Quotes about the night (3937 quotes, page 33)

“A breath upon her hand
Muted the night.
She turned —
A cymbal crashed,
Amid roaring horns.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Peter Quince at the Clavier (1915)

“Why should we do as those who do not have other joys than to believe, as night falls, in their double beds... that it is to be great and sanctified by love to jostle the companions of their bed. Our passion must be like our love – illusory and artistic, having no other end than the desire to be beautiful. To remain beautiful in unsated [unstated? ] passion…”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona

Love , Beauty , Passion , Joy

“Thee at the ferry Oxford riders blithe,
Returning home on summer-nights, have met
Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe,
Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet,
As the punt’s rope chops round.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

St. 8
The Scholar Gypsy (1853)

Home , Summer

“I believe I drank too much wine last night at Hurstbourne; I know not how else to account for the shaking of my hand today. You will kindly make allowance therefore for any indistinctness of writing, by attributing it to this venial error.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to Cassandra (1800-11-20) [Letters of Jane Austen -- Brabourne Edition]
Letters

Error , Wine

“To Whom the Mornings stand for Nights,
What must the Midnights — be!”

Emily Dickinson To Whom the Mornings stand for Nights,

1095: To Whom the Mornings stand for Nights,
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1960)

“He rolled in his bed, twisting the sheets, grappling with a problem years too big for him, awake in the night like a single sentinel on picket. And sometime after midnight, he slept, too, and then only the wind was awake, prying at the hotel and hooting in its gables under the bright gimlet gaze of the stars.”

Stephen King book The Shining

The Shining (1977)

Star , Problem

“Are we not bold to bid a god repent;
To break upon his slumbers with our prayers;
To watch him day and night; to wear him out
With endless supplication? Perhaps to beg
His kind attention to a pleasant tale;
To cheat him into pity, and conclude
Each story with Prometheus?”

Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849) British poet, biographer, essayist, and teacher

Sylphs
Poems (1851), Prometheus

God , Cheating

“In the day I can smile though I wanna die / Hold on, hold on / I can keep it together for a little while / and be strong, so strong / But when the sun goes down and I'm all alone / I haven't the strength to fight / That's when my tears give in to the night”

Kim Wilde (1960) English pop singer

Hold on
Now & Forever (1995)

Smile , Tear , Strong , Sun

“[about how people in the 90's used "awesome" wrongly]
Webster's dictionary defines awesome as "anything that leaves you in awe and wonder." Like winning the lottery—twice. That's awesome. Getting a call from the IRS saying you've been audited and they owe you $50,000—that would be awesome. Ladies, you wake up tomorrow morning and the newspaper reads, "Scientists have discovered a way for men to experience childbirth." That would be awesome. Getting invited to the Playboy Mansion—on trampoline night, that would be awesome. And I started thinking, ladies and gentlemen, what would be awesome for Bill Engvall? What would leave me in awe and wonder? And it would have to be, if I left this stage tonight and I went back to my hotel room, and Shania Twain met me at my door, wearing nothing but a fur coat, holding a note from my wife that said, "Have a good time!"”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

THAT would be AWESOME! It ain't gonna happen—but that would be awesome.
Now That's Awesome (2000)

Men , People , Way , Thinking

“I always search for some light and always at night and never illuminated by any light.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Siempre busco alguna luz y siempre en la noche y no alumbrado por ninguna luz.
Voces (1943)

Search , Light

“I was told I had to do a speech, to say a few thank yous and was lying in bed a couple of nights ago till about 2:30 in the morning thinking what I was going to say. I had it all planned out perfectly, fell asleep - and then was woken up at 4am when my cars were being driven off in the driveway!”

Frank Lampard (1978) English association football player

Sincerely yours, Frank (May 22, 2005)

Cars , Lying , Thinking

“Do not try the parallels in that way: I know that way all along. I have measured that bottomless night, and all the light and all the joy of my life went out there.”

Farkas Bolyai (1775–1856) Hungarian mathematician

Letter to János Bolyai (4 April 1820)
Published in: Samu Benkő (ed.), Bólyai-levelek, Kriterion, 1975, p. 123
As quoted in: O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Farkas Bolyai" http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Bolyai_Farkas.html, MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews.
Having himself spent a lifetime unsuccessfully trying to prove Euclid's fifth postulate, Farkas discouraged his son János from any further attempt.

Life , Way , Light , Joy

“All, wherein I have part,
All that was loss or gain, Slips from the clasping heart,
Breaks from the grasping brain. Lo, what is left? I am bare
As a new-born soul, — I am naught:
My deeds are dust in air,
My words are ghosts of thought.
I ride through the night alone,
Detached from the life that seemed,
And the best I have felt or known
Is less than the least I dreamed.”

Bayard Taylor (1825–1878) United States poet, novelist and travel writer

The Guests of Night (1871), st. 3 - 4, in The Poetical Works of Bayard Taylor (1907), p. 314.

Life , Dreams , Soul , Loss

“The new pornographers subvert this last, vital privacy; they do our imagining for us. They take away the words that were of the night and shout them over the roof-tops, making them hollow.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

"Night Words," Encounter (October 1965).
Language and Silence: Essays 1958-1966 (1967)

Imagination

“Let me come back again to the waking state. I have no choice but to consider it a phenomenon of interference. Not only does the mind display, in this state, a strange tendency to lose its bearings (as evidenced by the slips and mistakes the secrets of which are just beginning to be revealed to us), but, what is more, it does not appear that, when the mind is functioning normally, it really responds to anything but the suggestions which come to it from the depths of that dark night to which I commend it.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

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

Secret , Appearance

“Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.”

Carol Ann Duffy (1955) British writer and professor of contemporary poetry

Words, Wide Night, from The Other Country (1990).

Thinking

“A light is gone from yonder sky,
A star has left its sphere;
The beautiful--and do they die
In yon bright world as here?
Will that star leave a lonely place,
A darkness on the night?—
No; few will miss its lovely face,
And none think heaven less bright!”

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

The Lost Star from The Literary Souvenir, 1828
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Love , World , Beauty , Star

“And how often do we meet the man who prefaces his remarks with: "I was reading a book last night…" in the too loud, overenunciated fashion of one who might be saying: "I keep a hippogryph in my basement."”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

Reading confers status.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Books , Fashion , Reading

“The day after that wedding night I found that a distance of a thousand miles, abyss and discovery and irremediable metamorphosis, separated me from the day before.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

Noces (1945)

Wedding

“Alexander Gardner who later became the Colonel of Artillery in the service of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, had travelled extensively in Central Asia from 1819 to 1823 C. E. He saw a lot of slave-catching in Kafiristan, a province of Afghanistan, which was largely inhabited by infields at that time. He found that the area had been reduced to “the lowest state of poverty and wretchedness” as a result of raids by the Muslim king of Kunduz for securing slaves and supplying them to the slave markets in Balkh and Bukhara. He writes:
“All this misery was caused by the oppression of the Kunduz chief, who not content with plundering his wretched subjects, made an annual raid into the country south of Oxus, and by chappaos (night attacks) carried off all the inhabitants on whom his troops could lay their hands. These, after the best had been selected by the chief and his courtiers, were publicly sold in the bazaars of Turkestan. The principal providers of this species of merchandise were the Khan of Khiva, the king of Bokhara (the great hero of the Mohammedan faith), and the robber beg of Kunduz.
“In the regular slave markets, or in transactions between dealers, it is the custom to pay for slaves in money; the usual medium being either Bokharan gold tillahs (in value about 5 or 51/2 Company rupees each), or in gold bars or gold grain. In Yarkand, or on the Chinese frontier, the medium is the silver khurup with the Chinese stamp, the value of which varies from 150 to 200 rupees each. The price of a male slave varies according to circumstances from 5 to 500 rupees. The price of the females also necessarily varies much, 2 tillahs to 10,000 rupees. Even the double the latter sum has been known to have been given.
“However, a vast deal of business is also done by barter, of which we had proof at the holy shrine of Pir-i-Nimcha, where we exchanged two slaves for a few lambs’ skins! Sanctity and slave dealing may be considered somewhat akin in the Turkestan region, and the more holy the person the more extensive are generally his transactions in flesh and blood.””

Alexander Gardner (soldier)

Alexander Gardner subsequently found a Muslim fruit merchant at Multan “who was proved by his own ledger to have exchanged a female slave girl for three ponies and seven long-haired, red-eyed cats, all of which he disposed of, no doubt to advantage, to the English gentlemen at this station.”
Memoirs of Alexander Gardner, edited by Major Hugh Pearce, first published in 1898, reprint published from Patiala in 1970, quoted from Lal, K. S. (1994). Muslim slave system in medieval India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 1

Money , Faith , Travel , Girl

“She had been so close, then closer. And it was so much better than the anger that ruled when Sethe did or thought anything that excluded herself. She could bear the hours — nine or ten of them each day but one — when Sethe was gone. Bear even the nights when she was close but out of sight, behind walls and doors lying next to him. But now — even the daylight time that Beloved had counted on, disciplined herself to be content with, was being reduced, divided by Sethe's willingness to pay attention to other things. Him mostly.”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Source: Beloved (1987), Ch. 9

Lying , Time , Anger

“April 21. My birthday — I am told the fifty-seventh, and yet I feel only a boy. Must make haste and get my work done ere the night falls. Made an excursion with the babes to Mount Wanda.”

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

21 April 1895, page 340
John of the Mountains, 1938

Feeling , Boy , Birthday

“I took a Greyhound bus to New York and stayed at the YMCA, fifty cents a night. I took my stories around to a dozen publishers. Nobody wanted them. They said, We don’t publish stories. Nobody reads them. Don’t you have a novel?”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

The Paris Review interview (2010)

Reading

“And the best of all ways
To lengthen our days
Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear!”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

The Young May Moon, st. 1.
Irish Melodies http://www.musicanet.org/robokopp/moore.html (1807–1834)

Way

“These are the desolate, dark weeks
when nature in its barrenness
equals the stupidity of man. The year plunges into night
and the heart plunges
lower than night”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

"These"
Complete Collected Poems (1938)

Stupidity , Nature , Heart

“I heard through the night
The rush and the clamour;
The pulse of the fight
Like blows of Thor's hammer;
The pattering flight
Of the leaves, and the anguished
Moan of the forest vanquished.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

II, st. 2.
The Fall of the Leaves (1874)

Fight

“Who knows how to make love stay? Tell love you are going to the Junior's Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if love stays, it can have half. It will stay. Tell love you want a momento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a mustache on your face. Find love. Tell it you are someone new. It will stay. Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell it the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom window and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything is going to be all right. Fall asleep. Love will be there in the morning.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)

Love , World , Making love , Painting

“Rejoice, oh! grieving heart,
The hours fly past;
With each some sorrow dies,
With each some shadow flies,
Until at last
The red dawn in the east
Bids weary night depart,
And pain is past.”

Adelaide Anne Procter (1825–1864) English poet and songwriter

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 309.

Pain , Past , Heart , Flying

“I thought of my own wife's tears and her limp submission the night before — the bleak satisfaction I took from her smallness as I used her shamelessly. She's cried out, and remembering the taste of salted tears, I thought, for that instant, that I knew how the devil felt. Sex and tears, like sun and rain, were never meant to share a moment: but for a fallen soul, an act of wrong could, at times, feel very right, and that scared the hell out of me.”

John Hart (1965) American author with multiple books and awards

Source: The King of Lies (2006), Ch. 4.

Sex , Feeling , Soul , Hell

“Dicko: Oh my God, you can dance can't you. Hey look, fantastic song for you. You look wonderful. If you can't do bling on a disco night when can you? That was just a real eye opener for me. That was just a real, real joyous experience for me. What we've noticed, and certainly at the finals stage is there is the performance that defines someone and shows their true star potential. For me that was yours. That was terrific.”

Hayley Jensen (1983) Australian singer

Australian Idol, Final Performances, Final 9

God , Star , Dance

“Dark night,
Oh terrible is thy shadow on the battle!
Blows dealt alike on friend and foe, the dead,
And dying trampled on— oh, day alone
Should look upon the soldier's deeds!”

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

(1st February 1823) The Cadets. An Indian Sketch
The London Literary Gazette, 1823

Dead

“Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

" Tree at My Window http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/tree-at-my-window-2/" (1928)
1920s

Tree

“.. so before I died I wanted to paint a large canvas that I had worked out in my head, and all month long I worked [on Tahiti] day and night at fever pitch... It's all done without a model.”

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist artist

late quote about the start of his famous large painting 'Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going'
Source: 1890s - 1910s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), pp. 159-160: in a letter from Tahiti to a friend, 1898

Painting

“"I can see in the dark."
"That may be so, Mulla. But if it is true, why do you sometimes carry a candle at night?"
"To prevent other people from bumping into me."”

Nasreddin (1208–1284) philosopher, Sufi and wise man from Turkey, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes

N. Hanif (ed.), Biographical Encyclopaedia of Sufis: Central Asia and Middle East (2002), , p. 343

People

“then you too are a dream which last night and the night before that
and the years before that
you were not.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

"If the philosopher is right"
Red Bird (2008)

Dreams

“Tara: No more talk of gloomy Angel, though. Only happy thoughts. Sunshine, picnic, that spell we did last night. With the oil?”

Amber Benson (1977) actress from the United States

Seeing Red [6.19]
Willow & Tara (2000-2002)

Angels , Happiness

“Everytime she walks out (on stage), she acts like she's shocked anyone showed up! Every night! As if every single day, at about 3 o'clock, she's like, "You know Rene, maybe tonight iz ze night zey do not come?"”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

Strong Black Woman (2006)

“In Atlantic City, 60 miles from here, you'll find contractors and small businesses who lost everything because Donald Trump refused to pay his bills. Now remember what the President said last night -- don't boo, vote. People who did the work and needed the money, and didn't get it – not because he couldn't pay them, but because he wouldn't pay them. He just stiffed them. That sales pitch he's making to be your president? Put your faith in him – and you'll win big? That's the same sales pitch he made to all those small businesses. Then Trump walked away, and left working people holding the bag.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), 2016 Democratic National Convention (July 28, 2016)

Money , People , Faith , Business

“Even in that pale light I could see that she was more beautiful than ever, the black shadow of her hair framing a face I had seen every night in the misery of sleep for so long. Those deep brown eyes still had that hungry look when they watched mine and the lush fullness of her mouth glistened with a damp warmth of invitation.”

Mickey Spillane book The Snake

The Snake (1964)

Beauty , Sleep , Light

“A tiny light had been lit in a cottage on Álftanes; probably someone was going out fishing. Often there was frost and frozen snow, and the ice creaked in the night. Somewhere out in the infinite distance lay the spring, at least in God's mind, like the babies that are not yet conceived in the mother's womb.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Brekkukotsannáll (The Fish Can Sing) (1957)

God , Spring , Fish , Light

“The story of The Libertines starts for me when it was me, Carl Barât and Steve Bedlow sat on the side of a canal, throwing stones at a bottle and we had a game where whoever hit the bottle first with the stone got to choose the name of the band - I can't even remember who it was that hit the bottle but, yeah, from that night onwards we became The Libertines. We ended up throwing ourselves into eternity, as we called it at the time”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

On how The Libertines got their name
Definitions and objects

Game , Time

“As Catherine learned later that night [her wedding night], Russia makes strange bedfellows. Peter got into bed with his boots on, played with his collection of dolls for an hour or so, and told the Grand Duchess about his new mistresses. [Footnote: He had no mistresses, really, but he thought he had. It was all in his head. ]”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part IV: A Few Greats, Catherine the Great

Wedding , Learning

“You're a little honey and you're quite a dish.
Saturday night we're goin' fishin' to fish.”

Tex Atchison (1912–1982) American musician

Song We're Gonna Go Fishin'

Fish

“Desiree,
Oh, Desiree.
There I was found
By the sweet passion sound
Of your loving song.
Time was right, the night was long.Remember Desiree,
Oh, Desiree.
And though somehow I knew
I could only have you 'til the morning light,
The night was long, the time was right.”

Neil Diamond (1941) American singer-songwriter

Desiree
Song lyrics, I'm Glad You're Here with Me Tonight (1977)

Love , Light , Passion , Time

“It was one of those nights when the sky came down and wrapped itself around the world. The rain clawed at the windows of the bar like an angry cat and tried to sneak in every time some drunk lurched in the door. The place reeked of stale beer and soggy men with enough cheap perfume thrown in to make you sick.
Two drunks with a nickel between them were arguing over what to play on the juke box until a tomato in a dress that was too tight a year ago pushed the key that started off something noisy and hot. One of the drunks wanted to dance and she gave him a shove. So he danced with the other drunk.
She saw me sitting there with my stool tipped back against the cigarette machine and change of a fin on the bar, decided I could afford a wet evening for two and walked over with her hips waving hello.”

Mickey Spillane book The Big Kill

The Big Kill (1951)

Men , World , Cats , Beer

“When you have sweated, toiled, had mad dreams, hopeless nightmares, you find yourself in London's streets, cold and dank in the night air. Think — what have I got for Ireland? Something which she has wanted these past seven hundred years. Will anyone be satisfied at the bargain? Will anyone? I tell you this; early this morning I signed my death warrant. I thought at the time how odd, how ridiculous — a bullet may just as well have done the job five years ago.”

Michael Collins (Irish leader) (1890–1922) Irish revolutionary leader

Liam, Cathal (2006). Blood on the Shamrock: A Novel of Ireland's Continued Struggle for Freedom 1921-1924. St. Padraic Press, p. 194.

Death , Dreams , Thinking , Time

“You'll eat hamburgers year after year and live in dusty, vermin-infested apartments and hotels, but every morning you'll see the mighty sun, the eternal blue of the sky, and the streets will be full of sleek women you never will possess, and the hot semitropical nights will reek of romance you'll never have, but you'll still be in paradise, boys, in the land of sunshine.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Women , Boy , Sun

“The summer day was spoiled with fitful storm;
At night the wind died and the soft rain dropped;
With lulling murmur, and the air was warm,
And all the tumult and the trouble stopped.”

Celia Thaxter (1835–1894) American writer

The Nestling Swallows, in Drift-Weed (1878), p. 20.

Summer

“Contrary to several conflicting stories, I got the name "Count" right in Kansas City in 1936 while at the Reno Club. I was known as Bill Basie at that time. One night, while we were broadcasting, the announcer called me to the microphone for those usual few words of introduction. He commented that Bill Basie was a rather ordinary name, and further that there were a couple of well-known bandleaders named Earl Hines and Duke Ellington. Then he said, "Bill, I think I'll call you Count Basie from now on. Is that all right with you?" I thought he was kidding, shrugged my shoulders and replied, "OK." Well that was the last time I was ever introduced as Bill Basie. From then on, it was Count Basie, and I never did lose that nickname. It's funny the way those things will stick.”

Count Basie (1904–1984) American jazz musician, bandleader, and composer

As quoted in Hear Me Talkin' to Ya : The Story of Jazz as Told by the Men who Made It (1966) by Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, p. 301

Way , Thinking , Time

“Meet me by the fishin' hole and wear your leather britches.
Tell your ma and pa everything's all right.
We're really goin' fishin' next Saturday night.”

Tex Atchison (1912–1982) American musician

Song We're Gonna Go Fishin' http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=25201

“Consider: the darkening ease, the brightening trouble; the pleasure pleasure because it was, the pain pain because it shall be; the glad acts grown proud, the proud acts growing stubborn; the panting and trembling towards a being gone, a being to come; and the true true no longer, and the false true not yet. And to decide not to smile after all, sitting in the shade, hearing the cicadas, wishing it were night, wishing it were morning, saying, No, it is not the heart, no, it is not the liver, no, it is not the prostate, no, it is not the ovaries, no, it is muscular, it is nervous.”

Samuel Beckett book Watt

Part III, p. 201
Watt (1943)

Pain , Pleasure , Smile , Heart

“Come on, take me to the Mardi Gras,
Where the people sing and play,
Where the music is elite and there's dancing in the street,
Both night and day.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Take Me To The Mardi Gras
Song lyrics, There Goes Rhymin' Simon (1973)

People , Music , Singing , Dance

“Calmer than midnight's deepest bush
Is the sun-bright Summer nooning,
With its cloudy shadows seeking rest,
That fall on the hillside swooning.
Great Night with its solemn starry eyes,
Over Day's gate asks us whither We go,
what our password is,
To the camp beyond the river. …”

Ethel Lynn Beers (1827–1879) American writer

"Noonday Rest" (1869; published in All Quiet Along the Potomac and Other Poems, 1879).

Sun , Summer

“Oh, Mexico.
It sounds so sweet with the sun sinking low.
Moon's so bright like to light up the night,
Make everything all right.”

James Taylor (1948) American singer-songwriter and guitarist

"Mexico"
Song lyrics, Gorilla (1975)

Light , Sun

“I have spent
Many a silent night in sighs and groans,
Ran over all my thoughts, despised my fate,
Reasoned against the reasons of my love,
Done all that smoothed-cheek Virtue could advise,
But found all bootless: 'tis my destiny
That you must either love, or I must die.”

John Ford (dramatist) (1586–1639) dramatist

Act I, sc. iii.
Tis Pity She's a Whore (1629-33?)

Love , Fate

“Voyaging into the night, one knows exactly where, on a known vessel, an absolute harmony with the elements of the unreal. [1959, reacting on a remark of Robert Motherwell ]”

Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967) American painter

1956 - 1967
Source: Pax, no. 13, 1960; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990, p. 152

“It was Saturday night in America, and I felt like a native son.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

1980s, Generation of Swine (1988)

“And she was blinded by the light. Cut loose like a deuce,
Another runner in the night. Blinded by the light.
She got down but she never got tight, but she'll make it alright.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Blinded by the Light"
Song lyrics, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973)

Light

“I see America, not in the setting sun of a black night of despair ahead of us, I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God. I see great days ahead, great days possible to men and women of will and vision …”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

Interview with Frederick Van Ryn, This Week Magazine (January 4, 1953), p. 11. Sandburg previously used these words at a rally at Madison Square Garden, New York City (October 28, 1952), praising Adlai E. Stevenson during the latter's 1952 presidential campaign. Reported in The Papers of Adlai E. Stevenson (1955), vol. 4, p. 175.

Women , Men , God , Light

“Hands, touchin' hands,
Reachin' out, touchin' me, touchin' you.
Sweet Caroline.
Good times never seemed so good.
I've been inclined
To believe they never would.
But now I, look at the night
And it don't seem so lonely.
We fill it up with only two.”

Neil Diamond (1941) American singer-songwriter

Sweet Caroline
Song lyrics, Brother Love's Travelling Salvation Show (1969)

Time

“[The Mother and myself] do not found ourselves on faith alone, but on a great ground of knowledge which we have been developing and testing all our lives. I think I can say that I have been testing day and night for years upon years more scrupulously than any scientist his theory or his method on the physical plane. That is why I am not alarmed by the aspect of the world around me or disconcerted by the often successful fury of the adverse Forces who increase in their rage as the Light comes nearer and nearer to the field of earth and Matter.”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

August 30, 1932
India's Rebirth

World , Faith , Knowledge , Thinking

“I have always been amazed at my contemporaries’ lack of finesse, I whose soul writhed from morning to night, in the mere quest of itself.”

Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) Irish novelist, playwright, and poet

The Expelled (1946)

Soul

“The time for work is while the sun's light shines,
but every living thing finds peace at night.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Tempo è da travagliar mentre il sol dura;
Ma nella notte ogni animale ha pace.
Canto VI, stanza 52 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Peace , Light , Time , Sun

“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 Borrow book Lavengro

Source: Lavengro (1851), Ch. 25

Life , Star , Sun

“Still falls the Rain
At the feet of the Starved Man hung upon the Cross.
Christ that each day, each night, nails there, have mercy on us”

Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) British poet

Still Falls the Rain (1940)

Christ

“Julia Hayden, the colored school teacher, one of the latest victims of the White man's League, was only seventeen years of age. She was the daughter of respectable parents in Maury County, Tennessee, and had been carefully educated at the Central College, Nashville, a favorite place for the instruction of youth of both sexes of her race. She is said to have possessed unusual personal attractions as well as intelligence. Under the reign of slavery as it is defined and upheld by Davis and Toombs, Julia Hayden would probably have been taken from her parents and sent in a slave coffle to New Orleans to be sold on its auction block. But emancipation had prepared for her a different and less dreadful fate. With that strong desire for mental cultivation which marked the colored race since their freedom, in all circumstances where there is an opportunity left them for its exhibition, the young girl had so improved herself as to become capable of teaching others. She went to Western Tennessee and took charge of a school. Three days after her arrival at Hartsville, at night, two white men, armed with their guns, appeared at the house where she was staying, and demanded the school teacher. She fled, alarmed, to the room of the mistress of the house. The White Leaguers pursued. They fired their guns I through the floor of the room and the young girl fell dead within. Her murderers escaped.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

"Louisiana and the Rule of Terror" http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=EL18741010.2.9#, The Elevator (10 October 1874), Volume 10, Number 26.

Men , Fate , Youth , Age

“Not, not mine: it's somebody else's wound.
I could never have borne it. So take the thing
that happened, hide it, stick it in the ground.
Whisk the lamps away…
Night.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

No, it is not I, it is else who is suffering.
I could not have borne it. And this thing, which has happened
Let them cover it with black cloths,
And take away the lanterns...
Night.
Translated by D. M. Thomas
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), Prologue

“Women have come a long way, of course: we can all be left alone at night now. But sometimes it seems a high price to pay. We can also open the door cheerfully to strangers at any hour, deal with obscene telephone calls and mend fuses.”

Anita Brookner (1928–2016) British novelist and art historian.

A Friend From England (1987)

Women , Way

“I was borne on an eagle's wing,
Till with the noon-sun perishing;
Then I stood in a world alone,
From which all other life was gone,
Whence warmth, and breath, and light were fled,
A world o'er which a curse was said:
The trees stood leafless all, and bare,
The sky spread, but no sun was there:
Night came, no stars were on her way,
Morn came without a look of day,—
As night and day shared one pale shroud,
Without a colour or a cloud.
And there were rivers, but they stood
Without a murmur on the flood,
Waveless and dark, their task was o'er,—
The sea lay silent on the shore,
Without a sign upon its breast
Save of interminable rest:
And there were palaces and halls,
But silence reign'd amid their walls,
Though crowds yet fill'd them; for no sound
Rose from the thousands gather'd round;
All wore the same white, bloodless hue,
All the same eyes of glassy blue,
Meaningless, cold, corpse-like as those
No gentle hand was near to close.
And all seem'd, as they look'd on me,
In wonder that I yet could be
A moving shape of warmth and breath
Alone amid a world of death.”

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

Canto III
The Troubadour (1825)

Life , Death , World , Way

“Roses by the head, jasmine at the feet —
so appear the longings that have passed
without being satisfied, not one of them granted
a night of sensual pleasure, or one of its radiant mornings.”

Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933) Greek poet

Longings http://www.cavafy.com/poems/content.asp?id=45&cat=1
Collected Poems (1992)

Pleasure , Appearance

“Bad dreams in the night.
They told me I was going to lose the fight,
Leave behind my wuthering, wuthering
Wuthering Heights.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, The Kick Inside (1978)

Dreams , Fight

“Oh, Night will not see thirty again,
Yet soft her wing, Miranda;
Pick up your glass and tell me, then —
How old is Spring, Miranda?”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Many Long Years Ago (1945), A Lady Thinks She Is Thirty

Spring

“One of the band told me last night
That music is all that he's got in his life.
So where does it go?
Surely not with his soul.
Will all of his licks and his R'n'B
Blow away?”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Never for Ever (1980)

Life , Music , Soul

“"What are you trying to do, Kerouac?" I'd ask myself in my sleepingbag at night, "trying to deny reality with all this Buddha stuff, ya jerk?" … "Poor detailed immaculate incarnate fool, and you call yourself Self … Take off your coat and crash wits." And I realized that all this Buddhism was a STRAIN at telling the untellable emptiness yet that nothing was truer, a perfect paradox.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Meditation in the Woods (1958)

Fools , Jerk , Reality , Perfection

“Silence is closer
We're passing ships in the night.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

"I Sat By the Ocean", ...Like Clockwork (2013)
Lyrics, Queens of the Stone Age

Silence

“I watch the sea and the sky; sometimes I wade in the surf and build roads in the sand. At night I study the stars.”
“You have no friends?”
“No.”
“And what of the future?”
“The future stops at ‘now’.”
“As to that, I am not so sure,” said Shimrod. “It is at best a half-truth.”
“What of that? Half a truth is better than none: do you not agree?”
“Not altogether,” said Shimrod. “I am a practical man, I try to control the shape of the ‘nows’ which lie in the offing, instead of submitting to them as they occur.”
Melancthe gave an uninterested shrug. “You are free to do as you like.” Leaning back in the divan, she looked out across the sea.
Shimrod finally spoke. “Well then: are you ‘good’ or ‘bad’?”
“I don’t know.”
Shimrod became vexed. “Talking with you is like visiting an empty house.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Melancthe considered a moment before responding. “Perhaps,” she said, “you are visiting the wrong house. Or perhaps you are the wrong visitor.”
Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Madouc (1989), Chapter 5, section 4 (p. 783)

Truth , Lie , Star , Study

“My address to Congress comes on Tuesday night at 9:00 o'clock Eastern Time. I hope you'll tune in and consider what I have to say. I hope you'll agree that my plan is good for you and for your family. But, even more, I hope you'll agree it's good for America. Thank you for listening.”

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

2000s, 2001, Radio Address to the Nation (February 2001)

Family , Hope , Time

“T was the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring,—not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.”

Clement Clarke Moore (1779–1863) American biblical scholar

A Visit from St. Nicholas, published anonymously in the Troy, New York Sentinel on December 23, 1823 and was reprinted frequently thereafter with no name attached; later attributed to Clement Clarke Moore and included in an 1844 anthology of his works.

Hope , Christmas , Housing

“Oh Carol, don't let him steal your heart away
I'm gonna learn to dance if it takes me all night and day”

Chuck Berry (1926–2017) American rock-and-roll musician

"Carol" (1958)
Song lyrics

Learning , Heart , Dance

“The impending collision out there somewhere in the great dark between a gas giant and a world very much like our own has some parallels to the eternal collision between religion and common sense. One is bloated and full of gas, and the other is measurable and solid. One engulfs everything around it, and the other simply provides a place to stand. One is a rogue destroyer that has come in out of the night, and the other is a warm well-lighted place vulnerable to the sainted mobs.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Deepsix (2001), Chapter 1 (p. 15)

World , Religion , Sense , Light

“One who recites ten verses (ayat) of the Qur’an every night will not be counted amongst the negligent ones (Ghafilin); and one who recites fifty verses (ayat) will be written as those who remember Allah (Dhakirin); and one who recites one hundred verses (ayat) will be written down as the obedient and worshipper of Allah”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Qanitin
Thawabul A’mal, Page 232
Shi'ite Hadith

““And then along came Satan’s Eye Itself. Television.” He laughed, as at some fatal irony. “Don’t you hear the evil hum of the word, the knell of Satan? Television! It’s the ruling character of your lives, like the moon must have been for Indians. An oracle, a companion, a signal of the changing seasons. But rather than divine illumination, each night it spews forth Satan’s imagery. Murders, car crashes, mad policemen, perverted strangers! And you lie there decomposing in its flickering, blue-gray light, absorbing His horrid fantasies!””

Lucius Shepard book Green Eyes

Source: Green Eyes (1984), Chapter 10, p. 115

Lie , Cars , Light , Evil

“The war against Israel is not a war against Israel. It is a war against the West. It is jihad. Israel is simply receiving the blows that are meant for all of us. If there would have been no Israel, Islamic imperialism would have found other venues to release its energy and its desire for conquest. Thanks to Israeli parents who send their children to the army and lay awake at night, parents in Europe and America can sleep well and dream, unaware of the dangers looming. Many in Europe argue in favor of abandoning Israel in order to address the grievances of our Muslim minorities. But if Israel were, God forbid, to go down, it would not bring any solace to the West. It would not mean our Muslim minorities would all of a sudden change their behavior, and accept our values. On the contrary, the end of Israel would give enormous encouragement to the forces of Islam. They would, and rightly so, see the demise of Israel as proof that the West is weak, and doomed. The end of Israel would not mean the end of our problems with Islam, but only the beginning. It would mean the start of the final battle for world domination. If they can get Israel, they can get everything.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

2000s, Speech at the Four Seasons, New York (25 September 2008)

God , War , Children , World

“The only solution for dealing with the IRA is to kill 600 people in one night.”

Alan Clark (1928–1999) British politician

Spoken at a fringe meeting at the Conservative Party Conference, October 7, 1997. Reported in The Guardian, October 8, 1997 http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conservatives/story/0,,451799,00.html

People

“The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

St. 1.
The Day is Done (1845)

“As night is withdrawn
From these sweet-springing meads and bursting boughs of May,
Dream, while the innumerable choir of day
Welcome the dawn.”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

Nightingales http://www.poetry-online.org/bridges_nightingales.htm, st. 3.
Poetry

Dreams , Spring

“And I also say Pooh for sweetness and light,
And if you want to get the most out of life, why the thing to do is to be a gossiper by day and gossipee by night.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

I'm a Stranger Here Myself (1938), I Have It On Good Authority

Life , Light

“Uh, cause everyday she's struggling
she be hustling
day and night
I don't think you know how it feels
when you're an orphan yeah”

Slim Burna (1988) Nigerian singer and record producer

"The Orphan" (track 5)
I'm On Fire (2013)

Feeling , Thinking

“If I should die to-night
And you should come in deepest grief and woe—
And say: "Here's that ten dollars that I owe,"
I might arise in my large white cravat
And say, "What's that?"”

Benjamin Franklin King, Jr. (1857–1894) American humorist and poet

If I should die, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "If I should die to-night, / My friends would look upon my quiet face / Before they laid it in its resting-place, / And deem that death had left it almost fair", Belle E. Smith.