Quotes about the night
page 34

“I will here say, before closing, that two weeks before I left St. George, the spirits of the dead gathered around me, wanting to know why we did not redeem them. Said they, "You have had the use of the Endowment House for a number of years, and yet nothing has ever been done for us. We laid the foundation of the government you now enjoy, and we never apostatized from it, but we remained true to it and were faithful to God." There were the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and they waited on me for two days and two nights. I thought it very singular, that notwithstanding so much work had been done, and yet nothing had been done for them. The thought never entered my heart, from the fact, I suppose, that heretofore our minds were reaching after our more immediate friends and relatives. I straightway went into the baptismal font and called upon brother McCallister to baptize me for the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and fifty other eminent men, making one hundred in all, including John Wesley, Columbus, and others; I then baptized him for every President of the United States, except three; and when their cause is just, somebody will do the work for them.”

Wilford Woodruff (1807–1898) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Journal of Discourses 19:229 (September 16, 1877)

Men, God, Faith, Waiting

“The broad cloud-driving moon in the clear sky
Lifts o’er the firs her shining shield,
And in her tranquil light
Sleep falls on forest and field.
See! sleep hath fallen: the trees are asleep:
The night is come. The land is wrapt in sleep.”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

The Storm is Over, The Land Hushes to Rest, l. 38-43.
Poetry

Sleep, Tree, Light

“That night I slept there, but the next morning I began to hate the place. With her there it was part of a dream; without her, it was a house. I packed my things into the rumble seat and drove back to Los Angeles.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Hate, Dreams, Angels, Parting

“That was the other thing that drew me to India-the language. In high school my Latin teacher taught me Greek unofficially on Monday nights. I loved Greek; I loved the idea that there was another script. And then my Latin teacher told me there was a language that was even older and more interesting than Greek: Sanskrit. So everything started coming together-the art, the literature, the language.”

Wendy Doniger (1940) American Indologist

On the aspect of her studying Sanskrit.
Q&A with Wendy Doniger, the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor and author of The Hindus

Love, School, Art, Literature

“Not unremembering we pass our exile from the starry ways:
One timeless hour in time we caught from the long night of endless days.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Way, Time

“I am not courageous. To be brave means that you have conquered fear, but I have never had any fear to conquer. Believe me, Mr Leithen, I am quite impervious to threats. You come to me to-night and hold a pistol to my head. You offer me two alternatives, both of which mean failure. But how do you know that I regard them as failure? I have had what they call a good run for my money. No man since Napoleon has tasted such power. I may be willing to end it. Age creeps on and power may grow burdensome. I have always sat loose from common ambitions and common affections. For all you know I may regard you as a benefactor.”

John Buchan book The Power-House

Source: The Power-House (1916), Ch. 8 "The Power-House"

Money, Age, Fear, Failure

“Just let life be the spark
A catapult that shoots us through the dark
Raise your glass, bring a toast
To the one thing you treasure the most
Tonight the only way we go is up up
Let the music play, let's make it pop pop
DJ keep the record spinning all night non stop”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

"Party People (Ignite The World)"
Song lyrics, Other songs

Life, Music, Way

“Nasrudin walked into a house and exclaimed, "The moon is more useful than the sun."
"Why?" he was asked.
"Because at night we need the light more."”

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

Paul Blenkiron, Stories and Analogies in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (2010), , p. 43

Light, Sun, Housing

“Since suffering a concussion eight years ago, I find my inside emotions are right to the front and as such, when I heard that Antonio Carlos Jobim had died in December of 1994 I was much affected, I experienced happenings like no other time in my life. While sleeping one night, I dreamed that I was conducting a recording session with strings in Brazil and we were performing Jobim's "Corcovado," except that besides thje melody and harmony, there was polyharmonic bass line. As I awakened from this dream, I went to my piano and wrote down what I had dreamed.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Explaining the genesis of the track "Corcovado Fúnebre" in the liner notes from Clare Fischer's Jazz Corps

Life, Dreams, Sleep, Suffering

“And we danced all night to a soul fairy band.
And she kissed me just right like only a lonely angel can.
She felt just right just like as sweet as a spirit in the night.
In the night baby don't know what she do to you?
Spirits in the night, in the night.
Stand up now and let her shoot right through you.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Spirit in the Night"
Song lyrics, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (1973)

Angels, Soul, Kiss, Dance

“You seem to have dreamt on the white stone, in the midst of the people of dreams, since you dreamt so long a dream in the course of so short a night.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Source: The White Stone (1905), Ch. VI, p. 237

People, Dreams

“Punk: Hey, Jeff. Jeff, aren't you nervous sitting way up there so… high? Especially in the condition you're in, and by "condition", I mean that you're probably drunk right now, just like all these people here tonight. (Crowd boos) Yeah, that's something to be proud of, I mean, you'd have to be under the influence to stomach this "live in the moment" crap that you spew. What's living in the moment gotten you, Jeff? I know it got you a night in a hospital, and for what? The adulation of these people? One brief moment of attention? (Crowd chants "Hardy") You know, I don't know what's more pathetic—all these people hanging on your every word, waiting for the next pitiful example for you to set that they can lead, or you and your egotistical addiction to their cheers and support and adulation. Listen, listen to them, Jeff. They actually believe that you can beat me at SummerSlam. (Crowd cheers)
Jeff: So do I.
Punk: So does our general manager. Teddy Long's the guy that said TLC is your match. It's Jeff Hardy's match, everybody. They're right, it is your match. This TLC is your last match. I know what I have to accomplish to get everything I want. When I beat you at SummerSlam and I take back my World Heavyweight Title, it will validate everything I've said in the past. I will prove once and for all, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that straight edge is the right way, that straight edge means I'm better than you. Jeff, I have to get rid of you to teach these people the difference between right and wrong. I have to get rid of you to teach them how to say, "just say no." I have to get rid of you so they stop living in your moment, and they wake up, and they start living in my reality. Make no mistake about it, Jeff; there's no turning back from this point on. You can talk about the space from the top of that ladder to this mat, but from here on out, there's nothing left. At SummerSlam, I will hurt you, and I will remove you and the stain of all your bad examples from the WWE forever.
Jeff: Punk, you can't destroy me, you can't destroy what I've created over my ten years here. Kansas City's not gonna listen to you. You won't beat me at SummerSlam, Punk. I will prove that I'm better than you in my specialty: Tables, Ladders, & Chairs.
Punk: You're right, Jeff. You know what, you wouldn't be here if it wasn't for them, because you need them to enable you. You need them to justify your reckless behavior with their support and their cheers, just like they need you to somehow justify their reckless behavior, with their smoking and their drinking and their use of prescription medication. They try in vain to live vicariously through a man who, by way of his lifestyle, thinks he can fly.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

Interrupting Jeff Hardy's promo from the top of a ladder. August 21, 2009.
Friday Night SmackDown

People, World, Way, Guy

“Bad nights lead to better days”

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

Easy Plateau
29 (2005)

“I have seen starry archipelagoes! and islands
Whose raving skies are opened to the voyager:
Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep, in exile,
A million golden birds, O future Vigor?”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

J'ai vu des archipels sidéraux! et des îles Dont les cieux délirants sont ouverts au vogueur: Est-ce en ces nuits sans fond que tu dors et t'exiles, Million d'oiseaux d'or, ô future Vigueur ? St. 25 Le Bateau Ivre http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Boat.html (The Drunken Boat) (1871)

Bird, Sleep, Future

“The summer skies are darkly blue,
The days are still and bright,
And Evening trails her robes of gold
Through the dim halls of Night.”

Sarah Helen Whitman (1803–1878) United States poet

Summer's Call. Compare: "I heard the trailing garments of the Night / Sweep through her marble halls", Longfellow.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Summer

“Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before.”

G. K. Chesterton book Tremendous Trifles

Tremendous Trifles (1909)

“For many a day, and many a dreadful night,
Incessant lab'ring round the stormy cape.”

James Thomson (poet) The Seasons

Source: The Seasons (1726-1730), Summer (1727), l. 1002.

“A wife who preaches in her gown,
And lectures in her night-dress.”

Thomas Hood (1799–1845) British writer

The Surplice Question; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
20th century

“Dave always arrives at the right conclusions, but his mathematics is terrible. I take it home and find all sorts of errors and then have to spend the night trying to develop the correct proof. But in the end, the result is always exactly the same as the one Dave saw directly.”

David Bohm (1917–1992) American theoretical physicist

Professor Basil Hiley http://www.bbk.ac.uk/tpru/BasilHiley.html, a colleague at Birkbeck College, University of London.

Error, Home, Mathematics

“The mountain moon shines on a cloudless sky.
Deep in the night the wind rises among the pines.
I wish to weave my thoughts into a song for my jade lute,
But the pine wind never ceases blowing.”

Zhu Yizun

"Written at Mauve Garden: Pine Wind Terrace" (tr. Y. N. Chang and Lewis C. Walmsley), in Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry, eds. Wu-chi Liu and Irving Yucheng Lo (1975), p. 477; also in The Luminous Landscape: Chinese Art and Poetry, ed. Richard Lewis (1981), p. 57.

Mountain

“My first informed impression, and what I would like to achieve, I can perhaps only realize when I am impelled as in a vision. One of my figures, perhaps one from the Temptation, sang his strange song to me one night –.. We are playing hide-and-seek, we are playing hide-and-seek across a thousand seas, we gods.... when the skies are red in the middle of the night, when the skies are red at night. You cannot see us, you cannot see us but you are ourselves.... that is what makes us laugh so gaily... Stars are our eyes and nebulae our beards.... we have people's souls for our hearts. We hide ourselves and you cannot see us, which is just what we want.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

Source: 1930s, On my Painting (1938), p. 19

God, People, Soul, Star

“Hail, Sphinx: salutation from Julius Caesar! I have wandered in many lands, seeking the lost regions from which my birth into this world exiled me, and the company of creatures such as I myself. I have found flocks and pastures, men and cities, but no other Caesar, no air native to me, no man kindred to me, none who can do my day's deed, and think my night's thought.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Act I
1890s, Caesar and Cleopatra (1898)

Men, World, Birth, Thinking

“Magazines were even more scarce than books. It was after I moved into "town" (speaking comparatively) that I began to buy magazines. I well remember the first I ever bought. I was fifteen years old; I bought it one summer night when a wild restlessness in me would not let me keep still, and I had exhausted all the reading material on the place. I'll never forget the thrill it gave me. Somehow it never had occurred to me before that I could buy a magazine. It was an Adventure. I still have the copy. After that I bought Adventure for many years, though at times it cramped my resources to pay the price. It came out three times a month, then… I skimped and saved from one magazine to the next; I'd buy one copy and have it charged, and when the next issue was out, I'd pay for the one which I owed, and have the other one charged, and so on. So I generally owed for one, but only one.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to H. P. Lovecraft (1933)
Letters

Books, Time, Reading, Summer

“I’m a vegetarian. Eight years ago it was something that I really wanted to try but I was nervous, I was scared. And my reasonings for wanting to try it is, being the animal lover and activist that I am, I felt like a hypocrite not being a vegetarian. So, I actually went to an Amanda Foundation (animal rescue) event and I walked away going, ‘Okay! Tonight’s the night!’ And I just did it. And I was amazed at how much easier it was than I thought it was going to be. Spiritually, I just felt so great that I was doing something I wanted to do.”

Kelly Packard

"In-Depth with Loving the Silent Tears MC: Kelly Packard", GodsDirectContact.org (2012) http://www.godsdirectcontact.org.tw/eng/news/211/sr_47.htm.

Lovers, Animals

“Love is the mystery of divine revelations!
Love is the effulgent manifestation!
Love is the spiritual fulfillment!
Love is the breath of the Holy Spirit inspired into the human spirit!
Love is the cause of the manifestation of the Truth (God) in the phenomenal world!
Love is the necessary tie proceeding from the realities of things through divine creation!
Love is the means of the most great happiness in both the material and spiritual worlds!
Love is a light of guidance in the dark night!
Love is the bond between the Creator and the creature in the inner world!
Love is the cause of development to every enlightened man!
Love is the greatest law in this vast universe of God!
Love is the one law which causeth and controleth order among the existing atoms!
Love is the universal magnetic power between the planets and stars shining in the loft firmament!
Love is the cause of unfoldment to a searching mind, of the secrets deposited in the universe by the Infinite!
Love is the spirit of life in the bountiful body of the world!
Love is the cause of the civilization of nations in this mortal world!
Love is the highest honor to every righteous nation!
The people who are confirmed therein are indeed glorified by the Supreme Concourse, the angels of heaven and the dwellers of the Kingdom of El-Abha! But if the hearts of the people become devoid of the Divine Grace — the Love of God — they wander in the desert of ignorance, descend to the depths of ruin and fall to the abyss of despair where there is no refuge! They are like insects living in the lowest plane.
O beloved of God! Be ye the manifestations of God and the lamps of guidance throughout all regions shining with the light of love and union!
How beautiful the effulgence of this light!”

`Abdu'l-Bahá (1844–1921) Son of Bahá'u'lláh and leader of the Bahá'í Faith

“O thou who art attracted by the Fragrances of God!…” in Tablets of Abdul-Baha Abbas (1909), p. 730 http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/ab/TAB/tab-573.html

Love, Life, God, People

“A bat is born
Naked and blind and pale.
His mother makes a pocket of her tail
And catches him. He clings to her long fur
By his thumbs and toes and teeth.
And then the mother dances through the night
Doubling and looping, soaring, somersaulting —
Her baby hangs on underneath.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"A bat is born," lines 1-31; reprinted as "Bats" in The Lost World (1965)
The Bat-Poet (1964)

Dance, Baby

“Nasrudin used to take a donkey across a frontier every day, with the panniers loaded with straw. Since he admitted to being a smuggler when he trudged home every night, the frontier guards searched him again and again. They searched his person, staffed the straw, steeped it in water, even burned it from time to time. […] One of the customs officers met him years later.
"You can tell me now, Nasrudin," he said. "Whatever was it that you were smuggling, when we could never catch you out?"”

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

"Donkeys," said Nasrudin.
N. Hanif (ed.), Biographical Encyclopaedia of Sufis: Central Asia and Middle East (2002), ISBN 8176252662, p. 335

Home, Search, Water, Time

“Before it exploded one night, I went to a four grade, two room schoolhouse and we had textbooks from the 1940s.”

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[9690va$mjc$1@panix3.panix.com, 2001]
2000s

“The conjunction of the day and the night is the most auspicious time for calling on God. The mind remains pure at this time.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

Women Saints of East and West

God, Time

“Took a walk and passed your house late last night,
All the shades were pulled and drawn way down tight.
From within, the dim light cast two silhouettes on the shade.”

Frank Slay (1930–2017) American record producer

Song: "Silhouettes"

Way, Light, Housing

“I know that the Crusaders of Majorca put to death, in a single night, all the prisoners who were huddled in the Catalonian trenches. They took the whole herd down to the shore and shot them, one beast at a time - they were quite leisurely about it. The Lord High Archbishop of Palma arranged to be represented at the ceremony, by a certain number of his priests. You can picture the scene can't you? 'Come on, father, isn't that one ready?' - 'Just a moment captain, I'm handing him over to you at once.' When the job was finished, the Crusaders piled their cattle in two heaps - those who'd been given absolution and those who hadn't- then sprinkled petrol over them. It is quite likely that this purification by fire may then have taken on, by reason of the presence of priests officiating a liturgical significance. Unfortunately I only saw these blackened, shiny creatures two days after that, contorted by the flames, some of them counterfeiting obscene poses in death, which must have been very distressing for the ladies of Palma and for their eminent confessors. A reeking tar oozed out of them…”

Georges Bernanos book Les grands cimetières sous la lune

Source: Les grands cimetieres sous la lune (A Diary of My Times) 1938, p.153-154

Death, Time

“Raven from the dim dominions
On the Night's Plutonian shore,
Oft I hear thy dusky pinions
Wave and flutter round my door—
See the shadow of thy pinions
Float along the moonlit floor.”

Sarah Helen Whitman The Raven

The Raven (written as a counterpart to Poe's poem by the same name).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Alfie was an organizer. He would telephone the other kids a week before that first practice session (which he euphemistically called spring training), and he would knock on their doors the morning of, and they would look out the windows and say, "Hey, it's snowing," and he would say, "It's not snowing all that hard. See you in a half-hour." So we would gather our tired, cold bodies together, throw on our baseball clothes—old shirts, old pants, sneakers, old baseball gloves—and grab a couple of bats and scuffed-up balls, and we would pile onto the subway and ride to Van Cortland Park. We would run to make sure we'd be first to claim a ball field. Of course we were first. Nobody else was that crazy. My brother would direct practice for a couple of hours, batting practice, catching fungoes, fielding, practicing our curves and drops on the sidelines, fingers aching from contact with batted or thrown baseballs. We threw ourselves across that hard bone of a field so we would be ready when the spring suns finally thawed the ground at our feet. If the still-awake dreams of hunting lions in Africa were the peak moments of my night life, those frozen ball fields of February were the highlights of my days.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

Recalling his late brother, from "Life with Alfie," https://books.google.com/books?id=PWEEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA233&dq=%22Alfie+was+an+organizer%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAGoVChMIiqWJ2oHaxwIVipANCh2Utw2g#v=onepage&q=%22Alfie%20was%20an%20organizer%22&f=false in Orange Coast Magazine (November 1990), pp. 233–234 Other Topics

Life, Dreams, Spring, Sun

“You complain that no one can put himself in your place. I can imagine that it may never have occurred to you, preoccupied day and night with that thought, that you should comfort others: and he, the Comforter, he is the only one of whom it truly holds that no one could put himself in his place-how true if he had complained in that way! He, the Comforter, in whose place no one could put himself, he can put himself completely in your place and in every sufferer’s place. …. There is still one who is able to put himself completely in your place, the Lord Jesus Christ, who ”because he has suffered and himself been tempted is able to help those who are tempted” (Hebrews 2:18).”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Three Discourses at Friday Communion November 14, 1849 Hong translation 1997 P. 119-120
1840s, Three Discourses at the Communion on Fridays (1849)

Way, Imagination, Suffering, Help

“The window opened gently and a still Autumn night entered cat-like. Edwin smelt freedom and London autumn – decay, smoke, cold, motor oil.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Doctor is Sick (1960)

Cats, Autumn, Freedom

“Naked girls with the heads of Marx and Malraux prone and helpless in the glare of the headlights, tried to give them a little joie de vivre but maybe it didn’t take, their constant bickering and smallness, it’s like a stroke of lightning, the world reminds you of its power, tracheotomies right and left, I am spinning, my pretty child, don’t scratch, pick up your feet, the long nights, spent most of my time listening, this is a test of the system, this is only a test.”

Donald Barthelme book Sixty Stories

“Aria”, conclusion.
Sixty Stories (1981)

World, Girl, Time

“Night and day I've been most intensely thinking about my painting, and I have been more or less satisfied with everything I've done. I'm slacking a little now, not working as much, and no longer so satisfied. But all in all, I still have a loftier and happier perspective on my art than I did in Worpswede. But it does demand a very, very great deal of me – working and sleeping in the same room with my paintings is a delight... When I wake up in the middle of the night, I jump out of bed and look at my work. And in the morning it's the first thing I see..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

In a letter from Paris, 15 May 1906 to Otto Modersohn in Worpswede; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 204
1906 + 1907

Art, Thinking, Sleep, Painting

“Ellen: I think one of the turning points in my life came a few years ago. I started going to sleep at night just talking to myself, saying, "You're perfect just the way you are," because I used to beat myself up about weight and working out, and no matter what I did I never felt good about myself. I decided to accept myself and know that I am good. Just those affirmations every night changed my belief in who I was because I had been told for so long, over and over, that I was something else. That brings us to another agreement: Don't make assumptions—because we assume that when people do something or say something to you, they mean just what we think they mean.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Ellen DeGeneres' interview with The Four Agreements Author don Miguel Ruiz which appeared in the October 2001 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine

Life, People, Way, Thinking

“Hearing has its own memory. It registers the dog whose sudden barking startled me as a child. The folk songs my nanny used to sing. The dadaism of a cabaret song from Berlin: ‘I tear out one of my eyelashes and stab you dead with it,’ innocently sung by my mother. Hitler conjuring up the Almighty. The crowing voice of little Goebbels. Alarm sirens, the roar of aircraft, the blast of bombs. Ljuba Welitsch being Salome. The sonorities of Edwin Fischer’s piano playing. María Casares as Lady Macbeth in Avignon. Ralph Kirkpatrick’s two Scarlatti recitals. Gré Brouwenstijn as Leonore in Fidelio. The epiphany of Ligeti’s Aventures et Nouvelles Aventures. The magic application of noise in Peter Brook’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. All sorts of laughter.”

Alfred Brendel (1931) Austrian pianist, poet, and author

quoted in Alan Rusbridger, "Music, Sense and Nonsense by Alfred Brendel review – a great pianist’s thoughts on his art", The Guardian, 24 September 2015

Dogs, Dreams, Tear, Laughter

“I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

The Indian Serenade http://www.poetry-archive.com/s/the_indian_serenade.html (1819), st. 1

Dreams, Star, Sleep

“Everyone wants to kill me! The Americans want to kill me, the Shiites want to kill me, the Kurds want to kill me and even the insurgents.... Every night a different car passes by my house.”

Fakhri al-Qaisi

"A Nation in Blood and Ink" by Dexter Filkins, The New York Times, August 14, 2005
Commenting on the suspicions against him due to his roles as member of the constitutional committee, and as a Sunni Muslim who knows people with ties to the Iraqi insurgency.

Cars, Housing

“Now had Aurora displayed her mantle over the blushing skies, and dark night withdrawn her sable veil.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book III, Ch. 6.

“Concerning the night assault of Lord Asano's ronin, the fact that they did not commit seppuku at the Sengakuji was an error, for there was a long delay between the time their lord was struck down and the time when they struck down the enemy. If Lord Kira had died of illness within that period, it would have been extremely regrettable.”

Tsunetomo Yamamoto book Hagakure

Commentary on the tale of The Forty-Seven Samurai (or the "Forty-seven Ronin", or Akō Rōshi, the Akō "vendetta"), emphasizing his view that Bushido demands prompt action, and not delay, or concern about success and failure. Variant: "What if, nine months after Asano's death, Kira had died of an illness?"
Hagakure (c. 1716)

Error, Time

“If this were the last night of the world
What would I do
What would I do that was different
Unless it was champagne with you…”

Bruce Cockburn (1945) Canadian folk/rock guitarist and singer-songwriter

Breakfast in New Orleans, Dinner in Timbuktu (1999)

World

“I am afraid I can hold out but cold comfort'for the present at least'to those of your correspondents who are lamenting the present state of things. Things are bad, are growing worse and may at any time grow worst or worse than worst if that is possible'and anything however paradoxical seems possible in the present perturbed world. The best thing for them is to realise that all this was necessary because certain possibilities had to emerge and be got rid of, if a new and better world was at all to come into being; it would not have done to postpone them for a later time…. Also they can remember the adage that night is darkest before dawn and that the coming of dawn is inevitable. But they must remember too that the new world whose coming we envisage is not to be made of the same texture as the old and different only in pattern, and that it must come by other means'from within and not from without; so the best way is not to be too much preoccupied with the lamentable things that are happening outside, but themselves to grow within so that they may be ready for the new world, whatever form it may take.”

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

July 18, 1948 (From a letter.)
India's Rebirth

World, Way, Time

“Guided by His wisdom, strong in His strength, there maybe for you struggle and suffering, the darkness and the storm. "The disciple is not above His Master." There may be weeping that shall endure for a night, but joy shall come in the morning. If the night cometh, so also the morning, "a morning without clouds," the morning of an eternal day.”

Mark Hopkins (educator) (1802–1887) American educationalist and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 108.

Wisdom, Strong, Suffering, Joy

“O ah hear her walkin',
Walkin' barefoot 'cross the floor-boards,
All thru this lonesome night,
And ah hear her crying too.
Hot-tears come splashin' down,
Leaking thru the cracks,
Down upon my face, ah catch'em in my mouth!”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, From Her to Eternity (1984), From Her to Eternity

Tear, Cry

“Convince yourself. Kovno is a treasure-trove for artists. It is gloomy, the lamps don't make it lighter and the streets are getting darker. Their violet windows hover threateningly in the darkness. The elusive lines of low houses, on them - the glimmer of green and red flames - illuminating rows of shops. Bright green bright red stripes [all] fall on the violet sidewalk. And all those shadows are full of people who only speak about one thing, about love, in the dialect, Polish or broken Russian. Whispers and loud words touch the silence, like the green and red bands of light - the darkness of the night. Something terrible, terrible lies over everything, I feel a shudder, it seems I am in another world, far away from real life.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

Quote from Werefkin's letter to Alexej von Jawlensky, between December 1909 and Spring 1910; as cited in 'Ambiguity of Home: Identity and Reminiscence in Marianne Werefkin's Return Home, c. 1909', Adrienne Kochman http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring06/52-spring06/spring06article/171-ambiguity-of-home-identity-and-reminiscence-in-marianne-werefkins-return-home-c-1909 1906 - 1911

Love, Life, People, World

“The survivors lay quietly in that cratered void and watched the whitehot stars go rifling down the dark. Or slept with their alien hearts beating in the sand like pilgrims exhausted upon the face of the planet Anareta, clutched to a namelessness wheeling in the night.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter IV

Star, Heart

“The trouble is that the party’s been chasin’ after theories and stayin’ up nights readin’ books instead of studyin’ human nature and actin’ accordin’, as I've advised in tellin’ how to hold your district. p. 88”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 22, A Parting Word on the Future of the Democratic Party in America

Books, Nature

“I'm so afraid to love you, but more afraid to lose,
Clinging to a past that doesn't let me choose.
Once there was a darkness, deep and endless night;
You gave me everything you had, oh you gave me light.”

Sarah McLachlan (1968) Canadian musician, singer, and songwriter

I Will Remember You
Song lyrics, The Brothers McMullen soundtrack (1995)

Love, Light, Past

“Playboy: Then for now, aren't you asking home-computer buyers to invest $3000 in what is essentially an act of faith?
Jobs: In the future, it won't be an act of faith. The hard part of what we're up against now is that people ask you about specifics and you can't tell them. A hundred years ago, if somebody had asked Alexander Graham Bell, "What are you going to be able to do with a telephone?" he wouldn't have been able to tell him the ways the telephone would affect the world. He didn't know that people would use the telephone to call up and find out what movies were playing that night or to order some groceries or call a relative on the other side of the globe. But remember that first the public telegraph was inaugurated, in 1844. It was an amazing breakthrough in communications. You could actually send messages from New York to San Francisco in an afternoon. People talked about putting a telegraph on every desk in America to improve productivity. But it wouldn't have worked. It required that people learn this whole sequence of strange incantations, Morse code, dots and dashes, to use the telegraph. It took about 40 hours to learn. The majority of people would never learn how to use it. So, fortunately, in the 1870s, Bell filed the patents for the telephone. It performed basically the same function as the telegraph, but people already knew how to use it. Also, the neatest thing about it was that besides allowing you to communicate with just words, it allowed you to sing.
Playboy: Meaning what?
Jobs: It allowed you to intone your words with meaning beyond the simple linguistics. And we're in the same situation today. Some people are saying that we ought to put an IBM PC on every desk in America to improve productivity. It won't work. The special incantations you have to learn this time are "slash q-zs" and things like that. The manual for WordStar, the most popular word-processing program, is 400 pages thick. To write a novel, you have to read a novel—one that reads like a mystery to most people. They're not going to learn slash q-z any more than they're going to learn Morse code. That is what Macintosh is all about. It's the first "telephone" of our industry. And, besides that, the neatest thing about it, to me, is that the Macintosh lets you sing the way the telephone did. You don't simply communicate words, you have special print styles and the ability to draw and add pictures to express yourself.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

Steve Jobs, Playboy, Feb 1985, as quoted in “Steve Jobs Imagines 'Nationwide' Internet in 1985 Interview” https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/steve-jobs-imagines-nationwide-internet-in-1985-intervi-1671246589, Matt Novak, 12/15/14 2:20pm Paleofuture, Gizmodo. 1980s

People, World, Faith, Way

“This is the fourth film from hot Swedish director Lukas Moodysson. Two of his previous three movies, Show Me Love and Lilya 4-Ever, made my year-end Top 10 lists. So it was with great anticipation that I settled into a seat on the first Friday night of the 2004 Toronto Film Festival to see A Hole in My Heart. 98 minutes later, I felt like I had been dragged through a vat of raw sewage laced with Sominex - Directed by Lukas Moodysson.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=935 of A Hole in My Heart (2004). Zero star reviews

Love, Heart

“The stars are alive and nights like these
were born to be sanctified by you and me.”

Mike Scott (1958) songwriter, musician

"The Pan Within"
This Is the Sea (1985)

Star

“It is my solemn duty to stay up all night researching and writing the history of these three hapless youngsters, but you may be more comfortable getting a good night's sleep. In that case, you should probably choose some other book.”

Daniel Handler book The Austere Academy

The Austere Academy (2000)

Books, History, Sleep

“So this is me swallowing my pride,
Standing in front of you
Saying I'm sorry for that night.
And I go back to December all the time.
Turns out freedom ain't nothing but missing you,
Wishing that I realized what I had when you were mine.
I go back to December, turn around and make it all right.
I go back to December all the time.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

Back to December.
Song lyrics, Speak Now (2010)

Freedom, Time

“My hair is grey, but not with years,
Nor grew it white
In a single night,
As men's have grown from sudden fears.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

The Prisoner of Chillon http://readytogoebooks.com/PC31.htm, st. 1 (1816).

Men, Fear

“About one-fifth of all the heat that enters the average house comes through windows. …external shading is by far the most efficient method for controlling interior heat build-up. The air-wash between the shading screen and the window is also very effective. The screen should have a light-colored finish… Insulation boards placed next to the window pane at night, will help prevent heat losses through glazed openings. Overhangs and horizontal sunshades placed above south-facing windows serve effectively as heat reducers.”

Ken Kern American writer

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

Color, Light, Loss, Help

“With silent strides Odysseus then shot back the bolt,
passed lightly through the courtyard and sped down the street.
Some saw him take the graveyard's zigzag mountain path,
some saw him leap on rocks that edged the savage shore,
some visionaries saw him in the dead of night
swimming and talking secretly with the sea-demons,
but only a small boy saw him in a lonely dream
sit crouched and weeping by the dark sea's foaming edge.”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883–1957) Greek writer

Book II, line 457
The Odyssey : A Modern Sequel (1938)

Dreams, Mountain, Boy, Sea

“So you can try and live in darkness
but you will never shake the light.
It will greet you every morning and make you more aware with its absence at night”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2002)

Light

“Time won't fly, it's like I'm paralyzed by it.
I'd like to be my old self again, but I'm still trying to find it.
After plaid shirt days and nights when you made me your own,
Now you mail back my things and I walk home alone.But you keep my old scarf from that very first week,
'Cause it reminds you of innocence and it smells like me.
You can't get rid of it 'cause you remember it all too well, yeah.”

Taylor Swift (1989) American singer-songwriter

All Too Well, written by Taylor Swift and Liz Rose.
Song lyrics, Red (2012)

Home, Time, Flying

“at night we glimpsed the flowers blooming between women's legs
but we were vegetarians and misogynists”

Lajos Kassák The Horse Dies the Birds Fly Away

"A ló meghal a madarak kirepülnek" ("The Horse Dies the Birds Fly Away"), 1922, translated by Edwin Morgan.

Women, Flowers

“Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end,
after he plundered the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy.
He saw the townlands
and learned the minds of many distant men,
and weathered many bitter nights and days
in his deep heart at sea, while he fought only
to save his life, to bring his shipmates home.
But not by will nor valor could he save them,
for their own recklessness destroyed them all—
children and fools, they killed and feasted on
the cattle of Lord Hêlios, the Sun,
and he who moves all day through the heaven
took from their eyes the dawn of their return.”

Robert Fitzgerald (1910–1985) American poet, critic and translator

opening lines
The Odyssey (1961)

Life, Men, Children, Fools

“The whitewashed wall, the nicely sanded floor,
The varnished clock that clicked behind the door;
The chest contrived a double debt to pay,
A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day.”

Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village

Source: The Deserted Village (1770), Line 227.

“In the beginning there are those who don't quite fit in
But are somehow okay. And then some morning
There are places that suddenly seem wonderful:
Weather and water seem wonderful,
And the peaceful night sky that arrives
In time to protect us, like a sword
Cutting the blue cloak of a prince.”

John Ashbery (1927–2017) poet from the United States

"A Snowball in Hell"
Source: April Galleons (1987)

Peace, Water, Time, Weather

“President Bush said in his speech Monday night that the war in Iraq is "the central front in the war on terror." It's not the central front in the war on terror, but it has unfortunately become the central recruiting office for terrorists.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Quotes, NYU Speech (2004)

War

“No more my heart shall sob or grieve. My days and nights dissolve in God's own Light. Above the toil of life, my soul is a Bird of Fire winging the Infinite.”

Sri Chinmoy (1931–2007) Indian writer and guru

"Revelation", p. 47
My Flute (1972)

Life, God, Soul, Bird

“Here's the pitch to Mookie Wilson. Winning run at second. Ground ball to first, it is a run…an error! An error by Buckner! The winning run scores! The Mets win it 6 to 5 with three in the 10th! The ball went right through the legs of Buckner and the Mets with 2 men out and nobody on have scored three times to bring about a seventh game, which will be played here tomorrow night. Folks, it was unbelievable. An error, right through the legs of Buckner. There were two outs, nobody on, a single by Carter, a single by Mitchell, a single by Ray Knight, a wild pitch, an error by Buckner. Three in the 9th for the Mets. They've won the game 6-5 and we shall play here … tomorrow night! Well, open up the history book, folks, we've got an entry for you.”

Jack Buck (1924–2002) American sportscaster

Calling the final moments of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series.
1980s

Men, Books, Error, History

“To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction — every kind of evidence in the logician's list — have united to persuade consciousness that it is quite in isolation.”

Thomas Hardy book Far from the Madding Crowd

Source: Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), Ch. 2

People, Fear, Memory

“I lie awake at night to wait 'til you come in.
You stay a little while and then you're gone again.
Every question that I ask, I get a lie, lie, lie.
For every lie you tell, you're gonna cry, cry, cry!”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

Cry! Cry! Cry!
Song lyrics, Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar (1957)

Lie, Question, Waiting, Cry

“I was talking to a woman last night. I said, “I’m not like other people.” She started to giggle. Then I raised my voice and said evenly, “That’s one blessing God gave writers — they’re not like other people!””

Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) Novelist

1970s-, The Captains, the Kings, and Taylor Caldwell (1978)

God, People

“Roger: I think the best show is every night. I don't know every night we pretty much have the best show. We don't really have bad shows. The only thing that would contribute to a bad show is if nobody showed up. But, people do show up - so I can't really say. We did this tour in Australia and it was like a.. we were playing way out in Perth - you know, like in the middle of nowhere, the most remote city on the planet! But, we had a day off before that, so our booking agent got us to play at this tiny, tiny town north of Perth. It was a tiny club show, tiny PA, no baracade, like less then 200 kids and it was completely insaine! It was awesome! And then the next night we were playing in Perth and it was like 700 kids but the show just wasn't as awesome, you know? So it doesn't really ever matter where it is. I don't know. It wasn't a bad show!”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

laughs

People, Books, Way, Thinking

“Every star was once darker than the night, before it awoke.”

Dejan Stojanovic book The Sign and Its Children

"Earth and Light," p. 57
The Sign and Its Children (2000), Sequence: “The Sign and the Dream”

Star

“Well it's a marvellous night for a moondance,
With the stars up above in your eyes.
A fantabulous night to make romance,
'Neath the cover of October skies.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Moondance
Song lyrics, Moondance (1970)

Star

“Once there ruled in the distant city of Wirani a king who was both mighty and wise. And he was feared for his might and loved for his wisdom. Now, in the heart of that city was a well, whose water was cool and crystalline, from which all the inhabitants drank, even the king and his courtiers; for there was no other well. One night when all were asleep, a witch entered the city, and poured seven drops of strange liquid into the well, and said, “From this hour he who drinks this water shall become mad.” Next morning all the inhabitants, save the king and his lord chamberlain, drank from the well and became mad, even as the witch had foretold. And during that day the people in the narrow streets and in the market places did naught but whisper to one another, “The king is mad. Our king and his lord chamberlain have lost their reason. Surely we cannot be ruled by a mad king. We must dethrone him.” That evening the king ordered a golden goblet to be filled from the well. And when it was brought to him he drank deeply, and gave it to his lord chamberlain to drink. And there was great rejoicing in that distant city of Wirani, because its king and its lord chamberlain had regained their reason.”

Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese artist, poet, and writer

The Madman (1918)

Love, Wisdom, People, Fear

“I wish the Queen had died the night before the Royal Jubilee – I wish she’d just fucking died. But they wouldn’t have been able to tell us that she’d died. They would have had to hollow out her body and get that guy who plays Gollum to wear it.”

Frankie Boyle (1972) Scottish comedian

Give It Up for Comic Relief

Guy

“I'm not unmindful of man's seeming need for faith; I'm for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, tranquilizers, or a bottle of Jack Daniel's. But to me religion is a deeply personal thing in which man and God go it alone together, without the witch doctor in the middle.”

Frank Sinatra (1915–1998) American singer and film actor

Also quoted in Frank Sinatra, My Father (1986) by Nancy Sinatra, p. 201.
Playboy interview (1963)

God, Faith, Religion, Personality

“Th’ dead ar-re always pop’lar. I knowed a society wanst to vote a monyment to a man an’ refuse to help his fam’ly, all in wan night.”

Finley Peter Dunne (1867–1936) author

"On Charity" in Mr Dooley in Peace and War (1898).

Help, Dead

“On a long, lonesome highway east of Omaha
You can listen to the engine moanin' out its one-note song.
You can think about the woman or the girl you knew the night before.
But your thoughts will soon be wandering the way they always do,
When you're ridin' sixteen hours and there's nothin' much to do.
And you don't feel much like ridin', you just wish the trip was through.”

Bob Seger (1945) American singer-songwriter

Turn the Page.
Song lyrics, Back in '72 (1973)

Way, Feeling, Girl, Thinking

“When Frankie Goes To Hollywood were still going strong, we made a point of being as Spinal Tap as possible. Yes, we had food fights. Yes, items were thrown out of hotel windows. But one childish prank I liked at the time was when we stayed in those really posh hotels where, at night, you could put your shoes out and in the morning they’ve been cleaned. We amused ourselves by roaming the corridors at night and having a crap in each pair of shoes we found. We even made bets: whoever filled the most shoes, won.”

Holly Johnson (1960) British artist

"(untitled)" http://www.zttaat.com/article.php?title=905 HOLLY JOHNSON : Frankie Goes To Hollywood(untitled) article]at zttaat.com, Accessed May 2014.

Food, Shoe, Strong, Time

“"Where do you get those superior airs of yours?" "I've managed to survive, you see, all those nights when I wondered: am I going to kill myself at dawn?"”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

All Gall Is Divided (1952)

“Is it (Sports Night) a comedy or a drama? That's generally not a question I try and answer for myself before I'm going to write something. The example I would use is, if you're driving in your car and you're listening to a rock 'n' roll station on the radio and a song comes on, and in the song you hear elements of jazz and folk and you hear strings in there … it's not necessary to answer the question, "Is this jazz, is this folk, or is this rock?"”

Aaron Sorkin (1961) American screenwriter, producer, playwright

before you decide to listen to it and like it or not.
Interview for Comedy Central.

Cars, Question, Sport

“I had letters, last night, from South Carolina, which indicate a great disgust between the State and the Congress. They think themselves neglected. There is a large number of public vessels now on pay in the harbour, loaded with rice, which want to sail; but the State is so much soured, that they will not grant exclusive privileges to the Continental vessels from the embargo. The express is waiting.”

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

Letter to George Washington (26 April 1779)

Thinking, Waiting

“It's the bane of existence for anyone in comedy. 'The photograph must be funny!' So the people coordinating the shoot throw rubber chickens at you, 20 at a time. Or put a feathered hat on you. Or give you a clown nose. Of course, all of this makes you depressed, so you wind up looking more like you're promoting A Long Day's Journey Into Night.”

Martin Short (1950) Canadian stand-up comedian

"Hot Seat", Time Out New York; Issue 565: July 27–August 2, 2006

People, Time

“They did not talk or want to talk. It was as if they were afraid to talk for fear of spoiling something beautiful. But Anne had never felt so near Katherine Brooke before. By some magic of its own the winter night had brought them together... almost together but not quite.
When they came out to the main road and a sleigh flashed by, bells ringing, laughter tinkling, both girls gave an involuntary sigh. It seemed to both that they were leaving behind a world that had nothing in common with the one to which they were returning... a world where time was not... which was young with immortal youth... where souls communed with each other in some medium that needed nothing so crude as words.”

Lucy Maud Montgomery book Anne of Windy Poplars

Part 2, Ch. 5
Anne of Windy Poplars (1936)

Youth, World, Fear, Beauty

“Features distorted in the flickering light
Faces are twisted and grotesque
Silent and stern in the sweltering night
The mob moves like demons possessed

Quiet in conscience, calm in their right
Confident their ways are best
-- Witch Hunt (Part III of 'Fear') (1981)”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

Fear, Way, Confidence, Light

“A neurosurgeon once told me about operating on the brain of a young man with epilepsy. As is customary in this kind of operation, the patient was wide awake, under only local anesthesia, while the surgeon delicately explored his exposed cortex, making sure that the parts tentatively to be removed were not absolutely vital by stimulating them electrically and asking the patient what he experienced. Some stimulations provoked visual flashes or hand-raisings, others a sort of buzzing sensation, but one spot produced a delighted response from the patient: "It's 'Outta Get Me' by Guns N'Roses, my favorite heavy metal [sic] band!"I asked the neurosurgeon if he had asked the patient to sing or hum along with the music, since it would be fascinating to learn how "high fidelity" the provoked memory was. Would it be in exactly the same key and tempo as the record? Such a song (unlike "Silent Night") has one canonical version, so we could simply have superimposed a recording of the patient's humming with the standard record and compare the results. Unfortunately, even though a tape recorder had been running during the operation, the surgeon hadn't asked the patient to sing along. "Why not?" I asked, and he replied: "I hate rock music!"Later in the conversation the neurosurgeon happened to remark that he was going to have to operate again on the same young man, and I expressed the hope that he would just check to see if he could restimulate the rock music, and this time ask the fellow to sing along. "I can't do that," replied the neurosurgeon, "since I cut out that part." "It was part of the epileptic focus?"”

Daniel Dennett book Consciousness Explained

I asked, and he replied, "No, I already told you — I hate rock music."
Source: Consciousness Explained (1991), p. 58-59

Hate, Hope, Music, Learning

“Fill the brain with high thoughts, highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come great work.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

“Night my banner, and my herald Fear.”

Frances Bannerman (1855–1940) Canadian poet

"An Upper Chamber" http://www.bartleby.com/101/878.html

Fear

“In the game of Dawn Card-Castles, fifty-two playing cards are stacked up into a castle in a draught-free space: the player can determine the dreams of the next night if he awakes before the castle collapses. Those players who wish to dream of Romance build their castle with the seven of hearts.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Drowning By Numbers

Dreams, Game, Heart

“They shaved my head and took layers of skin from my scalp. To heal the wounds, I was in a hyperbaric chamber for 90 minutes twice daily for four days. It’s claustrophobic. One of my first nights home, I watched ‘Iron Man’ with friends. In the scene where Robert Downey Jr. comes out of the cave with a blowtorch, my whole body cringed. That night, I had a nightmare someone spilled fuel on me and was trying to light me on fire. I woke up and thought, ‘Oh my God, this is going to happen forever?”

Adam Goldstein (1973–2009) American DJ

DJ AM talks about plane crash http://www.celebritysmackblog.com/2008/10/16/dj-am-opens-up-about-the-plane-crash-that-nearly-took-his-life/ People Magazine. October 2008.

God, Home, Light

“There was a young lady named Bright,
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She started one day
In a relative way,
And returned on the previous night.”

Arthur Henry Reginald Buller (1874–1944) British–Canadian mycologist

A. H. Reginald Buller in Punch (Dec. 19, 1923): 591.

Way, Light, Speed

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

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Village Blacksmith

St. 7.
The Village Blacksmith (1842)

“My obsession with wolves hadn't helped past relationships. I had split up with Jan, the mother of my four children, after 11 years together, but there was never any animosity; it was more a case of separation by default. Maybe I never gave that relationship a chance. I was so passionate about wolves that I wonder whether any human relationship could have come close. If I'd had to choose between spending a night in the wolf enclosure or at home, I would probably have chosen the wolves.”

Shaun Ellis (1977) American football player, defensive end

I howled for the woman I loved... and she howled back - British wolfman tells how his obsession drove away the love of his life http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1245507/I-howled-woman-I-loved--howled--British-wolfman-tells-obsession-drove-away-love-life.html, Daily Mail, (23 January, 2010)

Children, Home, Wolf, Passion

“What another being is life when we have found out our Father; and if we work, it is beneath His eye, and if we play, it is in the light and encouragement of His smile. Earth's sunshine is heaven's radiance, and the stars of night as if the beginning of the beatific vision; so soft, so sweet, so gentle, so reposeful, so almost infinite have all things become, because we have found our Father in our God.”

Frederick William Faber (1814–1863) British hymn writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 260.

Life, God, Smile, Star

“We had stayed up all night — my friends and I — beneath mosque lamps hanging from the ceiling. Their brass domes were filigreed, starred like our souls; just as, again like our souls, they were illuminated by the imprisoned brilliance of an electric heart. On the opulent oriental rugs, we had crushed our ancestral lethargy, arguing all the way to the final frontiers of logic and blackening reams of paper with delirious writings.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

Original Italian text:
Avevamo vegliato tutta la notte — i miei amici ed io — sotto lampade di moschea dalle cupole di ottone traforato, stellate come le nostre anime, perchè come queste irradiate dal chiuso fulgòre di un cuore elettrico. Avevamo lungamente calpestata su opulenti tappeti orientali la nostra atavica accidia, discutendo davanti ai confini estremi della logica ed annerendo molta carta di frenetiche scritture.
Source: 1900's, The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism' 1909, p. 49 Lead paragraph

Way, Soul, Star, Heart

“From the walls of Baidi high in the colored dawn
To Jiangling by night-fall is three hundred miles,
Yet monkeys are still calling on both banks behind me
To my boat these ten thousand mountains away.”

Li Bai (701–762) Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period

[33] "Through the Yangzi Gorges"

Color, Mountain

“I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 35. It just happened—it just came over me. I’d gotten asthma and was having trouble sleeping, getting less than an hour of sleep a night. … I decided I wouldn’t eat meat any more, not even for a million dollars. I felt cleansed and incredible, like the inflammation in my body had been reduced. It was life-changing. … When I decided to become vegetarian, I had to learn how to ‘recook,’ if you will. … When I gave up meat, I wondered what I would make. That turned out to be vegetables, really organic and fresh. I made them very flavorful, using herbs, lemon and a little oil. I think I taught my kids well. My daughter, Dinah, for example, is also a vegetarian and doesn’t eat anything that can look at her.”

Cloris Leachman (1926) American actress

"For Cloris Leachman, No Bad Days" https://parade.com/362906/stephaniestephens/for-cloris-leachman-no-bad-days/, interview with Parade magazine (2 January 2015).

Life, Thinking, Sleep, Learning

“Night is an ally of sorrowful people.”

Ivo Kozarčanin (1911–1941) Croatian writer

quoted in Group of Authors: Velika knjiga aforizama, Prosvjeta-Globus, Vol. IV, 1984

People

“A man of valor is one who is mighty of heart with perfect trust to perform mitzvot at all times and to meditate upon the Torah day and night, even though there is no food or clothing in his house, and his children and the members of his household cry out to him: Provide us with our support and maintenance. And he does not heed them at all, or listen to their cries.”

Vilna Gaon (1720–1797) Polish-Lithuanian rabbi; Mitnagdim leader in opposition to Hasidism

Commentary on Mishlei 23:30, as cited in "Separation from the Worldly (Perishut)" http://etzion.org.il/en/separation-worldly-perishut

Children, Food, Support, Time

Quotes about the night page 34

Quotes about the night
page 34