanket, covering your thoughts, your confidence, creeping into your mind and filling the corners. I lie in the dark, suffocating under horrible dispare, wishing I were dead. I sleep, then wake, then sleep. The sleep is filled with monstrous dreams that attack, cry out, and vanish, leaving me once more awake and staring into the darkness. Help me! My mind is screaming, but there is no one to hear.

  Joan Lowery Nixon

  Dream, Lying, Sleep

  11 Copy quote

• The others followed, and found themselves in a small, stuffy basement, which would have been damp, smelly, close, and dark, were it not, in fact, well-lit, which prevented it from being dark.

  Steven Brust

  Facts, Found, Wells

  Steven Brust (2008). “The Phoenix Guards”, p.28, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What is real to me is the power of our awareness when we are focused on something beyond ourselves. It is a shaft of light shining in a dark corner. Our ability to shift our perceptions and seek creative alternatives to the conondrums of modernity is in direct proportion to our empathy. Can we imagine, witness, and ultimately feel the suffering of another?

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Real, Light, Shining

  4 Copy quote

• But what the evil people do, that's their responsibility. The burden they have to carry. Sure, when we see 'em starting on causing some hurt, we've got to try and stop 'em, but mostly what the rest of us should be concerning ourselves with is doing right by others. Every time you do a good turn, you shine the light a little further into the dark. And the thing is, even when we're gone, that light's going to keep shining on, pushing the shadows back.

  Charles de Lint

  Hurt, Responsibility, Light

  28 Copy quote

• His brow is seamed with line and scar; His cheek is red and dark as wine; The fires as of a Northern star Beneath his cap of sable shine. His right hand, bared of leathern glove, Hangs open like an iron gin, You stoop to see his pulses move, To hear the blood sweep out and in. He looks some king, so solitary In earnest thought he seems to stand, As if across a lonely sea He gazed impatient of the land. Out of the noisy centuries The foolish and the fearful fade; Yet burn unquenched these warrior eyes, Time hath not dimmed, nor death dismayed.

  Walter de La Mare

  Lonely, Kings, Stars

  Walter De la Mare (1920). “Collected Poems, 1901-1918”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• On a really dark night, you can see between 1,000 and 1,500 stars, and there are millions more that haven't been discovered. It is so easy to think that the world revolves around you, but all you have to do is stare up at the sky to realize it isn't that way at all. -Brian Fitzgerald

  Jodi Picoult

  Stars, Night, Thinking

  Jodi Picoult (2009). “My Sister's Keeper - Movie Tie-In: A Novel”, p.43, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• This was her, Mick Kelly, walking in the daytime and by herself at night. In the hot sun and in the dark with all the plans and feelings. This music was her—the real plain her...This music did not take a long time or a short time. It did not have anything to do with time going by at all. She sat with her arms around her legs, biting her salty knee very hard. The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen... Now that it was over there was only her heart beating like a rabbit and this terrible hurt.

  Carson McCullers

  Hurt, Real, Heart

  16 Copy quote

• Let’s think of reverence as awe, as presence in and openness to the world…Try walking around with a child who’s going, ‘Wow, wow! Look at that dirty dog! Look at that burned-down house! Look at that red sky!’ And the child points, and you look, and you see, and you start going, ‘Wow! Look at that huge crazy hedge! Look at that teeny little baby! Look at the scary dark cloud!’ I think this is how we are supposed to be in the world – present and in awe.

  Anne Lamott

  Dog, Baby, Children

  15 Copy quote

• He would not let her go. Even though, staring into her open eyes in the swirling salt-filled water, with sun flashing though each wave, he thought he would like this moment to be forever: the dark-haired woman on shore calling for their safety, the girl who had once jumped rope like a queen, now holding him with a fierceness that matched the power of the ocean—oh, insane, ludicrous, unknowable world! Look how she wanted to live, look how she wanted to hold on.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Girl, Queens, Ocean

  Elizabeth Strout (2008). “Olive Kitteridge: Fiction”, p.47, Random House

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sweet Jesus. It was The Delicious in the dark shirt and jeans.

  Julie James

  Sweet, Jesus, Jeans

  Julie James (2009). “Practice Makes Perfect”, p.78, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I love the night passionately. I love it as I love my country, or my mistress, with an instinctive, deep, and unshakeable love. I love it with all my senses: I love to see it, I love to breathe it in, I love to open my ears to its silence, I love my whole body to be caressed by its blackness. Skylarks sing in the sunshine, the blue sky, the warm air, in the fresh morning light. The owl flies by night, a dark shadow passing through the darkness; he hoots his sinister, quivering hoot, as though he delights in the intoxicating black immensity of space.

  Guy de Maupassant

  Country, Morning, Sunshine

  14 Copy quote

• They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under but among them and they rode at once jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Stars, Night, Light

  Cormac McCarthy (2012). “All the Pretty Horses”, p.31, Pan Macmillan

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• Now entertain conjecture of a time When creeping murmur and the poring dark Fills the wide vessel of the universe.

  William Shakespeare

  Pouring, Henry V, Conjecture

  "Complete Works".

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• No one but Night, with tears on her dark face, watches beside me in this windy place.

  Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Stars, Night, Clouds

  Edna St. Vincent Millay (2003). “Edna St. Vincent Millay: Selected Poems”, p.146, Library of America

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• She asked him to come and see her that night. He agreed, in order to get away, knowing that he was incapable of going. But that night, in his burning bed, he understood that he had to go see her, even if he were not capable. He got dressed by feel, listening in the dark to his brother's calm breathing, the dry cough of his father in the next room, the asthma of the hens in the courtyard, the buzz of the mosquitoes, the beating of his heart, and the inordinate bustle of a world that he had not noticed until then, and he went out in the sleeping street.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Brother, Father, Heart

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez (2014). “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, p.28, Penguin UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Long, dark, and lovely she had been, in those days before her mind broke and the parts scattered and she let them go.

  Daniel Woodrell

  Long, Lovely, Mind

  47 Copy quote

• I dreamed you were standing in this dark place and you touched these dead flowers and they lit up like they were electric or something. Electric lilies. Lighting up the Valley.

  Francesca Lia Block

  Flower, Valleys, Lilies

  7 Copy quote

• Awareness There is a dark place. A place where I have no eyes, no mouth. No words. I can't cry out because I have no breath. The silence is so deep I want to die. But I can't. The darkness and silence go on forever. It is not a dream. I don't dream.

  Mary E. Pearson

  Dream, Eye, Silence

  Mary E. Pearson (2012). “The Adoration of Jenna Fox: Chapters 1-5”, p.6, Macmillan

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor...Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

  Rumi

  Spiritual, Wisdom, Morning

  Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi, “The Guest House”

  472 Copy quote

  Show source

• Death opens a door out of a little, dark room (that's all the life we have known before it) into a great, real place where the true sun shines and we shall meet.

  C. S. Lewis

  Real, Doors, Shining

  C. S. Lewis (1980). “Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold”, p.79, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The society to which we belong seems to be dying or is already dead. I don't mean to sound dramatic, but clearly the dark side is rising. Things could not have been more odd and frightening in the Middle Ages. But the tradition of artists will continue no matter what form the society takes. And this is another reason to write: people need us, to mirror for them and for each other without distortion-not to look around and say, 'Look at yourselves, you idiots!,' but to say, 'This is who we are.

  Anne Lamott

  Mean, Writing, Artist

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.234, Anchor

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I believe there are techniques of the human mind whereby, in its dark deep, problems are examined, rejected or accepted. Such activities sometimes concern facets a man does not know he has. How often one goes to sleep troubled and full of pain, not knowing what causes the travail, and in the morning a whole new direction and a clearness is there, maybe the results of the black reasoning. And again there are mornings when ecstasy bubbles in the blood, and the stomach and chest are tight and electric with joy, and nothing in the thoughts to justify it or cause it.

  John Steinbeck

  Morning, Pain, Believe

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.286, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A lang, lang time ago…” MacPhee began, ignoring St.Vincent’s low groan, “there was a bonnie maid called Malvina. She was the betrothed of Oscar, the braw warrior who won her heart. Oscar bade his beloved tae wait for him while he went tae seek his fortune. But one black day Malvina received word that her lover had been killed in battle. He would lie forever in eternal rest in the faraway hills…lost in endless slumber…” “God, I envy him,” St. Vincent said feelingly, rubbing his own dark-circled eyes.

  Lisa Kleypas

  Lying, Eye, Heart

  Lisa Kleypas (2011). “The Devil In Winter: Number 3 in series”, p.19, Hachette UK

  5 Copy quote

  Show source