Dark Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

They say there is no light without dark, no good without evil, no male without female, no right without wrong. That nothing can exist if it's direct opposite does not also exist.

Laurell K. Hamilton

In the darkest times of your life, your praise to God should be the loudest. Let the enemy know you're not afraid of the dark.

Stormie Omartian

We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will.

Movies are one of the bad habits that have corrupted our century. They have slipped into the American mind more misinformation in one evening than the Dark Ages could muster in a decade.

In the land of badass, you've just been trumped. If Dark-Hunters had inmates, these would be they. Known as the Dogs of War because that's what they thrive on, they're cold-blooded and intolerant. Congratulations, bud, these are your new protectors. (Acheron)

Sherrilyn Kenyon

Art lies in understanding some part of the dark forces and bringing them under the direction of reason.

Robertson Davies

To be open, receptive and exposed to the dangers of making improvised music, means exposing yourself to unwanted situations that could break the foundations of your own security. … You must engage in questioning your security, see it as a constriction. You are aware and scared, as if you were in a dark corridor. Now you are starting to realise that what you thought of as walls existed only in your imagination.

To see a candle's light, one must take it into a dark place.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Little by little things began to assume a new aspect. The sense of insecurity vanished, words came of themselves, I was no longer so painfully conscious of everything I said. I drank on and felt the great soft wave approach and embrace me; the dark hour began to fill with pictures and stealthily the noiseless procession of dreams appeared again superimposed on the dreary, grey landscape of existence.

Erich Maria Remarque

Socrates called himself a midwife of ideas. A great book is often such a midwife, delivering to full existence what has been coiled like an embryo in the dark, silent depths of the brain.

Clifton Fadiman

People themselves are full of tunnels: winding, dark spaces and caverns; impossible to know all the places inside of them. Impossible even to imagine.

It was dark black water, secret, and the air was filled with murmurings and rustlings, it was as if they were walking into another world that had been kept secret from everyone and now they had found it.

Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.
Nothing harms beneath the leaves
More than waves a swimmer cleaves.
Toss your heart up with the lark,
Foot at peace with mouse and worm,
Fair you fare.
Only at a dread of dark
Quaver, and they quit their form:
Thousand eyeballs under hoods
Have you by the hair.
Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare.

George Meredith

Our ancestors, when about to build a town or an army post, sacrificed some of the cattle that were wont to feed on the site proposed and examined their livers. If the livers of the first victims were dark-coloured or abnormal, they sacrificed others, to see whether the fault was due to disease or their food. They never began to build defensive works in a place until after they had made many such trials and satisfied themselves that good water and food had made the liver sound and firm.... healthfulness being their chief object.

A cottonwood leaf beetle scuttled out of the loosened earth, frantic legs working the sandy dirt, orange and black body desperate for a new hiding place. The sunset was fading, and a bloated ocher moon pushed its way into the dark blue sky.

Very worried and nervous for 1944. Life is dark – as is death. Close 1943.

For them the Ceylon diver held his breath,
And went all naked to the hungry shark;
For them his ears gush'd blood; for them in death The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark Lay full of darts; for them alone did seethe A thousand men in troubles wide and dark: Half-ignorant, they turn'd an easy wheel,
That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel.

Where the light is, and each thing clear,
Separate from all others, standing in its place,
I drink the time and touch whatever's near, And hope for day when the whole world has that face:
For what assures her present every year?
In dark accidents the mind's sufficient grace.

Delmore Schwartz

Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet, Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?

Commentators who today talk of 'The Dark Ages' when faith instead of reason was said to ruthlessly rule, have for their animadversions only the excuse of perfect ignorance. Both Aquinas' intellectual gifts and his religious nature were of a kind that is no longer commonly seen in the Western world.

David Berlinski

Like the water of a deep stream, love is always too much. We did not make it. Though we drink till we burst, we cannot have it all, or want it all. In its abundance it survives our thirst. In the evening we come down to the shore to drink our fill, and sleep, while it flows through the regions of the dark. It does not hold us, except we keep returning to its rich waters thirsty. We enter, willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.

I think war is just part of human nature. And I'm fascinated by human nature – especially the dark side. I always have been. It doesn't make me a Devil worshipper, no more than being interested in Hitler makes me a Nazi. I mean, if I'm a Nazi, how come I married a woman who's half Jewish?

The seconds tick. They always do. The power of an entire sun cannot stop them even for a moment, and so death comes between the moments, like a thief of light in the dark.

Christopher Pike (author)

Images flashed through his mind. He saw Nico and his sister on a snowy mountain cliff in Maine, Percy Jackson protecting them from the manticore. Percy's sword gleamed in the dark. He'd been the first demigod Nico had ever seen in action. Later at Camp Half-Blood, Percy took Nico by the arm, promising to keep his sister Bianca safe. Nico believed him. Nico looked into his sea-green eyes and though, How can he possibly fail? This is a real hero.

And as I watched him, I knew that in every dark night there was, somewhere, a small light burning that could never be quenched.

Juliet Marillier