Should I curse the darkness or the candle?

Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness?

Eleanor Roosevelt? Confucius? Chinese Proverb? William L. Watkinson? E. Pomeroy Cutler? James Keller? Oliver Wendell Holmes? Adlai Stevenson? John F. Kennedy?

Quote Investigator

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/03/19/candle/

You light a candle, so you don't stub your toe and curse in the darkness.

But if you light a candle and still stub your toe, you might drop the candle and burn down the house.

I agree.

To answer the question of whether to curse the darkness, or to curse the candle; it may depend on the preference of an individual. If you have a comfort in with light to guide your path, you may want to light the candle and not curse it. If you are one who seeks to remain in darkness, then you may hide in the shadows and curse any light they comes your way.

Curse the candle.... it lead to more and more and more light.... which blotted out the mystery of the Milky Way.

Or you might say, "No good deed goes unpunished."

I read about a case that happened here in Los Angeles.

A citizen called police because of a neighbor's loud Halloween Party. The guests had come in costume. One guest came as Al Capone, complete with fake pistol. A police officer thought it was a real gun. He shot and killed the party guest.

A rather extreme case of toe stubbing.

Preference, or maybe circumstance.

My first case of candle cursing came in the form of removing statues of men who had supported the South in the civil war. Eventually, the antislavery zealots extended their activism to all slave holders, including Jefferson and Washington.

Seems to me that Jefferson, as much as anyone in American History, held a candle in darkness. And in this case, kicking the candle must be counter productive.

Ignorance is not for the blissful. It's for the ignorant.

What you don't know helps them hurt you.

But that isn't what the whole candle lighting thing is about...the candle in the quote isn't meant to represent knowledge or enlightenment, it represents perseverance...strength...courage...optimism...any or all of those. Rather than wallowing in darkness feeling sorry for one's self, it's better to light a candle and come out of the darkness.

Plato's Allegory of the Cave, etc...etc....

A person in the dark will move toward the light instinctively and often is not aware of the cave of darkness until he or she is out of it in the daylight.

At the next vacancy for God, if I am elected,
I shall forgive last the delicately wounded who,
having been slugged no harder than anyone else,
never got up again, neither to fight back,
nor to finger their jaws in painful admiration.

They who are wholly broken, and they in whom mercy is understanding,
I shall embrace at once and lead to pillows in heaven.
But they who are the meek by trade, baiting the best of their betters with extortions of a mock-helplessness,
I shall take last to love, and never wholly.

Let them all in Heaven - I abolish Hell -
but let it be read over them as they enter:
Beware the calculations of the meek, who gambled nothing
gave nothing, and could never receive enough.

Ciadi according to Google

“But denunciatory rhetoric is so much easier and cheaper than good works, and proves a popular temptation. Yet is it far better to light the candle than curse the darkness.”

In a sermon, "The Invincible Strategy" by William Lonsdale Watkinson, published in The Supreme Conquest: and other Sermons Preached in America (1907), pp. 217-218.

Professor Buzz Kill

https://professorbuzzkill.com/qnq-21-churchill-americans-2/

I think there is a certain world "leader" >>cough/choke<< that read only the first sentence of that.

Is it possible that due to lack of proper knowledge, or understanding that we may mistake candles for darkness and Vice Verna??

*Vice Versa*

My apologies. I didn’t disable auto correct from my iPad.

I suppose I have no doubt that criticism will gather more headlines than agreement.

In Watkinson's sermon, the candle was a metaphor for the criticism, but because the quote has become associated with Eleanor Roosevelt, the candle has become a metaphor for action.

indirectly - I always wonder that if " dc's green lantern's oath ":

“In brightest day, in blackest night,
No evil shall escape my sight
Let those who worship evil’s might,
Beware my power… Green Lantern’s light!”

there is more to it than simply oath to an fictional character. this oath goes back in the 40's, with original golden age green lantern. if when I was aa kid in 60's, I read the green lantern comic books, I thought the oath was weird then.

what do you think does this oath, had more meaning than superhero's oath?