“By night the skyscraper looms in the smoke and the stars and has a soul.”
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Carl Sandburg 62
American writer and editor 1878–1967Related quotes
“As night the life-inclining stars best shows,
So lives obscure the starriest souls disclose.”
Epilogue to Translations; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“The night is my best friend. It calms the storm in my soul and it lets the guiding stars rise.”
Die Nacht ist meine beste Freundin. Sie glättet den Sturm in der Seele und lässt die weisenden Sterne aufgehen.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)
“The birds of night peck at the first stars
that flash like my soul when I love you.”
Source: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
“My soul has gained the freedom of the night.”
Poems (1928)
Haven (1951)
Part 2, Book 1, Ch. 2
Variant translation: What makes night within us may leave stars.
Source: Ninety-Three (1874)
Context: Cimourdain was a pure-minded but gloomy man. He had "the absolute" within him. He had been a priest, which is a solemn thing. Man may have, like the sky, a dark and impenetrable serenity; that something should have caused night to fall in his soul is all that is required. Priesthood had been the cause of night within Cimourdain. Once a priest, always a priest.
Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars. Cimourdain was full of virtues and truth, but they shine out of a dark background.
“Ignorance is the night of the mind, but a night without moon or star.”