Quotes about the night
page 35

“During one of my annual visits to the great Fred Winter's yard I said to him, 'Good God, Fred, your horses look magnificent. Beautifully fit.' Of course they do, you twit,' he said. 'They don't sit up all night drinking gin and tonic and playing cards.”

Jeffrey Bernard (1932–1997) British journalist

From his 'Low Life' column in The Spectator (24.06.83)

God, Drink, Winter, Horse

“Last night I had looked into the heart of darkness, and the sight had terrified me. What part should I play in the great purification? Most likely that of the Biblical scapegoat.”

John Buchan book Prester John

Source: Prester John (1910), Ch. XII

Heart, Parting

“All hail to the Rev. George Gilfillan, of Dundee,
He is the greatest preacher I did ever hear or see.
He preaches in a plain, straightforward way,
The people flock to hear him night and day,
And hundreds from his church doors are often turned away,
Because he is the greatest preacher of the present day.”

William McGonagall (1825–1902) weaver, actor, poet

McGonagall's first poem.
Poetry, Lines in praise of the Rev. George Gilfillan (1877)

People, Way

“Allen West: We're going to be successful Tuesday night, don't worry.
Glenn Beck: I'm not worried, I think that— I believe in the protection of divine Providence. And I believe there are millions of Americans that are— still believe in and are still harkening to the spirit and harkening to God and God is not neutral in freedom of all of mankind. And if America falls, freedom all over the world takes a mighty blow, and it may take a thousand years to be able to recover from it. And he's not neutral. His work isn't done. And as long as we are decent, God-fearing people, we will be preserved to do his will. And I think that's exactly what you're going to see on Tuesday. I do.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

2012-11-02
Rep. Allen West in tight race
http://www.glennbeck.com/2012/11/02/rep-allen-west-in-tight-race/
The Glenn Beck Program
Radio, quoted in * 2012-11-06
Beck Confident About Election Because 'God is Not Neutral in [the] Freedom of All of Mankind'
Kyle
Mantyla
RightWingWatch
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/beck-confident-about-election-because-god-not-neutral-freedom-all-mankind
2012-11-07
2010s, 2012

God, People, World, Fear

“I feel I'm happily inspired now on Classical soil:
The Past and Present speak louder, more charmingly.
Here, as advised, I leaf through the works of the Ancients
With busy hands, and, each day, with fresh delight.
But at night Love keeps me busy another way:
I become half a scholar but twice as contented.
And am I not learning, studying the shape
Of her lovely breasts: her hips guiding my hand?”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe book Roman Elegies

Elegy 5
Roman Elegies (1789)

Love, Way, Feeling, Business

“Sometimes it's like someone took a knife baby, edgy and dull
And cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my soul.At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet
And a freight train running through the middle of my head.
Only you can cool my desire.
I'm on fire.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"I'm on Fire"
Song lyrics, Born in the U.S.A. (1984)

Baby, Training

“But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays
Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days;
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Game

“[13 years old] After almost a month went by after getting World of Warcraft, I was finally able to play it. I made a WoW account with my father, and then I created my first character, a night elf druid. It really blew my mind. My first experience with WoW was like stepping into another world of excitement and adventure. It was a video game world, but they made it so realistic that it was like living another life, a more exciting life. My life was getting more and more depressing at that point, and WoW would fill in the void. It felt refreshing and relieving. I was only able to play it for a few hours for my first session. It was all I would think about when I wasn’t able to play it.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), Pastimes

Life, World, Game, Thinking

“In time, of course, Paul's day world ceased to be flat, and became a huge ball. At this stage the universe was more like a dumpling than a sandwich. Vaguely Paul still conceived the three levels of existence. The nether night was deep down within the ball of the day world. The starry night was all around it. On the ball were all the countries except Fairyland, which was nowhere.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last Men in London

Source: Last Men in London (1932), Chapter III: The Child Paul

World, Universe, Time, Country

“A clouded dream on an earthly night
Hangs upon the crescent moon
A voiceless song in an ageless light
Sings at the coming dawn
Birds in flight are calling there
Where the heart moves the stones
It's there that my heart is calling
All for the love of you”

Loreena McKennitt (1957) Canadian musician and composer

The Mask and Mirror (1994), The Mystic's Dream

Love, Dreams, Bird, Light

“Altogether, a more miserable trio than we were that evening it would have been difficult to discover; and our only comfort lay in the reflection that we were exceedingly fortunate to be there to feel miserable, instead of being stretched dead upon the plain, as so many thousands of brave men were that night, who had risen well and strong in the morning.”

H. Rider Haggard book King Solomon's Mines

Source: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Chapter 15, "Good Falls Sick"

Men, Feeling, Strong, Dead

“I went home and stayed at Green Meadows. A couple of days later we all went up to Boston and the aircraft landed. I'll never forget it. My dad got out of the aircraft and he really looked super; he was fifty-nine years old at the time. WIth him in the aircaft were a couple of division commanders, including John W. O'Daniel, who had lost his son in the Normandy invasion and who later became my commanding general at the Infantry School at Fort Benning when I went through the basic officers course in 1946. Also aboard was Leon Johnson [USAF], who had been awarded the Medal of Honor for the Ploesti Raid, followed by eight or nine noncoms, not one of whom was wearing less than a Silver Star. All of this was followed by a ticker-tape parade through Boston. That evening my father spoke at the Shell on the Esplanade in Boston. We came home that night quite late and the next morning he came upstairs and woke me up and said we were going for breakfast. I ate breakfast with him and then I got on a train and went back to West Point. It was the last time I ever saw him.”

George S. Patton IV (1923–2004) U.S. Army general

Source: The Fighting Pattons (1997) by Brian M. Sobel, p. 33

School, Home, Star, Time

“When self-knowledge reveals the answer it will be a living fact in your own experience. At any time you wish to experience the answer it will be there, just as you can say 'It is night' or 'It is day'. You will know, while the rest of the world is arguing and speculating.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

World, Knowledge, Time

“No sound doth great the still of night;
My mother land in silence lies;
Yet oft is heard an anguished moan
As Georgia in her slumber sighs. I stand alone … the mountains, shades
The slumber of my land caress.
O God! O God! when will we wake
And rise again to happiness?”

Ilia Chavchavadze (1837–1907) Georgian poet and politician; a saint of Georgian Orthodox Church

Elegy, p. 60
Anthology of Georgian Poetry (1948)

God, Mountain, Silence, Happiness

“It is a view of God that compensates every thing else, and enables the soul to rest in His bosom. How, when the child in the night screams with terror, hearing sounds that it knows not of, is that child comforted and put to rest? Is it by a philosophical explanation that the sounds were made by the rats in the partition? Is it by imparting entomological knowledge? No; it is by the mother taking the child in her lap, and singing sweetly to it, and rocking it. And the child thinks nothing of the explanation, but only of the mother.”

Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) American clergyman and activist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 599

God, Soul, Knowledge, Thinking

“Don't let the tide of your sorrow
Drown your nights and flood your days”

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

"Don't Be Shy"(with Carl Barat)
Lyrics and poetry

“Radio, which formerly had been the main force making for cosmopolitanism, became suddenly in each country the main stimulus to nationalism. Morning, noon and night, every civilized people was assured that enemies, whose flavor was of course subhuman and foul, were plotting its destruction. Armament scares, spy stories, accounts of the barbarous and sadistic behavior of neighboring peoples, created in every country such uncritical suspicion and hate that war became inevitable…All thought of human brotherhood, and even of personal safety, was swept away by a savage blood-lust.”

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter III: The Other Earth; 2. A Busy World (p. 36)

Hate, War, People, Behavior

“Living in the world as a cripple allows you to see more clearly the crippled hearts of some people whose bodies are whole and sound. All of us, from time to time, suffer this crippling. Some suffer it daily and nightly; and while most of us, nearly all of us, have compassion and love in our hearts, we cannot of will not see these barely visible wounds of other human beings, and so cannot or will not pick up the telephone or travel to someone’s house or write a note or make some other seemingly trifling gesture to give to someone what only we, and God, can give: an hour’s respite, or a day’s, or a night’s; and sometimes more than respite: sometimes joy.”

Andre Dubus (1936–1999) Novelist, short story writer, teacher

A Woman in April.
Broken Vessels (1991)

Love, God, People, World

“The wretched desert takes its form, the jackal proud and tight.
In search of you, I feel my way, through the slowest heaving night.
Whatever fear invents, I swear it makes no sense.
I reach through the border fence.
Come down, come talk to me.”

Peter Gabriel (1950) English singer-songwriter, record producer and humanitarian

Come Talk to Me
Song lyrics, Us (1992)

Fear, Way, Feeling, Search

“Out among the big things —
The mountains and the plains —
An hour ain’t important,
Nor are the hour’s gains;
The feller in the city
Is hurried night and day,
But out among the big things
He learns the calmer way.”

Arthur Chapman (poet) (1873–1935) American poet and newspaper columnist

Out Among the Big Things http://www.cowboypoetry.com/ac.htm#AMONG, st. 1. Out Where the West Begins and Other Western Verses http://www.cowboypoetry.com/ac.htm#outbk (1917)

Way, Mountain, Learning

“Tonight is the night we celebrate excellence in film, with me, the fourth male lead from Death to Smoochy.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Rent it.
The 78th Academy Awards (2006)

Death

“There is a land of pure delight,
Where saints immortal reign;
Infinite day excludes the night,
And pleasures banish pain.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

Hymn 66, Hymns and Spiritual Songs, Book II.
Attributed from postum publications, Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1773)

Pain, Pleasure

“Oedipus had already probed his impious eyes with guilty hand and sunk deep his shame condemned to everlasting night; he dragged out his life in a long-drawn death. He devotes himself to darkness, and in the lowest recess of his abode he keeps his home on which the rays of heaven never look; and yet the fierce daylight of his soul flits around him with unflagging wings and the Avengers of his crimes are in his heart.”
Impia jam merita scrutatus lumina dextra merserat aeterna damnatum nocte pudorem Oedipodes longaque animam sub morte trahebat. illum indulgentem tenebris imaeque recessu sedis inaspectos caelo radiisque penates seruantem tamen adsiduis circumuolat alis saeva dies animi, scelerumque in pectore Dirae.

Statius book Thebaid

Source: Thebaid, Book I, Line 46

Life, Death, Home, Soul

“Hey what else can we do now?
Except roll down the window
And let the wind blow back your hair.
Well the night's busting open,
These two lanes will take us anywhere.
We got one last chance to make it real,
To trade in these wings on some wheels.
Climb in back, heaven's waiting on down the tracks.
Oh come take my hand,
We're riding out tonight to case the promised land.
Oh Thunder Road, oh Thunder Road.
Thunder Road.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Thunder Road"
Song lyrics, Born to Run (1975)

Chance, Waiting

“I was threatened to be ducked in the pond if I proceeded, and of course we had a great deal of the survey to take by stealth at the time when the persons were at dinner; we would not get it by night, for we were watched day and night and guns were discharged over the ground belonging to Captain Bradshaw to prevent us. I can state further, I was twice turned off the ground myself by his men; and they said if I did not go instantly they would carry me off to Worsley.”

George Stephenson (1781–1848) English civil engineer and mechanical engineer

Statement during Liverpool and Manchester Railway Bill Parliamentary Hearings (1825-04-25)

Men, Time, Personality

“Having failed, do you accept failure, saying only: Well, it is so. I will turn to other things? When night comes, do you accept the blackness of it, saying only: Well, it is so. I will turn and wait for morning? Or do you go on striving to light a candle against that dark however often the wind blows out the flame, however often the night returns?”

Tanith Lee book Volkhavaar

Source: Volkhavaar (1977), Chapter 11 (p. 102)

Failure, Light, Waiting

“Go bow thy head in gentle spite,
Thou lily white,
For she who spies thee waving here,
With thee in beauty can compare
As day with night.”

James Matthews Legaré (1823–1859) American writer

To a Lily, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Beauty

“On Earth it was day in some places, night in others.”

Vanna Bonta book Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel

Source: Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel (1995), Ch. 44

“(About Joe Jackson) First of all, he's sitting there with the pimp hat, and the tattooed drag queen eyebrows. Like maybe this whole time, he just has a separate drag character that he does at night………named La Toya!”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

Balls of Steel (2009)

Time, Tattoo

“It’s that feeling when you make it home Friday night and pour yourself a drink or a glass of wine and feel like the blood has drained out of you… I actually think burnout is the wrong description of it. I think it’s ‘burn up. Physiologically, that is what you are doing because of the chronic stress being placed on your body.”

Richard Boyatzis (1946) American business theorist

Richard Boyatzis (2006) cited in: "BURNOUT: Though no one is immune, middle managers are most at risk in a weak economy in which staff cuts add pressure on remaining workers" in: The Plain Dealer, February 13, 2006.

Feeling, Home, Drink, Thinking

“You can take the darkness from the deep of the night
And turn it to a beacon burning endlessly bright
I gotta follow it 'cause everything I know
Well, it's nothing 'till I give it to you.”

Jim Steinman (1947) American musician

Making Love out of Nothing at All (1983)

“Just why are we so poor? Why can I never sleep at night? Because bombs keep dropping! Why does my mother have to torture herself like that? Why didn't anyone give my dad a break? Why is there a war? Why? Why? Why?”

Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) German actor

On his childhood. p. 40
Kinski Uncut : The Autobiography of Klaus Kinski (1996)

War, Sleep

“I am going to tell you something you must not tell to any human being. We have split the atom. The report of the great experiment has just come in. A bomb was let off in some wild spot in New Mexico. It was only a thirteen-pound bomb, but it made a crater half a mile across. People ten miles away lay with their feet towards the bomb; when it went off they rolled over and tried to look at the sky. But even with the darkest glasses it was impossible. It was the middle of the night, but it was as if seven suns had lit the earth; two hundred miles away the light could be seen. The bomb sent up smoke into the stratosphere…It is the Second Coming. The secret has been wrested from nature…Fire was the first discovery; this is the second.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Conversation with his doctor, Lord Moran (23 July 1945), quoted in Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965 (London: Sphere, 1968), p. 305
The Second World War (1939–1945)

People, Secret, Nature, Light

“Time that gives so much and Time that takes so much away has put its mark on this place that is Old Hemlock almost without altering anything. In that gray-black blend of night-to-dawn I lie and think of all that Kay and I possess, aware that what is good is not what is new but what is loved and used, with a patina from hands and years.”

George Bird Evans (1906–1998) American writer

An Affair with Grouse (1982)

Love, Lie, Thinking, Time

“I drifted about from rock to rock, from stream to stream, from grove to grove. Where night found me, there I camped. When I discovered a new plant, I sat down beside it for a minute or a day, to make its acquaintance and hear what it had to tell. … I asked the boulders I met, whence they came and whither they were going.”

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

" Explorations in the Great Tuolumne Cañon http://books.google.com/books?id=ZikGAQAAIAAJ&pg=P139", Overland Monthly, volume XI, number 2 (August 1873) pages 139-147 (at page 141); modified slightly and reprinted in John of the Mountains (1938), page 69 1870s

“The children of fighter pilots tell different stories than other kids do. None of our fathers can write a will or sell a life insurance policy or fill out a prescription or administer a flu shot or explain what a poet meant. We tell of fathers who land on aircraft carriers at pitch-black night with the wind howling out of the China Sea. Our fathers wiped out aircraft batteries in the Philippines and set Japanese soldiers on fire when they made the mistake of trying to overwhelm our troops on the ground. Your Dads ran the barber shops and worked at the post office and delivered the packages on time and sold the cars, while our Dads were blowing up fuel depots near Seoul, were providing extraordinarily courageous close air support to the beleaguered Marines at the Chosin Reservoir, and who once turned the Naktong River red with blood of a retreating North Korean battalion. We tell of men who made widows of the wives of our nations' enemies and who made orphans out of all their children. You don't like war or violence? Or napalm? Or rockets? Or cannons or death rained down from the sky? Then let's talk about your fathers, not ours. When we talk about the aviators who raised us and the Marines who loved us, we can look you in the eye and say "you would not like to have been American's enemies when our fathers passed overhead". We were raised by the men who made the United States of America the safest country on earth in the bloodiest century in all recorded history. Our fathers made sacred those strange, singing names of battlefields across the Pacific: Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the Chosin Reservoir, Khe Sanh and a thousand more. We grew up attending the funerals of Marines slain in these battles. Your fathers made communities like Beaufort decent and prosperous and functional; our fathers made the world safe for democracy.”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

Eulogy for a Fighter Pilot (1998)

Love, Life, Death, Men

“O Heaven! Today I am sick and tired
Of the colors and forms of this world! …
I close my eyes to disregard the present,
Gradually shifting into the past upon my eyelids.
I close my eyes to let the dark shadows arise boundlessly,
Immense as in the deep of night,
To let my soul grow dark with the artificial,
In the world of the dead so long awaited.
Let the shades of ghosts and demons one by one appear.
Let their cries, their shouts of epilogue, reverberate in my ear.
Let me roll about, my soul intoxicated with illusion,
To put out of mind for a few minutes the scenes of this world!
Let my soul soar rapidly over great distances
In the dark night shadows of my eyelids,
And proudly assert: Here is a world
Created in a moment of grief.”

Chế Lan Viên (1920–1989) Vietnamese writer

"Creation", as quoted in "Shattered Identities and Contested Images: Reflections of Poetry and History in 20th-Century Vietnam" by Neil Jamieson, in Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1992, p. 89, and in Understanding Vietnam by Neil Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), ISBN 978-0520916586, p. 164

World, Color, Soul, Appearance

“My opinion has always been this, that you ought to never give up as long as you live, even though they have stolen everything from you. If nothing else, you can always call the air you breath your own, or at any rate you can claim that you have it on loan. Yes, lass, last night I ate stolen bread and left my son among men who are going to use pick-handles on the authorities, so I thought I might just as well look you up this morning.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Bjartur talking with Asta Sollilja
Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book Two, Part III: Conclusion

Men

“The surrender and succeeding jubilation was rightly American but, as Admiral Fraser appreciated, Britain and the Commonwealth had now been at war for six long years less a day. If the forenoon had been American, then the evening would be British. The last sunset ceremony had been carried out on the evening of September 2,1939. Since then the White Ensign had flown in every ship by day and night. Admiral Fraser ordered the resumption of sunset routine as from September 2, 1945 and invited all the senior officers of British ships in Tokyo, and a token number of sailors from each, to witness the ceremony in his flagship. He was dissuaded from firing a sunset gun in case some trigger-happy American or Japanese thought the war had re-started.”

Louis Le Bailly (1915–2010) Royal Navy admiral

War, Happiness

“I had been gone a fortnight when the telegram was put into my hands. I had got a letter from my sister, a few hours before, saying that all was well at home. The telegram said in five words that she had died suddenly the previous night. There was no mention of my mother, and I was three days' journey from home.
The news I got on reaching London was this: my mother did not understand that her daughter was dead, and they were waiting for me to tell her.”

J. M. Barrie book Margaret Ogilvy

Source: Margaret Ogilvy (1897), Ch. 10

Home, Understanding, Sister, Waiting

“Welcome back! If you're wondering where our good friend -- Kevin Eubanks couldn't be here. Kevin is on tour. He's in France right now. He called me today and he's over there and he wouldn't be back until next week. So if you're wondering where Kevin Eubanks is, he's with us in spirit certainly.
Okay. Boy, this is the hard part. I want to thank you, the audience. You folks have been just incredibly loyal. (emotionally) This is tricky. (laughs) We wouldn't be on the air without you people. Secondly, this has been the greatest 22 years of my life. (applause)
I am the luckiest guy in the world. I got to meet presidents, astronauts, movie stars, it's just been incredible. I got to work with lighting people who made me look better than I really am. I got to work with audio people who made me sound better than I really do. (voice breaking) And I got to work with producers! And writers! (choked pause) And just all kinds of talented people who make me look a lot smarter than I really am.
I'll tell you something. First year of this show, I lost my mom. Second year, I lost my dad. Then my brother died. And after that, I was pretty much out of family. And the folks here became my family. Consequently, when they went through rough times, I tried to be there for them. The last time we left the show, you might remember we had the 64 children that were born among all our staffers that married. That was a great moment.
And when people say to me, hey why don't you go to ABC? Why don't you go to FOX? Why don't you go…? I didn't know anybody over there. These are the only people I have ever known. I'm also proud to say this is a a union show. And I have never worked (applause) -- I have never worked with a more professional group of people in my life. They get paid good money and they do a good job.
And when the guys and women on this show would show me the new car they bought or the house up the street here in Burbank that one of the guys got, I felt I played a bigger role in their success as they played in mine. That was just a great feeling.
And I'm really excited for Jimmy Fallon. You know, it's fun to kind of be the old guy and sit back here and see where the next generation takes this great institution, and it really is. It's been a great institution for 60 years. I am so glad I got to be a part of it, but it really is time to go, hand it off to the next guy; it really is.
And in closing, I want to quote Johnny Carson, who was the greatest guy to ever do this job. And he said, I bid you all a heartfelt good night. Now that I brought the room down, hey, Garth, have you got anything to liven this party up? Give it a shot! Garth Brooks!”

Jay Leno (1950) American comedian, actor, writer, producer, voice actor and television host

Farewell speech, February 6, 2014
The Tonight Show

Life, Women, Money, Children

“Do not believe for an instant that the world's conspiring elite in every nation have so much as a serious quarrel among them. They have just one object: control through tribute. Your slavery, through tribute, and mine… Behind this attack are the self-styled elite, secure in their own power and riches… To be effective we must direct our attacks on the real criminals, the wealthy, and powerful and secret elite of all the world - the conspirators laboring day and night to enslave us.”

Taylor Caldwell book Captains and the Kings

Captains and the Kings (1974)
1970s-

Secret, World

“Sometimes it's hard to concentrate these days. I was thinking about the history of this building [Eventim Apollo] and the Bowie history. So I started to think about that and my mind began to wander. It's not a good…So I haven't really been talking about some things and I kind of… now it feels like it's conspicuous because I lost a really close friend of mine, somebody who…I'll say this too, I grew up as 4 boys, 4 brothers, and I lost my brother 2 years ago tragically like that in an accident and after that and losing a few other people, I'm not good at it, meaning I'm not…I have not been willing to accept the reality and that's just how I'm dealing with it (applause starts). No, no, no, no. So I want to be there for the family, be there for the community, be there for my brothers in my band, certainly the brothers in his band. But these things will take time but my friend is going to be gone forever and I will just have to…These things take time and I just want to send this out to everyone who was affected by it and they all back home and here appreciate it so deeply the support and the good thoughts of a man who was a… you know he wasn't just a friend he was someone I looked up to like my older brother. About two days after the news, I think it was the second night we were sleeping in this little cabin near the water, a place he would've loved. And all these memories started coming in about 1:30am like woke me up. Like big memories, memories I would think about all the time. Like the memories were big muscles. And then I couldn't stop the memories. And trying to sleep it was like if the neighbors had the music playing and you couldn't stop it. But then it was fine because then it got into little memories. It just kept going and going and going. And I realized how lucky I was to have hours worth of…you know if each of these memories was quick and I had hours of them. How fortunate was I?! And I didn't want to be sad, wanted to be grateful not sad. I'm still thinking about those memories and I will live with these memories in my heart and I will…love him forever.”

Eddie Vedder (1964) musician, songwriter, member of Pearl Jam

Talking about Chris Cornell for the first time since his death during a concert in London on June 6, 2017.

Love, People, Sadness, Family

“Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
for my unconquerable soul.”

William Ernest Henley book Invictus

Invictus (1875)

God, Soul

“By night an atheist half believes a God.”

Edward Young Night-Thoughts

Source: Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night V, Line 177.

God

“My delight and thy delight
Walking, like two angels white,
In the gardens of the night.”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

New Poems, No. 9, My Delight and Thy Delight http://www.poetry-online.org/bridges_my_delight.htm, st. 1 (1899). Poetry

Angels

“One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now, out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

" A Child's Christmas in Wales http://www.undermilkwood.net/prose_christmas.html", from Quite Early One Morning (1954)

Sleep, Distant, Christmas, Sea

“The members of the Japanese enlightenment of the early 1870's, Fukuzawa among them, now reasoned as follows: Japan can keep its independence only if it becomes stronger. It can become stronger only with the help of science. It will use science effectively only if it does not just practice science but also believes in the underlying ideology. To many traditional Japanese this ideology-the scientific worldview- was barbaric. But, so the followers of Fukuzawa argued, it was necessary to adopt barbaric ways, to regard them as advanced, to introduce the whole of Western civilization in order to survive. Having been thus prepared, Japanese scientists soon branched out as their Western colleagues had done before and falsified the uniform ideology that had started the development. The lesson I draw from this sequence of events is that a uniform 'scientific view of the world' may be useful for people doing science… However, it is a disaster for outsiders(philosophers, fly-by-night mystics, prophets of a new age, the (educated public"), who, being undisturbed by the complexities of research, are liable to fall for the most simpleminded and most vapid tale.”

Paul Karl Feyerabend (1924–1994) Austrian-born philosopher of science

pg 160.
Conquest of Abundance (2001 [posthumous])

People, Age, World, Education

“The tendency of the families of wealth in every country to form a class by themselves, is deep-set in the human makeup. Rome carried the tendency one step further — she cemented the moneyed class in the various countries into an international combine. "Peace and order" were at last secure. An antitoxin against insomnia had been devised. Slave owners could now lay their heads on their pillows at night, without the fear of insurrection gnawing them through the night-watches. An uprising of the toiling masses, no matter how formidable, could be handled. Upon a rebellious district could be mobilized in shortest time six and twenty legions. The machinery of intimidation was complete. Man was undermost, and property paramount. The "Golden Age" — literally — set in. The Roman Empire, that apotheosis of property rights, fastened itself upon the world. Embracing all nations and tongues and climates, a motley crew, they had one cohering principle which swallowed up their diversities — the coherence of a common plunder.”

Bouck White (1874–1951) American author and novelist

Source: The Call of the Carpenter (1914), pp. 15-16

Money, Age, World, Fear

“I mean, the question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again night after night, but God knows the answer to that is, don’t we all anyway; might as well get paid for it.”

Elaine Dundy (1921–2008) American journalist, actress

Part One, Eight
The Dud Avocado (1958)

God, Question

“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

"Red Wind" (short story, 1938), published in Trouble Is My Business (1939)

Feeling, Mountain, Beer, Study

“"God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good."
And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.”

Frank Borman (1928) NASA astronaut

Last lines of the Apollo 8 Genesis reading, and adding his own closing to the message from Apollo 8 crew, as they celebrated becoming the first humans to enter lunar orbit, Christmas Eve (24 December 1968) http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo8_xmas.html

God, Water, Christmas, Sea

“A thousand ages in Thy sight
Are like an evening gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun.”

Isaac Watts (1674–1748) English hymnwriter, theologian and logician

Psalm 90 st. 4.
1710s, "Our God, our help in ages past" (1719)

Age, Sun

“Then came the great days of the became historic. The sleepless nights, the permanent sessions. And, finally, the stirring declarations. "The Soviets take power!" "The Soviets address an appeal to the peoples of the world to put an end to the war." "The land is socialized and belongs to the peasants!"”

Alexandra Kollontai (1872–1952) Soviet diplomat

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

War, People, World

“Cured yesterday of my disease,
I died last night of my physician.”

Matthew Prior (1664–1721) British diplomat, poet

The Remedy Worse than the Disease (1714).

Disease

“I do not need your loving words
or hurried kiss
as night comes down
in the place where we once lived
innocent as children,
and happier.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Red Winged Birds (1917)

Love, Children, Kiss

“Jabir B. Abdillah reported that once he was on an expedition with the Prophet salla Allahu ʿalayhi wa sallam, and when they were close to the city of Madinah, he sped on his mount. The Prophet salla Allahu ʿalayhi wa sallam asked him why he was in such a hurry to return home. Jabir replied, “I am recently married!” The Prophet salla Allahu ʿalayhi wa sallam asked, “To an older lady or a younger one?” [the Arabic could also read: “To a widow or a virgin?”], to which he replied, “A widow.” The Prophet salla Allahu ʿalayhi wa sallam said, “But why didn’t you marry a younger girl, so that you could play with her, and she could play with you, and you could make her laugh, and she could make you laugh?”He said, “O Messenger of Allah! My father died a martyr at Uhud, leaving behind daughters, so I did not wish to marry a young girl like them, but rather an older one who could take care of them and look after them.” The Prophet salla Allahu ʿalayhi wa salam replied, “You have made the correct choice.”Jabir continues, “So when we were about to enter the city, the Prophet salla Allahu ʿalayhi wa sallam said to me, "Slow down, and enter at night, so that she who has not combed may comb her hair, and she who has not shaved may shave her private area."”

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

Then he said to me, "When you enter upon her, then be wise and gentle.”
Narrated Jabir bin 'Abdullah [Reported by al-Bukhari and Muslim, with various wordings, in their two Sahihs]
Sunni Hadith

Home, Girl, Reading, Daughters

“Maslow's psychology, firmly based upon Freud and Watson, simply points out that the optimistic side of the picture has been overlooked; the deterministic laws of our 'lower nature' hold sway in their won field; but there are other laws. Man's freedom is a reality -- a reality that makes a difference to his physical, as well as his mental health. When Frankl's prisoners ceased to believe in the possibility of freedom, they grew sick and died. On the other hand, when they saw that Dachau had no chimney, standing out all night in the rain seemed no great hardship; they laughed and joked. The conclusion needs to be stated in letters ten feet high. In order to realise his possibilities, man must believe in an open future; he must have a vision of something worth doing. And this will not be possible until all the determinism and pessimism that we have inherited from the 19th century -- and which has infected every department of our culture, from poetry to atomic physics -- has been dismissed as fallacious and illogical. Twentieth century science, philosophy, politics, literature -- even music -- has been constructed upon a weltanschauung that leaves half of human nature out of account.”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

p 219-220
New Pathways In Psychology: Maslow and the Post-Freudian Revolution (1972)

Health, Law, Music, Literature

“A breeze passes in the night. When did it spring up? Whence does it come? Whither is it going? No man knows.”

Pierre Teilhard De Chardin (1881–1955) French philosopher and Jesuit priest

The Divine Milieu, p. 128
The Divine Milieu (1960)

Spring

“The House of Fantasy is built of stone and wood and furnished in High Medieval. Its people travel by horse and galley, fight with sword and spell and battle-axe, communicate by palantir or raven, and break bread with elves and dragons.
The House of Science Fiction is built of duralloy and plastic and furnished in Faux Future. Its people travel by starship and aircar, fight with nukes and tailored germs, communicate by ansible and laser, and break protein bars with aliens.
The House of Horror is built of bone and cobwebs and furnished in Ghastly Gothick. Its people travel only by night, fight with anything that will kill messily, communicate in screams and shrieks and gibbers, and sip blood with vampires and werewolves.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

"The Furniture Rule", explaining the differences and similarities between the fields of weird fiction in Dreamsongs

People, Travel, Communication, Science

“On Christmas night, I danced with all kinds of fellows with pimples and all kinds of sores. I suddenly felt, ‘What is this being shy? I have to give myself, I just felt I didn't want to be shy, I didn't want to draw away, but give myself, I mean, not physically, but be there. It was a great lesson also for me, this tour through Africa and Italy during the war.”

Luise Rainer (1910–2014) German-born Austrian and American film actress

Being on Ascension Island in 1944 Article in Movie Maker http://www.moviemaker.com/directing/article/luise_rainer_3324/

War, Christmas, Dance, Drawing

“I, Christopher Logue, was baptized the year
Many thousands of Englishmen,
Fists clenched, their bellies empty,
Walked day and night on the capital city.”

Christopher Logue (1926–2011) Poet, screenwriter, actor

"The Song of Autobiography", from Songs (London: Hutchinson, 1959) p. 12.

“p>Ye living lamps, by whose dear light
The nightingale does sit so late
And studying all the summer night
Her matchless songs does meditate;Ye country comets, that portend
No war, nor prince's funeral,
Shining unto no higher end
Than to presage the grasses's fall;Ye glow-worms whose officious flame
To wandering mowers shows the way,
That in the night have lost their aim
And after foolish fires do stray;Your courteous lights in vain you waste,
Since juliana here is come,
For she my mind hath so displaced
That I shall never find my home.”

Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) English metaphysical poet and politician

The Mover to the Glow-worms

War, Way, Home, Study

“In an effort to salvage the money I wasted on this bullshit, I ate six cups of jello, one bag of corn nuts, a Soynut bar, and a bag of jelly beans for dinner. The only thing X-TREME about this experience was the X-TREME dump I took later that night:”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

Take your X-TREME marketing and shove it. http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=xtreme_bullshit The Best Page in the Universe

Money, Effort

“Bill Mayer, then the managing editor of the 'Lawrence Journal-World' recalled on of Wilt's impressive athletic feats: "We played Oklahoma in basketball on a friday night, here in Lawrence(, Kansas), When Oklahoma had one helluva team. And they pounded the living daylights out of Wilt, just beat him to a pulp. I think he got 32 points. This was on a friday, and the finals of the Big Seven indoor track championship were the next night in Kansas city in the Municipal Auditorium. Wilt goes in, and with a minimum of practice during the week-he had just been fiddling around-he sets a school record and ties for the Big Seven championship, jumping 6' 6 3/4""”

Wilt Chamberlain (1936–1999) basketball player

Wilt: Larger than Life, Robert Cherry
Athleticism

World, School, Thinking

“London is my favourite city in the world. Flying in last night, I felt I was really coming home, and that's unique. It's the only place I actually miss when I'm not here. London appeals to many aspects of me - it just feels like where I belong.”

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

Clarke Hayes The Spectator Blog "Switching off the spotlight" http://www.gilliananderson.ws/transcripts/10_15/11Spectator.shtml (October 14, 2011) 2010s

World, Feeling, Home, Flying

“He is made one with Nature: there is heard
His voice in all her music, from the moan
Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

St. XLII
Adonais (1821)

Music, Nature, Bird

“The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.”

Matthew Arnold Dover Beach

St. 3
Dover Beach (1867)

World, Faith, Sea

“The Mummy's Tomb was my only horror film, so I remember it vividly. We had to work all night on the kidnapping and graveyard scenes. Lon Chaney Jr. had a strap around his neck to support me. One arm was supposed to be paralyzed and he could only hold me with the other arm. I had this negligee with marabou—and one of the feathers somehow got under Lon’s rubber mummy mask. He was one unhappy actor—because he couldn’t get it out. After it was over, he thanked me for being petite. It seems some of my predecessors were a little on the heavy side! The day of the kidnapping scene—where the Mummy takes me from my bed, the director told me, "When you see him you really have to scream!" He thought since I’d never done anything like that before, I wouldn’t be able to do it. One look at Lon Chaney Jr. coming at me and it wasn’t hard to let out that scream at all!”

Elyse Knox (1917–2012) American actress

Interview with Ekyse Knox http://www.westernclippings.com/interview/elyseknox_interview.shtml

Support

“[On religion] I'm for anything that gets you through the night, be it prayer, benzedrine or a bottle of Jack Daniel's.”

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

The Way You Wear Your Hat (1997)

Religion

“In 1936, when the last issue of 'Abstraction-Création' appeared, Europe was in a deep slump. Hitlerism was rampant in Germany and many artists had already fled there… There were evil portents on the horizon; night was about to descend over Europe. It was at that moment that America took up the case of abstract art. The association of 'American Abstract Artists' was founded that year, and it was also in 1936 that the exhibition Cubism and Abstract Art was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York… At about this time a flood of refugees – artists, intellectuals, and men of science – began to pour into the United States.”

Michel Seuphor (1901–1999) designer, draughtsman, painter

Source: Abstract Painting (1964), p. 103

Men, Art, Appearance, Science

“I spent a night of watchfulness unto prayer, like Jacob, wrestling the whole night for the Lord's blessing, and towards morning the light of His countenance did very graciously arise upon me. My trust and confidence are renewed in Him, blessed and praised be His adorable name!”

Stephen Grellet (1773–1855) American Quaker missionary

As quoted in Stephen Grellet (1880) by Rev. William Guest, p. 146

Confidence, Light

“Home plays a very small role in the group activities of the corner boy. Except when he eats, sleeps, or is sick, he is rarely at home, and his friends always go to his corner first when they want to find him. Even the corner boy's name indicates the dominant importance of the gang in his activities. It is possible to associate with a group of men for months and never discover the family names of more than a few of them. Most are known by nicknames attached to them bv the group. Furthermore, it is easy to overlook the distinction between married and single men. The married man regularly sets aside one evening a week to take out his wife. There are other occasions when they go out together and entertain together, and some corner boys devote more attention to their wives than others, but, married or single, the corner boy can be found on his corner almost every night of the week.”

William Foote Whyte book Street Corner Society

Source: Street Corner Society, 1943, pp. 255-63, as cited in: Mercer (1958, p. 35-36)

Men, Family, Home, Boy

“In the east the day was reddening,
When the warriors pass'd;
In the west the night was deadening,
As they looked their last;
As they looked their last on him —
He, their comrade — their commander —
He, the earth's adored —
He, the godlike Alexander!
Who can wield his sword?
As they went their eyes were dim,
The silver-shielded warriors,
The warriors of the world!”

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

(1835-3) (Vol.45) Deathbed of Alexander the Great
The Monthly Magazine

World

““Pop, do we have heaven?” he’d asked on the day he discovered the (dead) cat. “You want to know a Jew’s idea of heaven?” his father had replied, looking up from his Maimonides. “It’s an endless succession of long winter nights on which we get paid a fair wage to sit in a warm room and read all the books ever written… Not just the famous ones, no, every book, the stuff nobody gets around to reading, forgotten plays, novels by people you never heard of. However, I profoundly doubt such a place exists.””

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 1 (p. 13)

People, Books, Cats, Idea

“The pines smell sweet in the frozen air,
and their silhoutte's just fading there,
the wolves crouch close, against the snow
but where we're running I don't know,
In villages and soft sad towns
the candles sway as night comes down,
cold bones creak and strange beasts cry,
watching shadows in the sky…
All I have, all I need, all I got….. is providence. ~ Providence”

Steve Kilbey (1954) British artist

Lyrics

Sadness, Cry

“Trembling I sit day and night, my friends are astonish’d at me.
Yet they forgive my wanderings, I rest not from my great task!
To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes
Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought: into Eternity
Ever expanding in the Bosom of God. the Human Imagination”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: 1800s, Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion (c. 1803–1820), Ch. 1, plate 5, lines 16-20 The Words of Blake

God, World, Imagination, Forgiveness

“Why should we be more shy of repeating ourselves than the spring be tired of blossoms or the night of stars?”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Star, Spring

“The imperial heroes who rule over the opinions of their fellow men for good or ill, are victory-organized; they march towards the execution of their purpose, as if they were intent on the conquest of a world. With a bold front and piercing eye, they are repelled by no obstacles, and entertain not the slightest doubt as to a final triumph; days and nights, like their fortune, health, and every thing dear in existence, they consecrate to the success of their particular enterprise. As with hooks of steel, they grapple the most stubborn difficulties, and relax neither hand nor foot so long as there remains one vital energy in their will.”

Elias Lyman Magoon (1810–1886) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 451.

Men, Health, World, Success

“For the time being I am enjoying my chance to enjoy civilian life off the road. If I combined all the months that I have lived out of a van or tour bus it would amount to twelve solid years. That would be twelve years of driving or flying an average of 100 to 400 miles per day and sleeping in a different city every night. It was a very unique lifestyle that I adapted to and even enjoyed with it’s surreal pace. It’s also a lifestyle that can take a toll on the body and relationships with the people that you are constantly leaving behind.”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Quotes from NatalieMerchant.com

Life, People, Sleep, Chance

“He gave up and went back to loafing, found that he could sleep all right in the afternoons but that the practice kept him awake at night.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Between Planets

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 17, “To Reset the Clock” (p. 173)

Sleep

“The human heart is a roaring forge where night and day the smiths are busy fashioning swords and silver cups, mitres and engine-wheels, the tools of *labor, and the gauds of precedence.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919), The Human Heart

Fashion, Business, Heart

“Let one hour, the same regularly each day, be set aside for food, so that out of the twenty-four hours of day and night, barely shall this one be expended on the body, the ascetic devoting the remainder to the activities of the mind.”

Basil of Caesarea (329–379) Christian Saint

vol. 1, p. 23
Letters

Food

“There the sons of obscure Night hold their habitation, Sleep and Death, dread gods.”

Hesiod Greek poet

Source: The Theogony (c. 700 BC), line 758.

Death, God, Sleep

“Music for me is life, I stay in my studio until ten or eleven at night and I record every day. Not for money or for albums - I just compose music.”

Vangelis (1943) Greek composer of electronic, progressive, ambient, jazz, pop rock, and orchestral music

https://books.google.hr/books?id=16jp_aFRHdgC
New Sounds
John Schaefer
June 1985
Spin
1
2
49
0886-3032
1985

Life, Money, Music

“The whole world is a dream; even this (the waking state) is a dream … What you dreamt last night does not exist now.”

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

[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 302]

World, Dreams

“I know I will never be happy but I know I can be gay! Remember I told you Kazan said I was the gayest girl he ever knew and, believe me, he has known many. But he loved me for one year and once rocked me to sleep one night when I was in great anguish. He also suggested that I go into analysis and later wanted me to work with Lee Strasberg. Was it Milton who wrote: "The happy ones were never born?"”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

I know at least two psychiatrists who are looking for a more positive approach.
In a letter to her psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson, in 1961, quoted in Marilyn's Last Sessions (2010) by Michel Schneider

Love, Girl, Sleep, Happiness

“…it's as electrifying as a hair dryer thrown into a bathtub…look at the balance…the timing…he's like a master thief stealing the silverware in the dark night…the galácticos are gladiators tonight…and Gareth Bale is Spartacus!”

Ray Hudson (1955) English footballer

[Mandis, Steven G., The Real Madrid Way: How Values Created the Most Successful Sports Team on the Planet, 2016, BenBella Books, https://books.google.fi/books/about/The_Real_Madrid_Way.html?id=IEbQDAAAQBAJ&redir_esc=y, 978-1-942952-54-1]
After Gareth Bale headed the game-winning goal in from two yards out to put Real ahead for the first time, in the 110th minute.
2014 UEFA Champions League Final

Time

“Rao Mandalik saw that his fate was sealed. He fled at night to the fort and gave him a battle. When the warfare continued for some time provisions in the fort became scarce. He requested the Sultan in all humility to save his life. The Sultan agreed on condition of his accepting Islam. Rao Mandalik came down from the fort, surrendered the fort’s keys to the Sultan. The Sultan offered recitation of the word of Unity to him to repeat. He instantly recited it. The fort was conquered in the year 877, eight hundred and seventy-seven… In a few days, he populated a city which can be called Ahmedabad and named it Mustafabad. Rao Mandalik was given the title of Khan Jahan with a grant of jagir. He gave away as presents the gold idols brought from the temple of Rao Mandalik to all soldiers…”

Mahmud Begada (1458–1511) Sultan of Gujarat

Junagadh (Gujarat) Mirat-i-Ahmdi, translated into English by M.F. Lokhandwala, Baroda, 1965,pp 47-52

Life, Fate, Time

“In a little while all resistance was gone, and I knocked on Hellfrick's door. His room was madness, pulp western magazines over the floor, a bed with sheets blackened, clothes strewn everywhere, and clothes-hooks on the wall conspicuously naked, like broken teeth in a skull. There were dishes on the chairs, cigaret butts pressed out on the window sills…He was always drinking, day and night, but he never got drunk.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Drink, Madness, Clothes

“But oh! may Earth her dreadful gulf display,
And gaping snatch me from the golden day;
May I be hurled, by Heaven's almighty fire,
Transfixed with thunder, and involved in fire,
Down to the shades of Hell, from realms of light,
The deep, deep shades of everlasting night.”

Christopher Pitt (1699–1748) English poet

Book III, line 35
The Æneid of Virgil (1740)

Hell, Light

“It was 12.30 in the night when I got two congratulatory telegrams - Indira Gandhi's and Jagjivan Ram's. Who has ever sent congratulatory telegrams to me? I went and woke him (Uncle) up and he came and sat with me. What did we do? We cried till dawn. Because of music…all that we had gone through…The joy was real. But we thought of the past.”

Gangubai Hangal (1913–2009) Indian singer

Her reaction after hearing the news of the first National Award of Padma Bhushan, in "Excerpts of an interview from C.S. Lakshmi's The Singer and the Song – Conversations with Women Musicians Vol 1 (2000)"

Music, Past, Joy

“The preservation of game involves a list of evils to the farmer of which the loss of money is probably not the greatest. It destroys his self-respect and the independence of his character. He takes a farm and contracts to pay a rent; he stocks it with cattle and sheep; he ploughs and sows and reaps—his landlord also stocks the same farm with hares and rabbits and pheasants, and enjoys his battue, or sends to market the game which his tenant's produce has fed. The tenant has his servants, to superintend or conduct the operations on his farm, and to feed and protect his cattle and his flocks—the landlord has his keepers to secure his game, and these keepers are a spy upon the tenant himself, and traverse his field by day or night, as though superior to his servants and himself. In all this there is a fruitful source of depredation to the farmer. Men of capital and independent feeling will shun an occupation which involves so much humiliation.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech on the Game Laws (1843), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 125-126.
1840s

Men, Money, Feeling, Game

“My mother was a strong, domineering woman, probably scared to death of the position she found herself in She was psychotic, attempting suicide several times and scaring the devil out of me as a kid with threats... One day [she] would say that she loved me, and the next day she'd scream that she was sorry I'd ever been born -- that I'd ruined her life... [She] would often stuff her mouth with cotton and hold her breath, pretending that she was dead, to scare me when I was small. Sometimes she'd tell me she really could walk and during the night she was going to get up, turn on the gas jets, and kill us both. I would be absolutely terrified... And yet... she encouraged my writing and would tell me that I was a good kid and she didn't know why she acted that way... but then she'd do it again.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Elmira Star Gazette (1973), Interview with Jane Roberts, quoted on p. 14 of Susan M. Watkins' Speaking of Jane Roberts (2001)

Love, Life, Death, Way

“If you were the sky, I would unfurl myself in you, as a rainbow of colors yet unseen. I would become oceans of stars in your night.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

"Love Beyond Time"
Rewards of Passion (Sheer Poetry) (1981)

Color, Star

“But alas, I'm going to die!
I'm a chap who…clings to life with the fingernails of both hands.
One who drinks of love till it overflows his lips,
But alas, I'm going to die…
The other night I sat alone in agony,
Listening to the hours pass, wracked with sorrow…
I have arrived to face the cold border of nihility.”

Xuân Diệu (1916–1985) Vietnamese poet

"Nothingness" [Hư vô], as quoted in "Shattered Identities and Contested Images: Reflections of Poetry and History in 20th-Century Vietnam" by Neil Jamieson, in Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1992, p. 87, and in Understanding Vietnam by Neil Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), p. 162

Love, Life, Drink

“I saw a review of our new album, and it said, "Every single component of the White Stripes is a gigantic lie." What does that mean? Have I sat down and said I was born in Mississippi? No. Did I say I grew up on a plantation and learned how to play guitar from a blind man? I never said anything like that. It's funny that people think me and Meg sit up late at night, in front of a gas lamp, and come up with these intricate lies to trick people.”

Jack White (1975) American musician and record producer

From the article White on White from Rolling Stone Magazine
On 'gimmicks

People, Lie, Thinking, Learning

“Guru: Today I will discourse upon the violence in astronomy.
Disciple: Revered Sir! Will you be describing the violent phenomenon in the Universe?
Guru: Yes, and I will also dwell upon the controversies amongst the astronomers about what these events imply – controversies which are no less violent than the phenomena themselves

The one aspect of the star-studded night sky which impresses the casual observer most is its tranquility. The peace and quiet of the heavens with the marked contrast to the hurly burly of life on the earth have inspired poets, philosophers, and religious thinkers from time immemorial. Even the amateur astronomer viewing the night sky from his proverbial roof top telescope sees a picture which changes very slowly from night to night. The occasional visit of comet, the fall of a meteorite, or in these modern times the passing of a man made satellite are examples of events which introduce transitory variation on an apparently steady cosmic theme.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

Source: Jayant V. Narlikar Violent Phenomena in the Universe http://books.google.com/books?id=VFbCAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover, Courier Dover Publications, 16 October 2012, p. 1

Life, Peace, Star, Universe

“People have wondered where the seat of original sin is; I think it 's in the stomach. A man eats too much and neglects exercise, and the Devil has him all his own way, and the little imps, with their long black fingers, play on his nerves like a piano. Never overwork either body or mind, boys. All the work that a man can do that can be rested by one night's sleep is good for him, but fatigue that goes into the next day is always bad.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book Old Town Folks

Old Town Folks (1869) Ch. 39 Last Days In Cloud-Land

People, Way, Exercises, Boy

“So we raise her up every morning
And we bring her down slow every night,
We don't let her touch the ground,
And we fold her up right.
On second thought
I do like to brag.
Cause I'm mighty proud of
That Ragged Old Flag.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

Ragged Old Flag
Song lyrics, Ragged Old Flag (1974)

Quotes about the night page 35

Quotes about the night
page 35