Illuminating Quotes

• Better to illuminate than merely to shine; to deliver to others contemplated truths than merely to contemplate.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Powerful, Thoughtful, Love Is

  "Summa Theologica". Book by Thomas Aquinas (Part II-II, Question 188), 1485.

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• Better to illuminate than merely to shine.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Shining, Contemplation, Contemplating

  "Summa Theologica". Book by Thomas Aquinas (Part II-II, Question 188), 1485.

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• As we curve around into the loop of the City Circle, I can see that a couple of other stylists have tried to steal Cinna and Portia's idea of illuminating their tributes. The electric-light-studded outfits from District 3, where they make electronics, at least make sense. But what are the livestock keepers from Distric 10, who are dressed as cows, doing with flaming belts? Broiling themselves? Pathetic.

  Suzanne Collins

  Couple, Curves, Light

  Suzanne Collins (2010). “Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games)”, p.213, Scholastic Inc.

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• Judging others makes us blind, whereas love is illuminating. By judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Love Is, Judging Yourself, Evil

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2015). “The Cost of Discipleship”, p.129, SCM Press

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• Four billion people on this earth, but my imagination is still the same. It's bad with large numbers. It's still taken by particularity. It flits in the dark like a flashlight, illuminating only random faces while all the rest go blindly by, never coming to mind and never really missed. . . . I can't tell you how much I pass over in silence.

  Wislawa Szymborska

  Taken, Dark, Numbers

  Wislawa Szymborska (2015). “View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems”, p.105, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• This splendid book discusses how, in the last two hundred fifty years, large numbers of people have achieved levels of well-being that were previously available only to a few individuals, and how this achievement has given rise to equally unprecedented inequalities. Unique in its focus and scope, exceptional knowledge and coherence, and careful argumentation, The Great Escape is highly illuminating and a delight to read.

  Thomas Pogge

  Book, Unique, Years

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• The extreme possibilities are the most illuminating.

  David Mumford

  Science, Mathematics, Possibility

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• Awareness must be like the rays of the sun: extending everywhere, illuminating all.

  B.K.S. Iyengar

  Rays, Sun, Awareness

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• Imagination is not to be divorced from the facts. It is a way of illuminating the facts.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Imagination, Way, Facts

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Aims of Education”, p.93, Simon and Schuster

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• If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.

  Bertrand Russell

  Giving, Able, Infinity

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays”, p.77, Booklassic

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• For since most of our living is unconscious, play is like matchstrokes in the void, bringing into light the structures we behave by, illuminating for us, however briefly, our deep meanings.

  Mary Caroline Richards

  Fun, Light, Play

  Mary Caroline Richards (2011). “Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person”, p.63, Wesleyan University Press

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• Giving to others selflesly and anonymously, radiating light throughout the world and illuminating your own darkness, your virtue becomes a sanctuary for yourself and all beings.

  Laozi

  Inspirational, Helping Others, Light

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• An enlightened awareness is within each one of us, right at this moment.
  This enlightened awareness is truly unborn and marvellously illuminating; and everything is perfectly managed by it.
  Conclusively realise that what is unborn and illuminating is truly awakened and without effort,
  rest naturally as the Unborn Mind.
  Resting in this way, you are a living Buddha.

  Bankei Yotaku

  Effort, Meditation, Mind

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• The chemical differences among various species and genera of animals and plants are certainly as significant for the history of their origins as the differences in form. If we could define clearly the differences in molecular constitution and functions of different kinds of organisms, there would be possible a more illuminating and deeper understanding of question of the evolutionary reactions of organisms than could ever be expected from morphological considerations.

  Ray Lankester

  Science, Animal, Differences

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• Every fight is one between different angles of vision illuminating the same truth.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Fighting, Vision, Different

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• Now and then in life, love catches you unawares, illuminating the dark corners of your mind, and filling them with radiance. Once in awhile you are faced with a beauty and a joy that takes your soul, all unprepared, by assault.

  Jennifer Worth

  Love Life, Dark, Joy

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• Memory is like patches of sunlight in an overcast valley, shifting with the movement of the clouds. Now and then the light will fall on a particular point in time, illuminating it for a moment before the wind seals up the gap, and the world is in shadows again.

  Tan Twan Eng

  Memories, Fall, Clouds

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• Just about every children's book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then, only a few feet away in the cookbook section, just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Children, Book, Hero

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• The known is finite, the unknown infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land, to add something to the extent and the solidity of our possessions.

  Thomas Huxley

  Ocean, Land, Generations

  Thomas Henry Huxley “Selected Works of Thomas Henry Huxley”, Library of Alexandria

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• When one takes action for others, one's own suffering is transformed into the energy that can keep one moving forward; a light of hope illuminating a new tomorrow for oneself and others is kindled.

  Daisaku Ikeda

  Moving Forward, Light, Suffering

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• Derive happiness in oneself from a good day's work, from illuminating the fog that surrounds us.

  Henri Matisse

  Inspirational, Happiness, Work

  Henri Matisse (1992). “Jazz”, George Braziller

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• In fact, nothing in science as a whole has been more firmly established by interwoven factual information, or more illuminating than the universal occurrence of biological evolution. Further, few natural processes have been more convincingly explained than evolution by the theory of natural selection, or as it has been popularly called, Darwinism.

  E. O. Wilson

  Religion, Atheism, Information

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• The last proceeding of reason is to recognize that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it. There is nothing so conformable to reason as this disavowal of reason.

  Blaise Pascal

  Lasts, Infinity, Reason

  Blaise Pascal (2013). “Pascal's Pensees”, p.80, Simon and Schuster

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• Srinivasa Ramanujan was the strangest man in all of mathematics, probably in the entire history of science. He has been compared to a bursting supernova, illuminating the darkest, most profound corners of mathematics, before being tragically struck down by tuberculosis at the age of 33, like Riemann before him. Working in total isolation from the main currents of his field, he was able to rederive 100 years' worth of Western mathematics on his own. The tragedy of his life is that much of his work was wasted rediscovering known mathematics.

  Michio Kaku

  Life, Science, Men

  "Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension". Book by Michio Kaku, March 24, 1994.

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• A memoir should have some uplifting quality, inspiring or illuminating, and that's what separates a life story that can influence other people.

  Mitch Albom

  Uplifting, Should Have, People

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