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night quotes

  • Por todos los senderos de la noche han venido a llorar en mi lecho. ‚Fueron tantos, son tantos! Yo no se   cua  les viven, yo no se   cua  l ha muerto. Me llorare   a m | misma para llorarlos todos. They have come from all of night's pathways to cry in my bed. They were so many, they are so many! I don't know who lives, I don't know who has died. I'll cry for myself so that I can cry for all.

    - Delmira Agustini
      El rosario de Eros,'Mis amores' ('My lovers').

  • The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum.

    - Sir Kingsley Amis
      Lucky  Jim, ch.6.

  • Et toi mon coeur pourquoi bats-tu Comme un guetteur me  lancolique J'observe la nuit et la mort. And you my heart why do you pound Like some melancholy watchman I watch the night and death.

    -Kostrowitzki
      Le Guetteur me l ancolique, pre  face.

  • Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure Les jours s'en vont je demeure. Let night come, ring out the hour, The days go by, I remain.

    -Kostrowitzki
      Les  Alcools,'Le Pont Mirabeau'.

  •    Come to me in my dreams, and then By day I shall be well again! For then the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day.

    - Matthew Arnold
      Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems,'Longing' (later published as 'Faded Leaves' in Poems: Second Series,1855).

  • And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

    - Matthew Arnold
      'Dover Beach', stanza 4.

  • No horse's cry was that, most like the roar Of some pained desert lion, who all day Hath trailed the hunter's javelin in his side, And comes at night to die upon the sand.

    - Matthew Arnold
      Poems:  A New Edition,'Sohrab and Rustum', l.501^4.

  • Still I enjoy The long sweetness of the simultaneity, yours and mine, ours and mine, The mosquitoey summer night light.

    -John Lawrence Ashbery
    Shadow Train,'Here Everything Is Still Floating'.

  • If they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.

    -James Arthur Baldwin
      'Open Letter to my Sister,  Angela Davis', in The NewYork Review of Books,7  Jan.

  • I wish I were where Helen lies, Night and day on me she cries; O that I were where Helen lies, On fair Kirkconnell lea!

    -Ballads
    'Helen of Kirkconnell', opening lines.

  • This ae nighte, this ae nighte, Every nighte and alle, Fire and fleet and candle-lighte, And Christe receive thy saule.

    -Ballads
    'A Lyke- Wake Dirge', opening lines.

  • They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.

    - Samuel Beckett
      Waiting for Godot, act 2.

  • A pretty girl is like a melody That haunts you night and day.

    - Irving originally Israel Baline Berlin
      'A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody'.

  • La mort, mon fils, est un bien pour tous les hommes; elle est la nuit de ce jour inquiet qu'on appelle la vie. Bernstein Death, my son, is a good for all; it is the night of this worrisome day that one calls life.

    -Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
      Paul et Virginie.

  • And God called the light Dayand the darkness he called Night. And the evening and morning were the first day.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Genesis1:5.

  • Iwill not againcursetheground anymore for man'ssake; for the imagination of man is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Genesis 8:21^2.

  • And the L went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDExodus13:21.

  • For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Psalms 90:4.

  •    Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If Isay, Surely the darknessshall cover me; even thenight shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    Psalms139:7^12.

  • But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Peter 3:10^11.

  • And thegates of it shall not be shut at all byday: for there shall be no night there.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Revelation 21:25.

  • O rose, thou art sick! The invisible worm That flies in the night, In the howling storm, Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy, And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.

    -William Blake
      Songs of Experience,'The Sick Rose'.

  • Tyger! Tyger! burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

    -William Blake
      Songs of Experience,'The Tyger'.

  • God appears and God is light To those poor souls who dwell in night, But does a human form display To those who dwell in realms of day.

    -William Blake
      Milton,'And Did Those Feet In  Ancient Time'.

  • The heavens declare the glory of God: and the firmament sheweth his handywork.One day telleth another: and one night certifieth another. There is neither speech nor language: but their voices are heard among them. Their sound isgone out into all lands: and their words into the ends of the world.

    -Book of Common Prayer
    Psalm19:1^4.

  •    There's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things: there's likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?

    - George Henry Borrow
    Lavengro, ch.25.

  • The night has a thousand eyes, And the day but one; Yet the light of the bright world dies, With the dying sun. The mind has a thousand eyes, And the heart but one; Yet the light of a whole life dies, When love is done. See Lyly 523:12.

    - F(rancis) W(illiam) Bourdillon
      Among the Flowers,'Light'.

  • The night is darkening round me, The wild winds coldly blow; But a tyrant spell has bound me And I cannot, cannot go.

    - EmilyJane Bronte« 
      'The Night is Darkening Round Me'.

  • The winter wind is loud and wild, Come close to me, my darling child; Forsake thy books, and mateless play; And, while the night isgathering grey, We'll talk its pensive hours away. Brooke

    - EmilyJane Bronte« 
      'Faith and Despondency', in Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.

  • Stand still, true poet that you are! I know you; let me try and draw you. Some night you'll fail us: when afar You rise, remember one man saw you, Knew you, and named a star!

    - Robert Browning
      Men and Women,'Popularity'.

  • There was a young lady named Bright Whose speed was far faster than light; She set out one day In a relative way And returned on the previous night.

    - A(rthur) H(enry) Reginald Buller
      'Relativity', published anonymously in Punch,19 Dec. Buller's claim to authorship is recorded in W S Baring-Gould The Lure of the Limerick (1968). British  historian,  notably  of  20c  Europe.  He  was  Master  of  St Catherine's College, Oxford (1960^80).

  • It was a dark and stormy night.

    -Lytton
      Opening words of Paul Clifford.

  • Corn rigs, an' barley rigs, An'corn rigs are bonie: I'll ne'er forget that happy night, Amang the rigs wi'Annie.

    - Robert Burns
      'Song, The Rigs o' Barley', or 'Corn Rigs  Are Bonie', chorus.

  • Nae man can tether time or tide; The hour approachesTam maun ride; That hour, o'night's black arch the key-stane, That dreary hourTam mounts his beast in.

    - Robert Burns
      'Tam o' Shanter.  A  Tale'.

  • She walks in beauty like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

    -Rochdale
      'She Walks in Beauty'.

  • My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love, And though the sager sort our deeds reprove, Let us not weigh them. Heaven's great lamps do dive Into their west, and straight again revive, But soon as once set is our little light, Then must we sleep one ever-during night. See Catullus 200:5.

    -Thomas Campion
    A Book of  Airs, no.1,'My Sweetest Lesbia', translation of a song by Catullus.

  • The sun was shining on the sea, Shining with all his might: He did his very best to make The billows smooth and bright And this was odd, because it was The middle of the night. 196

    -Dodgson
      Tweedledee. Through the Looking-Glass, ch.4, 'Tweedledum and Tweedledee'.

  • The streets were dark with something more than night.

    - Raymond Chandler
    Quoted in the Smithsonian, May1994.

  • And smale foweles maken melodye, That slepen al the nyght with open ye (So priketh hem nature in hir corages); Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.

    - Geoffrey Chaucer
      Canterbury  Tales,'General Prologue', l.9^12.

  • Til that the brighte sonne loste his hewe; For th'orisonte hath reft the sonne his lyght; This is as muche to seye as it was nyght!

    - Geoffrey Chaucer
      Canterbury  Tales,'The Franklin's Tale', l.1016^8.

  • Wellcome, all Wonders in one sight! Eternity shut in a span. Summer in Winter, Day in Night. Heaven in Earth and God in Man.

    - Richard Crashaw
      'Hymn of the Nativity' (published1652), l.79.

  • Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night, Brother to Death, in silent darkness born, Relieve my languish and restore the light; With dark forgetting of my care return. And let the day be time enough to mourn The shipwreck of my ill adventured youth: Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn Without the torment of the night's untruth.

    - Samuel Daniel
      Delia, sonnet 54.

  • Slowly, silently, now the moon Walks the night in her silver shoon.

    -Walter de la Mare
      'Silver'.

  • A face peered. All the grey night In chaos of vacancy shone; Nought but vast Sorrow was there The sweet cheat gone.

    -Walter de la Mare
      'The Ghost'.

  • Look thy last on all things lovely, Every hour. Let no night Seal thy sense in deathly slumber Till to delight Thou have paid thy utmost blessing.

    -Walter de la Mare
      'Fare Well'.

  •    Was there ever in anyone's life span a point free in time, devoid of memory, a night when choice was any more than the sum of all the choices gone before?

    -Joan Didion
      Run River, ch.4.

  • What if this present were the world's last night?

    -John Donne
    c.1610^1615  Holy Sonnets, no.19.

  • Dear, why should you command me to my rest, When now the night doth summon all to sleep? Methinks this time becometh lovers best; Night was ordained together friends to keep.

    - Michael Drayton
      Ideas Mirrour, sonnet 37.

  • The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, But Shadwell never deviates into sense. Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, Strike through and make a lucid interval; But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray, His rising fogs prevail upon the day.

    -John Dryden
      MacFlecknoe (published1682), l.19^24.

  • Joy ruled the day, and Love the night.

    -John Dryden
      The Secular Masque, l.81.

  • In the uncertain hour before the morning Near the ending of interminable night At the recurrent end of the unending.

    -T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
      Four Quartets,'Little Gidding', pt.2.

  • It ain't a fit night out for man or beast.

    -W C originally  William Claude Dukenfield Fields
      The Fatal Glass of Beer.

  • Awake! for Morning in the bowl of night Has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight: And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught The Sultan's turret in a noose of light.

    - Edward Fitzgerald
      The Ruba  iya  t of Omar Khayya  m of Naishapur, stanza1.

  •    Tender is the Night.

    - F(rancis) Scott Key Fitzgerald
       Title of novel.

  •    In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o'clock in the morning, dayafter day.

    - F(rancis) Scott Key Fitzgerald
      'Handle With Care', in Esquire, Mar.

  • Gwine to run all night, Gwine to run all day, I'll bet my money on de bob-tail nag, Somebody bet on de bay.

    - Stephen Collins Foster
      'Camptown Races', chorus.

  • All perfect republics are a perfect nonsense.The craving to risk death is our last great perversion.We come from night, we go into night.Why live in night?

    -John Robert Fowles
      The Magus, ch.19.

  •    What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to appall? If design govern in a thing so small.

    - Robert Lee Frost
      'Design'.

  • I have been one acquainted with the night.

    - Robert Lee Frost
      'Acquainted with the Night'.

  • Lone, lone, and lone I stand, With none to hear my cry, As the black feet of the night Go walking down the sky.

    - Dame MaryJean ne  e Mary Jean Cameron Gilmore
      Under the Wilgas,'The Myall in Prison'.

  • Nor second he, that rode sublime Upon the seraph-wings of ecstasy, The secrets of th'abyss to spy. He passed the flaming bounds of place and time: 370 The living throne, the sapphire-blaze, Where angels tremble, while they gaze, He saw; but blasted with excess of light, Closed his eyes in endless night.

    -Thomas Gray
      Of Milton. The Progress of Poesy, l.95^102.

  • Every night, whisper 'Peace' in your husband's ear.

    - Alfred Whitney Griswold
      Said to Nancy Reagan at a White House reception, 28 Sep.

  • Beware thoughts that come in the night. Theyaren't turned properly; they come in askew, free of sense and restriction, deriving from the most remote of sources.

    -William Least originally  WilliamTrogdon Heat-Moon
      Blue Highways:  A  Journey Into  America, opening words.

  • So when or you or I are made A fable, song, or fleeting shade; All love, all liking, all delight Lies drowned with us in endless night. Then while time serves, and we are but decaying; Come, my Corinna, come, let's go a Maying.

    - Robert Herrick
      'Corinna's Going a Maying'.

  • The Enemy has been here in the night of our natural ignorance, and sown the tares of spiritual errors.

    -Thomas Hobbes
    Leviathan, pt.4, ch.44.

  • I remember, I remember, The house where I was born, The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn; He never came a wink too soon, Nor brought too long a day, But now, I often wish the night Had borne my breath away!

    -Honorius of Autun
      'I Remember'.

  •    That night, that year Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

    -Gerard Manley Hopkins
      'Carrion Comfort'.

  • Now hollow fires burn out to black And lamps are guttering low. Square your shoulders, lift your pack, And leave your friends and go. Oh, never fear, man, nought's to dread Look not left nor right. In all the endless road you tread, There's nothing but the night.

    - A(lfred) E(dward) Housman
    Quoted in Bernard Levin Hannibal's Footsteps (1985).

  • Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace.

    - (James Henry) Leigh Hunt
      'Abou Ben  Adhem'.

  • Come, my Celia, let us prove, While we can, the sports of love, Time will not be ours for ever, He, at length, our good will sever; Spend not then his gifts in vain: Suns that set may rise again; But if once we lose this light, 'Tis with us perpetual night. Why should we defer our joys? Fame and rumour are but toys.

    - Ben Jonson
      Volpone,'Song', act 3, sc.7.

  • Satire is what closes Saturday night.

    - George S(imon) Kaufman
    Quoted in Howard Teichmann George S Kaufman (1972).

  • When I behold, upon the night's starred face Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love;then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness so sink.

    -John Keats
      'When I Have FearsThat I May Cease to Be'.

  • And soft adorings from their loves receive Upon the honeyed middle of the night.

    -John Keats
      Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St.  Agnes and Other Poems,'The Eve of St.  Agnes', stanza 6.

  • Already with thee! tender is the night.

    -John Keats
      Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St.  Agnes and Other Poems,'Ode to a Nightingale', stanza 4.

  • Night Geometryand the GarscaddenTrains.

    - A(lison) L(ouise) Kennedy
       Title of short story collection.

  •    The wonderful Southernnight-sky that makes a manfeel so lonely, alien: with Orion standing on his head in the west, and his sword-belt upside down, and his Dog-star prancing in mid-heaven, high above him; and with the Southern Cross insignificantly mixed in with the other stars, democratically inconspicuous.

    - D(avid) H(erbert) Lawrence
      Of night over Sydney. Kangaroo, ch.1.

  • All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night inthe dusty recesses of their mindswake inthe day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the dayare dangerous men, for they mayact their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.

    -Arabia
      Seven Pillars of  Wisdom, introductory chapter.

  • It's been a hard day's night, And I've been working like a dog.

    -Paul
      'A Hard Day's Night'.

  • Each morning sees some task begin, Each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night's repose.

    - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
      'The VillageBlacksmith', stanza 7. Collected in Ballads and other Poems (1841).

  • The shades of night were falling fast, As through an Alpine village passed Ayouth, who bore,'mid snow and ice, A banner with a strange device, Excelsior!

    - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
      'Excelsior'.

  • And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold up their tents like Arabs, And as silently steal away. See Kaufman 455:57.

    - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
      The Waif,'The Day Is Done', stanza11.

  • Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupations, That is known as the Children's Hour.

    - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
      'The Children's Hour', stanza1.

  • Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.

    - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
      Tales of a Wayside Inn, pt.3.'The Theologian's Tale: Elizabeth'.

  • Mon fre'  re, en une nuit, avait invente   le cine  matographe. My brother, in one night, had invented the cinema.

    - Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas Lumie'  re
    Of the night his brother Louis had a flash of inspiration which resulted in the'Kinetoscope de projection'patented in1895. Quoted in C  W Ceram  Archaeology of the Cinema (1965).

  • Night hath a thousand eyes. See Bourdillon147:28.

    -John Lyly
      The Maydes Metamorphosis, act 3, sc.1.

  • O wha's the bride that cairries the bunch O'thistles blinterin' white? Her cuckold bridegroom little dreids What he sall ken this nicht.

    -Grieve
      A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle.

  • To see the earth as we now see it, small and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in theunending nightbrothers who see now theyare truly brothers.

    - Archibald MacLeish
      On the first pictures from the moon. In the NewYork Times, 25 Dec.

  • I wondered if I'd ever see another Saturday night.

    - Robert Strange McNamara
    On the threat of nuclear war from Russian warheads in Cuba, Oct1962. Quoted in Elie  Abel Missile Crisis (1966).

  • The sense of a long last night over civilization is back again.

    - Norman Kingsley Mailer
      Cannibals and Christians,'Introducing Our Argument'.

  • Nuit blanche de gla c° ons et de neige cruelle! White night of icicles and bitter snow!

    - Ste  phane Mallarme 
      Poe  sies, He  rodiade,'La Nourrice'.

  • Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night!

    - Herman Mankiewicz
      Bette Davis as Margo Channing in  All  About Eve.

  • The sad presaging raven, that tolls The sick man's passport in her hollow beak, And in the shadow of the silent night Doth shake contagion from her sable wings.

    - Christopher Marlowe
    c.1589  The Jew of Malta (published1633), act 2, sc.1.

  • Ye living lamps, by whose dear light The nightingale does sit so late, And studying all the summer night, Her matchless songs does meditate. 556

    - Andrew Marvell
    c.1650^1652  'The Mower to the Glo- Worms' (published1681).

  • For some time I watch the coming of the night† Above is the glistening galaxy of childhood, now hidden in the Western world by air pollution and the glare of artificial light; for my children's children, the power, peace and healing of the night will be obliterated.

    - Peter Matthiessen
      Of the night sky in Nepal. The Snow Leopard,'Northward, October18'.

  • My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends It gives a lovely light.

    - Edna St Vincent Millay
      A Few Figs From Thistles,'First Fig'.

  • I see America as a black curse upon the world. I see a long night settling in and that mushroom which has poisoned the world withering at the roots.

    - Henry Valentine Miller
      Black Spring,'Third or Fourth Day of Spring'.

  • But peaceful was the night Wherein the Prince of Light His reign of peace upon the earth began: The winds, with wonder whist, Smoothly the waters kissed, Whispering new joys to the mild ocea'  n, Who now hath quite forgot to rave, While birds of calm sit brooding on the charme'  d wave.

    -John Milton
      'On the Morning of Christ's Nativity','The Hymn', stanza 3.

  • What hath night to do with sleep?

    -John Milton
      Comus,  A Mask, l.122.

  • How sweetly did they float upon the wings Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night At every fall smoothing the raven down Of darkness till it smil'd.

    -John Milton
      Comus,  A Mask, l.248^51.

  • But O as to embrace me she enclin'd I wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night.

    -John Milton
    c.1658  Sonnets, no.19,'Methought I Saw'.

  • And when night Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.

    -John Milton
      Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.1, l.500^2.

  • A shout that tore hell's concave, and beyond Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night.

    -John Milton
      Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.1, l.542^3.

  • To be no more; sad cure; for who would lose, Though full of pain, this intellectual being, Those thoughts that wander through eternity, To perish rather, swallowed up and lost In the wide womb of uncreated night, Devoid of sense and motion?

    -John Milton
      Belial. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.2, l.146^51.

  • In our system, at about11.30pm on election night, they just push you off the edge of the cliffand that's it.You might scream on the way down, but you're going to hit the bottom, and you're not going to be in office.

    -Walter F(rederick) Mondale
      On losing to Ronald Reagan in the presidential elections, in the NewYork Times, 4 Mar.

  • La Historia no se detiene nunca. D|a y noche su marcha es incesante. Querer detenerla ser|a como querer detener la Geograf|a. History never stops. It progresses ceaselessly day and night. Trying to stop it is like trying to stop Geography.

    - Augusto Monterroso
      Lo dema  s es silencio ('The Rest is Silence'),'Aforismos, dichos, etc'.

  • 'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

    - Clement Moore
      The Night Before Christmas.

  •    Just a wee deoch-an-doris, Just a wee yin, that's a'. Just a wee deoch-an-doris, Afore we gang awa'. There's a wee wifie waitin' In a wee but-an-ben; If ye can say 'It's a braw bricht moonlicht nicht', Ye're a'richt, ye ken.

    - R F Morrison
      'Just a Wee Deoch-an-Doris', chorus. The song was popularized by Sir Harry Lauder.

  • He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle to steady his fellow countrymen and hearten those Europeans upon whom the long dark night of tyranny had descended.

    - Edward (Edgar) R(oscoe) Murrow
      Of Churchill. Broadcast, 30 Nov, quoted in In Search of Light (1967).

  • Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead thou me on; The night is dark, and I am far from home, Lead thou me on. Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me.

    -John Henry Newman
      'Lead, kindly Light'.

  •    When things go wrong and will not come right, Though you do the best you can, When life looks black as the hour of night

    -Myles na Gopaleen
    US   writer.   She   is   best   known   as   a   novelist,   but   has   also published   several   volumes   of   poetry,   and   essays,   critical writings and journalism.

  •    A Long Day's Journey Into Night.

    - Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
    ^41  Title of play (published1956).

  •   She's so clumsy. I watch for her to do the same things every night.The wayshejumps onthebed, asif shewere stamping on someone's face, and draws the curtains back with a great clatter, in that casually destructive way of hers. It's like someone launching a battleship. Have you ever noticed how noisy women are? Have you? The way they kick the floorabout, simply walking over it? Or have you watched them sitting at their dressing tables, dropping their weapons and banging down their bits of boxes and brushes and lipsticks? 630

    -John Osborne
      Look Back in  Anger.

  • Dogs with broken legs are shot; men with broken souls write through the night.

    - Kenneth Patchen
    TheJournal of Albion Moonlight.

  • And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedecked halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall.

    - EdgarAllan Poe
      'The Masque of the Red Death', in the Gentleman's Magazine, May.

  • They walked and eat, good folks: What then? Why then they walked and eat again: They soundly slept the night away: They did just nothing all the day.

    - Matthew Prior
      'An Epitaph', l.9^12.

  • The mind is a museum to be looted at night.

    - Craig Anthony Raine
      'The Grey Boy'.

  • Musing on roses and revolutions, I saw night close down on the earth like a great dark wing.

    - Dudley Randall
      Cities Burning,'Roses and Revolutions'.

  • In fine, we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place. So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head.

    - Edwin Arlington Robinson
      The Children of the Night,'Richard Cory'.

  • Farewell Woman, I intend, Henceforth, every night to sit, With my lewd well natured friend, Drinking, to engender wit.

    -JohnWilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester
    'Love aWoman!', l.9^12 (published1680).

  • Come to me in the silence of the night; Come in the speaking silence of a dream; Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright As sunlight on a stream; Come back in tears, O memory, hope, love of finished years.

    - Christina Georgina Rossetti
      Goblin Market and Other Poems,'Echo'.

  • Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end. Will the day's journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend.

    - Christina Georgina Rossetti
      Goblin Market and Other Poems,'Up-Hill'.

  • I always claim the mission workers came out too early to catch any sinners on this part of Broadway. At such an hour the sinners are still in bed resting up from their sinning of thenight before, so they will be ingood shape for more sinning a little later on.

    - (Alfred) Damon Runyon
      Runyon a'   la Carte,'The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown'.

  • The greater cats with golden eyes Stare out between the bars. Deserts are there, and different skies, And night with different stars.

    -Vita (Victoria Mary) Sackville-West
      'The Greater Cats with Golden Eyes'.

  • I have sat by night beside a cold lake And touched things smoother than moonlight on still water, But the moon on this cloud sea is not human, And here is no shore, no intimacy, Only the start of space, the road to suns.

    - F(rancis) R(eginald) Scott
      'Trans Canada'.

  • A traveller from the cradle to the grave Through the dim night of this immortal day.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      Prometheus Unbound, act 4, l.551^2.

  • To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent: To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This, like thy glory,Titan, is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life,Joy, Empire and Victory.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      Prometheus Unbound, act 4, l.570^8.

  •    He has out-soared the shadow of our night; Envyand calumnyand hate and pain, And that unrest which men miscall delight, Can touch him not and torture not again; From the contagion of the world's slow stain He is secure, and now can never mourn A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
    Adonais, stanza 40.

  • Death will come when thou art dead, Soon, too soon Sleep will come when thou art fled; Of neither would I ask the boon I ask of thee, belove'  d Night Swift be thine approaching flight, Come soon, soon!

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'To Night'.

  • Swiftly walk o'er the western wave, Spirit of Night! Out of the misty eastern cave, Where, all the long and lone daylight, Thou wovest dreams of joyand fear, Which make thee terrible and dear, Swift be thy flight!

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
    'To Night' (published1824).

  • Whatever may have been my enthusiasm or impatience to be up and doing on the night before, the hour for getting up always finds me with no other ambition in the world than to be permitted to lie where I am and sleep, sleep, sleep.Not soTilman.Ihave never met anyonewith such a complete disregard for the sublime comforts of the early morning bed. However monstrously early we might decide, thenight before, toget up, hewas about at least half an hour before the time. He was generally very good about it, and used to sit placidly smoking his pipe over the fire.

    - Eric Earle Shipton
      On climbing with H W (Bill) Tilman. Nanda Devi.

  • Come, gie's a sang, Montgomery cry'd, And lay your disputes a'aside; What signifies't for folks to chide For what's been done before them? Let Whig and Torya'agree, Whig and Tory,Whig and Tory, Whig and Tory a'agree To drop their whigmigmorum; Let Whig and Torya'agree To spend this night wi'mirth and glee, And cheerfu'sing, alang wi'me, The Reel o' Tullochgorum.

    -John Skinner
    'Tullochgorum', stanza1.

  • Night, with all her negro train, Took possession of the plain; In an hearse she rode reclined, Drawn by screech-owls slow and blind: Close to her, with printless feet, Crept Stillness, in a winding sheet.

    - Christopher Smart
      'A Night-Piece; or, Modern Philosophy', stanza 2. In the London Magazine, no.14, Dec. Collected in Poems on Several Occasions (1752).

  •    'This night shall thy soul be required of thee.' My soul is never required of me It always has to be somebody else of course. Will my soul be required of me tonight perhaps? See Bible115:42.

    - Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
      Scorpion,'Scorpion'.

  • Poetry is a rich, full-blooded whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbers the leaf, the duet of two nightingales, the sweet pea, that has run wild,Creation's tears in shoulder blades.

    -Wallace Stevens
    Quoted in Life,13 Jun1960.

  •   In winter I get up at night And dress by yellow candle-light. In summer, quite the other way, I have to go to bed by day. I have to go to bed and see The birds still hopping on the tree, Or hear the grown-up people's feet Still going past me in the street.

    - Robert Louis Stevenson
      A Child's Garden ofVerses, no.1,'Bed in Summer', stanzas1^2.

  • Whenever the moon and stars are set, Whenever the wind is high, All night long in the dark and wet, A man goes riding by. Late in the night when the fires are out, Why does he gallop and gallop about?

    - Robert Louis Stevenson
      A Child's Garden ofVerses, no.9,'Windy Nights', stanza1.

  • My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky; It's time to take the window to see Leerie going by; Foreverynight attea-timeand before youtakeyourseat, With lantern and with ladder he comes posting up the street.

    - Robert Louis Stevenson
      A Child's Garden ofVerses, no.30,'The Lamplighter', stanza1.

  • The longest day must have its close,the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning. An eternal, inexorable lapse of moments is ever hurrying the day of the evil to aneternal night, andthenightofthejusttoaneternalday.

    - Harriet (Elizabeth) ne  e Beecher Stowe
      UncleTom's Cabin, ch.40.

  • Set me whereas the sun doth parch the green, Or where his beams may not dissolve the ice, In temperate heat, where he is felt and seen, With proud people, in presence sad and wise; Set me in base, or yet in high degree, In the long night, or in the shortest day, In clear weather, or where mists thickest be, In lusty youth, or when my hairs be grey† Yours will I be, and with that only thought Comfort myself when that my hap is nought.

    - Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
    'Set me whereas the sun doth parch the green'.

  • For winter's rains and ruins are over, And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover, The light that loses, the night that wins; And time remembered isgrief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

    - Algernon Charles Swinburne
      Atlanta in Calydon, chorus,'When the hounds of spring'.

  • Strength without hands to smite, Love that endures for a breath; Night, the shadow of light, And Life, the shadow of death.

    - Algernon Charles Swinburne
      Atlanta in Calydon, chorus,'Before the beginning of years'.

  • I shall remember while the light lives yet And in the night time I shall not forget.

    - Algernon Charles Swinburne
      Poems and Ballads,'Erotion'.

  • For a dayand a night Love sang to us, played with us, Folded us round from the dark and the light; And our hearts were fulfilled with the music he made with us, Made with our hands and our lips while he stayed with us, Stayed in mid passage his pinions from flight For a dayand a night.

    - Algernon Charles Swinburne
      Poems and Ballads (2nd edn),'At Parting'.

  • We turned the switch, saw the flashes, watched for ten minutes, then switched everything off and went home. That night I knew the world was headed for sorrow.

    - Leo Szilard
      After an early experiment at Columbia University which proved the possibility of splitting the atom. Quoted inJames B Simpson Simpson's Contemporary Quotations (1988).

  •    I've heard the wolves scuffle, and said: So this Is man; sowhat better conclusion is there The day will not follow night, and the heart Of man has a little dignity, but less patience Than a wolf's, and a duller sense that cannot Smell its own mortality.

    - (John Orley) Allen Tate
      Poems1922^1947,'TheWolves'.

  • Behold, we know not anything; I can but trust that good shall fall At lastfar offat last, to all, And every winter change to spring. So runs my dream: but what am I? An infant crying in the night: An infant crying for the light: And with no language but a cry.

    -Tennyson
      In Memoriam A.H.H., canto 54, l.13^20.

  • Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year isgoing, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.

    -Tennyson
      In Memoriam A.H.H., canto106, l.1^8.

  • Come into the garden, Maud, For the black bat, night, has flown, Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone; Maud And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, And the musk of the rose is blown. For a breeze of morning moves, And the planet of Love is on high, Beginning to faint in the light that she loves On a bed of daffodil sky.

    -Tennyson
      Maud, pt.1, sect.22, stanza1, l.850^9.

  • All night has the casement jessamine stirred To the dancers dancing in tune; Till a silence fell with the waking bird, And a hush with the setting moon.

    -Tennyson
      Maud, pt.1, sect.22, stanza 3, l.864^7.

  • When the face of night is fair on the dewy downs, And the shining daffodil dies.

    -Tennyson
      Maud, pt.3, sect.6, stanza1, l.5^6.

  • Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    - Dylan Marlais Thomas
      'Do Not Go Gentle IntoThat Good Night'.

  • To begin at the beginning: It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and- rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.

    - Dylan Marlais Thomas
      Under MilkWood, opening words.

  • The boys are dreaming wicked orofthebucking ranches of the night and the jolly-rogered sea.

    - Dylan Marlais Thomas
      Under MilkWood.

  • Bankers'genes were Wall St. genes, especially in the big cities. If the banks were conservative just now [1955], it was because bankers still awoke in the middle of the night, trembling and sweaty with thoughts of the Crash. But intimeanewgenerationwouldtake over: ambitious, overcompetitive young men to whom1929 would be merelya date on a page; such menwould sever theroots of memory as if with an ax, not realizing that those tendrils were also the rudder cables.

    - Michael M Thomas
      The Ropespinner Conspiracy.

  • The City is of Night, but not of Sleep; There sweet Sleep is not for the weary brain; The pitiless hours like years and ages creep, A night seems termless hell.

    -James pseudonym 'BV',ByssheVanolis Thomson
      The City of Dreadful Night, pt.1.

  • The City is of Night; perchance of Death, But certainly of Night.

    -James pseudonym 'BV',ByssheVanolis Thomson
      The City of Dreadful Night, pt.1.

  • I was seized by the stern hand of Compulsion, that dark, unseasonable Urgethat impelswomento cleanhouse in the middle of the night.

    -James Grover Thurber
      Alarms and Diversions,'There's A Time For Flags'.

  •    To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin That makes calamity of so long life; For who would fardels bear, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane, But that the fear of something after death Murders the innocent sleep, Great nature's second course, And makes us rather sling the arrows of outrageous fortune Than fly to others that we know not of. There's the respect must give us pause: Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

    - Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens Twain

  • I saw Eternity the other night Like a great ring of pure and endless light, All calm, as it was bright, And round beneath it,Time in hours, days, years Driven by the spheres Like a vast shadow moved.

    - Henry Vaughan
      Silex Scintillans,'TheWorld'.

  • Patriots spring up like mushrooms. I could raise 50 of them within the four and twenty hours. I have raised many of them in one night. It is but refusing to gratifyan immeasurable or insolent demand, and up starts a patriot.

    - Sir Robert, 1st Earl of Orford Walpole
      Speech, House of Commons,13 Feb.

  •    I hope in time 'twill grow into a custom That noblemen shall come with cap and knee To purchase a night's lodging of their wives. 895

    -John Webster
      The Duchess of Malfi, act 3, sc.2.

  • The best time to listen to a politician is when he is on a street corner, in the rain, late at night, when he's exhausted. Then he doesn't lie.

    -Theodore H(arold) White
      In the NewYorkTimes, 5 Jan.

  • When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd, And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night, I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

    -Walt(er) Whitman
    ^66  Leaves of Grass,'Memories of President Lincoln','When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd', section1.

  • Come lovelyand soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later delicate death.

    -Walt(er) Whitman
    ^66  Leaves of Grass,'Memories of President Lincoln','When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd', section14.

  • He has something of the night in him.

    - Anne Widdecombe
      Of fellow Conservative Michael Howard. In the Sunday Times, (electronic edition) 11 May.

  • All night, this headland Lunges into the rumpling Capework of the wind.

    - Richard Wilbur
      The Mind Reader,'Sleepless at Crown Point'.

  •    The greatest asset that a head of state can have is the ability to get a good night's sleep.

    - (James) Harold Wilson, Baron Wilson of Rievaulx
      BBC Radio 4 broadcast,16 Apr.

  • There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore; Turn whereso'er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

    -William Wordsworth
    c.1802^1803  'Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood', stanza1 (published1807).

  •    A mistress should be like a little country retreat near the town, not to dwell in constantly, but only for a night and away.

    -William Wycherley
      The CountryWife, act1, sc.1.

  • Had I the heavens'embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

    -W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
      'HeWishes for the Cloths of Heaven', complete poem. Collected in TheWind Among the Reeds (1899).

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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