Yet you shall not deplore having known blindness, nor regret having been deaf. For in that day you shall know the hidden purposes in all things. And you shall bless darkness as you would bless light.
Look for the stars, you'll say that there are none; / Look up a second time, and, one by one, / You mark them twinkling out with silvery light, / And wonder how they could elude the sight!
The truth is revealed by removing things that stand in its light, an art not unlike sculpture, in which the artist creates, not by building, but by hacking away.
I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.
...those experiments be not only esteemed which have an immediate and present use, but those principally which are of most universal consequence for invention of other experiments, and those which give more light to the invention of causes; for the invention of the mariner's needle, which giveth the direction, is of no less benefit for navigation than the invention of the sails, which give the motion.
Your mind has some clearness and capacity for right thinking; it opens towards the heights, but for its own sake, - to receive light from above for its own activity.
Both nuns and mothers worship images,
But those the candles light are not as those
That animate a mother's reveries,
But keep a marble or a bronze repose.