The moon was a sharply defined crescent and the sky was perfectly clear. The stars shone with such fierce, contained brilliance that it seemed absurd to call the night dark.

It was the possibility of darkness that made the day seem so bright.

The moon stays bright when it doesn't avoid the night.

The peaceful splendour of the night healed again. The moon was now past the meridian and travelling down the west. It was at its full, and very bright, riding through the empty blue sky.

Full-blossoming moon! In thy fair light
Like liquid gold, the ocean gleams:
Like daylight’s clearness, yet charm’d into twilight,
Over the strand’s wide plain all is lying;
In the starless clear azure heavens
Hover the snowy clouds,
Like colossal figures of deities
Of glittering marble.
No, ’tis not so, no clouds can they be!
’Tis They themselves, the Gods...

The full moon hung low, a fresh coin that threw its silver grandly on the water in a ribbon that dazzled for a thousand miles.

As when around the clear bright moon, the stars
Shine in full splendor, and the winds are hush'd,
The groves, the mountain-tops, the headland-heights
Stand all apparent, not a vapor streaks
The boundless blue, but ether open'd wide
All glitters, and the shepherd's heart is cheer'd.

Whites were bright as fresh-fallen snow, yellow shone like gold, reds turned to flame, but the shadows were so black they looked like holes in the world.

The moon appeared for some time [in the Savoy, Switzerland] and the rocks seemed to be much bigger than they were. The mountains were silvery illuminated and appeared gently against the mysterious blue of the sky - that blue color with moonlight, that has such an indefinable, deep tone; actually it is not a blue.

The sun provides the moon with its brightness.

At sunrise, everything is luminous but not clear

It was around midday but it might as well have been midnight, with us canvassing for clues in the light of a full moon — the canopy of the ancient trees let in an annoying in-between light, too low to see well in, yet too bright for flashlights.

Yet there was a momentary hint of blue sky, and even this bit of light was enough to release a flash of diamonds across the wide landscape, so oddly disfigured by its snowy adventure. Usually the snow stopped at that hour of the day, as if for a quick survey of what had been achieved thus far; the rare days of sunshine seemed to serve much the same purpose — the flurries died down and the sun’s direct glare attempted to melt the luscious, pure surface of drifted new snow. It was a fairy-tale world, child-like and funny. Boughs of trees adorned with thick pillows, so fluffy someone must have plumped them up; the ground a series of humps and mounds, beneath which slinking underbrush or outcrops of rock lay hidden; a landscape of crouching, cowering gnomes in droll disguises — it was comic to behold, straight out of a book of fairy tales. But if there was something roguish and fantastic about the immediate vicinity through which you laboriously made your way, the towering statues of snow-clad Alps, gazing down from the distance, awakened in you feelings of the sublime and holy.

When the spirit shines, even foggy skies make pleasant light.