Edna St. Vincent Millay, in "First Fig" from A Few Figs from Thistles (1920); said to be a motto Roald Dahl lived by.
Misattributed
Variant: My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends —
It gives a lovely light.
Source: Boy: Tales of Childhood
“Dark night,
Oh terrible is thy shadow on the battle!
Blows dealt alike on friend and foe, the dead,
And dying trampled on— oh, day alone
Should look upon the soldier's deeds!”
(1st February 1823) The Cadets. An Indian Sketch
The London Literary Gazette, 1823
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Letitia Elizabeth Landon 785
English poet and novelist 1802–1838Related quotes
New Morality. Compare: "Defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies", attributed to Maréchal Villars, when taking leave of Louis XIV.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Canto I, stanza 31.
The Lady of the Lake http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3011 (1810)
“Shadow is the diminution alike of light and of darkness, and stands between darkness and light.”
The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), III Six books on Light and Shade
1870s, The Unknown Loyal Dead (1871)
O guiding night! O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united the Lover with his beloved, transforming the beloved in her Lover.
Variant translation by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (1991)
Oh night thou was my guide
Oh night more loving than the rising sun
Oh night that joined the lover to the beloved one
transforming each of them into the other.
Variant adapted for music by Loreena McKennitt (1994)
Dark Night of the Soul
Letter to Hilda Chamberlain (30 December 1939), quoted in Maurice Cowling, The Impact of Hitler. British Politics and British Policy. 1933-1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 355.
Prime Minister
Context: I stick to the view I have always held that Hitler missed the bus in September 1938. He could have dealt France and ourselves a terrible, perhaps a mortal, blow then. The opportunity will not recur.