Source: Northern Farm
“Our fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of nature, and with none more completely than with night. Primitive folk, gathered at a cave mouth round a fire, do not fear night; they fear, rather, the energies and creatures to whom night gives power; we of the age of the machines, having delivered ourselves of nocturnal enemies, now have a dislike of night itself. With lights and ever more lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea; the little villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it. Are modern folk, perhaps, afraid of night? Do they fear that vast serenity, the mystery of infinite space, the austerity of stars? Having made themselves at home in a civilization obsessed with power, which explains its whole world in terms of energy, do they fear at night for their dull acquiescence and the pattern of their beliefs? Be the answer what it will, to-day's civilization is full of people who have not the slightest notion of the character or the poetry of night, who have never even seen night. Yet to live thus, to know only artificial night, is as absurd and evil as to know only artificial day.”
Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod
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Henry Beston 24
American writer 1888–1968Related quotes

“Women are beautiful in the light of the day, but are even more so in the shadows of the night.”
Aphorisms. Magnum in Parvo (2000)
“The blackest night must end in dawn, the light dispel the dreamer's fear.”

“Oh pilot, 't is a fearful night!
There's danger on the deep.”
The Pilot, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“I have many ideas for lights. I will paint only lights at night. [on the twinkling city-lights]”
Quote from Tobey's letter to the cubist painter Feininger, 1955
1950's

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 83
Context: Our faith is a light by nature coming of our endless Day, that is our Father, God. In which light our Mother, Christ, and our good Lord, the Holy Ghost, leadeth us in this passing life. This light is measured discreetly, needfully standing to us in the night. The light is cause of our life; the night is cause of our pain and of all our woe: in which we earn meed and thanks of God. For we, with mercy and grace, steadfastly know and believe our light, going therein wisely and mightily.

Source: Litany for Dictatorships (1935)