Quotes about the night
page 19

“Hey mama, don't you treat me wrong,
Come and love your daddy all night long.
All right now, hey hey, all right.
See the girl with the diamond ring;
She knows how to shake that thing.
All right now now now, hey hey, hey hey.
Tell your mama, tell your pa,
I'm gonna send you back to Arkansas.
Oh yes, ma'm, you don't do right, don't do right.”

Ray Charles (1930–2004) American musician

"What'd I Say", from the album What'd I Say (1957)

Love, Girl

“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 (1934) American writer

From the novel Run, River

Life, Memory, Time

“Have you ever fall'n into one of those Cometary Dazes, with the way the Object grows brighter and brighter each night? These Apparitions in the Sky, we never observe them but in Motion, — gone in seconds, and if they return, we do not see them. Once safely a part of the Night Sky, they may hang there at their Pleasure, performing whatever their Work corresponds to shifting jibs and stay-sails, keeping perfectly upon Station, mimicking any faint, unnam'd Star you please. Do they watch us? Are they visits from the past, from an Age of Faith, when Miracles still literally happen'd?”

Thomas Pynchon Mason & Dixon

Source: Mason & Dixon (1997), Chapter 74

Pleasure, Age, Faith, Way

“Hence, to the realms of Night, dire Demon, hence!
Thy chain of adamant can bind
That little world, the human mind,
And sink its noblest powers to impotence.”

Samuel Rogers (1763–1855) British poet

I.1 l. 1-4.
Ode to Superstition (1786)

World

“Rarely, rarely, comest thou,
Spirit of Delight!
Wherefore hast thou left me now
Many a day and night?
Many a weary night and day
'Tis since thou are fled away.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

St. 1 Song: Rarely, Rarely, Comest Thou http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Percy_Bysshe_Shelley/17889 (1821)

“This appearance of the Evening was… just after a very heavy rain — more rain in the night and very — [? light] wind which continued all the — day following while making – this sketch observed the Moon easing – very beautifully… [in the] due East over the — heavy clouds from which the late showers – had fallen.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Inscription: 12 September, 1821, written on the back of 'Hampstead Heath, Sun setting over Harrow,' his sketch in oil on paper; as quoted in Leslie Parris and Ian Fleming-Williams, Constable (Tate Gallery Publications, London. 1993), p. 221
1820s

Light, Appearance

“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 book A Child's Garden of Verses

Windy Nights, st. 1.
A Child's Garden of Verses (1885)

Star

“Manhattan. Sometimes from beyond the skyscrapers, across of thousands of high walls, the cry of a tugboat finds you in your insomnia in the middle of the night, and you remember that this desert of iron and cement is an island.”

Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist

American Journals (1978)

Cry

“When we rise out of [the night] into the new life and there begin to receive the signs, what can we know of that which — of him who gives them to us? Only what we experience from time to time from the signs themselves. If we name the speaker of this speech God, then it is always the God of a moment, a moment God.”

Martin Buber (1878–1965) German Jewish Existentialist philosopher and theologian

Between Man and Man (1965), p. 15
Between Man and Man (1965)

Life, God, Time

“There's something in the way she eases my mind
And lays me across the bed till I close my eyes.
Stirs me in the morning till I can't ever be satisfied.
I leave Carolina every night in my dreams,
Like the girls that try to love me that I only leave.
Rock me like a baby doll and hold me to your chest,
But I'm always moving too fast.”

Ryan Adams (1974) American alt-country/rock singer-songwriter

When Will You Come Back Home?
29 (2005)

Love, Dreams, Way, Girl

“The man who desires to have a clear head, a brain keenly alive to the subtle influences of the universe about him, alert to respond to every call made upon it by the bodily organs under its supervision, ready to receive impressions from the infinite source of universal thought, and capable of thinking the high thoughts of God after him, must live simply, abstemiously, naturally, and must avoid every harmful and inferior food. He will select the choicest food stuffs. These will consist of fruits, nuts, legumes, and dextrinized grains,—that is, well-toasted grain preparations, toasted bread, toasted wheat flakes, etc. He will eat sparingly, never to repletion. He will exercise out of doors at least two or three hours daily, living as much of the time as possible in the open air. He will sleep eight hours at night. He will take a vigorous cold bath every morning on rising, and, at least two or three times a week, will take a warm cleansing bath just before going to bed at night. He will conserve for useful work every energy of mind and body. He will endeavor to live righteously in the largest sense of the word.”

John Harvey Kellogg (1852–1943) American physician

Source: The Living Temple, pp. 422-423

God, Food, Exercises, Nature

“Grove of Tuoni, grove of night!
There thy bed of sand is light.
Thither my baby I lead.
Mirth and joy each long hour yields
In the Prince of Tuoni's fields
Tending the Tuonela cattle.
Mirth and joy my babe will know,
Lulled to sleep at evening glow
By the pale Tuonela maiden.
Surely joy hours will hold,
Lying in thy cot of gold,
Hearing the nightjar singing.
Grove of Tuoni, grove of peace!
There all strife and passion cease.
Distant the treacherous world.”

Aleksis Kivi (1834–1872) Finnish writer

"Tuonen lehto, öinen lehto! / Siell' on hieno hietakehto, / Sinnepä lapseni saatan. // Siell' on lapsen lysti olla, / Tuonen herran vainiolla / Kaitsea Tuonelan karjaa. // Siell' on lapsen lysti olla, / Illan tullen tuuditella / Helmassa Tuonelan immen. // Onpa kullan lysti olla, / Kultakehdoss' kellahdella, / Kuullella kehräjälintuu. // Tuonen viita, rauhan viita! / Kaukana on vaino, riita, / Kaukana kavala maailma." (Äiti Aleksis Kiven kuvaamana, koonnut Ukko Kivistö, Turussa, kustannusosakeyhtiö Aura 1948)

World, Peace, Lying, Sleep

“I miss having to wonder about any aspect of an artist’s life. [This] was a luxury we don’t have anymore. Whether it’s the people surrounding them revealing things about their process or their personal lives, or the artists themselves going on Twitter and telling you what they’re doing in the middle of the night with their girlfriend — it’s like, ‘Wow, um… I really liked you better before you told me that. I really would like to go back to imagining the person that I was imagining.”

Davey Havok (1975) American singer

Alternative Press magazine, December 2009

Life, People, Imagination, Personality

“He picked out this sentence in a New Yorker casual of mine: "After dinner, the men moved into the living room," and he wanted to know why I, or the editors, had put in the comma. I could explain that one all night. I wrote back that this particular comma was Ross's way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

The Years with Ross (Little Brown & Co, 1957, pg.267)

Variant: From one casual of mine he picked this sentence. “After dinner, the men moved into the living room.” I explained to the professor that this was Ross’s way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up. There must, as we know, be a comma after every move, made by men, on this earth.

Memo to The New Yorker (1959); reprinted in New York Times Book Review (4 December 1988); Harold Ross was the editor of The New Yorker from its inception until 1951, and well-known for the overuse of commas
From other writings

Men, Way, Time

“Since taking this job things have happened. I've been spending my free time studying the Word. Each night the Lord seemed to get hold of me a little more. Night before last I was reading in Nehemiah. I finished the book, and read it through again. Here was a man who left everything as far as position was concerned to go do a job nobody else could handle. And because he went the whole remnant back in Jerusalem got right with the Lord. Obstacles and hindrances fell away and a great work was done. Jim, I couldn't get away from it. The Lord was dealing with me. On the way home yesterday morning I took a long walk and came to a decision which I know is of the Lord. In all honesty before the Lord I say that no one or nothing beyond Himself and the Word has any bearing upon what I've decided to do. I have one desire now - to live a life of reckless abandon for the Lord, putting all my energy into it. Maybe He'll send me someplace where the name of Jesus Christ is unknown. Jim, I'm taking the Lord at His word, and I'm trusting Him to prove His Word. It's kind of like putting all your eggs in one basket, but we've already put our trust in Him for salvation, so why not do it as far as our life is concerned? If there's nothing to this business of eternal life we might as well lose everything in one crack and throw our present life away with out life hereafter. But if there is something to it, then everything else the Lord says must hold true likewise. Pray for me, Jim.”

Ed McCully (1927–1956) American Christian missionary

Life, Books, Way, Home

“In order to cultivate yourself and to drop no lower than the level of the milieu in which you have landed, it is not enough to read Pickwick and memorize a monologue from Faust…. You need to work continually day and night, to read ceaselessly, to study, to exercise your will…. Each hour is precious.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to his brother, N.P. Chekhov (March 1886)
Original: Чтобы воспитаться и не стоять ниже уровня среды, в которую попал, недостаточно прочесть только Пикквика и вызубрить монолог из «Фауста». <…> Тут нужны беспрерывный дневной и ночной труд, вечное чтение, штудировка, воля… Тут дорог каждый час…

Reading, Exercises, Study

“My ankle hurts from dancing last night so there is pain. But the pain doesn't hurt me for there is no me.”

Ken Wilber (1949) American writer and public speaker

One Taste (2000)

Pain, Dance, Hurt

“My home is my paradise. When I come home at night, I feel an overall peaceful sensation. We will never give this place up.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

People en Espanol magazine (April, 2004)
2007, 2008

Peace, Feeling, Home

“At Posada, Calugareni, on the Olt, jiu and. Cerna rivers, at Turda; in the mountains of the unhappy and forgotten Moti of Vidra, all the way to Huedin and Alba-Iulia (the torture place of Horia and his brothers-in-arms), there are everywhere testimonies of battles and tombs of heroes. All over the Carpathians, from the Oltenian mountains at Dragoslavele and at Predeal, from Oituz to Vatra Dornei, on peaks and in valley bottoms, everywhere Romanian blood flowed like rivers. In the middle of the night, in difficult times for our people, we hear the call of the Romanian soil urging us to battle. I ask and I expect an answer: By what right do the Jews wish to take this land from us? On what historical argument do they base their pretensions and particularly the audacity with which they defy us Romanians, here in our own land? We are bound to this land by millions of tombs and millions of unseen threads that only our soul feels, and woe to those who shall try to snatch us from it.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Jewish Problem

People, Way, Feeling, Soul

“[The Spanish news] really keeps me awake at night and in the day I can think of nothing else. I did not think it possible that anything could have made me regret being out of office, but I now wish I was in a situation, in which it might be possible to assist this glorious cause.”

Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey (1764–1845) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Letter to Lady Holland (2 July 1808), quoted in E. A. Smith, Lord Grey. 1764-1845 (Alan Sutton, 1996), p. 169.
1800s

Thinking

“I shall inclose your Excellency a plan of the enemy's works, and of their strength, from the best ac counts we are able to get. They have never been out of their lines since the siege began, till, night be fore last, Colonel Bruce came out with one hundred and fifty men, to take off a small picket of ours, posted at the neck of Easton's beach. He partly succeeded in the attempt, by the carelessness of the old guard. He came over after dark, and lay in ambush, that when the new guard went down to take their post, the enemy came upon their backs before they discovered them, it being very dark. We lost twenty-four privates and two subalterns. Ten of the picket got off.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (August 1778)

Men

“This election was lost four and five and six years ago not this year. They dident start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickled down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the dryest little spot. But he dident know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands. They saved the big banks but the little ones went up the flue.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Nationally syndicated column number 518, And Here’s How It All Happened (1932), as published in the Tulsa Daily World, 5 December 1932.<ref>
Weekly columns

Money, People, Hope, Thinking

“I saw a commercial on late night TV, it said,"Forget everything you know about slipcovers." So I did. And it was a load off my mind. Then the commercial tried to sell me slipcovers, and I didn't know what the hell they were.”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Just For Laughs: On The Edge - 2002

Hell, Forgetting

“We cannot pretend that we do not see the armed policeman who marches up and down beneath our window to guarantee our security while we eat our luxurious dinner, or look at the new piece at the theater, or that we are unaware of the existence of the soldiers who will make their appearance with guns and cartridges directly our property is attacked.
We know very well that we are only allowed to go on eating our dinner, to finish seeing the new play, or to enjoy to the end the ball, the Christmas fete, the promenade, the races or, the hunt, thanks to the policeman's revolver or the soldier's rifle, which will shoot down the famished outcast who has been robbed of his share, and who looks round the corner with covetous eyes at our pleasures, ready to interrupt them instantly, were not policeman and soldier there prepared to run up at our first call for help.
And therefore just as a brigand caught in broad daylight in the act cannot persuade us that he did not lift his knife in order to rob his victim of his purse, and had no thought of killing him, we too, it would seem, cannot persuade ourselves or others that the soldiers and policemen around us are not to guard us, but only for defense against foreign foes, and to regulate traffic and fetes and reviews; we cannot persuade ourselves and others that we do not know that the men do not like dying of hunger, bereft of the right to gain their subsistence from the earth on which they live; that they do not like working underground, in the water, or in the stifling heat, for ten to fourteen hours a day, at night in factories to manufacture objects for our pleasure. One would imagine it impossible to deny what is so obvious. Yet it is denied.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894), Chapter 12

Men, Hunger, Pleasure, Imagination

“Anyone wanting slyly to avoid suffering identifies with the entirety of the universe, judges each thing as if he were it. In the same way, he imagines, at bottom, that he will never die. We receive these hazy illusions like a narcotic necessary to bear life. But what happens to us when, disintoxicated, we learn what we are? Lost among babblers in a night in which we can only hate the appearance of light which comes from babbling. The self-acknowledged suffering of the disintoxicated is the subject of this book.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: L’Expérience Intérieure (1943), p. xxxii

Life, Hate, Books, Way

“Why should we fear that which will come to all that is?
We cannot tell, we do not know, which is the greater blessing — life or death. We do not know whether the grave is the end of this life, or the door of another, or whether the night here is not somewhere else at dawn. Neither can we tell which is the more fortunate — the child dying in its mother's arms, before its lips have learned to form a word, or he who journeys all the length of life's uneven road, painfully taking the last slow steps with staff and crutch.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

At A Child's Grave (1882)

Life, Death, Fear, Learning

“Your eyes, accustomed to semi-darkness, will soon open to more radiant visions of light. The shadows which we shall paint shall be more luminous than the high-lights of our predecessors, and our pictures, next to those of the museums, will shine like blinding daylight, compared with deepest night. We conclude that painting cannot exist today without divisionism... w:Divisionism - [ Paul Signac initiated divisionism slightly earlier, together with Seurat ] - for the modern painter, must be an innate complementariness which we declare to be essential and necessary.”

Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Italian painter and sculptor

As quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 92.
1910, Manifesto of Futurist Painters,' April 1910

Light, Painting

“…best night of my life.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

citation needed
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson (2005–2014), Commonly repeated

Life

“This is the worst of love, this unmeant mystification — someone smiling and going out without saying where, or a letter arriving, being read in your presence, put away, not explained, or: "No, alas, I can't to-night" on the telephone — that, one person having set up without knowing, the other cannot undo without the where? who? why? that brings them both down a peg. Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies.”

Elizabeth Bowen book The House in Paris

The House in Paris (1935)

Love, Jealousy, Smile, Feeling

“Faith has in it the recognition of the certainty and the justice of a judgment that is coming down crashing on every human head; and then from the midst of these fears and sorrows and the tempest of that great darkness there rises up in the night of terrors the shining of one perhaps pale, quivering, distant, but divinely given hope, "My Saviour! My Saviour! He is righteous; He has died; He lives! I will stay no longer; I will cast myself upon Him!"”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 229.

Fear, Faith, Justice, Hope

“From the city of angels off the Pacific Ocean. Good morning, good evening, wherever you may be, across the nation, around the world. I'm George Noory. Welcome to America's most listened-to late night talk show, Coast to Coast AM.”

George Noory (1950) Talk Radio Host

Show Opener (Nightly)

World, Angels

“I now began for the first time to envy those young cubs at the university who had fine scholars to tell them what was what; professors who had devoted their lives to mastering and focusing ideas in every branch of learning; who were eager to distribute the treasures they had gathered before they were overtaken by the night. But now I pity undergraduates, when I see what frivolous lives many of them lead in the midst of precious fleeting opportunity. After all, a man’s Life must be nailed to a cross either of Thought or Action. Without work there is no play.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Source: My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 9 (Education At Bangalore).

Life, Idea, Learning, Universe

“He's going to go all-the-way. (often quoted by Cosell during the "Halftime Highlights" segment of ABC's Monday Night Football games to announce touchdowns scored in games on Sunday a day earlier. Adopted as a tribute, and modified to include a hesitating voice cadence by Chris Berman of ESPN as He could… go… all… the … way!)”

Howard Cosell (1918–1995) American sportscaster

citation needed

Way, Quotes, Game, Football

“Pursuit of happiness, unalienable pursuit… right to life liberty and… A black moonless night; Jimmy Herf is walking alone up South Street. Behind the wharfhouses ships raise shadowy skeletons against the night. "By Jesus I admit I'm stumped," he says aloud. All these April nights combing the streets alone a skyscraper has obsessed him, a grooved building jutting up with uncountable bright windows falling onto him out of a scudding sky. Typewriters rain continual nickelplated confetti in his ears.”

John Dos Passos book Manhattan Transfer

Source: Manhattan Transfer (1925), p. 365

Life, Happiness

“Whatever his views are this morning, they might change this afternoon, and they were different than they were last night, and they’ll be different tomorrow. … They seem to be ever, ever-changing, depending on what crowd he’s in front of. Sounds like a typical politician, by the way, where you get in front of one crowd and say one thing, and then say something else to another crowd that may want to hear a different view. All the things that Donald Trump railed against, he seems to be morphing into — it’s kind of disturbing. … He doesn’t believe in things, this is all a game.”

Jeb Bush (1953) American politician, former Governor of Florida

About Donald Trump's views — Jeb Bush Says He’s Not Buying The Trump Immigration Shift https://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/jeb-bush-says-hes-not-buying-the-trump-immigration-shift?utm_term=.xtWW3bwaw#.iaPobDJKJ, BuzzFeed (August 25, 2016)

Way, Game, Change, Dependency

“"Hair loss and retrieval" (Translation of "Pérdida y recuperación del pelo")

To combat pragmatism and the horrible tendency to achieve useful purposes, my elder cousin proposes the procedure of pulling out a nice hair from the head, knotting it in the middle and droping it gently down the hole in the sink. If the hair gets caught in the grid that usually fills in these holes, it will just take to open the tap a little to lose sight of it.

Without wasting an instant, must start the hair recovery task. The first operation is reduced to dismantling the siphon from the sink to see if the hair has become hooked in any of the rugosities of the drain. If it is not found, it is necessary to expose the section of pipe that goes from the siphon to the main drainage pipe. It is certain that in this part will appear many hairs and we will have to count on the help of the rest of the family to examine them one by one in search of the knot. If it does not appear, the interesting problem of breaking the pipe down to the ground floor will arise, but this means a greater effort, because for eight or ten years we will have to work in a ministry or trading house to collect enough money to buy the four departments located under the one of my elder cousin, all that with the extraordinary disadvantage of what while working during those eight or ten years, the distressing feeling that the hair is no longer in the pipes anymore can not be avoided and that only by a remote chance remains hooked on some rusty spout of the drain.

The day will come when we can break the pipes of all the departments, and for months to come we will live surrounded by basins and other containers full of wet hairs, as well as of assistants and beggars whom we will generously pay to search, assort, and bring us the possible hairs in order to achieve the desired certainty. If the hair does not appear, we will enter in a much more vague and complicated stage, because the next section takes us to the city's main sewers. After buying a special outfit, we will learn to slip through the sewers at late night hours, armed with a powerful flashlight and an oxygen mask, and explore the smaller and larger galleries, assisted if possible by individuals of the underworld, with whom we will have established a relationship and to whom we will have to give much of the money that we earn in a ministry or a trading house.

Very often we will have the impression of having reached the end of the task, because we will find (or they will bring us) similar hairs of the one we seek; but since it is not known of any case where a hair has a knot in the middle without human hand intervention, we will almost always end up with the knot in question being a mere thickening of the caliber of the hair (although we do not know of any similar case) or a deposit of some silicate or any oxide produced by a long stay against a wet surface. It is probable that we will advance in this way through various sections of major and minor pipes, until we reach that place where no one will decide to penetrate: the main drain heading in the direction of the river, the torrential meeting of detritus in which no money, no boat, no bribe will allow us to continue the search.

But before that, and perhaps much earlier, for example a few centimeters from the mouth of the sink, at the height of the apartment on the second floor, or in the first underground pipe, we may happen to find the hair. It is enough to think of the joy that this would cause us, in the astonished calculation of the efforts saved by pure good luck, to choose, to demand practically a similar task, that every conscious teacher should advise to its students from the earliest childhood, instead of drying their souls with the rule of cross-multiplication or the sorrows of Cancha Rayada.”

Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) Argentinian writer

Historias de Cronopios y de Famas (1962)

Money, Family, Way, Feeling

“I cannot believe that there is any being in this universe who has created a human soul for eternal pain. I would rather that every god would destroy himself; I would rather that we all should go to eternal chaos, to black and starless night, than that just one soul should suffer eternal agony.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

What Must We Do To Be Saved? (1880) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38801/38801-h/38801-h.htm Section X, "The Evangelical Alliance."

God, Pain, Soul, Suffering

“Human beings—any one of us, and our species as a whole—are not all-important, not at the center of the world. That is the one essential piece of information, the one great secret, offered by any encounter with the woods or the mountains or the ocean or any wilderness or chunk of nature or patch of night sky.”

Bill McKibben (1960) American environmentalist and writer

Source: The Age of Missing Information (1992), p. 228

Secret, World, Mountain, Nature

“Greta Van Susteren: And Governor, last night, there was a lot of talk about the "Sputnik moment" that the President talked about, um… Do you agree with him? Do you f— And is this our moment?”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

2014

“I was tryin' to find my way home,
But all I heard was a drone
Bouncing off a satellite,
Crushin' the last lone American night.
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?
This is radio nowhere, is there anybody alive out there?”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Radio Nowhere"
Song lyrics, Magic (2007)

Way, Home

“Let me be transparent about my affection for cops. When you dial 911, whether you are white or black, the cops come, and they come quickly, and they come quickly whether they are white or black. That’s what cops do, in addition to all of the other hard and difficult and dangerous and frightening things that they do. They respond to homes in the middle of the night where a drunken father, wielding a gun, is threatening his wife and children. They pound up the back stairs of an apartment building, not knowing whether the guys behind the door they are about to enter are armed, or high, or both.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

Children, Guy, Home

“When night was drawing near, I ran down the flowery slopes exhilarated, thanking God for the gift of this great day. The setting sun fired the clouds. All the world seemed new-born. Every thing, even the commonest, was seen in new light and was looked at with new interest as if never seen before.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Travels in Alaska http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/travels_in_alaska/ (1915), chapter 7: Glenora Peak 1910s

God, World, Light, Sun

“I went out the other night for the first time in ages, just because I'd been so busy. As I came out of the cinema, I ran down the street to get cigarettes, and 30 guys followed me with cameras and shouted at me. It's all so strange. It's not a life I really live or understand.”

Sienna Guillory (1975) British actress

Sienna Guillory Interview http://community.livejournal.com/siennagfan/20449.html#cutid1. Vanity Fair. December 2001.

Life, Age, Guy, Understanding

“Oh, well, I'm leaving here now," he told her. "They're forcing me to sell up."
"And I'm not surprised," she replied. "It's that dirty old devil again, he who haunts Summerhouses and always has. And always will. Kolumkilli has rarely allowed anyone who lived in this croft to escape scot-free. I say for my part that I have never made this place my home. I have been nothing more than a lodger for the night.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

:- conversation between Bjartur and Hallbera
Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book Two, Part II: Years of Prosperity

Home, Parting

“Tis true, 'tis day; what though it be?
O wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise, because 'tis light?
Did we lie down, because 'twas night?
Love which in spite of darkness brought us hither
Should in despite of light keep us together.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

Break of Day, stanza 1

Love, Lie, Light

“I know you are asking today, "How long will it take?" Somebody's asking, "How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?" Somebody's asking, "When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and communities all over the South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?" Somebody's asking, "When will the radiant star of hope be plunged against the nocturnal bosom of this lonely night, plucked from weary souls with chains of fear and the manacles of death? How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it?" I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because "truth crushed to earth will rise again." How long? Not long, because "no lie can live forever."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

How long? Not long, because "you shall reap what you sow."
1960s, How Long, Not Long (1965)

Death, Wisdom, Men, Children

“She wore a wreath of roses
The first night that we met.”

Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797–1839) English poet, songwriter, dramatist, and writer

She wore a Wreath, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“All the glories of the sunset,
In the sunrise one may see;
That which others call the dawning
Is the night for you and me.”

Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt (1836–1919) American writer

To-day, Stanza 3.

“A very distinguished colleague began his criticism of this show by asking what is Mr Astaire's secret. May I suggest that the solution hangs on a little word of three letters? Mr Astaire's secret is that of the late Rudolph Valentino and of Mr Maurice Chevalier — sex, but sex so bejewelled and be-pixied that the weaker vessels who fall for it can pretend that it isn't sex at all but a sublimated projection of the Little Fellow with the Knuckles in His Eyes. You'd have thought by the look of the first night foyer that it was Mothering Thursday, since every woman in the place was urgent to take to her bosom this waif with the sad eyes and the twinkling feet.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Theatre critic James Agate in a review of a 1933 London performance of Gay Divorce as quoted in Cooke, Alistair. "Fred Astaire Obituary", Letter From America, BBC World Service, June 28, 1987.

Secret, Sadness, Sex

“In the night as he slept Boyd came to him and squatted by the deep embers of the fire as he'd done times by the hundreds and smiled his soft smile that was not quite cynical and he took off his hat and held it before him and looked down into it. In the dream he knew that Boyd was dead and that the subject of his being so must be approached with a certain caution for that which was circumspect in life must be doubly so in death and he'd no way to know what word or gesture might subtract him back again into that nothingness out of which he'd come. When finally he did ask him what it was like to be dead Boyd only smiled and looked away and would not answer. They spoke of other things and he tried not to wake from the dream but the ghost dimmed and faded and he woke and lay looking up at the stars through the bramblework of the treelimbs and he tried to think of what that place could be where Boyd was but Boyd was dead and wasted in his bones wrapped in the soogan upriver in the trees and he turned his face to the ground and wept.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Crossing

The Crossing (1994)

Life, Death, Smile, Dreams

“Night, the mother of fear and mystery, was coming upon me.”

H. G. Wells book The War of the Worlds

Book II, Ch. 8 (Ch. 25 in editions without Book divisions): Dead London
The War of the Worlds (1898)

Fear

“There is legitimate debate about many of these decisions. But there can be little debate about the results. America has gone more than seven years without another terrorist attack on our soil. This is a tribute to those who toil day and night to keep us safe – law enforcement officers, intelligence analysts, homeland security and diplomatic personnel, and the men and women of the United States Armed Forces. Our nation is blessed to have citizens who volunteer to defend us in this time of danger. I have cherished meeting these selfless patriots and their families. America owes you a debt of gratitude. And to all our men and women in uniform listening tonight: There has been no higher honor than serving as your Commander in Chief.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2009, Farewell speech to the nation (January 2009)

Women, Men, Family, Law

“And there shall be for thee all soft delight
That shadowy thought can win,
A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
To let the warm Love in!”

John Keats Ode to Psyche

"Ode to Psyche", st. 5
Poems (1820)

Love

“[Writing songs] is no different than explaining to somebody what you dreamed last night: No one ever gives you crap for what you dreamed last night. "I was laying in my bed, and all of a sudden a stallion jumped on my bed and the next thing I know I was in Mars but it looked like my kitchen"... That's kind of what I do with my songs, write them in a dream-like manner. It's up to people to swallow it however they want.”

Jason Mraz (1977) American singer-songwriter

[Christina, Fuoco, http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7600127/jason_mraz_goes_to_school, Jason Mraz Goes to School, Rolling Stone, 2 September 2007, 2007-09-28]

People, Dreams

“I've never thought much of Joe Biden. But man, did he get it right in last night's debate, and not just because he walloped sniveling little Paul Ryan on the facts. What he got absolutely right, despite what you might read this morning (many outlets are criticizing Biden's dramatic excesses), was his tone. Biden did absolutely roll his eyes, snort, laugh derisively and throw his hands up in the air whenever Ryan trotted out his little beady-eyed BS-isms.
But he should have! He was absolutely right to be doing it. We all should be doing it. That includes all of us in the media, and not just paid obnoxious-opinion-merchants like me, but so-called "objective" news reporters as well. We should all be rolling our eyes, and scoffing and saying, "Come back when you're serious."”

Matt Taibbi (1970) author and journalist

"The Vice Presidential Debate: Joe Biden Was Right to Laugh" at Rolling Stone (12 October 2012) http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/the-vice-presidential-debate-joe-biden-was-right-to-laugh-20121012

Reading

“Honour the brave who sleep
Where the lost “Titanic” lies,
The men who knew what a man must do
When he looks Death in the eyes.“Women and children first,”—
Ah, strong and tender cry!
The sons whom women had borne and nursed,
Remembered,—and dared to die.The boats crept off in the dark:
The great ship groaned: and then,—
O stars of the night, who saw that sight,
Bear witness, These were men!”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Heroes of the "Titantic" (November 9, 1912).

Death, Women, Men, Children

“And the heavy night hung dark,
The hills and waters o'er,
When a band of exiles moored their bark
On the wild New England shore.”

Felicia Hemans (1793–1835) English poet

Stanza 2. The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers http://www.poetry-archive.com/h/landing_of_the_pilgrim_fathers.html (1826)

Water

“As when, upon a tranced summer-night,
Those green-rob’d senators of mighty woods,
Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars,
Dream, and so dream all night without a stir,
Save from one gradual solitary gust
Which comes upon the silence, and dies off,
As if the ebbing air had but one wave.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Bk. I, l. 72
Hyperion: A Fragment (1819)

Dreams, Star, Silence, Summer

“Now, I have to go back to work on my State of the Union speech. And I worked on it until pretty late last night. I want to say one thing to the American people. I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again. I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time, never. These allegations are false, and I need to go back to work for the American people.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

Clinton denying that he had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSDAXGXGiEw. Remarks on the After-School Child Care Initiative, Roosevelt Room, White House Remarks on the After-School Child Care Initiative http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=56257 (January 26, 1998) 1990s

People, Lie, Time, Falseness

“I was so sick last night I
Didn't hardly know my mind.
So sick last night I
Didn't know my mind.
I drunk some bad licker that
Almost made me blind.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

"Morning After," (l. 1-6), from Shakespeare in Harlem (1942)

“Take ye my solemn farewell! O, my friends,
Already night is darkening on my eyes;—
But is not Heaven most beautiful by night?
Thousands of stars shine in the kindling sky,
Which is an azure desert during day.
Thus do the gathering of eternal shades
Reveal innumerable thoughts, half lost
In the full daylight of prosperity.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Translations, From the French

Beauty, Star

“And I said, baby don't waste your time
I know what's on your mind
U wouldn't be satisfied with a one night stand
And I could never take the place of your man.”

Prince (1958–2016) American pop, songwriter, musician and actor

I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man
Song lyrics, Sign O' the Times (1987)

Time, Baby

“Merle's all-night illumination prolonged itself into an inescapable glow that began to keep him awake.”

Thomas Pynchon book Against the Day

Source: Against the Day (2006), p. 65

“A good night for the fireplace to be
crackling with flames - or so he figured,
Crumpling the papers he could only see
As testimonials to long plateaus of emptiness.”

Weldon Kees (1914–1955) American artist

The Heat in the Room (Jarkko Laine: Amerikan Cowboy. Helsinki: Otava, 1981. ISBN 951-1-06597-1

“I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams. It is because man, when he ceases to sleep, is above all the plaything of his memory, and in its normal state memory takes pleasure in weakly retracing for him the circumstances of the dream, in stripping it of any real importance, and in dismissing the only determinant from the point where he thinks he has left it a few hours before: this firm hope, this concern. He is under the impression of continuing something that is worthwhile. Thus the dream finds itself reduced to a mere parenthesis, as is the night. And, like the night, dreams generally contribute little to furthering our understanding. This curious state of affairs seems to me to call for certain reflections.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, Andre Breton (Manifesto of Surrealism; 1924)

Pleasure, Dreams, Hope, Way

“Here’s to the day
That wondrous May,
A-roaming through the heather,
When her little shoes
And my big boots
Were out on the hills together.

And here’s to the night
Of our delight,
That held the stars in tether,
When her little shoes
And my big boots
Were under the bed together.”

Bliss Carman (1861–1929) author

The full toast, as reported in New York Sun. Quoted in John Coldwell Adams, Confederation Voices http://www.uwo.ca/english/canadianpoetry/confederation/John%20Coldwell%20Adams/Confederation%20Voices/chapter%203.html, 2007.

Shoe, Star

“Do you curse where you come from?
Do you swear in the night?
Will it mean much to you
If I treat you right?
Do you like what you're doing?
Would you do it some more?
Or will you stop once and wonder
What you're doing it for?
Hey slow Jane, make sense.
Slow, slow, Jane, cross the fence.”

Nick Drake (1948–1974) British singer-songwriter

Hazey Jane I
Song lyrics, Bryter Later (1970)

Sense

“Here are a few questions to stir your vision: Why does your organization exist? What can your organization be the best in the world at? If you could do only one thing, what would it be? If you left your organization tomorrow, what would you hope would continue forever? What breaks your heart, keeps you awake at night, wrecks you?”

Craig Groeschel (1967) American priest

It – How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It (2008, Zondervan)

World, Hope, Question, Heart

“Junior faculty members used to come up to me and say. "Wow, you got tenure early; what's your secret?" I said, "It's pretty simple, call me any Friday night in my office at 10 o'clock and I'll tell you."”

Randy Pausch book The Last Lecture

The Last Lecture (2007)

Secret

“I saw thee in a vision of the night
Transfigured; for it seemed that on thy brows
The heavens did rest with all their stars, like boughs
Laden with blossoms; round thy feet the bright
Green waves, like grass, ran rippling, strewn with white
Star-fragments of rent petals: wasted vows,
And ruined prayers I thought them, such as house
In hearts that love and are not loved aright.”

John Barlas (1860–1914) British writer

XLVI. "I saw thee in a vision of the night" Love Sonnets http://www.sonnets.org/love-sonnets.htm (1889)

Love, Star, Grass, Heart

“Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right;
But when asked how 'bout something to eat
They will answer with voices so sweet:

You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

"The Preacher and the Slave" http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Preacher_and_the_Slave (1911)

“I liked to go at night when I thought there was a better chance of finding a fight. I was always looking for a fight. I had not known I was capable of such rage. I knew I had been cheated of a future, but I felt I'd been cheated of a past, too. The underpinnings of my life had been kicked out from under me… and it wasn't just the loss of Neilia and Naomi. All my life I'd been taught about our benevolent God. This is a forgiving God, a just God, a God who knows people make mistakes. This is a God who is tolerant. This is a God who gave us free will to be able to doubt. This was a loving God, a God of comfort. Well, I didn't want to hear anything about a merciful God. No words, no prayer, no sermon gave me ease. I felt God had played a horrible trick on me, and I was angry. I found no comfort in the Church. So I kept walking the dark streets to try to exhaust the rage.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Page 81
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

Love, Life, God, People

“Not long after I first came to the anchor chair, I briefly signed off using the word, Courage. I want to return to it now, in a different way: to a nation still nursing a broken heart for what happened here in 2001, and especially to those who found themselves closest to the events of September 11; to our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, in dangerous places; to those who have endured the tsunami, and to all who have suffered natural disasters, and must now find the will to rebuild; to the oppressed and to those whose lot it is to struggle in financial hardship or in failing health; to my fellow journalists in places where reporting the truth means risking all; and to each of you, Courage.
For The CBS Evening News, Dan Rather reporting. Good night.”

Dan Rather (1931) Journalist, Anchor

CBS Evening News Farewell (2005)

Health, Truth, Way, Courage

“I have worked like a galley slave throughout these eight years, morning till night, and I have given all I could to this work. I am happy with the results.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

Quoted in The Truth About Putin and Medvedev http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21353, last annual press conference. 2006- 2010

Happiness

“filled with boredom, the winter days were here. A threadbare and patchy, too-short mantle of snow was spread over the reddened earth. It was too meagre for the many roofs, which remained black or rust coloured, shingled roofs like arks and thatched cottages, concealing within them the smoke-blackened expanses of attics—charred-black cathedrals bristling with ribs of rafters, purlins and joists, dark lungs of the winter gales. Each dawn uncovered new vent pipes and chimney stacks, sprung up in the night, blown out by the nocturnal gale—black pipes of the Devil’s organs.”

Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) Polish novelist and painter

“The Birds” http://www.schulzian.net/translation/shops/birds.htm His father, The seasons

Winter

“I had started to become interested in the punk scene and started to dress differently than a lot of the kids in Grand Rapids, Michigan were dressing. And I got my nose pierced and I started to shave my head and dye my hair and wear a lot of black. And so I looked like somebody that might be arrested… I was a bit of a class clown, usually the one that people would get to do the things that they were afraid to get in trouble for… On graduation night, I was arrested… I had a boyfriend at the time who was a couple centuries older than I was and I'd convinced him that we should go and glue the locks of the school so that people couldn't get in the morning. And lo and behold, they had a security guard because it was graduation night and they were concerned that idiots like me might try and do something like that.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

On her teenage punk years and being arrested on graduation night — NPR "Gillian Anderson On 'The Fall' And Getting Arrested In High School" http://www.npr.org/2013/12/07/249240231/gillian-anderson-on-the-fall-and-getting-arrested-in-high-school/ (December 7, 2013) 2010s

People, School, Time

“Well I'm accustomed to a smooth ride,
Or maybe I'm a dog that's lost its bite,
I don't expect to be treated like a fool, no, no,
I don't expect to sleep long nights,
Some people say a lie is just a lie but I say,
Why deny the obvious child?”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

The Obvious Child
Song lyrics, The Rhythm of the Saints (1990)

People, Lie, Dogs, Fools

“[Karel Appel called out to 'his Night':] You, Beauty! And since I have to account for a body, I have handed this torture over to the executioner”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

CF,28; p. 219
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)

Beauty

“The infidels demolished a mosque that was under construction and wounded the artisans. When the news reached Shah Yasin, he came to Banaras from Mandyawa and collecting the Muslim weavers, demolished the big temple. A Sayyid who was an artisan by profession agreed with one Abdul Rasul to build a mosque at Banaras and accordingly the foundation was laid. Near the place there was a temple and many houses belonging to it were in the occupation of the Rajputs. The infidels decided that the construction of a mosque in the locality was not proper and that it should be razed to the ground. At night the walls of the mosque were found demolished. Next day the wall was rebuilt but it was again destroyed. This happened three or four times. At last the Sayyid hid himself in a corner. With the advent of night the infidels came to achieve their nefarious purpose. When Abdul Rasul gave the alarm, the infidels began to fight and the Sayyid was wounded by Rajputs. In the meantime, the Musalman resident of the neighbourhood arrived at the spot and the infidels took to their heels. The wounded Muslims were taken to Shah Yasin who determined to vindicate the cause of Islam. When he came to the mosque, people collected from the neighbourhood. The civil officers were outwardly inclined to side with the saint, but in reality they were afraid of the royal displeasure on account of the Raja, who was a courtier of the Emperor and had built the temple (near which the mosque was under construction). Shah Yasin, however, took up the sword and started for Jihad. The civil officers sent him a message that such a grave step should not be taken without the Emperor's permission. Shah Yasin, paying no heed, sallied forth till he reached Bazar Chau Khamba through a fusillade of stones' The, doors (of temples) were forced open and the idols thrown down. The weavers and other Musalmans demolished about 500 temples. They desired to destroy the temple of Beni Madho, but as lanes were barricaded, they desisted from going further.”

Aurangzeb (1618–1707) Sixth Mughal Emperor

Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh) Ganj-i-Arshadi, cited in : Sharma, Sri Ram, Religious Policy of the Mughal Emperors, Bombay, 1962. p. 144-45
Quotes from late medieval histories

People, Reality, Time, Fight

“…The music was evolving with society, and society, if you recall, there was a narcissism that entered society in the 80s. Saturday Night Fever, you know, hey! This whole LOOK, the LOOK about things, and the look almost became more important of the content…”

John McLaughlin (1942) guitarist, founder of the Mahavishnu Orchestra

On music and society in the 1980s, as quoted in "John McLaughlin: Challenges to creative music", by The Snapshots Foundation, YouTube, Nov 8, 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iubDTkT3Y4

Music

“You have a valuable house or farm. It is suggested that the title is not good. You employ counsel. You have the deeds examined. You search the records for mortgages, judgments and liens. You are not satisfied until you have a certificate, signed by the great seal of the State, assuring you that the title is good. Yet how many leave their title to heaven an undecided matter! Why do you not go to the records and find it? Give yourself no rest day or night until you can read your title clear to mansions in the skies.”

Thomas De Witt Talmage (1832–1902) American Presbyterian preacher, clergyman and reformer during the mid-to late 19th century.

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 16.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Search, Reading, Housing

“In the Far West, the United States of America openly claimed to be custodians of the whole planet. Universally feared and envied, universally respected for their enterprise, yet for their complacency very widely despised, the Americans were rapidly changing the whole character of man’s existence. By this time every human being throughout the planet made use of American products, and there was no region where American capital did not support local labour. Moreover the American press, gramophone, radio, cinematograph and televisor ceaselessly drenched the planet with American thought. Year by year the aether reverberated with echoes of New York’s pleasures and the religious fervours of the Middle West. What wonder, then, that America, even while she was despised, irresistibly moulded the whole human race. This, perhaps, would not have mattered, had America been able to give of her very rare best. But inevitably only her worst could be propagated. Only the most vulgar traits of that potentially great people could get through into the minds of foreigners by means of these crude instruments. And so, by the floods of poison issuing from this people’s baser members, the whole world, and with it the nobler parts of America herself, were irrevocably corrupted.
For the best of America was too weak to withstand the worst. Americans had indeed contributed amply to human thought. They had helped to emancipate philosophy from ancient fetters. They had served science by lavish and rigorous research. In astronomy, favoured by their costly instruments and clear atmosphere, they had done much to reveal the dispositions of the stars and galaxies. In literature, though often they behaved as barbarians, they had also conceived new modes of expression, and moods of thought not easily appreciated in Europe. They had also created a new and brilliant architecture. And their genius for organization worked upon a scale that was scarcely conceivable, let alone practicable, to other peoples. In fact their best minds faced old problems of theory and of valuation with a fresh innocence and courage, so that fogs of superstition were cleared away wherever these choice Americans were present. But these best were after all a minority in a huge wilderness of opinionated self-deceivers, in whom, surprisingly, an outworn religious dogma was championed with the intolerant optimism of youth. For this was essentially a race of bright, but arrested, adolescents. Something lacked which should have enabled them to grow up. One who looks back across the aeons to this remote people can see their fate already woven of their circumstance and their disposition, and can appreciate the grim jest that these, who seemed to themselves gifted to rejuvenate the planet, should have plunged it, inevitably, through spiritual desolation into senility and age-long night.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last and First Men

Source: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter II: Europe’s Downfall; Section 1, “Europe and America” (p. 33)

Fate, People, Pleasure, Youth

“A bell was rung. All the passengers came on deck. Never shall I forget the scene we then witnessed. It was ten o'clock in the morning. The sky was overspread with thick dark clouds. It looked like a vast temple at night, as the fitful, lurid sun cast a yellowish tinge resembling the pale light of the tapers near a catafalque. The foaming waves opened like immense tombs that seemed avid to swallow their first victim. When all was ready a porthole was opened, and a plank painted black, six feet long and three broad, was suspended over the deep. The body of a child, wrapped in a winding sheet, was placed upon it, with a large stone attached to the feet. For a minute or two the captain read -- I do not know what prayer. Profound silence reigned. The father scarcely shed a tear. The mother seemed quite unmoved. At a word spoken by the captain, the plank was raised in the air, and the next instant the light corpse glided into the waters. I made the Sign of the Cross over it, but alas, I do not know whether the child was even baptized. The passengers withdrew, apparently untouched by the scene, and some even smiled. How impiety deadens the heart!”

Théodore Guérin (1798–1856) Catholic saint and nun from France

Third Journal of Travel (1844-1845)

Smile, Tear, Light, Silence

“I feel asleep late last night
Crying like a newborn child
Holding myself close
Pretending my arms are yours
I want no one but you.”

Janet Jackson (1966) singer from the United States

I Get Lonely
The Velvet Rope (1997)

Feeling, Cry

“Serious business people would never get elected in Ireland. You don't get elected in this country if you run around and tell people the truth. You've got to run round and lie to them about 'it will be all right on the night' and then they'll vote for you.”

Michael O'Leary (businessman) (1961) businessman, CEO of Ryanair

Newsnight Interview (February 24, 2011)

People, Truth, Lie, Business

“From toil he wins his spirits light,
From busy day the peaceful night;
Rich, from the very want of wealth,
In heaven's best treasures, peace and health.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

Source: Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=oopv (1754), Line 93

Health, Peace, Business, Light

“I'm on the Internet a lot more than I watch TV and most everybody I know is, and yet if you watch most late-night talk shows, it's as if it doesn't even exist. So the Internet, it's just something I wanted to make use of in some way. I was fascinated by what appeared to be a child singing this song. It just struck me as funny.”

Jimmy Kimmel (1967) American talk show host and comedian

On his initial impression of Andy Milonakis — reported in Susan Carpenter, Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times (May 3, 2006) "Making a fool of himself for video - Andy Milonakis' success story", Chicago Tribune, p. 8A.

Way, Appearance, Singing

“Night in so sweet an attitude beheld Asleep, was by an angel sculptured In this stone; and sleeping, is alive; Waken her, doubter; she will speak to thee”

Giovan Battista Strozzi

Epigram for Michelangelo's ""la Notte""

Angels, Sleep

“I always love coming to Disneyland but celebrating my birthday here with my family, friends and the kids from YSA is really awesome!, this is a night I'll never forget.”

Miley Cyrus (1992) American actor and singer-songwriter

MarketWatch http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/hannah-montanas-miley-cyrus-celebrates/story.aspx?guid={E11F09FF-BA05-49D1-A779-53357962A1D7}&dist=hppr (October 5, 2008)

Love, Family, Birthday, Forgetting

“Nobody knew the Iron Man had fallen.
Night passed.”

Ted Hughes book The Iron Man

Source: The Iron Man (1968), Ch. 1 : The Coming of the Iron Man

“Now I begin to know at last,
These nights when I sit down to rhyme,
The form and measure of that vast
God we call Poetry, he who stoops
And leaps me through his paper hoops
A little higher every time.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"The God Called Poetry".
Country Sentiment (1920)

God, Time

“Here comes Johnny singing oldies, goldies
Be-Bop-A-Lula, Baby What I Say
Here comes Johnny singing I Gotta Woman
Down in the tunnels, trying to make it pay.
He got the action, he got the motion
Oh yeah the boy can play.
Dedication, devotion
Turning all the night time into the day.”

Mark Knopfler (1949) English guitarist

Walk of Life
Song lyrics, Brothers in Arms (1985)

Boy, Singing, Time, Baby

“Cause it's a good night
To be out there soakin' up the moonlight.
Stake out a little piece of shoreline.
I've got the perfect place in mind.
It's in the middle of nowhere; only way to get there
You got to get a little mud on the tires.”

Brad Paisley (1972) American country music singer

Mud on the Tires, written by Brad Paisley and Chris DuBois.
Song lyrics, Mud on the Tires (2003)

Way, Perfection

“Lady Cannon's gone to a matinée at the St. James's. We had tickets for the first night, but of course she wouldn't use them then. She preferred to go alone in the afternoon, because she detests the theatre, anyhow, and afternoon performances give her a headache. If she does a thing that's disagreeable to her, she likes to do it in the most painful possible way. She has a beautiful nature.”

Ada Leverson (1862–1933) British writer

Source: Love's Shadow (1908), Chapter ii.

Pain, Beauty, Way, Nature

“Quiet night that brings
Rest to the labourer, is the outlaw's day,
In which he rises early to do wrong,
And when his work is ended, dares not sleep.”

Philip Massinger The Guardian

The Guardian (1633), Act II, scene iv.

Sleep

“The greying east brightened, metamorphosed to pink, then red, and then the giant ball of fire rose out of the blackened hills. Across the desolation lay a supreme indifference, the casualness of night and another day, and yet the secret intimacy of those hills, their silent consoling wonder, made death a thing of no great importance. You could die, but the desert would hide the secret of your death, it would remain after you, to cover your memory with ageless wind and heat and cold.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Death, Secret, Memory, Indifference

“Every night, at exactly a quarter past three, something dreadful happens on the street outside our bedroom window. We peek through the curtains, yawning and shivering in the life-draining chill, and then we clamber back beneath the blankets without exchanging a word, to hug each other tightly and hope for sound sleep before it's time to rise.

Usually what we witness verges on the mundane. Drunken young men fighting, swaying about with outstretched knives, cursing incoherently. Robbery, bashings, rape. We wince to see such violence, but we can hardly be shocked or surprised any more, and we're never tempted to intervene: it's always far too cold, for a start! A single warm exhalation can coat the window pane with mist, transforming the most stomach-wrenching assault into a safely cryptic ballet for abstract blobs of light.

On some nights, though, when the shadows in the room are subtly wrong, when the familiar street looks like an abandoned film set, or a painting of itself perversely come to life, we are confronted by truly disturbing sights, oppressive apparitions which almost make us doubt we're awake, or, if awake, sane. I can't catalogue these visions, for most, mercifully, are blurred by morning, leaving only a vague uneasiness and a reluctance to be alone even in the brightest sunshine.”

Greg Egan (1961) Australian science fiction writer and former computer programmer

Scatter My Ashes http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/HORROR/SCATTER/Scatter.html, published in Interzone (Spring 1988) Fiction

Life, Men, Hope, Sleep

“Who is it who is responsible for the scheme of things whereby one man is engaged through life in grinding labour to win a bare and precarious subsistence for himself, and when, at the end of his days, he claims at the hands of the community he served a poor pension of eightpence a day, he can only get it through a revolution, and another man who does not toil receives every hour of the day, every hour of the night, whilst he slumbers, more than his poor neighbour receives in a whole year of toil? Where did the table of that law come from? Whose finger inscribed it? These are the questions that will be asked. The answers are charged with peril for the order of things the Peers represent; but they are fraught with rare and refreshing fruit for the parched lips of the multitude who have been treading the dusty road along which the people have marched through the dark ages which are now merging into the light.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Newcastle (9 October 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), pp. 174-175.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Life, People, Age, Law

“The cold blast at the casement beats;
The window-panes are white;
The snow whirls through the empty streets;
It is a dreary night!”

Epes Sargent (1813–1880) American editor, poet and playwright

The Heart's Summer, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“I write jokes for a living, I sit at my hotel at night, I think of something that's funny, then I go get a pen and I write it down. Or if the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain't funny.”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

track 11, "Three Easy Payments"
Mitch All Together (2003)

Thinking

Quotes about the night page 19

Quotes about the night
page 19