C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Light
And God said, Let there be light! and there was light.
I am the light of the world.
And God called the light day.
Light (God’s eldest daughter!).
Hail, holy light! offspring of heaven first-born.
God and Nature met in light.
Light is but the shadow of God.
The sacred influence of light appears.
Is not light grander than fire?
Light is, as it were, a divine humidity.
Light is, perhaps, the most wonderful of all visible things.
Light is the symbol of truth.
Where there is much light, the shade is deepest.
Prime cheerer, light! of all material beings first and best! Efflux divine.
Light, whether it be material or moral, is the best reformer.
The very plants turn with a joyful transport to the light.
The light in the world comes principally from two sources,—the sun, and the student’s lamp.
Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.
All human souls, never so bedarkened, love light; light once kindled, spreads till all is luminous.
Children always turn towards the light. Oh that grown-up people in this world became like little children!
Only the worm of conscience consorts with the owl. Sinners and evil spirits shun the light.
Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile; so, ere you find where light in darkness lies, your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.
Light itself is a great corrective. A thousand wrongs and abuses that are grown in darkness disappear, like owls and bats, before the light of day.
The first creation of God in the works of the days was the light of the sense; the last was the light of the reason; and His Sabbath-work ever since is the illumination of the spirit.
We should render thanks to God for having produced this temporal light, which is the smile of heaven and joy of the world, spreading it like a cloth of gold over the face of the air and earth, and lighting it as a torch by which we might behold His works.
And as the eye is the best composer, so light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make beautiful. And the stimulus it affords to the sense, and a sort of infinitude which it hath like space and time, make all matter gay.
No wonder that light is so frequently used by the sacred oracles as the symbol of our best blessings. Of the Gospel revelation one apostle says, “The night is far spent, and the day is at hand.” Another, under the impression of the same auspicious event, thus applied the language of ancient prophecy: “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up”