Great Quotations about Light

"Where there is much light, the shadow is deep." -- Goethe

"Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you."
-- Maori Proverb

"You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in."
--Arlo Guthrie

These are some favorite quotes of mine, which I've been using in my email signature for a couple months. I've been surprised that nobody has commented on them. I think they're really neat individually, and the juxtaposition of them strikes off new sparks every time i notice and read them.

The Goethe and the Maori quotes work as literal statements of the way light works in the physical world of vision and perception, but they also reverberate profoundly of another dimension of spirit, of duality and unity beyond duality. And lest I get too serious, Arlo brings me back down to the ground.

Don't know much about Goethe, except that he sure did say some powerful pithy quotes. And also he did "Faust." My roommate in college my freshman year was fluent in German, and he said he thought Goethe was a greater writer than Shakespeare. I was too anglocentric to buy that, but now I'm thinking intrigued about it. Won't be learning German though, and I'm grateful I came by English the easy way.

One of my many pleasures/diversions/timewasters online is collecting quotes, and several by Goethe are great.

"I love those who yearn for the impossible"

"Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, BEGIN IT. Action has magic, grace, and power in it."
--Goethe


"Action is eloquence"

"All glory comes from daring to begin."
--William Shakespeare