Nature

"Thy prayer was "Light—more Light"—while Time shall last Thou sawest a glory growing on the night, But not the shadows which that light would cast, Till shadows vanish in the Light of Light."

"Every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest."

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

"In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't."

"Where God and Nature met in light."

"I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will by no means walk in darkness, but will possess the light of life."

"Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night: God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was light."

"Nur der Gewissenswurm schwärmt mit der Eule. Sünder und böse Geister scheun das Licht."

"And from her native east, To journey through the aery gloom began, Spher'd in a radiant cloud, for yet the sun Was not."

"There swift return Diurnal, merely to officiate light Round this opacous earth, this punctual spot."

"Those having lamp will pass them on to others."

"But it is not necessary to light a candle to the sun."

"In absolute clarity, one sees as little as in absolute darkness. Pure light and pure darkness are two voids, they are the same. Only in determined light—and light determined by darkness—therefore only in light obscured as in determined darkness—and darkness is determined by light—therefore only in illuminated darkness can anything be distinguished."

"But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloisters pale, And love the high embowed roof, With antique pillars massy proof, And storied windows richly dight; Casting a dim religious light."

"Where art thou, beam of light? Hunters from the mossy rock, saw ye the blue-eyed fair?"

"There can be no doubt that light consists of the motion of a certain substance. For if we examine its production, we find that here on earth it is principally fire and flame which engender it, both of which contain beyond doubt bodies which are in rapid movement, since they dissolve and destroy many other bodies more solid than they: while if we regard its effects, we see that when light is accumulated, say by concave mirrors, it has the property of combustion just as fire has, that is to say, it disunites the parts of bodies, which is assuredly a proof of motion, at least in the true philosophy, in which the causes of all natural effects are conceived as mechanical causes. Which in my judgment must be accomplished or all hope of ever understanding physics is renounced."

"'Twas a light that made Darkness itself appear A thing of comfort."

"Dark with excessive bright."

"For... small things, there must be something else. There is. We call it the electric interaction (more generally, the electromagnetic interaction), and it arises from an endowment of matter known as the . Standing still, an electrically charged particle throws up an to which other charged particles can respond. Electric or magnetic, charge gives rise to both. Whether we say "electric potential" (because we perceive a charge to be at rest) or "" (because we perceive a charge to be in motion), the difference lies solely in our point of view. The source is one. From the world of mass we descend... into the world of charge, ready to see our most familiar surroundings in a new light. Let there be electric charge."

"Ex luce lucellum."

"The obstacle was what Schiller and Koerner once called the "sensual element" in Goethe's philosophy, and which, years after the death of both Kant and Schiller, came out in Goethe in a most typical fashion when young Schopenhauer, a zealous and thorough-going Kantian, tried to explain that light would cease to exist along with the seeing eye. "What!" he said, according to Schopenhauer's own report, "looking at him with his Jove-like eyes,"—"You should rather say that you would not exist if the light could not see you?""

"The Light that Failed."

"The prayer of Ajax was for light; Through all that dark and desperate fight, The blackness of that noonday night."

"Seeing into darkness is clarity. Knowing how to yield is strength. Use your own light and return to the source of light. This is called practicing eternity."

"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."

"Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you."

"Fra l' ombre un lampo solo Basta al nocchier fugace Che già ritrova il polo, Già riconosce il mar."

"There is strong shadow where there is much light."

"DEFIN. II. ... Mathematicians uſually conſider the Rays of Light to be Lines reaching from the luminous Body to the Body illuminated, and the refraction of thoſe Rays to be the bending or breaking of thoſe lines in their paſſing out of one Medium into another. And thus may Rays and Refractions be conſidered, if Light be propagated in an inſtant. But by an Argument taken from the Æquations of the times of the Eclipſes of 𝔍upiter's Satellites, it ſeems that Light is propagated in time, ſpending in its paſſage from the Sun to us about ſeven Minutes of time: And therefore I have choſen to define Rays and Refractions in ſuch general terms as may agree to Light in both caſes."

"I propose to discuss this afternoon certain effects of the energy which is continuously pouring out from the sun on all sides with the speed of light—the energy which we call sunlight when we enjoy the brilliance of a cloudless sky, which we call heat when we bask in its warmth, the stream of radiation which supports all life on our globe and is the source of all our energy. ... ... Beyond the violet are the still shorter waves, which affect a photographic plate or a fluorescent screen, and will pass through certain substances opaque to ordinary light. Here, for instance, is a filter, devised by Professor Wood, which stops visible rays, but allows the shorter invisible waves to pass and excite the fluorescence of a platinocyanide screen. Again, beyond the red end are still longer waves, which are present in very considerable amount, and can be rendered evident by their heating effect. We can easily filter out the visible rays and still leave these long waves in the beam by passing it through a thin sheet of vulcanite. A piece of phosphorus placed at the focus of these invisible rays is at once fired, or a thermometer quickly rises in temperature."

"The eye owes its existence to the light. Out of indifferent animal organs the light produces an organ to correspond to itself; and so the eye is formed by the light, for the light so that the inner light may meet the outer... If the eye were not sunlike, how could we perceive the light?"

"Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom."

"An unreflected light did never yet Dazzle the vision feminine."

"Nations will go to your light"

"Hail, holy light! offspring of heaven firstborn! Or of th' eternal co-eternal beam, May I express thee unblam'd? since God is light And never but in unapproached light Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee, Bright effluence of bright essence increate!"

"He was a burning and a shining light"

"This is a world in which each of us, knowing his limitations, knowing the evils of superficiality and the terrors of fatigue, will have to cling to what is close to him, to what he knows, to what he can do, to his friends and his tradition and his love, lest he be dissolved in a universal confusion and know nothing and love nothing."

"Against the darkness outer God's light his likeness takes, And he from the mighty doubter The great believer makes."

"Mehr Licht!"

"The general equations are next applied to the case of a magnetic disturbance propagated through a non-conductive field, and it is shown that the only disturbances which can be so propagated are those which are transverse to the direction of propagation, and that the velocity of propagation is the velocity v, found from experiments such as those of Weber, which expresses the number of electrostatic units of electricity which are contained in one electromagnetic unit. This velocity is so nearly that of light, that it seems we have strong reason to conclude that light itself (including radiant heat, and other radiations if any) is an electromagnetic disturbance in the form of waves propagated through the electromagnetic field according to electromagnetic laws."

"That light is not itself a substance may be proved from the phenomenon of interference. A beam of light from a single source is divided by certain optical methods into two parts, and these, after travelling by different paths, are made to reunite and fall upon a screen. If either half of the beam is stopped, the other falls on the screen and illuminates it, but if both are allowed to pass, the screen in certain places becomes dark, and thus shows that the two portions of light have destroyed each other. Now, we cannot suppose that two bodies when put together can annihilate each other; therefore light cannot be a substance. ... What we have proved is that one portion of light can be the exact opposite of another portion... Such quantities are the measures, not of substances, but always of processes taking place in a substance. We therefore conclude that light is... a process going on in a substance... so that when the two portions [of light] are combined no process goes on at all. ...the light is extinguished when the difference of the length of the paths is an odd multiple of... a half wave-length. ...we see on the screen a set of fringes consisting of dark lines at equal intervals, with bright bands of graduated intensity between them. ...if the two rays are polarized ...when the two planes of polarization are parallel the phenomena of interference appear as above ...As the plane turns ...light bands become less distinct ...at right angles ...illumination of the screen becomes uniform, and no trace of interference can be discovered. ...The process may, however, be an electromagnetic one ...the electric displacement and the magnetic disturbance are perpendicular to each other, either ...supposed to be in the plane of polarization."

"I shall light a candle of understanding in thine heart, which shall not be put out."

"Wo viel Licht is, ist starker Schatten."

"Light (God's eldest daughter!)."

"Misled by Fancy's meteor-ray, By passion driven; But yet the light that led astray, Was light from Heaven."

"There is always inequity in life. Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded, and some men never leave the country, and some men are stationed in the Antarctic and some are stationed in San Francisco. It's very hard in military or in personal life to assure complete equality. Life is unfair."

"… the giver of life, who gave it for happiness and not for wretchedness."

"What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking of all day? This is his fate and his employer. Knowing is the measure of the man. By how much we know, so much we are."

"Hinc lucem et pocula sacra."

"It is infamy to die, and not be missed."