Quotes about the night page 3
E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet
A Poet's Advice (1958)
Context: Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel …
the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.
To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.
Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)
Source: Through the Year with Jimmy Carter: 366 Daily Meditations from the 39th President
“Night can't cloak your scarlet dream. Accept Desire's call.”
P. C. Cast book Betrayed
Source: Betrayed
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
William C. Dement (1928) American sleep researcher
E.L. Doctorow (1931–2015) novelist, editor, professor
On his writing style
Interview in Writers at Work (1988)
Variant: Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
Source: Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews
Dylan Thomas book Under Milk Wood
Source: " Under Milk Wood http://www.undermilkwood.net/prose_umw1.html" (1954)
Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl
Christopher Morley book Parnassus on Wheels
Variant: When you sell a man a book you don’t sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there’s all heaven and earth in a book, a real book I mean.
Source: Parnassus on Wheels
“What makes night within us may leave stars.”
Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist
Variant: Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars.
Source: Ninety-Three
Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist
Variant: A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.
Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist
Attributed in The Quotable Woman (1991) by the Running Press, p. 53
1990s
“I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer
Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer
Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod
Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author
Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential
Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), p. 74
Raymond Chandler book The Big Sleep
Source: The Big Sleep (1939), chapter 3
Context: Her hot black eyes looked mad. "I don't see what there is to be cagey about," she snapped. "And I don't like your manners."
"I'm not crazy about yours," I said. "I didn't ask to see you. You sent for me. I don't mind your ritzing me or drinking your lunch out of a Scotch bottle. I don't mind your showing me your legs. They're very swell legs and it's a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings. But don't waste your time trying to cross-examine me."
“I have no intention of spending the night in a chair and leaving you the bed.”
Kathleen E. Woodiwiss book The Flame and the Flower
Source: The Flame and the Flower
Rainer Maria Rilke book Duino Elegies
First Elegy (as translated by Stephen Mitchell)
Source: Duino Elegies (1922)
Context: Yes—the springtimes needed you. Often a star
was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you
out of the distant past, or as you walked
under an open window, a violin
yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission.
But could you accomplish it? Weren't you always
distracted by expectation, as if every event
announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place
to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you
going and coming and often staying all night.)
Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl
“For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.”
William Shakespeare book Shakespeare's Sonnets
Source: Shakespeare's Sonnets
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer
Source: The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
“I am the shadow on the moon at night/Filling your dreams to the brim with fright.”
Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker
“I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
“See, the night doth enfold us! See, all the world lies sleeping!”
Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) Italian composer
Peter Ustinov (1921–2004) English actor, writer, and dramatist
As quoted in Contemporary Quotations (1988) by James Beasley Simpson
Lewis Carroll Three Sunsets and Other Poems
The Path of Roses (1856)
Three Sunsets and Other Poems (1898)
Sam Cooke (1931–1964) American singer-songwriter and entrepreneur
Good Times
Song lyrics, Ain't That Good News (1964)
Lewis Carroll Three Sunsets and Other Poems
Beatrice (1862), st. 1
Three Sunsets and Other Poems (1898)
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
United Nations, General Debate of the 64th Session (2009), United States of America, H.E. Mr. Barack Obama, President p. 6 http://un.org/ga/64/generaldebate/pdf/US_en.pdf, (23 September 2009) <br class="br">2009
Emo Philips (1956) American comedian
The Guardian - The best God joke ever - and it's mine! (September 1980)
Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac
Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Chihuahua and Sonora: The Green Lagoons", p. 149.
Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress
You and I
Song lyrics, Born This Way (2011)
Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician
A New Kind of Man
Song lyrics, A Sense of Wonder (1985)
“Give me night or give me Blücher”
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769–1852) British soldier and statesman
Comment made at a crisis point during during Battle of Waterloo at about 5.45 pm on 18 June. The Military Maxims of Napoleon by Napoleon Bonaparte, David G. Chandler, William E. Cairnes , p. 143 http://books.google.co.uk/books?um=1&spell=1&q=%22Give+me%0D%0Anight+or+give+me+Blucher%22+was+the+Duke%27s+prayer+at+about+5.45+pm+on+18+June.%0D%0Anight+or+give+me+Blucher%22+wellington&btnG=Search+Books Alternatively wording may have been "Night or the Prussians must come": quoted by David Howarth, page 162, "Waterloo: Day of Battle", ISBN=0-88365-273-0
Kanye West (1977) American rapper, singer and songwriter
"Hey Mama", Live Grammy Performance, February 2008
Lyrics, 808s & Heartbreak (2008)
Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) British academic historian and Marxist historiographer
Preface to Pantheon Edition
Bandits (1969)
“A face at the window,
A tap on the pane;
Who is it that wants me
To-night in the rain?”
Richard Henry Stoddard (1825–1903) American poet
The Messenger at Night.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Nahum Tate (1652–1715) Anglo-Irish poet and playwright
Hymn While shepherds watched their flocks by night
“They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) American author, poet, editor and literary critic
" Eleonora http://www.classicreader.com/read.php/sid.6/bookid.9/" (1841).
James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician
"The Songs of Selma"
The Poems of Ossian
Buddy Holly (1936–1959) American singer-songwriter
Not Fade Away, written by Buddy Holly and Norman Petty
Song lyrics, The "Chirping" Crickets (1957)