Martin Farquhar Tupper Quotes

[A]s if life were a thunder-storm wherein you can see by a flash the horizon, and then cannot see your hand.

So few the grains of happiness measured against all the dark and still the scales balance.

Above all shadows rides the sun.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us.

The firefly only shines when on the wing, So it is with us--when we stop, we darken.

Where music thundered let the mind be still, Where the will triumphed let there be no will, What light revealed, now let the dark fulfill.

The sunlights differ, but there is only one darkness.

If there is always light, you don’t experience light anymore. You have to have the rhythm of light and darkness.

A day! It has risen upon us from the great deep of eternity, girt round with wonder; emerging from the womb of darkness; a new creation of life and light spoken into being by the word of God.

The moon is always jealous of the heat of the day, just as the sun always longs for something dark and deep.

A man’s life may stagnate as literally as water may stagnate, and just as motion and direction are the remedy for one, so purpose and activity are the remedy for the other.

Love shows itself more in adversity than in prosperity; as light does, which shines most where the place is darkest.

What excites and interests the looker-on at life, what the romances and the statues celebrate, and the grim civic monuments remind us of, is the everlasting battle of the powers of light with those of darkness; with heroism reduced to its bare chance, yet ever and anon snatching victory from the jaws of death.

The short span of life forbids us to spin out hope to any length. Soon will night be upon you, and the fabled Shades, and the shadowy Plutonian home.

Turn to the light. Don't fear the shadow it creates.

So dear night the half of life is, And the fairest half indeed.

Activity does not necessarily mean life.

Death to the killers, bringing light to life.

Sometimes Evil pursues the Warrior of the Light, and when it does, he calmly invites it into his tent.

Black is like the silence of the body after death, the close of life.

Darkness is only light's absence.

Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.

In visions of the dark night I have dreamed of joy departed- But a waking dream of life and light Hath left me broken-hearted. Ah! what is not a dream by day To him whose eyes are cast On things around him with a ray Turned back upon the past? That holy dream- that holy dream, While all the world were chiding, Hath cheered me as a lovely beam A lonely spirit guiding. What though that light, thro' storm and night, So trembled from afar- What could there be more purely bright In Truth's day-star?