Brightness Quotes

Poetry reveals to us the loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness of youthful feelings, reviews the relish of simple pleasures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the springtime of our being, refines youthful love, strengthens our interest in human nature, by vivid delineations of its tenderest and softest feelings, and through the brightness of its prophetic visions, helps faith to lay hold on the future life. ~ William Ellery Channing

His terror became his companion. When it seemed to diminish, or grow easier to bear, he forced himself to remember the details of what he had said and done so that his fears returned, redoubled. His previous life, which had been without fear, he now dismissed as an illusion since he had come to believe that only in fear could the truth be found. When he woke from sleep without anxiety, he asked himself, What is wrong? What is missing? And then his door opened slowly, and a child put its head around and gazed at him: there are wheels, Ned thought, wheels within wheels. The curtains were now always closed, for the sun horrified him: he was reminded of a film he had seen some time before, and how the brightness of the noonday light had struck the water where a man, in danger of drowning, was struggling for his life. ~ Peter Ackroyd

That was so-Gryffin always has so much pain. That you can take it away like that - it's almost like magic."

Chase shrugged in the dark. "Kindness is a form of magic," he said. "So everyone should be capable of at least a little. Good night. See you in the morning." And he nodded to me and strode off.

Kindness is a form of magic.

Then magic had sprinkled itself across me many times, when I had not noticed its fey sparkle. I had been used to thinking of my life as bleak and full of darkness, but for the first time it occurred to me how often a stranger had stepped forward to offer me comfort and assistance, no matter how briefly. Ian Shelby. Sarah Parmer. Aylre the Safe-Keeper. The man who had stopped Carlon from beating me in the streets. Chase Beerin. They had been kind to me; most had, in different ways, been kind to Gryffin as well. Looked at that way, my life was a weave of brightness laid over a trembling black, a scrap of midnight velvet spangled with many jewels.

I had another thought as I stood there, trying desperately to understand a completely altered view of my existence. Someday I might be the one to offer kindness to someone else in grim and dire circumstances. Someday I might be the one with wealth or knowledge or strength or power that could be used to alleviate another person's distress. Such a thought had literally never crossed my mind before. More than once I had been saved. Someday I might save someone else in re ~ Sharon Shinn

He sang the brightness of mornings and green rivers,
He sang of smoking water in the rose-colored daybreaks,
Of colors: cinnabar, carmine, burnt sienna, blue,
Of the delight of swimming in the sea under marble cliffs,
Of feasting on a terrace above the tumult of a fishing port,
Of tastes of wine, olive oil, almonds, mustard, salt.
Of the flight of the swallow, the falcon,
Of a dignified flock of pelicans above the bay,
Of the scent of an armful of lilacs in summer rain,
Of his having composed his words always against death
And of having made no rhyme in praise of nothingness. ~ Czeslaw Milosz

Such is the imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the disc of the clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd's can only see those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of the orb. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Do not let the darkness of others hide the brightness of your heart. ~ Debasish Mridha

Towards midnight the rain ceased and the clouds drifted away, so that the sky was scattered once more with the incredible lamps of stars. Then the breeze died too and there was no noise save the drip and tickle of water that ran out of clefts and spilled down, leaf by leaf, to the brown earth of the island. The air was cool, moist, and clear; and presently even the sound of the water was still. The beast lay huddled on the pale beach and the stains spread, inch by inch.

The edge of the lagoon became a streak of phosphorescence which advanced minutely, as the great wave of the tide flowed. The clear water mirrored the clear sky and the angular bright constellations. The line of phosphorescence bulged about the sand grains and little pebbles; it held them each in a dimple of tension, then suddenly accepted them with an inaudible syllable and moved on.

Along the shoreward edge of the shallows the advancing clearness was full of strange, moonbeam-bodied creatures with fiery eyes. Here and there a larger pebble clung to its own air and was covered with a coat of pearls. The tide swelled in over the rain-pitted sand and smoothed everything with a layer of silver. Now it touched the first of the stains that seeped from the broken body and the creatures made a moving patch of light as they gathered at the edge. The water rose further and dressed Simon's coarse hair with brightness. The line of his cheek silvered and the turn of his shoulder became sculptured mar ~ William Golding

Turning to the colour-classification methodology: The starting point are the four pure colours red, yellow, green and blue; their in-between shades and scales of brightness result in colour schemes containing 16, 64, 256 and 1,024 shades. More colours would be pointless because it wouldn't be possible to distinguish between them clearly. ~ Gerhard Richter

Honesty is proportional to clarity of soul and brightness of consciousness. Being honest allows your soul to be clear and your consciousness to be bright. Genuine honesty, therefore, is not for winning recognition from others, but for getting recognition from ourselves and for recognizing our conscience within. Honesty makes us honorable in our own eyes. ~ Ilchi Lee

We who are crushed to earth with heavy chains, who travel a weary, rugged, thorny road, groping through midnight darkness on earth, earn our right to enjoy the sunshine in the great hereafter. At the grave, at least, we should be permitted to lay our burdens down, that a new world, a world of brightness, may open to us. The light that is denied us here should grow into a flood of effulgence beyond the dark, mysterious shadows of death. ~ Elizabeth Keckley

Moses spent so much time face to face with Yahweh, that his own face began to transfigure and shine like the sun. He had to pull a cloak over himself because the Israelites could not stand before the brightness of holiness. The direct presence of Yahweh changes one's very being from human to divine." "Moses was made into a god?" "Like a Son of God. Bene ha Elohim. But it was only a foretaste, because it would fade with time." Mary was putting it together. "So, Sons of God are the holy ones who surround Yahweh Elohim's throne chariot, and they are myriad." "Ten thousands upon ten thousands. They are the divine ones who administered the Law of Yahweh at Sinai. They are direct creations of Yahweh, and because they are in his presence, they shine with holiness. ~ Brian Godawa

We like to admit to only that which already glows, although it is nobler to support brightness before it glows, not afterwards. ~ Dejan Stojanovic

All the labor of all the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction. So now, my friends, if that is true, and it is true, what is the point? ~ Bertrand Russell

Deep darkness enhances the brightness and beauty of a little lamp. ~ Debasish Mridha

A feeling of slow motion came upon me then, and parts of my bike scratched against bits of my body. Slimy seaweed tangled around my ankles and my shoes slipped off my feet. My arms and legs were dragged in different directions as if there was an underwater force making me dance to a morbid tune.

I felt light. I felt slow. I felt fast - all in quick succession, but I couldn't think of anything except the quite relaxing idea that soon everything was going to be over.

I was alone. All around the wet rocks were silent and slimy. I couldn't feel any pleasure or any purpose. My decision seemed to make a terrible kind of sense My panic had gone. I was finished making decisions. I didn't think I'd ever have any more to make.

I'm not exactly sure what I'd been hoping for next. Brightness and song possibly. Beautiful music perhaps, say a harp or something playing in the distance and warmth to soothe my numb, frozen, sopping, scraped body. I definitely wasn't expecting what happened next. ~ Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

The brighter you are, the more you have to learn. ~ Don Herold

Humans had a brightness to them, a glow that only death extinguished. ~ Amy Tintera

There is something so pure and frank and noble about Him that to doubt His sincerity would be like doubting the brightness of the sun. ~ Charles Edward Jefferson

The hare grows old as she plays in the sun
And gazes around her with eyes of brightness;
Before the swift things that she dreamed of were done
She limps along in an aged whiteness ... ~ William Butler Yeats

I love a bright lip with a neutral eye. It's an easy, wearable look that gives brightness to your face without looking over-the-top. ~ Bobbi Brown

From around the corner's edge a grotesque light was trickling out, the first intimations of an ominous sunrise over a dark horizon. I dimly recognized this colored light, though not from my waking memory. It grew more intense, now pouring out in weird streams from beyond the solid margin of the building. And the more intense it grew, the more clearly I could hear the screaming voice that had called out to me in a dream. I shouted his name, but the swelling colored brightness was a field of fear which kept me from making any move toward it. It was no amalgam of colors comparable to anything in mortal experience. It was as if all natural colors had been mutated into a painfully lush iridescence by some prism fantastically corrupted in its form; it was a rainbow staining the sky after a poison deluge; it was an aurora painting the darkness with a blaze of insanity, a blaze that did not burn vigorously but shimmered with an insect-jeweled frailness. And, in actuality, it was nothing like these color-filled effusions, which are merely a feeble means of partially fixing a reality uncommunicable to those not initiated to it, a necessary resorting to the makeshift gibberish of the mystic isolated by his experience and left without a language to describe it.

("The Dreaming In Nortown") ~ Thomas Ligotti

Young poets are too apt to consider themselves "children of the mist" – they must dwell apart from men and contemn their kind, or they fear they shall be only taken for common-place characters. They forget that poetry is the language which speaks to all hearts - and that instead of cherishing the sacred fire as a lonely light, as one that burns in a charnel house, they should bring it forth in its beauty and brightness as a guide to the pleasant places and sparkling waters of earth's happiness and the radiant messenger of heaven's exalted hopes. And they should rejoice and be glad that to them the kindling of such high imagination is given.

~ Sarah Josepha Hale
Ladies Magazine, November 1830

From the Introduction to Cherishing the Sacred Fire ~ Deborah L. Halliday

What drew him towards the outside was not the student, not the goat, not even the man in the down-at-heel shoes who joined them. Simply the street, like a blanched life-drained cadaver, fettered his whole attention. Never before had he seen it look so monstrously real, lit by the tired face of the moon, quiet and grave. There was about it, as it were, a sort of despairing dignity. You might have thought that the street had been killed by the weight of its suffering, that it had that moment died after long agony. It was old, the street, hobbling and twisted with age. Some of its houses were already crumbling in ruins. For years now it had sheltered the petty life of men. And now they had elected it to express the extent of their weariness. Naked beneath the prodigious brightness of the moon, it revealed all that men hid in the depths of their beings, the little hopes, the hates so huge. No longer could it hide anything; it cried out its despair from every corner. ~ Albert Cossery

In these dark and uncertain times, there can be great value in imagining a bit of star in each human soul.
Not just that it gives some hope for humanity at a time when man's inhumanity to man seems ever on the increase; but also because it points to an inner brightness
that can light the way
in dark times. ~ Michael Meade

Bodies could be beacons, too, Saul knew. A lighthouse was a fixed beacon for a fixed purpose; a person was a moving one. But people still emanated light in their way, still shone across the miles as a warning, an invitation, or even just a static signal. People opened up so they became a brightness, or they went dark. They turned their light inward sometimes, so you couldn't see it, because they had no other choice. ~ Jeff VanderMeer

In natures, we see God, as it were, like the sun in a picture; in the law, as the sun in a cloud; in Christ we see Him in His beams; He being 'the brightness of His glory, and the exact image of His person. ~ Stephen Charnock

Destruction perfects that which is good; for the good cannot appear on account of that which conceals it. The good is least good whilst it is thus concealed. The concealment must be removed so that the good may be able freely to appear in its own brightness. For example, the mountain, the sand, the earth, or the stone in which a metal has grown is such a concealment. Each one of the visible metals is a concealment of the other six metals. ~ Paracelsus Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Von Hohenheim

My reading has been lamentably desultory and immedthodical. Odd, out of the way, old English plays, and treatises, have supplied me with most of my notions, and ways of feeling. In everything that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world. I should have scarcely cut a figure among the franklins, or country gentlemen, in King John's days. I know less geography than a schoolboy of six weeks standing. To me a map of old Ortelius is as authentic as Arrowsmith. I do not know whereabout Africa merges into Asia, whether Ethiopia lie in one or other of those great divisions, nor can form the remotest, conjecture of the position of New South Wales, or Van Diemen's Land. Yet do I hold a correspondence with a very dear friend in the first named of these two Terrae Incognitae. I have no astronomy. I do not know where to look for the Bear or Charles' Wain, the place of any star, or the name of any of them at sight. I guess at Venus only by her brightness - and if the sun on some portentous morn were to make his first appearance in the west, I verily believe, that, while all the world were grasping in apprehension about me, I alone should stand unterrified, from sheer incuriosity and want of observation. Of history and chronology I possess some vague points, such as one cannot help picking up in the course of miscellaneous study, but I never deliberately sat down to a chronicle, even of my own country. I have most dim apprehensions of the four great monarc ~ Charles Lamb

Hello, Harry!" she said.
"Er - my name's Barny," said Harry, flummoxed.
"Oh, have you changed that too?" she asked brightly.
"How did you know - ?"
"Oh, just your expression," she said.
Like her father, Luna was wearing bright yellow robes, which she had accessorized with a large sunflower in her hair. Once you got over the brightness of it all, the general effect was quite pleasant. At least there were no radishes dangling from her ears. ~ J.K. Rowling

We should blunt our sharp points, and unravel the complications of things; we should attemper our brightness, and bring ourselves into agreement with the obscurity of others. ~ Lao-Tzu

Rikpa literally means "intelligence" or "brightness." Behind all the planning and worrying, behind all the wishing and wanting, picking and choosing, the unfabricated, wisdom mind of rikpa is always here. Whenever we stop talking to ourselves, rikpa is continually here. ~ Pema Chodron

Beauty is the brightness of being. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The phenomenon moon-in-the-water is likened to human experience. The water is the subject, and the moon the object. When there is no water, there is no moon-in-the-water, and likewise when there is no moon. But when the moon rises the water does not wait to receive its image, and when even the tiniest drop of water is poured out the moon does not wait to cast its reflection. For the moon does not intend to cast its reflection, and the water does not receive its image on purpose. The event is caused as much by the water as by the moon, and as the water manifests the brightness of the moon, the moon manifests the clarity of the water. Another poem in the Zenrin Kushu says: Trees show the bodily form of the wind; Waves give vital energy to the moon.g ~ Alan W. Watts

God's glory is the created brightness that surrounds God's revelation of himself. ~ Wayne Grudem

The range in brightness from the purple glow [of the sunset] to the dark sky above is too great for most films, and naturally it is beyond the range of printed pictures. ~ James Elkins

Tessa was only half way down the corridor when they caught up to her -Will and Jem, walking on either side of her. "you didn't really think we weren't going to come along, did you?" Will asked, raising his hand and letting his witchlight fare up between his fingers, lighting the corridor to daylight brightness. Charlotte, hurrying along ahead of them, turned and frowned, but said nothing.
"I know you can't leave anything well alone," Tessa replied, looking straight ahead. "But I though better of Jem."
"Where Will goes, I go," Jem said good-naturedly. "And besides, I'm as curious as he is. ~ Cassandra Clare

We don't have to wait for the sunshine of spring to splash color into our days when our relationship with Jesus illuminates brightness to every day. ~ Tessa Emily Hall

The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the shadowy and of the Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout history, the powers of single blacks flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

In that brief glance Vronsky has time to notice the restrained animation that played over her face and fluttered between her shining eyes and the barely noticeable smile that curved her red lips. It was as if a surplus of something so overflowed her being that it expressed itself beyond her will, now in the brightness of her glance, now in her smile. She deliberately extinguished the light in her her eyes, but it shone against her will in a barely noticeable smile. ~ Leo Tolstoy

You don't even know me. (Adron)
Yes, I do. You try to hide what you are, but I see it. It shines through your bitterness with a brightness not even you can extinguish. (Livia) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Just as a star suddenly flares to a hundred times its previous brightness -- and then fades away, so, too, a human being not disposed to be a political may nonetheless flare up briefly and intensely in prison and perish as a result. Ordinarily we do not learn about these cases. Sometimes there is a witness to tell about them. Sometimes there is merely a faded piece of paper in front of us on which we can only build hypothesis; ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Oh, give our frightened souls the sure salvation for which, O Lord, You taught us to prepare. And when this cup You give is filled to brimming with bitter suffering, hard to understand, we take it thankfully and without trembling, out of so good and so beloved a hand. Yet when again in this same world You give us the joy we had, the brightness of Your Sun, we shall remember all the days we lived through, and our whole life shall then be Yours alone. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Billions of stars will lose it's fuel from the brightness of the only face, the guest of your heart,
The beauty of your soul. ~ Bzam

Oh woman! lovely woman! nature made thee To temper man; we had been brutes without you; Angels are painted fair to look like you; There's in you all that we believe of heaven, Amazing brightness, purity, and truth, Eternal joy, and everlasting love. ~ Thomas Otway

After the brightness of the morning, the interior of the pavilion seemed cool and dim. Stannis seated himself on a plain wooden camp stool and waved Davos to another. "One day I may make you a lord, smuggler. If only to irk Celtigar and Florent. You will not thank me, though. It will mean you must suffer through these councils, and feign interest in the braying of mules."
"Why do you have them, if they serve no purpose?"
"The mules love the sound of their own braying, why else? And I need them to haul my cart. ~ George R R Martin

It was about having a box in the attic or basement or attic or garage, something we could return to over and over again, something that said, this is us, this is where we were last year, and this is where we'll stay, and this is where we'll pile on the memories, over and over again, until there are so many memories that it's blinding, the brightness of family, the way love and nurturing is like a color you can't name because it's so new. ~ Carrie Brownstein

All brightness was gone, leaving nothing. We stepped out of the tent onto nothing. Sledge and tent were there, Estraven stood beside me, but neither he nor I cast any shadow. There was dull light all around, everywhere. When we walked on the crisp snow no shadow showed the footprint. We left no track. Sledge, tent, himself, myself: nothing else at all. No sun, no sky, no horizon, no world. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Vanish.
Pass into nothingness: the Keats line that frightened her.
Fade as the blue nights fade, go as the brightness goes.
Go back into the blue.
I myself placed her ashes in the wall.
I myself saw the cathedral doors locked at six.
I know what it is I am now experiencing.
I know what the frailty is, I know what the fear is.
The fear is not for what is lost.
What is lost is already in the wall.
What is lost is already behind the locked doors.
The fear is for what is still to be lost.
You may see nothing still to be lost.
Yet there is no day in her life on which I do not see her. ~ Joan Didion

Discussion of theology is not for everyone, I tell you, not for everyone-it is no such inexpensive or effortless pursuit. Nor, I would add, is it for every occasion, or every audience; neither are all its aspects open to inquiry. It must be reserved for certain occasions, for certain audiences, and certain limits must be observed. It is not for all people, but only for those who have been tested and have found a sound footing in study, and, more importantly, have undergone, or at the very least are undergoing purification of body and soul. For one who is not pure to lay hold of pure things is dangerous, just as it is for weak eyes to look at the sun's brightness. What is the right time? Whenever we are free from the mire and noise without, and our commanding faculty is not confused by illusory, wandering images, leading us, as it were, to mix fine script with ugly scrawling, or sweet-smelling scent with slime. We need actually "to be still" in order to know God, and when we receive the opportunity, "to judge uprightly" in theology. Who should listen to discussions of theology? Those for whom it is a serious undertaking, not just another subject like any other for entertaining small-talk, after the races, the theater, songs, food, and sex: for there are people who count chatter on theology and clever deployment of arguments as one of their amusements. What aspects of theology should be investigated, and to what limit? Only aspects within our grasp, and only to the limit of the ~ Gregory Of Nazianzus

God, how pointless and empty the world is! Days filled with cheap and tarnished moments succeed each other, restless and haunted nights follow in bitter routine: the sun shines without brightness, and the moon rises without light. My heart has the taste of ashes, and my throat is tight and weary with weeping. What is a lost soul? It is one that has turned from its true path and is groping in the darkness of remembered ways - ~ Malcolm Lowry

And although it was in a hospital that she lay and I sat next to her - it is always that eternal poetry of Christmas night with the infant in the stable, as the old Dutch painters conceived it and MIllet and Breton - a light in the darkness, the brightness in the middle of a dark night. And so I hung a large etching after Rembrandt over it, the two women by the cradle, one of them reading from the Bible by candlelight, while the great shadows cast a deep chiaroscuro over the whole room. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Optimism: That effervescent, blindingly- bright, perky, chipper, twittering quality you want to squash out of annoying people. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

There is no brightness without darkness. There is no body without its shadow. ~ Jessica Khoury

I used to wonder if we were destined to fail from the start, two people who lived hard and loved fast. Afraid to slow down. But now I know that my fingers weren't long enough to reach your wounds, to caress the places that ached from the sharp words and careless actions of others. People had confused your gentleness for weakness. You carried everything heavy.

Had I known, I would have danced delicate language all around you. I would've told you that your internal brightness illuminated mine. And that I only saw the beauty in myself when I looked at my reflection in your eyes. If only I had known that behind that strong gaze was everything else. Everything you didn't want me to know. Your shine came from what you felt when you looked at me. And you feared that I would be yet another to use your light and leave you alone. In even more darkness.
But I wouldn't have.
I didn't know how to tell you, but I know that pain too. ~ Jacqueline Simon Gunn

Terrestrial happiness is of short duration. The brightness of the flame is wasting its fuel; the fragrant flower is passing away in its own odors. ~ Samuel Johnson

The Milky Way Galaxy is one of billions, perhaps hundreds of billions of galaxies notable neither in mass nor in brightness nor in how its stars are configured and arrayed. Some modern deep sky photographs show more galaxies beyond the Milky Way than stars within the Milky Way. Every one of them is an island universe containing perhaps a hundred billion suns. Such an image is a profound sermon on humility. ~ Carl Sagan

The journey of the development of the ability of transmutation, is quite the journey to be on! First you awaken to the darkness that is in you, then you learn to accept it, then you learn to marry it with your light, and then, finally, you learn how to harness the dark energy through your bright energy in order to transmutate any darkness into brightness, into light and lightness. This is Soul Alchemy and sometimes it is thrust upon an individual and other times it is sought after by an individual. In any case, it is not an easy journey to surmount. ~ C. JoyBell C.

Perhaps that is nearly the perfection of good writing which is original, but whose truth alone prevents the reader from suspecting that it is so; and which effects that for knowledge which the lens effects for the sunbeam, when it condenses its brightness in order to increase its force. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

I can assure you that the life outside the front door is bright and full of life ~ Sunday Adelaja

Although words are the world and were the birthing of the world, there are no words to express what I felt at that moment, no words for the dimensions of my joy, for the great buoyancy that overcame my spirit, for the depth of my gratitude, for the brightness of my hope. ~ Dean Koontz

Farewell, Mother, careworn and abiding,
Farewell, Papa, faded brightness hiding.
Farewell, Constanze, I took your tales to heart,
Farewell, Hans, and your fumbles in the dark.
Farewell, Käthe, I'm sorry I did you wrong.
Farewell, Josef, may you play ever-long.
Farewell, all, to you I give my love. ~ S. Jae-Jones

By this brightness God designed to impress upon Israel the sacred, exalted character of his law, and the glory of the gospel revealed through Christ. While Moses was in the mount, God presented to him, not only the tables of the law, but also the plan of salvation. He saw that the sacrifice of Christ was pre-figured by all the types and symbols of the Jewish age; and it was the heavenly light streaming from Calvary, no less than the glory of the law of God, that shed such a radiance upon the face of Moses. That divine illumination symbolized the glory of the dispensation of which Moses was the visible mediator, a representative of the one true Intercessor. ~ Ellen G. White

Then stars arise, and the night is holy. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Then it was she saw him again. On the upper reaches of the scaffolding, a sheerness of presence, no more. It was as if he took the space from the air about him and against the darkness was etched, like the brightness which seeps through a door ajar, hinting at nameless, fathomless brilliances beyond, the slightest margin of light. Impossible to look too closely, but some way below, beneath where the long feet might have rested, she made out the girl's huddled shape, her arms folded over her head like some small broken-winged, storm-tossed bird. ~ Salley Vickers

The beauty of life is the brightness of a happy living. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Because God is not only infinitely greater and more excellent than all other being, but he is the head of the universal system of existence; the foundation and fountain of all being and all beauty; from whom all is perfectly derived, and on whom all is most absolutely and perfectly dependent; of whom, and through whom, and to whom is all being and all perfection; and whose being and beauty are, as it were, the sum and comprehension of all existence and excellence: much more than the sun is the fountain and summary comprehension of all the light and brightness of the day. ~ Jonathan Edwards

The boy knelt, shoulders bowed, on the sand in the grey of morning, moaning softly, fearfully. Glowing tendrils of energy streamed across the agitated sky, converging high above him in a vortex of brightness. He flung his hands heavenward and a sheet of blinding brilliance descended from the vortex. It enveloped him and from its core a pulsing sphere of light fell, entering his body and almost tearing him apart. He went rigid, screaming to shatter the heavens, his dark eyes bulging from their sockets, his mouth wide in a rictus of agony. Sirius exploded in a burst of silver-blue radiance, as his howl rose to a shriek beyond hearing and endurance. Out of the light and the sound and the anguish, two names imprinted themselves on his mind. One of them, he knew, was his own.
The other floated for an instant above his consciousness like a fugitive white dove in the morning. ~ J. Valor

It is no secret that the moon has no light of her own, but is, as it were, a mirror, receiving brightness from the influence of the sun. ~ Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

My first memory is of the brightness of light ... light all around. I was sitting among pillows on a quilt on the ground ... very large white pillows ... ~ Georgia O'Keeffe

Envy, if surrounded on all sides by the brightness of another's prosperity, like the scorpion confined within a circle of fire, will sting itself to death. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

From that very first moment, with her looking up at that stairway that led from the darkness of the basement to the brightness of the world above, all she wanted to do was be part of something. That was all she ever wanted, not just to see, but to be seen. Not just to hear, but to be heard. Not just to feel, but to be felt by other people, to touch them, affect them in some way, to make their lives different, and to be made different by them. And here, on this night, at this moment, on this rooftop, she knew that time had finally come. ~ Robert Beatty

He needed her so badly, to reassure himself of his
own existence, that he never comprehended the desperation in her dazzling, permanent smile, the terror in the brightness with which she faced the world, or the reasons why she hid when she couldn't manage to beam ... every moment she
spent in the world was full of panic, so she smiled and smiled and maybe once a week she locked the door and shook and felt like a husk, like an empty peanut-shell, a monkey without a nut. ~ Salman Rushdie

The "brightness" of the 15 percent might or might not indicate a profound feeling for the causes of things; it is largely verbal and symbol-manipulating, and is almost certainly partly an obsessional device not to know and touch risky matter, just as Freud long ago pointed out that the nagging questions of small children are a substitute for asking the forbidden questions. ~ Paul Goodman

The sun's brightness painted our shadows on the ground. ~ Ishmael Beah

The wicked will be consumed with the spirit of his mouth and destroyed with the brightness of his coming. ~ William Pocock

Buddy hugged his father,and promptly, with a dreadful brightness, came over to me and held out his had.I shook it. It felt fat and moist. ~ Sylvia Plath

But woe to him, who left to moan, Reviews the hours of brightness gone. ~ Euripides

Don't you wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence? There's one marked 'Brightness,' but it doesn't work. ~ Gallagher

He moved on from Anatole France to the eighteenth-century philosophers, though not to Rousseau. Perhaps this was because one side of him - the side easily moved by passion - was too close to Rousseau. Instead, he approached the author of 'Candide', who was closer to another side of him - the cool and richly intellectual side.
At twenty-nine, life no longer held any brightness for him, but Voltaire supplied him with man-made wings.
Spreading these man-made wings, he soared with ease into the sky. The higher he flew, the farther below him sank the joys and sorrows of a life bathed in the light of intellect. Dropping ironies and smiles upon the shabby towns below, he climbed through the open sky, straight for the sun - as if he had forgotten about that ancient Greek who plunged to his death in the ocean when his man-made wings were singed by the sun. ~ Ryunosuke Akutagawa

Christ illustrates the purport of life as He descends from His transfiguration to toil, and goes forward to exchange that robe of heavenly brightness for the crown of thorns. ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin

It is easy to acknowledge, but almost impossible to realize for long, that we are mirrors whose brightness, if we are bright, is wholly derived from the sun that shines upon us. ~ C.S. Lewis

Work in me more profound and abiding repentance;
Give me the fullness of godly grief, that trembles and fears, yet ever trust and loves, which is ever powerful, and ever confident;
Grant through the tears of repentance I may see more clearly the brightness and glories of the saving cross. ~ Arthur Bennett

One of the rules of Greek lament poetry is that it mustn't mention the dead by name in case of invoking a ghost. Maybe the 'Iliad,' crowded with names, is more than a poem. Maybe it's a dangerous piece of the brightness of both this world and the next. ~ Alice Oswald

Luckily Shasta had lived all his life too far south in Calormen to have heard the tales that were whispered in Tashbaan about a dreadful Narnian demon that appeared in the form of a lion. And of course he knew none of the true stories about Aslan, the great Lion, the son of the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea, the HIgh King above all high kings in Narnia. But after one glance at the Lion's face he slipped out of the saddle and fell at its feet. He couldn't say anything but then he didn't want to say anything, and he knew he needn't say anything.

The High King above all kings stooped towards him. Its mane, and some strange and solemn perfume that hung about the mane, was all round him. It touched his forehead with its tongue. He lifted his face and their eyes met. Then instantly the pale brightness of the mist and fiery brightness of the Lion rolled themselves together into a swirling glory and gathered themselves up and disappeared. He was alone with the horse on a grassy hillside under a blue sky. And there were birds singing. ~ C.S. Lewis

The most striking impression was that of an overwhelming bright light. I had seen under similar conditions the explosion of a large amount - 100 tons - of normal explosives in the April test, and I was flabbergasted by the new spectacle. We saw the whole sky flash with unbelievable brightness in spite of the very dark glasses we wore. Our eyes were accommodated to darkness, and thus even if the sudden light had been only normal daylight it would have appeared to us much brighter than usual, but we know from measurements that the flash of the bomb was many times brighter than the sun. In a fraction of a second, at our distance, one received enough light to produce a sunburn. I was near Fermi at the time of the explosion, but I do not remember what we said, if anything. I believe that for a moment I thought the explosion might set fire to the atmosphere and thus finish the earth, even though I knew that this was not possible. ~ Emilio Segre

Your Business is to shine; therefore you must by all means prevent the shining of others, for their Brightness may make yours the less distinguished. ~ Benjamin Franklin

The shadows of our own desires stand between us and our better angels, and thus their brightness is eclipsed. ~ Charles Dickens

But the older priestesses had explained to her, as they gathered in the courtyard, that the Moon God was effacing the brightness of the Goddess, and she ran out with them joyously to join in the shrieks of the women to frighten him away. Later it had been explained to her how the sun and moon moved, and why, now and again, one of them crossed the face of the other; that it was in the way of nature, and the common people's beliefs about the face of the Gods were symbols which these people, at the current state of their evolution, needed to visualize the great truths. Some day all men and women would know the inner truths, but now they needed them not. ~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

Be a lamp in brightness, and make the works of darkness cease, so that whenever your doctrine shines, no one may dare to heed the desires of darkness. ~ Ephrem The Syrian

Every light has a point where it is brightest and a point toward which it wanders to lose itself completely. It must be intercepted to fulfill its mission; it cannot function in a void. Light can go straight, penetrate and turn back, be reflected and deflected, gathered and spread, bent as by a soap bubble, made to sparkle and be blocked. Where it is no more is blackness, and where it begins is the core of its brightness. The journey of rays from that central core to the outposts of blackness is the adventure and drama of light. ~ Josef Von Sternberg

A Cheerful friend is like a sunny day, which sheds its brightness on all around. ~ John Lubbock

She then thought the land enchanted into everlasting brightness and happiness; she fancied, then, that into a region so lovely no bale or woe could enter, but would be charmed away and disappear before the sight of the glorious guardian mountains. Now she knew the truth, that earth has no barrier which avails against agony. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Men in a state of nature, uncivilized nations, children, have a great fondness for colors in their utmost brightness, and especially for yellow-red. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

There are planes that are not light. There are planes that are shadowy. But that is not our interest in meditation. We want brightness, ecstasy, brilliance beyond comprehension. ~ Frederick Lenz

We get very few of he true images in our heads of the kind I am talking about, the kind which become more and more vivid for us as if the passage of the years did not obscure their reality but, year by year, drew off another veil to expose a meaning which we had only dimly surmised at first. Very probably the last veil will not be removed, for there are not enough years, but the brightness of the image increases and our conviction increases that the brightness is meaning, or the legend of meaning, and without the image our lives would be nothing except an old piece of film rolled on a spool and thrown into a desk drawer of unanswered letters. ~ Robert Penn Warren

That she could smile while I hurt in ways I could not understand - it broke something in me. I did not understand the heart of her, then. She is made of brightness, too much for sorrow. Such a glad spirit - I am humbled now that she shared it with me. ~ Ann Aguirre

It's impossible to imagine my mother like that. I cannot imagine her softened, thawed, decayed, becoming sweeter as she spoils. I imagine her trapped in a mirror instead. A permanent image of her locked into a rectangle of hard brightness, open-eyed. ~ Laura Kasischke

Squeeze your eyes closed, as tight as you can, and think of all your favorite autumns, crisp and perfect, all bound up together like a stack of cards. That is what it is like, the awful, wonderful brightness of Fairy colors. Try to smell the hard, pale wood sending up sharp, green smoke into the afternoon. To feel the mellow, golden sun on your skin, more gentle and cozier and more golden than even the light of your favorite reading nook at the close of the day. ~ Catherynne M Valente

Brightness ... I believe you stray into sarcasm."
"Funny.I thought I'd run straight into it,screaming at the top of my lungs. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Juliette Ferrars." A voice detonates my name. There's a heavy boot pressed on my back and I can't lift my head to distingush who's speaking to me.
"Weston, dim the lights and release her. I want to see her face." The command is cool and strong like steel, dangerously calm, effortlessly powerful.
The brightness is reduced to a level I'm able to tolerate. The imprint of a boot is carved into my back but no longer settled on my skin. I lift my head and look up.
I'm immediately struck by his youth. He can't be much older than me. It's obvious he's in charge of something, though I have no idea what. His skin is flawless, unblemished, his jawline sharp and strong. His eyes are the palest shade of emerald I've ever seen.
He's beautiful.
His crooked smile is calculated evil. ~ Tahereh Mafi