Darkens Quotes

People talk about nightfall, or night falling, or dusk falling, and it's never seemed right to me. Perhaps they once meant befalling. As in night befalls. As in night happens. Perhaps they, whoever they were, thought of a falling sun. That might be it, except that that ought to give us dayfall. Day fell on Rupert the Bear. And we know, if we've ever read a book, that day doesn't fall or rise. It breaks. In books, day breaks, and night falls.
In life, night rises from the ground. The day hangs on for as long as it can, bright and eager, absolutely and positively the last guest to leave the party, while the ground darkens, oozing night around your ankles, swallowing for ever that dropped contact lens, making you miss that low catch in the gully on the last ball of the last over. ~ Hugh Laurie

Last night I heard a robin singing in the rain,
And the raindrop's patter made a sweet refrain,
Making all the sweeter the music of the strain.
So, I thought, when trouble comes, as trouble will,
Why should I stop singing? Just beyond the hill
It may be that sunshine floods the green world still.
He who faces the trouble with a heart of cheer
Makes the burden lighter. If there falls a tear,
Sweeter is the cadence in the song we hear.
I have learned your lesson, bird with dappled wing,
Listening to your music with its lilt of spring
When the storm-cloud darkens, then's the TIME to sing. ~ Eben E. Rexford

The desire for sudden change and the thought of their realization by force often appears among men like a disease and gains ground mainly in young brains; only these brains do not think as they should, do not amount to anything in the end and the heads that think thus do not remain long on their shoulders. For it is not human desires that dispose and administer the things of this world. Desire is like a wind, it sifts the dust from one place to another, sometimes darkens the whole horizon, but in the end calms down and leaves the old and eternal picture of the world. Lasting deeds are realized on this earth only by God's will, and man is only His humble and blind tool. ~ Ivo Andric

The season of the world before us will be like no other in the history of mankind. Satan has unleashed every evil, every scheme, every blatant, vile perversion ever known to man in any generation. Just as this is the dispensation of the fullness of times, so it is also the dispensation of the fullness of evil. We and our wives and husbands, our children, and our members must find safety. There is no safety in the world: wealth cannot provide it, enforcement agencies cannot assure it, membership in this Church alone cannot bring it.
As the evil night darkens upon this generation, we must come to the temple for light and safety. In our temples we find quiet, sacred havens where the storm cannot penetrate to us. There are hosts of unseen sentinels watching over and guarding our temples. Angels attend every door. As it was in the days of Elisha, so it will be for us: "Those that be with us are more than they that be against us."
Before the Savior comes the world will darken. There will come a period of time where even the elect will lose hope if they do not come to the temples. The world will be so filled with evil that the righteous will only feel secure within these walls. The saints will come here not only to do vicarious work, but to find a haven of peace. They will long to bring their children here for safety's sake.
I believe we may well have living on the earth now or very soon the boy or babe who will be the prophet of the Church when the Savior comes. Thos ~ Vaughn J. Featherstone

Like the hills under
dusk
you fall away
from the light:
you deepen: the green
light darkens
and you are nearly lost:
only so much light as
stars keep
manifests your face:
I feel the total night
in myself rave
for the light along your lips. ~ A.R. Ammons

God darkens our awareness in order to keep us safe. When we cannot chart our own course, we become vulnerable to God's protection, and the darkness becomes a "guiding night," a "night more kindly than the dawn."5 ~ Gerald G. May

Calvin clears his throat. "Do you have anything to drink?"

Booze. Right. This is the perfect situation for some booze. I jump up, and he laughs, awkwardly. "I should have thought to get champagne or something."

"You bought the dinner," I remind him. "Obviously the champagne was on my list and I dropped the ball."

Pulling a bottle of vodka from the freezer, I set it on the counter and then realize I have nothing to mix it with. And I finished the last beer the other night.

"I have vodka."

He smiles valiantly. "Straight-up vodka it is."

"It's Stoli."

"Straight-up mediocre vodka it is," he amends with a cheeky wink.

His phone buzzes, and it sets off a weird, giddy reaction in my chest. We both have full lives beyond this apartment, which remain complete mysteries to each other. One difference between us is that Calvin likely doesn't care about my life outside of this. Yet I care intensely about his. Having him here feels like finding the key to unlock a mysterious chest that's been sitting in the corner of my bedroom for a year.

Buzz. Buzz.

Looking up, I meet his eyes. They're wide, almost as if he's not sure whether to answer.

"You can get it," I assure him. "It's okay."

His face darkens with a flush. "I . . . don't think I should."

"It's your phone! Of course it's okay to answer it."

"It's not . . ."

Buzz. Buzz.
Christina Lauren

Sunday Morning

I

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

II

Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.

III

Jove in the clouds had his inh ~ Wallace Stevens

The steam of meat darkens the light of the spirit ... One hardly can have virtue when one enjoys meat meals and feasts ... ~ Saint Basil

Faith spans years, generations, millenia. God's silence marks the pages of the biblical narrative more than I ever knew.
His silence stretches over years, over countries over generations. but its not an abandonment, it's an invitation.
It asks for our trust, for our hope, for us to stay as the night darkens around us and we can't hear a thing. ~ Addie Zierman

It is strange how a memory will grow into a wax figure, how the cherub grows suspiciously prettier as its frame darkens with age-strange, strange are the mishaps of memory. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

London darkens the map like England's bowel polyp. There is a whole country up here. ~ David Mitchell

His face darkens. He glares at me and I glare back. "Fine!" he yells. "I'm jealous! Are you happy now!"

And then he jerks is head toward mine and he kisses me. On the lips. ~ Jenny Han

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life. ~ James Wright

When thou are not pleased, beloved, Then my heart is sad and darkened, As the shining river darkens When the clouds drop shadows on it! When thou smilest, my beloved, Then my troubled heart is brightened, As in sunshine gleam the ripples That the cold wind makes in rivers. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Do you have a piece of paper I could write on?"

I jump up too fast. "Sure. Just one? Do you - of course you need something to write with. Sorry. Here." I grab him a paper from my deskdrawer and one of my myriad pencils, and he uses the first Children of Hypnos book as a flat surface to write on. When I'm sure he's writing something for me to read right now, I say, "I thought you only needed to do that when other people were around?"

He etches one careful line after the next. He frowns, shakes his head. "Sometimes it's . . . tough to say things. Certain things." His voice is hardly a whisper. I sit down beside him again, but his big hand blocks my view of the words. He stops writing, leaves the paper there, and stares.

Then he hands it to me and looks the other direction.

Can I kiss you?

"Um," is a delightfully complex word. "Um" means "I want to say something but don't know what it is," and also "You have caught me off guard," and also "Am I dreaming right now? Someone please slap me."

I say "um," then. Wallace's entire head-neck region is already flushed with color, but the "um" darkens it a few shades, and goddammit, he was nervous about asking me and I made it worse. What good is "um" when I should say "YES PLEASE NOW"? Except there's no way I'm going to say "YES PLEASE NOW" because I feel like my body is one big wired time bomb of organs and if Wallace so much as brushes my hand, I'm going to jump out of my ~ Francesca Zappia

Laughter changes to screams, blood stains pastel stones, real smoke darkens the special effect stuff made for television. ~ Suzanne Collins

Ambition, the soldier's virtue, rather makes choice of loss, than gain which darkens him. ~ William Shakespeare

Autumn"

Again the wind
flakes gold-leaf from the trees
and the painting darkens -
as if a thousand penitents
kissed an icon
till it thinned
back to bare wood,
without diminishment.

The Paris ReviewIssue 109, Winter 1988 ~ Jane Hirshfield

Another gift is Pansy's love. Bathed in that love, Lyle in turn is gentle with other kids, especially with kids uneasy under their bragging, kids really as frightened as rabbits when a hawk darkens their world. Lyle's underweight presence steadies them, and he is sought after - but not exactly as a friend. He is more like Anansi the helpful spider of his favorite tales - a quiet ally who prefers his own company but skitters over to join you when you need him. ~ Kate Bernheimer

Let it come, let it come The time that we will love. So patient have I been That I've forgetten everything: Fear and suffering Have departed for the heavens, And an unholy thirst Darkens my veins. Let it come, let it come The time that we will love. Like the field Left to forgetfulness, Growing and flowering With incense and weeds, And the fierce buzzing Of dirty flies. Let it come, let it come The time that we will love. I loved the desert, burnt orchards, musty shops, tepid drinks. I dragged myself through stinking alleys, and with eyes closed I offered myself to the sun, the god of fire. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Whenever the birds sing, I will remember you Claire. As long as the sun shines, I will love you. And when the sun darkens everything and the dead sky falls, I will hope to see life again, I will hope to see you. There was never much hope but a fool's hope and a fool am I. ~ Huseyn Raza

His look darkens and he heaves me against his chest forcing me to look at him. What I do know is that you are disrespectful and disobedient. And that is something that we have to change, don't we? ~ Aileen Rose

So it is with time, that lightens what is dark, that darkens what is light. ~ Samuel Beckett

Examine your own hearts. Do you see there any habit or custom which you know is wrong in the sight of God? If you do, don't delay for a moment in attacking it. Resolve at once to lay it aside. Nothing darkens the eyes of the mind so much, and deadens the conscience so surely, as an allowed sin. It may be a little one, but it is not any less dangerous. ~ J.C. Ryle

Do not breed. Nothing gives less pleasure than childbearing. Pregnancies are damaging to health, spoil the figure, wither the charms, and it's the cloud of uncertainty forever hanging over these events that darkens a husband's mood. ~ Marquis De Sade

Death darkens his eyes, and unplumes his wings, Yet the sweetest song is the last he sings: Live so, my Love, that when death shall come, Swan-like and sweet it may waft thee home. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

On an impulse he cannot explain, he buys himself a one-way ticket - and the evening of that very same day finds him wandering the streets of the old colonial quarter of the Colombian town. Girls in love with boys on scooters, screeching birds, tropical flowers on winding vines, saudade, and solitude, One Hundred Years of it; and then, as the tropical dusk darkens the corners of the Plaza de la Adana, he sees a woman, her fingers toying with a necklace of lapis lazuli, and they stand still as the world eddies about them. ~ David Mitchell

But she feared time itself, and read on Lady Bruton's face, as if it had been a dial cut in impassive stone, the dwindling of life; how year by year her share was sliced; how little the margin that remained was capable any longer of stretching, of absorbing, as in the youthful years, the colours, salts, tones of existence, so that she filled the room she entered, and felt often as she stood hesitating one moment on the threshold of her drawing-room, an exquisite suspense, such as might stay a diver before plunging while the sea darkens and brightens beneath him, and the waves which threaten to break, but only gently split their surface, roll and conceal and encrust ~ Virginia Woolf

Wherever you are, stay there. I will find you. The world darkens and narrows; the places where we can communicate, where we can meet, are diminishing and departing. ~ Ian McDonald

He touches my face.
There is something different in his touch. It feels like he's saying good-bye, and I know a moment of panic.
But my dream sky darkens and sleep's moon fills the horizon.
"Don't leave me." I thrash in the sheets.
"I'm not, Mac."
I know I am dreaming then, because dreams are home to the absurd and what he says next is beyond absurd.
"You're leaving me, Rainbow Girl. ~ Karen Marie Moning

What beauty. I saw clouds and their light shadows on the distant dear earth ... . The water looked like darkish, slightly gleaming spots ... . When I watched the horizon, I saw the abrupt, contrasting transition from the earth's light-colored surface to the absolutely black sky. I enjoyed the rich color spectrum of the earth. It is surrounded by a light blue aureole that gradually darkens, becoming turquiose, dark blue, violet, and finally coal black. ~ Yuri Gagarin

How is it that artists keep their powers of perception even in the days when life darkens? he asked himself. Thinking about it and taking as his model Grandfather, an artist in religion who had given to its study the devotion and the hours of discipline that a violinist devotes to his instrument, he thought that their perception was born of the faculty of wonder, deepening to meditation and to penetrating sight and so strong that it could last out a lifetime. Grandfather wondered, all day and every day, at the wisdom of God and the beauty of the world, and Ferranti had wondered at the waste and pain and frustration of life. ~ Elizabeth Goudge

The night darkens, the stars unfriendly, the cold a knife upon her neck - but Nella waits, until she can no longer difference between Johannes and the darkness that carries him away. ~ Jessie Burton

So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty. ~ Jack Kerouac

No one in hundreds of years has had that kind of power -- the power to control the elements. Not since the slaughter of the 1600's ... She has saved her greatest warrior for the moment when you are most needed. It is you, Isi, not us; you are the one destined to save the planet. We boys are just window dressing while you are the last knight of the Earth, pulled from her core and given from her heart to save us all. Haven't you noticed it? The flowers turn their faces to you, as if you were the sun. The most timid and previously abused bird curls up in your arms, as if it were her most natural place. When you are sad, the sky shares your sorrow and darkens in empathy. When you are happy, the moon throws herself into eclipse and the stars themselves wink at you to celebrate your joy. You are her daughter, the daughter of Earth, and she smiles when she sees you. ~ Sarah Warden

I see less and less ... I need to avoid lateral light, which darkens my colors. Nevertheless, I always paint at the times of day most propitious for me, as long as my paint tubes and brushes are not mixed up ... I will paint almost blind, as Beethoven composed completely deaf. ~ Claude Monet

Some memories never heal. Rather than fading with the passage of time, those memories become the only things that are left behind when all else is abraded. The world darkens, like electric bulbs going out one by one. I am aware that I am not a safe person. ~ Han Kang

The young, thought Sharma, have this ability to suffer much in the time of grief, unlike the old who have seen enough sorrow and know it shall not stay forever. The young hardly know grief is like a thunderstorm. It comes whispering softly at first, a distant hum, a halo of vehemence in the sky, and then there is a sudden, violent, and copious outpouring; that drenches everything that comes in its way. It darkens the sky and turns every inch of green terrain dusky grey. But they don't realize its ferocity will become less with the lapse of time, and the sun will shine bright and warm, and wash the land golden, and no one would be able to tell there had been a storm. They scarcely understand this essential unfolding of grief isn't meant to last forever, and eventually, it shall come to pass. ~ Neena H. Brar

The worst of all things that haunt poor mortal men," said I; "and that is, in all its nakedness - 'Fear!' Fear that will not have light or sound, that will not bear with reason, that deafens and darkens and overwhelms. ~ H.G.Wells

Much is being said of deep crime which darkens heaven's windows. We shudder at immoralities which terrify us. We nearly panic at the divorce frequency and broken homes and delinquent children about us. But perhaps sometimes we should stop to reflect that all are not criminals, all are not bad, and all are not rebellious. . . . The gospel of Jesus Christ teaches men to live righteously, to make the family supreme, the home inviolate. It moves the characters of its adherents toward faultlessness. It is the true way. If lived rightly it will ennoble men toward Godhood ~ Spencer W. Kimball

Now that it's too late, now that I lie here dying on this bloodstained sand, I finally get it.

I understand, now.

I understand. I know what he meant. My father told me that to know
the enemy is half the battle. I know you, now. That's right.

It's you.

All of you who sit in comfort and watch me die, who see the twitch of
my bowels through my own eyes: You are my enemy.

Corpses lie scattered around me, gleanings left in a wheat field by a careless reaper. Berne's body cools beneath the bend of my back, and I can't feel him anymore. The sky darkens over my head - but no, I think that's my eyes; Pallas' light seems to have faded.

Every drop of the blood that soaks into this sand stains my hands and the hands of the monsters that put me here.

That's you, again.

It's your money that supports me, and everyone like me; it's your lust that we serve.

You could thumb your emergency cut-off, turn your eyes from the screen, walk out of the theatre, close the book . . .

But you don't.

You are my accomplice, and my destroyer.

My nemesis.

My insatiable blood-crazed god.

Ah, ahhh, Christ . . . it hurts. ~ Matthew Woodring Stover

Love is the tyrant of the heart; it darkens
Reason, confounds discretion; deaf to Counsel
It runs a headlong course to desperate madness. ~ John Ford

Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

The sky darkens from ultramarine to indigo. God bless the namers of oil paints and high-class women's underwear, Snowman thinks. Rose-Petal Pink, Crimson Lake, Sheer Mist, Burnt Umber, Ripe Plum, Indigo, Ultramarine – they're fantasies in themselves, such words and phrases. It's comforting to remember that Homo sapiens sapiens was once so ingenious with language, and not only with language. Ingenious in every direction at once. ~ Margaret Atwood

A society which abandons children and the elderly severs its roots and darkens its future. ~ Pope Francis

WINTERS WERE TOUGH in the Midwest, then and now. I never liked winter. And I hate snow. It's white, but it darkens your heart. ~ Clara Cannucciari

Every friendship travels at sometime through the black valley of despair. This tests every aspect of your affection. You lose the attraction and the magic. Your sense of each other darkens and your presence is sore. If you can come through this time, it can purify with your love, and falsity and need will fall away. It will bring you onto new ground where affection can grow again. ~ John O'Donohue

If the lamb sees the knife, she panics. Her panic seeps into her meat, darkens it, fouls the flavor. ~ George R R Martin

Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear; only love can do that. Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illumines it. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Heart of my heart, we are one with the wind,
One with the clouds that are whirled o'er the lea,
One in many, O broken and blind,
One as the waves are at one with the sea!
Ay! when life seems scattered apart,
Darkens, ends as a tale that is told,
One, we are one, O heart of my heart,
One, still one, while the world grows old. ~ Alfred Noyes

To a Boy

Boy,
you are a hidden watering place under the trees
where, as the day darkens, gentle beasts with calm eyes
appear one after another.

Even if the sun drops flaming at the end of the fields where grass stirs greenly
and a wind pregnant with coolness and night-dew agitates your leafy bush,
it is only a premonition.

The tree of solitude that soars with ferocity,
crowned with a swirling night,
still continues in your dark place.

-Translated from the Japanese by Hiroaki Sato ~ Mutsuo Takahashi

The evening darkens over
After a day so bright,
The windcapt waves discover
That wild will be the night. ~ Robert Bridges

PANOTII LOOKS PUT OUT ABOUT BEING LEFT BEHIND AND dogs my steps as I stow his tack under the deep overhang on the south side of the wizard's hovel. There's plenty of grass here, water at the lake, and it's not that cold yet, despite the shift in seasons. If the rains start before we get back, the horses can take shelter under the overhang. I'm not worried about them wandering off. Not one of them has stepped outside of the large makeshift corral of God Bolt pits since we got here.

"You can't come with us," I tell him. "It'll be cold and slippery. And big monsters will want to eat you." He tosses his head, snorting. "Really big monsters. There might be Dragons. And the Hydra. And I can't vouch for the friendliness of the Ipotane toward regular horses." I blow gently into his nose. Panotii chuffs back. "You'll be safe here, and if anyone tries to steal you, Grandpa Zeus will throw down a thunderbolt. Boom! No more horse thief."

"Zeus may have better things to do than babysit our horses," Flynn says, stowing his own equine gear next to mine.

I glance northward toward the Gods' mountain home and speak loudly. "In that case, I'm announcing right now that I'll make an Olympian stink if anything happens to my horse." Flynn looks nervous and moves away from me like he's expecting a God Bolt to come thundering down.

"She's not kidding." Sunlight glints off Griffin's windblown hair. Thick black stubble darkens his jaw. He flashes me a smi ~ Amanda Bouchet

We must eliminate the individual tendency to selfishness that snares the soul, shrinks the heart, and darkens the mind. ~ Spencer W. Kimball

What can be salvaged from your life? A pain
that gently darkens over heart and brain,
a fairy's touch, a cobweb's weight of pain,
now makes me tremble at your right to live. ~ Robert Lowell

We are born in debt, owing the world a death. This is the shadow that darkens every cradle. Trauma is what happens when you catch a surprise glimpse of that darkness, the coming annihilation not only of the body and the mind but also, seemingly, of the world. ~ David J. Morris

It is useless work that darkens the heart. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Sophisticated people seem to think that "the truth" must always be dark, disappointing, disillusioning. But this is not so at all. Most of the time, darkness, disappointment, and disillusionment are the illusion.
Truth is neutral. Our decisions determine what darkens and what lightens our lives. ~ Orson Scott Card

The sea darkens And a wild duck s call Is faintly white. ~ Matsuo Basho

A lighthouse...speaks to the guiding nature of hope. By equal turns, it illuminates and darkens, so the way forward can be chosen in the light, and trusted in the darkness. ~ Michael J. Fox

Phases of the Love Cloud
Week 1: A cloud of feelings form around you.

Week 2: It has the texture of cotton candy with an implied sweetness and suggestion of sensuality.

Week 3: It lightens to a blinding brightness, as if barely covering the sun.

Week 4: The texture become less permeable and hardens like sugar caramelized when making leche flan on too high a fire.

Week 5: The cloud darkens gradually and lightning blinks
intermittently like a firefly convention in Georgia.

Week 6: There's an eerie silence gathering around the cloud
which is growing way out of proportion.

Week 8: 200 MPH winds hit, torrential rains
and the roof comes off the house.

Week 10: There's not a cloud in the sky. The sun appears.

Weeks11-25: Inside you there's a storm of tears
that makes Noah's flood look a kiddie-pool.

Week 26: A new cloud of feelings form around you... ~ Beryl Dov

In obedience there is always fear, and fear darkens the mind. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

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

The quest for riches darkens the sense of right and wrong. ~ Antiphanes

A dark and terrible side of this sense of community of interests is the fear of a horrible common destiny which in these days of atomic weapons darkens men's minds all around the globe. ~ Emily Greene Balch

The flames scorch the edges of her leather gloves, but she comes away with a small white flower the shape of a teardrop. When touched it expands and darkens to the color of blood before wilting and turning to ash. I've never seen anything like it. Nor do I particularly give a piss about the showmanship. It's too cold for that. ~ Pierce Brown

Dear Halford, When we were together last, you gave me a very particular and interesting account of the most remarkable occurrences of your early life, previous to our acquaintance; and then you requested a return of confidence from me. Not being in a story-telling humour at the time, I declined, under the plea of having nothing to tell, and the like shuffling excuses, which were regarded as wholly inadmissible by you; for though you instantly turned the conversation, it was with the air of an uncomplaining, but deeply injured man, and your face was overshadowed with a cloud which darkened it to the end of our interview, and, for what I known, darkens it still; for your letters have, ever since, been distinguished by a certain dignified, semi-melancholy stiffness and reserve, that would have been very affecting, if my conscience had accused me of deserving it. ~ Anne Bronte

In this fairy tale, I'm not the hero who scales the drawbridge. I'm the wolf who darkens the door." He was so close now that he was nearly pressed against her. "And when I do valiantly scale bridges to save the princess, it's only because I intend to burn those bridges down. ~ Kait Ballenger

Every man who begets a free act projects his personality into the infinite. If he gives a poor man a penny grudgingly, that penny pierces the poor man's hand, falls, pierces the earth, bores holes in suns, crosses the firmament and compromises the universe. If he begets an impure act, he perhaps darkens thousands of hearts whom he does not know, who are mysteriously linked to him, and who need this man to be pure as a traveler dying of thirst needs the Gospel's draught of water. A charitable act, an impulse of real pity sings for him the divine praises, from the time of Adam to the end of the ages; it cures the sick, consoles those in despair, calms storms, ransoms prisoners, converts the infidel and protects mankind ~ Leon Bloy

Faith is a light of such supreme brilliance that it dazzles the mind and darkens all its visions of other realities, but in the end when we become used to the new light, we gain a new view of all reality transfigured and elevated in the light itself. ~ Thomas Merton

And what if you weren't a jinni? What if you were free from their rules?"
I stare at him. His jaw tightens, his eyes steely with determination that frightens me to my core. A cloud drifts across the face of the crescent moon, and the courtyard darkens. Here and there, the grass is still bent where Aladdin and I danced just hours earlier. I drop my gaze and glare at it, shaking from head to toe.
"Don't say it, Aladdin. Don't you even think it." Dread rises in me like a storm cloud, dark and menacing.
Aladdin moves closer. He takes my hands. His skin is warm and crackling with energy, setting me on fire.
"I have one wish left," he murmurs. "And this one is for you."
"No, Aladdin! Don't speak it. Don't make the Forbidden Wish. The cost - "
"Damn the cost. Zahra, I wish - "
I stop him with a kiss.
Because it is the first thing I think of to stop the terrible words. Because he fills me with light and hope and deep, deep fear. Because I have been longing to for days. ~ Jessica Khoury

The film medium is some sort of magic. I think also it's a magic that every frame comes and stands still for a fraction of a second and then it darkens. A half part of the time when you see a picture you sit in complete darkness. Isn't that fascinating? That is magic. ~ Ingmar Bergman

God sometimes sends flowers -but I like it best when he darkens the sky and lights up an infinitude of worlds ... ~ John Geddes