Darkness is one of the many things people fear. In the dark, we don’t know what might happen to us or if something is lurking out there.
Be that as it may, being in the dark isn’t always a bad thing. Without darkness, we could never appreciate the beauty of the moon and the stars at night. Without it, sunrise and sunsets wouldn’t be a marvel of nature.
In our lives, without darkness, we wouldn’t grow and find the light to help us transform into better versions of ourselves.
Here are several of the best deep dark quotes and sayings we have collected to remind you to find comfort in the darkness.
1. “A work will only have deep resonance if the kind of darkness I can generate is something that is resident in me already.” — Anish Kapoor
2. “People are like stained – glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.” — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
3. “Go with your fate, but not beyond. Beyond leads to dark places.” — Mary Renault
4. “There is nothing in the dark that isn’t there when the lights are on.” — Rod Serling
5. “What other dungeon is so dark as one’s own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one’s self!” — Nathaniel Hawthorne
6. “A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.” — C. S. Lewis
7. “A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.” — Percy Bysshe Shelley
8. “Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
9. “There was a darkness, a melancholy, that people had trouble accepting. Maybe now, it would work better.” — Alain Resnais
10. “When the darkness comes, keep an eye on the light – whatever that is for you – no matter how far away it seems.” — Jan Berry
11. “Life is one long struggle in the dark.” — Lucretius
12. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.
13. “It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.” — Aristotle Onassis
14. “I actually think sadness and darkness can be very beautiful and healing.” — Duncan Sheik
15. “I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.” — Richard Wright
16. “Weather forecast for tonight: dark.” — George Carlin
17. “It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
18. “There is something in even the darkest situations that we can make a positive in our lives.” — Deborah Norville
19. “I remember looking at the sky and thinking that the universe is so big and it’s all chaos. I call it ‘the dark fear.’ At any moment, the dark fear could come in.” — St. Vincent
20. “The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence.” — Rabindranath Tagore
21. “I guess darkness serves a purpose: to show us that there is redemption through chaos. I believe in that. I think that’s the basis of Greek mythology.” — Brendan Fraser
22. “Sometimes there is no darker place than our thoughts, the moonless midnight of the mind.” — Dean Koontz
23. “Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.” — Helen Keller
24. “It’s always been said that comedy comes mostly out of the dark side anyway.” — Alan Thicke
25. “The world outside existed in a kind of darkness; and we inquired about nothing.” — V. S. Naipaul
26. “Hear one side and you will be in the dark. Hear both and all will be clear.” — Lord Chesterfield
27. “The darkness of death is like the evening twilight it makes all objects appear more lovely to the dying.” — Jean Paul
28. “We are never the same with others as when we are alone. We are different, even when we are in the dark with them.” — Maurice Maeterlinck
29. “All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.” — Swami Vivekananda
30. “If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.” — C. S. Lewis
31. “Some of the greatest blues music is some of the darkest music you’ve ever heard.” — Bruce Springsteen
32. “As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” — Carl Jung
33. “Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.” — Rabindranath Tagore
34. “Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites which people our life, which make it pungent, intoxicating. We only exist in terms of this conflict, in the zone where black and white clash.” — Louis Aragon
35. “And then when all around grows dark, when we feel utterly alone, when all men right and left pass us by and know us not, a forgotten feeling rises in the breast.” — Max Muller
36. “Character is what a man is in the dark.” — Dwight L. Moody
37. “True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.” — Henry David Thoreau
38. “Still falls the rain – dark as the world of man, black as our loss – blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails upon the Cross.” — Edith Sitwell
39. “Going to the darkest place you can to make yourself really upset and adding that with the physicality and running around, you can work yourself into hysteria that way.” — Alexandra Daddario
40. “I don’t believe there’s any inherent darkness at the center of religion at all. I think religion actually is a morally neutral force.” — Ian McEwan
41. “Find beauty not only in the thing itself but in the pattern of the shadows, the light and dark which that thing provides.” — Junichiro Tanizaki
42. “Flowers grow out of dark moments.” — Corita Kent
43. “Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.” — John Ruskin
44. “In the time of darkest defeat, victory may be nearest.” — William McKinley
45. “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” — Desmond Tutu
46. “The dark shadow we seem to see in the distance is not really a mountain ahead, but the shadow of the mountain behind – a shadow from the past thrown forward into our future. It is a dark sludge of historical sectarianism. We can leave it behind us if we wish.” — David Trimble
47. “The future is hidden by a dark impenetrable veil, and yet we struggle to pierce through it.” — Joseph Barber Lightfoot
48. “The joys we expect are not so bright, nor the troubles so dark as we fancy they will be.” — Charles Reade
49. “The three great problems of this century; the degradation of man in the proletariat, the subjection of women through hunger, the atrophy of the child by darkness.” — Victor Hugo
50. “Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.” — Erica Jong
51. “Even in the darkest regions, people have discovered their right of freedom.” — Javier Bardem
52. “You can’t study the darkness by flooding it with light.” — Edward Abbey
53. “Color is born of the interpenetration of light and dark.” — Sam Francis
54. “The rising sun can dispel the darkness of night, but it cannot banish the blackness of malice, hatred, bigotry, and selfishness from the hearts of humanity.” — David O. McKay
55. “In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald
56. “It is a dark, dark world. If you’re going to be in a dark world, I can’t think of any better one to be in. I still think I’m very lucky to be in it.” — James Gandolfini
57. “So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds, And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.” — Countee Cullen
58. “Darkness is to space what silence is to sound, i.e., the interval.” — Marshall McLuhan
59. “A few vices are sufficient to darken many virtues.” — Plutarch
60. “Help us to be ever faithful gardeners of the spirit, who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth, and without light nothing flowers.” — May Sarton
61. “Against the dark background of this contemporary civilization of well-being, even the arts tend to mingle, to lose their identity.” — Eugenio Montale
62. “Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness.” — Yousuf Karsh
63. “He travels safest in the dark night who travels lightest.” — Hernando Cortez
64. “Faith means living with uncertainty – feeling your way through life, letting your heart guide you like a lantern in the dark.” — Dan Millman
65. “Romantic love, or sex, is the only good thing in a life that is being lived in a dark way.” — Alan Furst
66. “The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.” — Henry David Thoreau
67. “We shall see that at which dogs howl in the dark, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight.” — H. P. Lovecraft
68. “I’m afraid of the dark, so I have a lot of night-lights.” — Lara Flynn Boyle
69. “A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.” — Jean Genet
70. “There is no greater mystery to me than that of light traveling through darkness.” — Alexander Volkov
71. “There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.” — Charles Dickens
72. “Creativity – like human life itself – begins in darkness.” — Julia Cameron
73. “Education is the movement from darkness to light.” — Allan Bloom
74. “From the night, his solitude, the poet finds day and starts a diary that is lethal to the inert. The dark landscape yields a dialogue.” — Salvatore Quasimodo
75. “This dark brightness that falls from the stars.” — Pierre Corneille
76. “I say there is no darkness but ignorance.” — William Shakespeare
77. “No matter how dark the moment, love and hope are always possible.” — George Chakiris
78. “When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.” — Corrie Ten Boom
79. “Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.” — Carl Jung
80. “I think we both have some darkness in us. But when we are together, we tend to concentrate more on the light.” — Bobby Farrelly
81. “When I have clarified and exhausted a subject, then I turn away from it, in order to go into darkness again.” — Carl Friedrich Gauss
82. “We must believe that it is the darkest before the dawn of a beautiful new world. We will see it when we believe it.” — Saul Alinsky
83. “In complete darkness we are all the same, it is only our knowledge and wisdom that separates us, don’t let your eyes deceive you.” — Janet Jackson
84. “Even so, one step from my grave, I believe that cruelty, spite, The powers of darkness will in time, Be crushed by the spirit of light.” — Boris Pasternak
85. “When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.” — Alexis de Tocqueville
86. “I saw also that there was an ocean of darkness and death, but an infinite ocean of light and love, which flowed over the ocean of darkness.” — George Fox
87. “Blemishes are hid by night and every fault forgiven; darkness makes any woman fair.” — Ovid
88. “The nearer the dawn the darker the night.” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
89. “One who roams the channels after dark, searching for buried treasure.” — Harriet Van Horne
90. “Being in the dark, there’s a real weight to it. It’s heavy.” — Amanda Lindhout
91. “I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.” — Aldous Huxley
92. “Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.” — Desiderius Erasmus
93. “Human knowledge is dark and uncertain; philosophy is dark, astrology is dark, and geometry is dark.” — John Jewel
94. “My dark side, my shadow, my lower companion is now in the back room blowing up balloons for kids’ parties.” — Gary Busey
95. “An increase in light gives an increase in darkness.” — Sam Francis
96. “In the total darkness, poetry is still there, and it is there for you.” — Abbas Kiarostami
97. “The depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.” — Pliny the Elder
98. “Dance with a girl three times, and if you like the light of her eye and the tone of voice with which she, breathless, answers your little questions about horseflesh and music about affairs masculine and feminine, then take the leap in the dark.” — Anthony Trollope
99. “Poetry operates by hints and dark suggestions. It is full of secrets and hidden formulae, like a witch’s brew.” — Anthony Hecht
100. “Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion avarice, and Ignorance folly, infatuation and darkness.” — Cyril Connolly
101. “Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.” — J. R. R. Tolkien
102. “Truly, it is in darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.” — Meister Eckhart
103. “Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.” — Edgar Allan Poe
104. “Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.” — Walt Whitman
105. “When it gets dark enough you can see the stars.” — Russell Lynes
106. “Fear is the dark room where the Devil develops his negatives.” — Gary Busey
107. “I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.” — Dalai Lama
108. “The darkness of death is like the evening twilight; it makes all objects appear more lovely to the dying.” — Jean Paul
109. “In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.” — Francis Bacon
110. “The courage of very ordinary people is all that stands between us and the dark.” — Pam Brown
111. “It is often when night looks darkest, it is often before the fever breaks that one senses the gathering momentum for change, when one feels that resurrection of hope in the midst of despair and apathy.” — Hillary Clinton
112. “Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.” — Carl Jung
113. “One of the darkest evils of our world is surely the unteachable wildness of the Good.” — H. G. Wells
114. “In a dark time, the eye begins to see.” — Cavett Robert
115. “With their souls of patent leather, they come down the road. Hunched and nocturnal, where they breathe they impose, silence of dark rubber, and fear of fine sand.” — Federico Garcia Lorca
116. “Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness.” — Carl Jung
117. “Wit is the only wall between us and the dark.” — Mark Van Doren
118. “Your soul is a dark forest. But the trees are of a particular species, they are genealogical trees.” — Marcel Proust
119. “I know not if the dark or bright shall be by lot; if that wherein my hopes delight be best or not.” — Henry Alford
120. “If you start in the pit of despair with these profane, awful things, even a glimmer of hope or awareness is going to occur that’s much brighter coming from this dark, awful beginning.” — Chuck Palahniuk
121. “The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.” — Agnes de Mille
122. “The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.” — Dante Alighieri
123. “When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.” — Charles A. Beard
124. “See you in the darkness.” — Gary Gilmore
125. “I have long thought that anyone who does not regularly – or ever – gaze up and see the wonder and glory of a dark night sky filled with countless stars loses a sense of their fundamental connectedness to the universe.” — Brian Greene
126. “What interests me is the sense of the darkness that we carry within us, the darkness that’s akin to one of the principal subjects of the sublime – terror.” — Anish Kapoor
127. “And out of darkness came the hands that reach thro’ nature, moulding men.” — Alfred Lord Tennyson
128. “Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings – always darker, emptier and simpler.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
129. “Unhappiness in a child accumulates because he sees no end to the dark tunnel. The thirteen weeks of a term might just as well be thirteen years.” — Graham Greene
130. “You can’t have a light without a dark to stick it in.” — Arlo Guthrie
131. “Even in your darkest moments, you’ll think of something that’ll crack you up.” — Brad Paisley
132. “Most of us are imprisoned by something. We’re living in darkness until something flips on the switch.” — Wynonna Judd
133. “The fear of burglars is not only the fear of being robbed, but also the fear of a sudden and unexpected clutch out of the darkness.” — Elias Canetti
