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In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.
--
Variant translation: There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition. 430

 

Blaise Pascal

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You know the story of the famous seer Phineus whom the Argonauts consulted when they stopped in Salmydessos in Thrace on their way to Colchis to get the golden fleece. He was blind, but not entirely blind - he could see just enough to see that he could not see. And the little flickering spots of light that forced themselves on him were wind-harpies trying to steal from him his prophetic power. So he would beg everyone to make him blind, to rid him of the harpies. But people laughed at him because, so far as they could tell, he was as blind as any man needed to be. Only Hercules understood, because his spirit extended into the divine shadows. Only Hercules had the courage to make the blind Phineus blind.

 

Laura Riding

 

Even in art, there is no light without shadows, and no shadows are cast without some light. Even the shadow of Adolf Hitler is accompanied by some light.

 

Hans Frank

 

The outlines and form of any part of a body in light and shade are indistinct in the shadows and in the high lights; but in the portions between the light and the shadows they are highly conspicuous.

 

Leonardo da Vinci

 

Do not speak to us of the greatness of poetry,
Of the torches wisping in the underground,
Of the structure of vaults upon a point of light.
There are no shadows in our sun,
Day is desire and night is sleep.
There are no shadows anywhere.
The earth, for us, is flat and bare.
There are no shadows.

 

Wallace Stevens

 

Such fable ours! However sweet,
That earlier hope had, if fulfilled,
Been but child's pap and toothless meat
— And meaning blunt and deed unwilled,
And we but motes that dance in light
And in such light gleam like the core
Of light, but lightless, are in right
Blind dust that fouls the unswept floor

For, no: not faith by fable lives,
But from the faith the fable springs
— It never is the song that gives
Tongue life, it is the tongue that sings;
And sings the song. Then, let the act
Speak, it is the unbetrayable
Command, if music, let the fact
Make music's motion; us, the fable

 

Robert Penn Warren