106 Light-Inspired Quotes

In a world often shrouded in uncertainty and shadows, the enduring symbolism of light serves as a beacon of hope and inspiration. Light has long captivated writers, philosophers, and thinkers, providing a rich tapestry of metaphors that speak to the human experience. Whether it's the soft glow of dawn heralding new beginnings or the steadfast flame of a candle symbolizing resilience, light reminds us that even in the darkest times, there is always a glimmer of hope. In this post, we’ve gathered a selection of the top 106 light-inspired quotes, each one offering a unique perspective on the ways light touches and transforms our lives. Dive in and let these words illuminate your journey.

1. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

2. “When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

3. “It's hard to be a bright light in a dim world.” - Gary Starta

4. “Our dreams are luminous, a cast fire upon the world.Morning arrives and that's it.Sunlight darkens the earth.” - Charles Wright

5. “Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.” - Terry Pratchett

6. “If there be light, then there is darkness; if cold, heat; if height, depth; if solid, fluid; if hard, soft; if rough, smooth; if calm, tempest; if prosperity, adversity; if life, death.” - Pythagoras

7. “How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.” - William Shakespeare

8. “The baby batScreamed out in fright,'Turn on the dark,I'm afraid of the light.” - Shel Silverstein

9. “Here's another way to put it: You're here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We're going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don't think I'm going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I'm putting you on a light stand. Now that I've put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand—shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you'll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.” - Anonymous

10. “In the light, we read the inventions of others; in the darkness we invent our own stories. ” - Alberto Manguel

11. “What happens to the drop of wineThat you pour into the sea?Does it remain itself, unchanged?It is as if it never existed.So it is with the soul: Love drinks it in,It is united with Truth,Its old nature fades away,It is no longer master of itself.The soul wills and yet does not will:Its will belongs to Another.It has eyes only for this beauty;It no longer seeks to possess, as was its wont--It lacks the strength to possess such sweetness.The base of this highest of peaksIs founded on nichil,Shaped nothingness, made one with the Lord.” - Jacopone Da Todi

12. “Out of sight above the house, the mirror moon reflected the sun of a day not yet dawned, shining the pale light of tomorrow on the yard and on the paper birches.” - Dean Koontz

13. “We went down into the silent garden. Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.” - Leonora Carrington

14. “What can I do, Muslims? I do not know myself.I am neither Christian nor Jew, neither Magian nor Muslim,I am not from east or west, not from land or sea,not from the shafts of nature nor from the spheres of the firmament,not of the earth, not of water, not of air, not of fire.I am not from the highest heaven, not from this world,not from existence, not from being.I am not from India, not from China, not from Bulgar, not from Saqsin,not from the realm of the two Iraqs, not from the land of Khurasan.I am not from the world, not from beyond,not from heaven and not from hell.I am not from Adam, not from Eve, not from paradise and not from Ridwan.My place is placeless, my trace is traceless,no body, no soul, I am from the soul of souls.I have chased out duality, lived the two worlds as one.One I seek, one I know, one I see, one I call.He is the first, he is the last, he is the outer, he is the inner.Beyond He and He is I know no other.I am drunk from the cup of love, the two worlds have escaped me.I have no concern but carouse and rapture.If one day in my life I spend a moment without youfrom that hour and that time I would repent my life.If one day I am given a moment in solitude with youI will trample the two worlds underfoot and dance forever.O Sun of Tabriz, I am so tipsy here in this world,I have no tale to tell but tipsiness and rapture.” - Jelalludin Rumi

15. “No one lights a lamp in order to hide it behind the door: the purpose of light is to create more light, to open people's eyes, to reveal the marvels around.” - Paulo Coelho

16. “It's not easy to be Light when you've been Dark. It's almost too much to ask anyone.-Macon Ravenwood” - Margaret Stohl

17. “I have a little theory that I'd like to air here, if I may. What is it that you think makes you magicians?" More silence. Fogg was well into rhetorical-question territory now anyway. He spoke more softly. "Is it because you are intelligent? Is it because you are brave and good? Is is because you're special? Maybe. Who knows. But I'll tell you something: I think you're magicians because you're unhappy. A magician is strong because he feels pain. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it. Or what did you think that stuff in your chest was? A magician is strong because he hurts more than others. His wound is his strength. Most people carry that pain around inside them their whole lives, until they kill the pain by other means, or until it kills them. But you, my friends, you found another way: a way to use the pain. To burn it as fuel, for light and warmth. You have learned to break the world that has tried to break you.” - Lev Grossman

18. “Fear can only grow in darkness. Once you face fear with light, you win.” - Steve Maraboli

19. “In Light there is Dark, and in Dark there is Light.” - Kami Garcia

20. “Everybody's got the seam of goodness in them, Kit," said Grandpa. "Just a matter of whether it can be found and brought out into the light.” - David Almond

21. “Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

22. “Oftentimes we call Life bitter names, but only when we ourselves are bitter and dark. And we deem her empty and unprofitable, but only when the soul goes wandering in desolate places, and the heart is drunken with overmindfulness of self.Life is deep and high and distant; and though only your vast vision can reach even her feet, yet she is near; and though only the breath of your breath reaches her heart, the shadow of your shadow crosses her face, and the echo of your faintest cry becomes a spring and an autumn in her breast.And life is veiled and hidden, even as your greater self is hidden and veiled. Yet when Life speaks, all the winds become words; and when she speaks again, the smiles upon your lips and the tears in your eyes turn also into words. When she sings, the deaf hear and are held; and when she comes walking, the sightless behold her and are amazed and follow her in wonder and astonishment.” - Kahlil Gibran

23. “Light is more important than the lantern,The poem more important than the notebook” - Nizar Qabbani

24. “So black was the way ahead that my progress consisted of long periods of inert despondency punctuated by spasmodic lurches forward towards any small chink of light that I thought I saw ... As the years went by, it did not get lighter but I became accustomed to the dark.” - Quentin Crisp

25. “If the mind is to emerge unscathed from this relentless struggle with the unforeseen, two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.” - Carl von Clausewitz

26. “To be taught to read—what is the use of that, if you know not whether what you read is false or true? To be taught to write or to speak—but what is the use of speaking, if you have nothing to say? To be taught to think—nay, what is the use of being able to think, if you have nothing to think of? But to be taught to see is to gain word and thought at once, and both true.” - John Ruskin

27. “Like most hearts, it was complicated, shaded with dark and dappled with light.” - kate dicamillo

28. “Green was the silence, wet was the light,the month of June trembled like a butterfly.” - Pablo Neruda

29. “Technically, on the spectrum of very bad things, they did nothing truly wicked. But of course, that spectrum has no measure for the greatest of all carnal sins, the kind that occurs before skin touches skin, before wondering turns to yearning, yearning to having, having to holding for dear life, when two people cling to each other so desperately that even when they lie, inches apart, neither is fully satisfied until the light between them turns to darkness.” - Galt Niederhoffer

30. “You can make it dark, but I can't make it light.” - Jodi Picoult

31. “In the depth a light will grow,A silver shine no shadows know, Like wings unfolding in the sky,That circle 'round a gleaming eye,Turning darkness all away,Even depths will know their day,For every shadow has its end,In light!Life will return again!” - Robert Fanney

32. “It takes darkness to be aware of the light.” - Treasure Tatum

33. “Light lost in dark. Dark died in light.” - Toba Beta

34. “Light is good company, when alone; I took my comfort where I found it, and the warmest yellow bulb in the living-room lamp had become a kind of radiant babysitter all its own.” - Aimee Bender

35. “When I set a glass prism on a windowsill and allow the sun to flood through it, a spectrum of colors dances on the floor. What we call "white" is a rainbow of colored rays packed into a small space. The prism sets them free. Love is the white light of emotion.” - Diane Ackerman

36. “I come to a red light, tempted to go through it, then stop once I see a billboard sign that I don’t remember seeing and I look up at it. All it says is 'Disappear Here' and even though it’s probably an ad for some resort, it still freaks me out a little and I step on the gas really hard and the car screeches as I leave the light.” - Bret Easton Ellis

37. “Look at the ex-demon with his big boy pants on now.” - Rob Thurman

38. “Most of us are imprisoned by something. We're living in darkness until something flips on the switch.” - Wynonna Judd

39. “The best way to be appreciative for your life is to live it; don't die for any other reason but love. Dreams are what guide us, art is what defines us, math is makes it all possible, and love is what lights our way.” - Mike Norton

40. “When yellow lights struggle with blue shades in hairlike lines.” - Thomas Hardy

41. “I am the kid who sticks her finger in the light socket. I am the person who doesn't check the expiration date on the milk. I am the idiot who has never looked before she leaped. I am the girl who is falling apart, right now.” - Amy Garvey

42. “Even though it's dark and cold there is always a shade of light.” - Angela Bernabe

43. “Don't worry about it, Borage. I've always been inclined to think that the Apostle Paul was similarly afflicted. He speaks often of a bodily weakness, and men have been at pains to name it, attibuting to him everything from lameness to lung sickness. But I think the clue lies in his experience on the road to Damascus. Tell me, do you see a great light?Dr. Trudgett” - Norah Lofts

44. “The brightest light casts the darkest shadow.” - Jess C. Scott

45. “There was a man here, lashed himself to a spar as his ship went down, and for seven days and seven nights he was on the sea, and what kept him alive while others drowned was telling himself stories like a madman, so that as one ended another began. On the seventh day he had told all the stories he knew and that was when he began to tell himself as if he were a story, from the earliest beginnings to his green and deep misfortune. The story he told was of a man lost and found, not once, but many times, as he choked his way out of the waves. And the night fell, he saw the Cape Wrath light, only lit a week it was, but it was, and he knew that if he became the story of the light, he might be saved. With his last strength he began to paddle towards it, arms on either side of the spar, and in his mind the light became a shining rope, pulling him in. He took hold of it, tied it round his waist, and at that moment, the keeper saw him, and ran for the rescue boat.” - Jeanette Winterson

46. “The source of all light is in the eye.” - Alan Wilson Watts

47. “Give yourself to reading.’... You need to read. Renounce as much as you will all light literature, but study as much as possible sound theological works,especially the Puritanic writers, and expositions of the Bible.” - Charles Spurgeon

48. “The future is like a corridor into which we can see only by the light coming from behind.” - Edward Weyer, Jr.

49. “[A] person whose head is bowed and whose eyes are heavy cannot look at the light.” - Christine de Pizan

50. “The light of day showed you the limits of possibility. But walk through the dark, the absolute, total darkness, and the possibilities were limitless.” - Michael Grant

51. “To love a swamp, however, is to love what is muted and marginal, what exists in the shadows, what shoulders its way out of mud and scurries along the damp edges of what is most commonly praised. And sometimes its invisibility is a blessing. Swamps and bogs are places of transition and wild growth, breeding grounds, experimental labs where organisms and ideas have the luxury of being out of the spotlight, where the imagination can mutate and mate, send tendrils into and out of the water.” - Barbara Hurd

52. “Light's all very well, brothers, but it's not easy to live with.” - Mikhail Zoshchenko

53. “We move in and out of darkness and light all our lives. Right now I'm pleased to be in the light.” - Neal Shusterman

54. “People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” - Carl Jung

55. “Master Plato once said that Lux est umbra Dei; light is the shadow of God. I say this way: Light is the god of shadow!” - Mehmet Murat ildan

56. “Who says you cannot hold the moon in your hand?Tonight when the stars come out and the moon rises in the velvet sky, look outside your window, then raise your hand and position your fingers around the disk of light.There you go . . . That was easy!” - Vera Nazarian

57. “Shadow is ever besieged, for that is its nature. Whilst darkness devours, and light steals. And so one sees shadow ever retreat to hidden places, only to return in the wake of the war between dark and light.” - Steven Erikson

58. “Today, and let us celebrate this fact, We can eat the light of our beloved, warmed by compassion or cooled by intellectual feeling. And if we are surprised, and some of us disappointed, that the light is now only green - well, such was the vital probability awaiting us. We have, after all, an increase in the energy available for further evolution; we can use the energy of our position relative to the probabilities in the future to reach the future we desire. The full use of this energy is just beginning to be explored, and we have the opportunity open to few generations to create our best opportunities. We must not slacken in our desire now if we desire a future. The pressure of probabilities on the present increases the momentum of evolution, and as the voluble helix turns, and turns us away from our improbable satiation, we can see that the shadow cast on the present from the future is not black but rainbowed, brilliant with lemon yellow, plum-purple, and cherry-red. I have no patience with those who say that their desire for light is satisfied. Or that they are bored. I have myself a still unsatisfied appetite for green: eucalyptus, celadon, tourmaline, and apple. ("Desire")” - William S. Wilson

59. “Until a few days ago, humans had been little more than legend to him, and now here he was in their world. It was like stepping into the pages of a book -- a book alive with color and fragrance, filth and chaos -- and the blue-haired girl moved through it all like a fairy through a story, the light treating her differently than it did others, the air seemed to gather around her like held breath. As if this whole place was a story about her.” - Laini Taylor

60. “If God created shadows it was to better emphasise the light.” - Pope John XXIII

61. “Photographs don’t discriminate between the living and the dead. In the fragments of time and shards of light that compose them, everyone is equal. Now you see us; now you don’t. It doesn’t matter whether you look through a camera lens and press the shutter. It doesn’t even matter whether you open your eyes or close them. The pictures are always there. And so are the people in them.” - Robert Goddard

62. “In the end, people will not be judged by the darkness they lived in, but by the light they rejected.” - Anthony Liccione

63. “Walk in the light so you can see where you're going” - Eleazar

64. “But you can't stay in the dark for so long. Something inside of you starts to fade and you become like a starving person, crazy-hungry for light.” - Amy Tan

65. “The inner light actually comes from the soul; it is already inside us. The moment we can have free access to our soul, we will see that this light is coming to the fore to permeate our whole outer existence.” - Sri Chinmoy

66. “There is only a certain amount of kindness in the world…just as there is a certain amount of light. We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things…Choose a place where you won’t do very much harm and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.” - E.M. Forster

67. “SUN, MOON, AND STARRY SKYEarly summer evenings, when the first stars come out, the warm glow of sunset still stains the rim of the western sky.Sometimes, the moon is also visible, a pale white slice, while the sun tarries.Just think -- all the celestial lights are present at the same time!These are moments of wonder -- see them and remember.” - Vera Nazarian

68. “...in that dilated moment after sunset when the sky holds all the light...” - David Wroblewski

69. “I am not here to merely argue about the perplexities regarding theism or philosophy, but to be a light to the world and to reach out to those who long to be a part of that light.” - Criss Jami

70. “All bodies are radiant but not all radiance is visible: stars radiate visible light; planets and donkeys and couches radiate infrared waves. (If your couch is emitting visible light GET UP IMMEDIATELY!)” - Amy Leach

71. “It was the hour in which objects lose the consistency of shadow that accompanies them during the night and gradually reacquire colors, but seem to cross meanwhile an uncertain limbo, faintly touched, just breathed on by light; the hour in which one is least certain of the world's existence.” - Italo Calvino

72. “That is what you meant to me: a light that shone through the darkness.” (Your smile, p. 56)” - Chimnese Davids

73. “The spring came suddenly; the rains stopped, the days grew noticeably longer, and the afternoon light felt powdery, as if it might blow away.” - Jane Mendelsohn

74. “You don't find light by avoiding the darkness.” - S. Kelley Harrell

75. “Remember that each light between sunrise and sunset is worth dying for at least once.” - Tad Williams

76. “Among the tales of sorrow and of ruin that came down to us from the darkness of those days there are yet some in which amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light that endures. And of these histories most fair still in the ears of the Elves is the tale of Beren and Lúthien” - J.R.R. Tolkien

77. “He'll have to do without me, Jamie thought, not looking back. And then clearly, as if he'd been told, he knew Grenville /could/ do without him. There was somewhere else he had to go now, somewhere else he had to be.” - S.E. Hinton

78. “Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are; and, as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many...” - William Bradford

79. “Have trembled beneath the pressure of a light beam.” - jay woodman

80. “Gardens are made of darkness and light entwined.” - F.T. McKinstry

81. “In the forestlichen writhes and assembles itself into signs to light my path through the deep dark north shadow; and I emerge at last onto a hillside strewn with logogrammatic stones, and scramble away from spruce tops." in the poem "Beyond the Beacon" from Terra Affirmative.” - jay woodman

82. “Either all lights are turned off or one inner light is missing.” - Dejan Stojanovic

83. “The light teaches you to convert life into a festive promenade.” - Dejan Stojanovic

84. “ZENITHNOON beats outon its solar anvilthe rays of light” - Sonia Delaunay

85. “Inside all of us is a light, but some beacons are darker than others, and some are so dark they never realize they are a form of light at all.” - Courtney M. Privett

86. “... when someone sees a soul disturbed and unable to see something, he won't laugh mindlessly, but he'll take into consideration whether it has come from a brighter life and is dimmed through not having yet become accustomed to the dark or whether it has come from greater ignorance into greater light and is dazzled by the increased brillance.” - Plato

87. “You can walk in the Light or you can grope around in the dark because there is no walking with Jesus by candle light".~ R. Alan Woods [2012]” - R. Alan Woods

88. “From whichever direction or from whoever the light comes to you, always welcome it!” - Mehmet Murat ildan

89. “Light is shallow; darkness is infinitely deep. Light is always bounded, it has boundaries. Darkness has no boundaries, it is unbounded. Light comes and goes; darkness always is. When there is light you cannot see it. When light is not there you can see it. But it is always there; you cannot cause it. Light has a cause. You burn the fire, you put on wood. When the wood is finished the light will be gone. It is caused, hence it is an effect. But darkness is not caused by anything, it is not an effect. It is uncaused eternity.” - Osho

90. “See people in the light of their potentials, not their problems.” - Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

91. “Darkness has the ability to cover up; light has the ability to uncover! Darkness is the enemy of truth; light is the friend of truth!” - Mehmet Murat ildan

92. “Gray fall light came through the nine square glass panes. On days like this, the strips of white wood that separated the glass seemed brighter to the eye than did the window light.” - Graham Moore

93. “The color palette is confined to that of a Gustave Dore' engraving, greys and blacks, and subtle shadings of these rendered in harrowing crosshatches and highlighted with sudden glaring areas of nothingness, like splotches of vitiligo sent to haunt the dead with memories of what real light did to the eyes.” - Kevin Hearne

94. “There are no shadows in darkness. Shadows are created by light, and only exist in the presence of light. Refusing to acknowledge our shadow leads us to deny the presence of light in us.” - Franco Santoro

95. “If you have a light, meet the world or let the world meets you!” - Mehmet Murat ildan

96. “The ability to find sparks may be buried so deep in you that you stop believing there's a God. Until someone comes along, with so much light in her that you can't help but see your own, and when you're together,that light grows even brighter.” - Jodi Picoult

97. “One grateful thought is a ray of sunshine.  A hundred such thoughts paint a sunrise.  A thousand will rival the glaring sky at noonday - for gratitude is light against the darkness.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

98. “You are a creature meant to be free. Almost always, the person hardest to tell the truth to...is you. Once you can be honest with yourself, you'll find the strength and desire to be honest with others. It's the most freeing feeling imaginable. Go find a mirror and face yourself and your darkest truths. You have the light within you to chase away the dark demons that hold you down and push you back into the black corners of your past. You deserve better. You are a child of light and light hidden behind dark clouds, does nothing to brighten the world.” - Toni Sorenson

99. “A sacred picture of Saint Anthony alone is one vertical, unwavering band of light. If a cockroach were near him, or a cocktail waitress, the picture would be two such bands of light. Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is just dead machinery.” - Kurt Vonnegut

100. “Say it. But...""But what?" he asked.She whispered it, sounding too vulnerable. "But only if its the truth, Caine. Only. If.""I love you," he said.” - Michael Grant

101. “Hello, Darkness," Caine said.Gaia's face fell. Her bloody, feral grin faded to be replaced by lips drawn right with fear. Her killer blue eyes widened as she looked at Caine who was no longer Caine."Nemesis," Gaia said.” - Michael Grant

102. “I’m sorry for hurting you. I know I did. I’m most likely dead now, and I guess if there’s any kind of fairness in the afterlife I’m probably in hell getting roasted. But if that’s where I am, I want you to know, I still love you. Always did. Love, Caine” - Michael Grant

103. “Sento ancora la follia scorrermi dentro, ma ancora non ho scritto le parole che avrei voluto, la tigre mi è rimasta sulla schiena. Morirò con addosso quella figlia di puttana, ma almeno le ho dato battaglia. E se fra voi c'è qualcuno che si sente abbastanza matto da voler diventare scrittore, gli consiglio va' avanti, sputa in un occhio al sole, schiaccia quei tasti, è la migliore pazzia che possa esserci, i secoli chiedono aiuto, la specie aspira spasmodicamente alla luce, e all'azzardo e alle risate. Regalateglieli. Ci sono abbastanza parole per noi tutti.” - Charles Bukowski

104. “It was as if his song was one voice, calling out into the darkness until it was answered by another, harmonizing with its own unique voice and emotion to create something even more beautiful than the sum of its parts.” - Erik Tomblin

105. “Thus it is said:The path into the light seems dark,the path forward seems to go back,the direct path seems long,true power seems weak,true purity seems tarnished,true steadfastness seems changeable,true clarity seems obscure,the greatest are seems unsophisticated,the greatest love seems indifferent,the greatest wisdom seems childish.The Tao is nowhere to be found.Yet it nourishes and completes all things.” - Lao Tzu

106. “Desire, desire which knows, we draw no advantage from our shadows except from some veritable sovereignties accompanied by invisible flames, invisible chains, which, coming to light, step after step, cause us to shine.” - Rene Char