A Quote by John James Cowperthwaite

A glimmer of light is better than no illumination at all. — © John James Cowperthwaite
A glimmer of light is better than no illumination at all.

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Even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination, and ... such illumination may well come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in their lives and their works, will kindle under almost all circumstances and shed over the time-span that was given them on earth.
Illumination is nothing if you do not share it with anyone. Illumination is about spreading light across entire nations. It's about wearing that crown that shines like the sun on your head and getting other minds to synergize with yours.
We can often better help another by fanning a glimmer of goodness than by censuring his faults.
What are the sources of an illumination? To me, they come after hours of searching and keeping my soul ready. Yet they come in a flash, as a religious phenomenon. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter had such an illumination, beginning my long search for the truth of the story and flashing light into the long two years ahead.
A blaze of love and extinction, was better than a lantern glimmer of the same which should last long years.
I share with many people the feeling that there is a sweetness and constancy to light that falls into a studio from the north sky that sets it beyond any other illumination. It is a light of such penetrating clarity that even a simple object lying by chance in such a light takes on an inner glow, almost a voluptuousness.
We can find meaning and reward by serving some higher purpose than ourselves, a shining purpose, the illumination of a Thousand Points of Light...We all have something to give.
A pretty girl is better than a plain one. A leg is better than an arm. A bedroom is better than a living room. An arrival is better that a departure. A birth is better than a death. A chase is better than a chat. A dog is better than a landscape. A kitten is better than a dog. A baby is better than a kitten. A kiss is better than a baby. A pratfall is better than anything.
Once you can open yourself to joy, you feel as if you've transformed your sadness into illumination, which is really all that art is. All we want to do is transform the negative emotions into light. We want to compost them into light.
Local esteem is far more conducive to happiness than general reputation. The latter may be compared to the fixed stars which glimmer so remotely as to afford little light and no warmth. The former is like the sun, each day shedding his prolific and cheering beams.
My candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open.
Here then at long last is my darkness. No cry of light, no glimmer, not even the faintest shard of hope to break free across the hold.
Men's and nations' finest hour consist of those moments when extraordinary challenge is met by extraordinary response. Hence in those darkest hours, we must light our individual candles rather than vying with others to call attention to the enveloping darkness. Our indignation about injustice should lead to illumination, for if it does not, we are only adding to the despair-and the moment of gravest danger is when there is so little light that darkness seems normal!
Never an illness, nor the absence of grandeur, no, nothing is able to kill the best in us, that kindness, dear sir, we are afflicted with: beautiful is the flower of man, his conduct, and every door opens on the beautiful truth and never hides treacherous whispers. I always gained something from making myself better, better than I am, better than I was, that most subtle citation: to recover some lost petal of the sadness I inherited: to search once more for the light that sings inside of me, the unwavering light.
With Wordsworth, indeed, the light of revelation did not fall upon human beings so unbrokenly as upon the face of the earth. He knew the birds of the countryside better than the old men, and the flowers far better than the children.
A friend is more to be longed for than the light; I speak of a genuine one. And wonder not: for it were better for us that the sun should be extinguished, than that we should be deprived of friends; better to live in darkness, than to be without friends
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