«There is no doubt that Emerson was a yea-sayer. He did celebrate the daylight and hope in preference to blackness and despair.»

«In our music, in our everyday life, there are so many negative things. Why not have something positive and stamp it with blackness?»

«Is it worthwhile that we jostle a brother, Bearing his load on the rough road of life? Is it worthwhile that we jeer at each other, In blackness of heart - that we war to the knife? God pity us all in our pitiful strife»

«If thou art called to pass through tribulations; if thou art in perils among false brethren; if thou art in perils among robbers; if thou art in perils by land or by sea; if thou art accused with all manner of false accusations; if thine enemies fall upon thee; if they tear thee from the society of thy father and mother and brethren and sisters; and if with a drawn sword thine enemies tear thee from the bosom of thy wife, and of thine offspring, and thine elder son, although but six years of age, shall cling to thy garments, and shall say, My father, my father, why can't you stay with us? O, my father, what are the men going to do with you? and if then he shall be thrust from thee by the sword, and thou be dragged to prison, and thine enemies prowl around thee like wolves for the blood of the lamb; and if thou shouldest be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep, if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good. The Son of Man (Jesus Christ) hath descended below them all; art thou greater than he?»

«My mind is imbued with the Lord's Love; it is dyed a deep crimson. Truth and charity are my white clothes. The blackness of sin is erased by my wearing of blue clothes, and meditation on the Lord's Lotus Feet is my robe of honor.»

«Before their face the people shall be much pained: all faces shall gather blackness.»

«I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering.»

«These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear: clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; / Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.»

«For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, / And the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more: / (For they could not endure that which was commanded, And if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart: / And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake:) / But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, / To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, / And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things that that of Abel.»

«Let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it.»