You yourself may not be luminous, but you are a conductor of light.

Some people without possesing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it

"Really, Watson, you excel yourself," said Holmes, pushing back his chair and lighting a cigarette. "I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt."

Be a light unto oneself

There is no more light in a genius than in any other honest man — but he has a particular kind of lens to concentrate this light into a burning point.

I cannot cause light; the most I can do is try to put myself in the path of its beam.

You must be a light unto yourself.

As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

Don't you know Yet? It is your light that lights the World.

Your eyes, brilliant as shop windows Or as blazing lamp-stands at public festivals, Insolently use a borrowed power Without ever knowing the law of their beauty. Blind,

I feel that we’re all lighthouses, and my job is to shine my light as brightly as I can to the darkness.

I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being

I believe that each of us carries a bit of inner brightness, something entirely unique and individual. A flame that's worth protecting. When we are able to recognize our own light, we become empowered to use it. When we learn to foster what's unique in the people around us, we become better able to build compassionate communities and make meaningful change.

You are not the oil, you are not the air — merely the point of combustion, the flash-point where the light is born. You are merely the lens in the beam. You can only receive, give, and possess the light as the lens does. If you seek yourself, you rob the lens of its transparency. You will know life and be acknowledged by it according to your degree of transparency — your capacity, that is, to vanish as an end and remain purely as a means.