Quotes About Darkness

Sorrow might have grown into depression if he had been a less positive person, but his lifelong experience was that every spell of darkness lifted soon enough, so that light came again into the soul and mind and heart, which were not made for darkness.

The imagination can be a kind of wilderness, too, in fact a wasteland, if you allow it to take you into one bleak and grotesque place after another, for you can imagine yourself into all kinds of paranoid delusions and even into madness.

Power is the central promise of evil, the dark light of that lamp, because nothing extinguishes the soul more quickly than pride in power.

Once truth was known, it could not be unlearned, nor could it be forgotten, but lay always in the heart, a darkness for which all the years ahead would be spent seeking whatever light could be found to compensate.

THE OFFICE FELT SUMPTUOUS EVEN IN NEAR DARKNESS. It reminded me of certain photographs by Edward Steichen: velvet shadows deepening into moody gloom, here and there a form suggested by a reflection of light on a radius of polished wood, the mysterious gleam of Tiffany glass in the pendant shade of a lamp not lit, the room implied rather than revealed, yet known as well as if it had been enraptured by sunshine instead of barely kissed by the ghost light of the haunted city beyond the windows.

darkening sea full of stirred silt and clouds of minute

Carpe noctem

Dedicated Practitioners of Evil," or DPEs.

Perhaps they thought they could bring to this valley only those things they loved, leaving behind all ugliness. We are not, however, a species that can choose the baggage with which it must travel. In spite of our best intentions, we always find that we have brought along a suitcase or two of darkness, and misery.

Norman Bates was happy just dressing up like his mother and stabbing people," Chief Porter said, "but Hannibal Lecter has to cut off their faces and eat their livers with fava beans. The role models have become more intense.

a touchstone by which they both could test their commitment to what was good and true in a world of darkness and lies. But a touchstone had value only if they acted with reason, from a sense of duty, rather than because sentimentality overtook them.

Tenderness is false mercy. It's easy, emotion without reason. Mercy takes strength, courage, love. Tender-hearted folks will never be there for you when the dark is darkest.

This is his life: confrontation with the darkness that has nothing to do with an absence of light.

No helicopters are aloft. If boats ply the lake, they do so without running lights.

I was finally convinced of something I had suspected for a long time: God has a sense of humor, and because the world is wondrous, God expects us to find reasons to smile even on the darkest days.

They had formed an alliance for survival and a covenant of affection against the darkness of the world.

Darkness was conducive to contemplation.

Treat the study as if we're in a Daphne du Maurier novel, as if this house is an alternate-universe version of Manderley, and I am keeping either the murdered and mummified corpse of Rebecca or Mrs. Danvers—or both!—behind that locked door, to spare myself from a long prison sentence.

why. Now she arrives at the realization that the why of evil is not to be found anywhere in the flaws of society or its institutions, nor can it be pinned down by even the most erudite and loquacious philosopher. The why of evil is in the human soul, which can't be examined with a CT scan or MRI to locate a dark mass, or dissected in an autopsy to learn in what artery the calcification proved mortal.

Evil and stupidity often go together, however, and arrogance is the offspring of their marriage

He didn't mind killing children. He looked forward to it.

a magic egg swaddled in a nest, waiting for its mystery to hatch, and the night grew yet darker.

We have a responsibility to stand watch over one another, we are watchers, all of us, watchers guarding against the darkness. You've taught me that we're all needed, even those who sometimes think we're worthless, plain, and dull. If we love and allow ourselves to be loved . . . well, a person who loves is the most precious thing in the world, worth all the fortunes that ever were.

we are the instruments of one another's salvation, and only by the hope that we give to others do we lift ourselves out of the darkness into light.