Dark Days Quotes

1. "He was a compact, clearcut man, with precise features, a lot of very soft black hair, and thoughtful dark brown eyes. He had a look of wariness, which could change when he felt relaxed or happy, which was not often in these difficult days, into a smile of amused friendliness and pleasure which aroused feelings of warmth, and something more, in many women."
Author: A.S. Byatt

2. "It's dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you're feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days…Lightly, lightly – it's the best advice ever given me…to throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That's why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling…"
Author: Aldous Huxley

3. "And in our dark days, with so many threatening clouds on the horizon, he concluded, we puff up a story like this to drug people, to distract theirattention from the serious problems anddivert them with a Romeo-and-Julietstory, one scripted, however, by a soap opera writer."
Author: Andrea Camilleri

4. "If you'd rather skip lunch, that's fine with me. I've got some things to take care of anyway before I can leave the store to Robin for the weekend.""I don't want to skip lunch," he bit out. "I'm starving."Her temper got the better of her. "Fine, but if you plan on snapping at me the whole time then I'd just as soon you eat alone."His gaze darkened. "I'm not snapping."She poked him in the chest. "Yes, you are."Leo started to speak, then paused and let out a huge breath. "Sorry. Damn, I'm just having one of those days."Amanda smiled and patted his cheek. "You can tell me all about it over a bowl of fettuccine."
Author: Anne Rainey

5. "Every second a million petitions wing past the ear of God. Let it be door number two. Get Janet through this. Make Mom fall in love again, make the pain go away, make this key fit. If I fish this cove, plant this field, step into this darkness, give me the strength to see it through. Help my marriage, my sister, me. What will this fund be worth in thirteen days? In thirteen years? Will I be around in thirteen years? And the most unanswerable of unanswerables: Don't let me die. And: What will happen afterward? Chandeliers and choirs? Flocks of souls like starlings harrying across the sky? Eternity; life again as bacteria, or as sunflowers, or as a leatherback turtle; suffocating blackness; cessation of all cellular function."
Author: Anthony Doerr

6. "I had diverged, digressed, wandered, and become wild. I didn't embrace the word as my new name because it defined negative aspects of my circumstances or life, but because even in my darkest days—those very days in which I was naming myself—I saw the power of the darkness. Saw that, in fact, I had strayed and that I was a stray and that from the wild places my straying had brought me, I knew things I couldn't have known before."
Author: Cheryl Strayed

7. "I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe."
Author: Dalai Lama

8. "Long, dark, and lovely she had been, in those days before her mind broke and the parts scattered and she let them go."
Author: Daniel Woodrell

9. "I do know now I was never forgotten. And I know something else and as an apostle of our master Jesus Christ, I proclaim with all the certainty and conviction of my heart and soul, neither are you. You are not forgotten! Sisters, wherever you are, whatever the circumstances may be, you are not forgotten. No matter how dark your days may seem, no matter how insignificant you may feel, no matter how overshadowed you think you may be, your Heavenly Father has not forgotten you. In fact, He loves you with an infinite love. Just think of it! You are known and remembered by the most majestic, powerful and glorious Being in the universe. You are loved by the King of infinite space and everlasting time. He who created and knows the stars knows you and your name. You are the daughters of His kingdom!"
Author: Dieter F. Uchtdorf

10. "Wherever you are, whatever your circumstances may be, you are not forgotten. No matter how dark your days may seem, no matter how insignificant you may feel, no matter how overshadowed you think you may be, your Heavenly Father has not forgotten you."
Author: Dieter F. Uchtdorf

11. "Boy, you resolve not to go down the path of a Dark Lord and the universe starts messing with you the instant the Hat comes off your head. Some days it just doesn't pay to fight destiny. Maybe I'll wait until tomorrow to start on my resolution to not be a Dark Lord."
Author: Eliezer Yudkowsky

12. "I think I was enchantedWhen first a sombre Girl —I read that Foreign Lady** —The Dark — felt beautiful —And whether it was noon at night —Or only Heaven — at Noon —For very Lunacy of LightI had not power to tell —The Bees — became as Butterflies —The Butterflies — as Swans —Approached — and spurned the narrow Grass —And just the meanest TunesThat Nature murmured to herselfTo keep herself in Cheer —I took for Giants — practisingTitanic Opera —The Days — to Mighty Metres stept —The Homeliest — adornedAs if unto a Jubilee'Twere suddenly confirmed —I could not have defined the change —Conversion of the MindLike Sanctifying in the Soul —Is witnessed — not explained —'Twas a Divine Insanity —The Danger to be SaneShould I again experience —'Tis Antidote to turn —To Tomes of solid Witchcraft —Magicians be asleep —But Magic — hath an ElementLike Deity — to keep —"
Author: Emily Dickinson

13. "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."
Author: Emily Greene Balch

14. "For some crime committed by my ancestors in the dark and forgotten days, I came into the world already tarred and feathered. With shyness. It hurts terribly -- every bit as much as hot tar choking every pore -- and I wish I could be rid of it. But it hurts a lot less than having someone try and peel the shyness off. That's like being flayed alive."
Author: Geraldine McCaughrean

15. "Great men die and are forgotten,Wise men speak; their words of wisdomPerish in the ears that hear them,Do not reach the generationsThat, as yet unborn, are waitingIn the great, mysterious darknessOf the speechless days that shall be!"
Author: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

16. "Cravats grow higher, as if they mean to protect the throat. The highest cravats in public life will be worn by Citizen Antoine Saint-Just, of the National Convention and the Committee of Public Safety. In the dark and harrowing days of '94, an obscene feminine inversion will appear: a thin crimson ribbon, worn round a bare white neck."
Author: Hilary Mantel

17. "Author's PrayerIf I speak for the dead, I mustleave this animal of my body,I must write the same poem over and overfor the empty page is a white flag of their surrender.If I speak of them, I must walkon the edge of myself, I must live as a blind manwho runs through the rooms withouttouching the furniture.Yes, I live. I can cross the streets asking "What yearis it?"I can dance in my sleep and laughin front of the mirror.Even sleep is a prayer, Lord,I will praise your madness, andin a language not mine, speakof music that wakes us, musicin which we move. For whatever I sayis a kind of petition and the darkest daysmust I praise."
Author: Ilya Kaminsky

18. "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"
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

19. "A DESCRIPTION OF HAPPINESS IN KOBENHAVN All this windless day snow fellinto the King's Gardenwhere I walked, perfecting and growing old,abandoning one by one everybody:randomly in love with the paradisefurnace of my mind. Now I sit in the dark,dreaming of a marble sunand its strictness. Thisis to tell you I am not coming back.To tell you instead of my private lifeamong people who must wrestle their heartsin order to feel anything, as though it wereunnatural. What I master by daystill lapses in the night. But I go onwith the cargo cult, blindly feeling the snowcome down, learning to flower by tightening."
Author: Jack Gilbert

20. "This thing was power from the Outside, and I was a grain of sand to its oncoming tide. But you know what? That grain of sand might be the last remnant of what had once been a mountain, but that which it is, it is. The tide comes and the tide goes. Let it hammer the grain of sand as it may. Let lofty mountains fear the slow, constant assault of the waters. Let the valleys shudder at the pitiless advance of ice. Let continents drown beneath the dark and rising tide. But that grain of sand? It isn't impressed. Let the tide roll in. The sand will still be there when it rolls out again. -Harry Dresden, Cold Days by Jim Butcher"
Author: Jim Butcher

21. "Colors. Would it be green or blue today? Maybe white—my favorite. A dark voice in the back of my mind offered no color at all as an alternative. I smothered that voice. The days of no color were simply too hard to bear. I needed color today."
Author: Julie Hockley

22. "If the city of London was a body, Whitechapel would be the groin; a great unwashed area that only showed itself under the cover of darkness, and only for the most salacious of entertainments. No one of "proper" birth ever admitted to going there, but they all did at one time or another—or at least they wanted to. Slumming was very popular these days."
Author: Kady Cross

23. "When I closed the door Grandmother was already seated at her spinning wheel. Her foot was on the treadle but her eyes were thoughtfully on me. The spinner was beautifully carved of dark oak with leaves twining their way round and round the outer rim. It must have been very old, as the designs were too fanciful to have been made i the new England. She called to me and asked me if I could spin. I told her yes, well enough, but that I could sew better, which was a statement only half true. A camp surgeon would have a better hand with a cleaver to a limb than I with a needle on the cloth. She spun the wool through knotted fingers glistening with sheep's oil and wrapped the threads neatly around the bobbin. Gently probing, she teased out the story of our days in Billerica just as she teased out the fine thread from the mix and jumble of the coarse wool in her hands."
Author: Kathleen Kent

24. "That was on a night in August. Dad Lewis died early that morning and the young girl Alice from next door got lost in the evening and then found her way home in the dark by the streetlights of town and so returned to the people who loved her. And in the fall the days turned cold and the leaves dropped off the trees and in the winter the wind blew from the mountains and out on the high plains of Holt County there were overnight storms and three-day blizzards."
Author: Kent Haruf

25. "I smiled, then shivered. "It's dark so early these days.""Today's Winter Solstice—shortest day of the year.""Gee, thanks a lot. Way to pick the shortest day of the bleeping year for my birthday."He laughed and put his arms around me. "Ah, but the longest night . . .""Scandalous!"He blinked innocently at me. "What? More time for movies, right?""Sure . . ."
Author: Kiersten White

26. "If you don't think your anxiety, depression, sadness and stress impact your physical health, think again. All of these emotions trigger chemical reactions in your body, which can lead to inflammation and a weakened immune system. Learn how to cope, sweet friend. There will always be dark days."
Author: Kris Carr

27. "That night was a dark day. Of course, all nights are dark days, because night is simply a badly lit version of day, ..."
Author: Lemony Snicket

28. "I'm a leukemia survivor, and I recall during my darkest days in the hospital when my friends would come to see me, especially the male friends - they had certain mortality issues with their visit."
Author: Lew Temple

29. "I have read my books by many lights, hoarding their beauty, their wit or wisdom against the dark days when I would have no book, nor a place to read. I have known hunger of the belly kind many times over, but I have known a worse hunger: the need to know and to learn."
Author: Louis L'Amour

30. "Each of us hides our own private Delaware lost in the gray jungle-tangle of our brains. No one else can know its depths and byways. No one else can know the height of its towers, the secrets of its tides and pools. There will always be lost lagoons to find there, and ruins almost hidden by the sand. There will always be monsters of great beauty and good men with ugly frowns. The forests are dark but lights bob among the branches. You are at home there, more at home than anyplace else, and yet you will never go there in your life. Their legends are yours. The pirates sale around the cape, a crew of skeletons in the rigging. Milkmaids run down mountain passes, dragging kites behind them. Wizards crack their backs after long days of chalk and incantation while above the crowded bazaars, over the golden temples, against the setting sun, around the ruddy minarets, the pterodactyls call out a long farewell."
Author: M.T. Anderson

31. "Your eye will no longer linger on the light, it will no longer trace constellations. You'll care only about the darkness and you'll watch it for hours, for days, maybe even for years, trying in vain to believe you're some kind of indispensable, universe-appointed sentinel, as if just by looking you could actually keep it all at bay."
Author: Mark Z. Danielewski

32. "Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds. Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the fires of justice. Let us be dissatisfied until they who live on the outskirts of Hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security. Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heap of history and every family will live in a decent, sanitary home. Let us be dissatisfied until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will betransformed into the bright tomorrows of quality integrated education."
Author: Martin Luther King Jr.

33. "In the cold dark days of the winter, dream about the flowers to get warmed up!"
Author: Mehmet Murat Ildan

34. "One voice whispered Beloved. She spread her colors on the starshine to embrace this land he had given her, and there were no shadows to darken the Fire soaring across the sand. Only light, only joy.No one heard Elisel scream. Only the dragons saw her rise into the night sky like an arrow, mute after that one keening wail. It was two days before she returned to Skybowl.Long before that, they found Sioned."
Author: Melanie Rawn

35. "He pulled his hand back, aware now that sweat beaded on his forehead and that Rale watched him, his eyes dark, intense. Errol licked his lips. Did he want a drink? He hadn't gone more than two days in a row without a drink since he was...since...Warrel...the quarry...stone."
Author: Patrick W. Carr

36. "What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me - into us - clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can't any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone's sake, the scanners do better. Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we'll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too."
Author: Philip K. Dick

37. "Are you okay with what we ordered?" Angeline asked him. "You didn't pipe up with any requests." Neil shook his head, face stoic. He kept his dark hair in a painfully short and efficient haircut. It was the kind of no-nonsense thing the Alchemists would've loved. "I can't waste time quibbling over trivial things like pepperoni and mushrooms. If you'd gone to my school in Devonshire, you'd understand. For one of my sophomore classes, they left us alone on the moors to fend for ourselves and learn survival skills. Spend three days eating twigs and heather, and you'll learn not to argue about any food coming your way." Angeline and Jill cooed as though that was the most rugged, manly thing they'd ever heard. Eddie wore an expression that reflected what I felt, puzzling over whether this guy was as serious as he seemed or just some genius with swoon-worthy lines."
Author: Richelle Mead

38. "I came to a happy Jewish family in dark days in Europe."
Author: Roald Hoffmann

39. "His angelic wings blackened when the dark fury assailed his mind. Summoning new strength from the unholy power that ravaged his soul, grieved to drastic levels of desperation by the tainting of the holy light within him, he combated ally and enemy alike, bent on destroying both sides in order to ensure the quelling of the dark energies there and then. For days and nights, the lone warrior bathed himself in the blood of angels and demons. And when it was over, he stood alone on contaminated land, with a contaminated soul. He was banned forever from Heaven and not even Hell had space for a creature which seemed to cherish Oblivion over Pandemonium. The dark angel, not so far removed from his former self as his superiors seemed to believe, died on the edge of the cliffs, of utter loneliness and despair."
Author: T.A. Miles

40. "On the darkest days you have to search for a spot of brightness, on the coldest days you have to seek out a spot of warmth; on the bleakest days you have to keep your eyes onward and upward and on the saddest days you have to leave them open to let them cry. To then let them dry. To give them a chance to wash out the pain in order to see fresh and clear once again."
Author: Tahereh Mafi

41. "The night is always old. He'd walked too often down dark streets in the secret hours and felt the night stretching away, and known in his blood that while days and kings and empires come and g, the night is always the same age, always aeons deep. Terrors unfolded in the velvet shadows and while the nature of the talons may change, the nature of the beast does not."
Author: Terry Pratchett

42. "These are dark times. Back in my Wildwood days with Janet, you were either blessed with a beautiful body or not. And if you were not, you could just chill out and learn a trade."
Author: Tina Fey

43. "On some of my darkest days, Lucifer's the one who comes and gives me an ice cream."
Author: Tori Amos

44. "Happiness leaves such slender records; it is the dark days that are so voluminously documented."
Author: Truman Capote

45. "That said, in the two weeks before I leave for the Dark Days tour, I am going radio silent, which means I will be avoiding the Internet at all costs in order to revise, revise, revise. I will miss you. Tris says hi, though."
Author: Veronica Roth

46. "Inside this pencilcrouch words that have never been writtennever been spokennever been taughtthey're hidingthey're awake in theredark in the darkhearing usbut they won't come outnot for love not for time not for fireeven when the dark has worn awaythey'll still be therehiding in the airmultitudes in days to come may walk through thembreathe thembe none the wiserwhat script can it bethat they won't unrollin what languagewould I recognize itwould I be able to follow itto make out the real namesof everythingmaybe there aren'tmanyit could be that there's only one wordand it's all we needit's here in this pencilevery pencil in the worldis like this"
Author: W.S. Merwin

47. "Francis began the actual illumination of the lambskin. The intricacies of scrollwork and the excruciating delicacy of the gold-inlay work would, because of the brevity of his spare-project time, make it a labor of many years; but in a dark sea of centuries wherein nothing seemed to flow, a lifetime was only brief eddy, even for the man who lived it. There was a tedium of repeated days and repeated seasons; then there were aches and pains, finally Extreme Unction, and a moment of blackness at the end-or at the beginning, rather. For then the small shivering soul who had endured the tedium, endured it badly or well, would find itself in a place of light, find itself absorbed in the burning gaze of infinitely compassionate eyes as it stood before the Just One. And then the King would say: "Come," or the King would say: "Go," and only for that moment had the tedium of years existed. It would be hard to believe differently during such an age as Francis knew."
Author: Walter M. Miller Jr.

48. "Whiles in the early Winter eve We pass amid the gathering night Some homestead that we had to leave Years past; and see its candles bright Shine in the room beside the door Where we were merry years agone But now must never enter more, As still the dark road drives us on. E'en so the world of men may turn At even of some hurried day And see the ancient glimmer burn Across the waste that hath no way; Then with that faint light in its eyes A while I bid it linger near And nurse in wavering memories The bitter-sweet of days that were."
Author: William Morris

49. "SONNET 43When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see,For all the day they view things unrespected;But when I sleep, in dreams they look on thee,And darkly bright are bright in dark directed.Then thou, whose shadow shadows doth make bright,How would thy shadow's form form happy showTo the clear day with thy much clearer light,When to unseeing eyes thy shade shines so!How would, I say, mine eyes be blessed madeBy looking on thee in the living day,When in dead night thy fair imperfect shadeThrough heavy sleep on sightless eyes doth stay!All days are nights to see till I see thee,And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me."
Author: William Shakespeare

50. "Our children will be born of our actions. Our accidents will become their destinies. Oh, the actions will remain. It is a simple matter of what you will do when the chips are down, my friend. When the fat lady is singing. When the walls are falling in, and the sky is dark, and the ground is rumbling. In that moment our actions will define us. And it makes no difference whether you are being watched by Allah, Jesus, Buddah, or whether you are not. On cold days a man can see his breath, on a hot day he can't. On both occasions, the man breathes."
Author: Zadie Smith

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