60+ Inspiring quotes about finding the light in the dark that will illuminate your soul

In the tapestry of life, darkness and light are the contrasting threads that weave the intricate patterns of our existence. In the world of words, writers and thinkers have eloquently captured the essence of this eternal struggle, offering us a treasury of wisdom to draw from.

These words of wisdom will not only illuminate your path but inspire you to radiate your own inner light into the world. As you read on, may these quotes help you to always seek the light—and to be the light.

“Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.” 
– Brené Brown

“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.” 
– John Steinbeck

“Gotta have opposites, light and dark and dark and light, in painting. It’s like in life. Gotta have a little sadness once in awhile so you know when the good times come. I’m waiting on the good times now.” 
― Bob Ross

“However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.” 
– Stanley Kubrick

“Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.” 
– Madeline L’Engle

“In the midst of darkness, light persists.”
– Mahatma Gandhi

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” 
– Plato

“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.”
– Og Mandino

“Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.” 
– Walt Whitman

“Your path is illuminated by the light, yet darkness lets the stars shine bright.” 
– J.L.W. Brooks

“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.” 
– Aristotle

“ Why blame the dark for being dark? It is far more helpful to ask why the light isn’t as bright as it could be. “ 
– Rob Bell

“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 light from within.”
– Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

“It is often in the darkest skies that we see the brightest stars.” 
– Richard Evans

“Light must come from inside. You cannot ask the darkness to leave; you must turn on the light.” 
– Sogyal Rinpoche

“In order for the light to shine so brightly, the darkness must be present.”
– Sir Francis Bacon

“Don’t fight darkness — bring the light, and darkness will disappear.” 
– Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

“You may be the only person left who believes in you, but it’s enough. It takes just one star to pierce a universe of darkness. Never give up.” 
– Richelle E. Goodrich

“To see a candle’s light one must take it into a dark place.”
– Ursula K. Le Guin

“We are not here to curse the darkness, but to light the candle that can guide us through that darkness to a safe and sane future.”
– John F. Kennedy

“Instead of cursing the darkness, light a candle.”
– Benjamin Franklin

“You can curse the darkness or light a candle. The choice is yours.”
– Patrick Kane

“Know that darkness is merely the absence of light. You can be the small candle that defeats the vast darkness.” 
– Jonathan Lockwood Huie

“How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.” 
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

“All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.”
– St. Francis of Assisi

“Your existence brings a light into this world like no other. Please keep that light shining.” 
– TWLOHA

“There are two ways of spreading light; to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
– Edith Wharton

“As we work to create light for others, we naturally light our own way.”
 — Mary Anne Radmacher

“Is there anything more loyal than the sun?”
– Mary Oliver

“As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence actually liberates others.”
– Marianne Williamson

“Just as one candle lights another and can light thousands of other candles, so one heart illuminates another heart and can illuminate thousands of other hearts”
– Leo Tolstoy

“A candle loses nothing when it lights another candle.”
– Thomas Jefferson

“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
– Leonard Cohen

“A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”
– Steve Martin

“Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness.”
– Anne Frank

“Why not dare yourself to become a shining positive light where darkness is the only thing known?”
– Edmond Mbiaka

“Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.”
– Helen Keller

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”
– Mary Oliver

“The darkness declares the glory of light.”
– T. S. Eliot

“I think we all have light and dark inside us.”
– Sean Penn

“It is as if the smallest amount of light is infinitely more powerful than massive amounts of dark.”
– Rob Bell

“The shadow is the greatest teacher for how to come to the light.”
– Ram Dass

“Never fear shadows. They simply mean there’s a light shining somewhere nearby.”
– Ruth E. Renkel

“Keep your face always toward the sunshine — and shadows will fall behind you.”
– Walt Whitman.

“I think that light and shadow have exactly the same duality that exists between life and death.”
– Manuel Alvarez Bravo

“There are no shadows in the dark. Shadows are the servants of light, the children of fire. The brightest flame casts the darkest shadows.”
– George R. R. Martin

“I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light.”
– Barbara Brown Taylor

“Your mind is a galaxy. More dark than light. But the light makes it worthwhile. Which is to say, don’t kill yourself. Even when the darkness is total. Always know that life is not still. Time is space. You are moving through that galaxy. Wait for the stars.” 
– Matt Haig

“A visionary is one who can find his way by moonlight and see the dawn before the rest of the world.” 
– Oscar Wilde

“Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.” 
– J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

“Light is to darkness what love is to fear; in the presence of one the other disappears.” 
– Marianne Williamson

“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.”
– Carl Jung

“Listen, the obvious thing to remember is without dark, there is no light, and without light, there is no dark.”
– Jessica Capshaw

“No situation is so dark that there is not a ray of light!” 
– Norman Vincent Peale