Quotes about moonlight

A collection of quotes on the topic of moonlight, night, likeness, love.

Quotes about moonlight

“Follow your inner moonlight, don’t hide the madness.”

Allen Ginsberg book Howl and Other Poems

Variant: Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness.
Source: Howl and Other Poems

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Variant: A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
Source: The Critic as Artist (1891), Part II

World, Way

“Concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don't care who's listening.”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Madness

“Venice by moonlight is an enchanted city; the floods of silver light upon the moresco architecture, the perfect absence of all harsh sounds of carts and carriages, the never-ceasing music on the waters, produced an effect on the mind which cannot be experienced, I am sure, in any other city in the world.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Letter to Isaac Disraeli (c. 8 September 1826), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume. I. 1804–1859 (1929), p. 108

World, Music, Light, Water

“She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to flamenco guitar.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Dance, Sea

“How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank
Here we will sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears; soft stillness, and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Music, Sleep, Night

“So I walked away and left him standing there in the moonlight - watching over nothing.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

“Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Source: A Midsummer Nights Dream

“17. The Jnanin present in the heart sees the mind merged in the light of the heart, like moonlight in the presence of the sun during the day.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

The Science of the Heart

Light, Sun, Heart

“Tonight my wife must watch alone
the full moon over Fu-zhou;
I think sadly of my sons and daughters far away,
too young to understand this separation
or remember our life in Chang'an.
In fragrant mist, her flowing hair is damp;
In clear moonlight, her jade-white arms are cold.
When will we lean at the open casement together
while the moonlight dries our shining tears?”

Du Fu (712–770) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

"Moonlit Night" https://allpoetry.com/Moonlit-Night (trans. David Lunde)

Life, Understanding, Thinking, Tear

“It sometimes strikes me how immensely fortunate I am that each day should take its place in my life, either reddened with the rising and setting sun, or refreshingly cool with deep, dark clouds, or blooming like a white flower in the moonlight. What untold wealth!”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Glimpses of Bengal http://www.spiritualbee.com/tagore-book-of-letters/ (1921)

Life, Flowers, Sun, Wealth

“It will not hurt me when I am old,
A running tide where moonlight burned
Will not sting me like silver snakes;
The years will make me sad and cold,
It is the happy heart that breaks.”

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet

"Moonlight"
Flame and Shadow (1920)

Happiness, Sadness, Heart, Hurt

“Be happy, be happy; you shall have your red rose. I will build it out of music by moonlight, and stain it with my own heart's-blood. All that I ask of you in return is that you will be a true lover, for Love is wiser than Philosophy, though she is wise, and mightier than Power, though he is mighty.”

Oscar Wilde book The Happy Prince and Other Tales

"The Nightingale and the Rose"
The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888)

Love, Happiness, Music, Lovers

“The heaviest burden: “What, if some day or night, a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life, as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life must return to you, all in the same succession and sequence — even this spider and this moonlight between the trees and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again—and you with it, speck of dust!’ Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god, and never have I heard anything more divine!’ If this thought were to gain possession of you, it would change you as you are, or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, “do you want this once more and innumerable times more?””

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?.
Sec. 341
The Gay Science (1882)

Life, God, Pain, Lie

“In this big moonlit landscape by the painter N. N., that deservedly celebrated technician, one sees more than one would wish, or that can actually be seen by moonlight. But what the perceptive, sensitive soul looks for in every painting, and rightly expects to find, is missing.... If that painter could find it in himself to paint fewer, but more deeply-felt, pictures instead of so many clever ones, his contemporaries and posterity would be more grateful to him.”

Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Swedish painter

Quote from his writings Thoughts on Art, Caspar David Friedrich; as cited in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 33
undated

Soul, Painting

“But she woke up just then, and in the moonlight covered herself with a blanket. She smiled at him drowsily and called him "Yero, my hero," and that melted his heart.”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Smile, Heart

“Fighting evil by moonlight, winning love by daylight, never running from a real fight, she is the one named Sailor Moon!”

Naoko Takeuchi (1967) Japanese manga artist

Love, Evil, Fight

“In summer moonlight, she was dangerously, inebriatingly magnified.”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Summer

“He was the owner of the moonlight on the ground, he fell in love with the most beautiful of the trees, he made wreaths of leaves and strung them around his neck.”

Tove Jansson book Tales from Moominvalley

Source: Tales from Moominvalley

Love, Beauty, Tree

“A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Books, Youth, Age, Light

“An ugliness unfurled in the moonlight and soft shadow and suffused the whole world. If I were an amoeba, he thought, with an infinitesimal body, I could defeat ugliness. A man isn’t tiny or giant enough to defeat anything.”

Yukio Mishima book The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

Source: The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

World

“What were you doing with her?" I ask quietly.
"Apart from questioning her about your whereabouts, I was listening to the most intriguing story about my life moonlighting as a kidnapper.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

Life, Question

“Are you happy?" she [Clarisse] said. "Am I what?" he [Montag] cried. But she was gone- running in the moonlight. Her front door shut gently.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Happiness

“Each night I lie down in a graveyard of memories. Moonlight spins a shroud about me.”

Jerry Spinelli book Love, Stargirl

Variant: Each night I lie down in a graveyard of memories.
Source: Love, Stargirl

Lie, Memory, Night

“In pale moonlight / the wisteria's scent / comes from far away.”

Yosa Buson (1716–1783) poet from Japan

“With her braided hair and white dress, she seemed to glow in the moonlight.”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

“The wastes of snow on the hill were ghostly in the moonlight. The stars were piercingly bright.”

Maud Hart Lovelace book Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown

Source: Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown

Star

“She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.”

Raymond Chandler book The Little Sister

Source: The Little Sister

Way

“Moonlight making crosses
on your body, and me putting my mouth on every one.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

“Lazarevo drips you into my soul, dawn drop by moonlight drop from the river Kama. When you look for me, look for me there, because that's where I'll be all the days of my life.”

Paullina Simons (1963) Russian writer

Life, Soul

“Go on, she urged. Lie to me by the moonlight. Do a fabulous story.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Variant: Lie to me by the moonlight. Do a fabulous story.
Source: Gatsby Girls

Lie

“The owl flies, in the moonlight, over a field where the wounded cry out.

Like the owl, I fly in the night over my own misfortune.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: The Impossible

Cry, Flying, Night

“You are mine-you know you're mine!" he cried wildly… the moonlight twisted in through the vines and listened… the fireflies hung upon their whispers as if to win his glance from the glory of their eyes.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book This Side of Paradise

Source: This Side of Paradise

“all people start to
come apart finally
and there it is:
just empty ashtrays in a room
or wisps of hair on a comb
in the dissolving moonlight.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

People

“This is what it is to love an artist: The moon is always rising above your house. The houses of your neighbors look dull and lacking in moonlight. But he is always going away from you. Inside his head there is always something more beautiful.”

Sarah Ruhl Eurydice

Source: Eurydice

Love, Beauty, Housing

“Go to sleep, baby, Mama will sing. Of blue butterflies, and dragonfly wings. Moonlight and sunbeams, raiment so fine. Silver and gold, for baby of mine. Go to sleep, baby. Sister will tell, of wolves and of lambs, and demons who fell.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Black Magic Sanction

Sister, Sleep, Singing, Baby

“A black cat among roses,
phlox, lilac-misted under a quarter moon,
the sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock. The garden is very still.
It is dazed with moonlight,
contented with perfume…”

Amy Lowell (1874–1925) US writer

Cats, Night

“Many girls have been romanced under the moon, and I don’t mean to say moonlight is overrated, but few I think have known the magic of a sunrise kiss.”

Jerry Spinelli book Love, Stargirl

Source: Love, Stargirl

Girl, Kiss, Thinking

“Darkness was a beautiful thing. The kiss of a shadow. A caress as soft as moonlight.”

Mary E. Pearson (1955) young-adult fiction writer

Source: The Beauty of Darkness

Beauty, Kiss

“It is rather exciting to write by moonlight.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

“Inching one's way along a steep cliff in the dark: on reaching the highway, one breathes a sigh of relief. Just when one can't take any more, one sees the moonlight. Beauty that seems to infuse itself into the heart: I know about that”

Banana Yoshimoto book Kitchen

Source: Kitchen

Beauty, Way, Heart

“If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Do I Come Here Often

World, Light, Sun, Night

“But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition

Money

“Love is like moonlight or thunder, or rain on a tin roof in the middle of the night; it is one of those things in life that is truly worth knowing.”

Sonya Hartnett (1968) Australian writer

Source: The Ghost's Child

Love, Life, Night

“I ran home in the moonlight with firm strides; for the sun-love made me strong.”

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

Source: The Wild Muir: Twenty-Two of John Muir's Greatest Adventures

Love, Home, Strong, Sun

“I got up and walked back to my roominghouse. The moonlight was bright. My footsteps echoed in the empty street and it sounded as if somebody was following me, I looked around. I was mistaken. I was quite alone.”

Charles Bukowski book Factotum

Source: Factotum

“He looked different in sleep, beautiful but cold as moonlight. I found myself wishing he would wake so that I might watch the life return.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

Life, Beauty, Sleep

“All these years I've had a story in my mind, the story about us that never really existed. And because of that story, I've kept you framed up on the wall in a little box of nostalgic moonlight.”

Cathleen Schine (1953) American writer

Source: The Love Letter

Box

“Moonlight is sculpture; sunlight is painting.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

1838
Notebooks, The American Notebooks (1835 - 1853)

Painting

“What looks like crazy on an ordinary day looks looks a lot like love if you catch it in the moonlight.”

Pearl Cleage What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day

Source: What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day

Love

“There is a moonlight note in the Moonlight Sonata; there is a thunder note in an angry sky.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Dancing of Sounds http://www.poetrysoup.com/famous/poem/21378/Dancing_of_Sounds <br class="br">From the poems written in English

“Moonlight on canvas, midnight and wine,Two shadows starting to softly combine.
The picture they're painting
Is one of the heart;
And to those who have seen it,
It's a true work of art.Oh, the red strokes,
Passions uncaged;
Thundering moments of tenderness rage.
Oh, the red strokes,
Tempered and strong (Fearlessly drawn),
Burning the night like the dawn.”

Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist

The Red Strokes, written by Jim Garver, Lisa Sanderson, Jenny Yates, and G. Brooks.
Song lyrics, In Pieces (1993)

Strong, Rage, Passion, Wine

“It is a night of summer,—and the sea
Sleeps, like a child, in mute tranquillity.
Soft o'er the deep-blue wave the moonlight breaks;
Gleaming, from out the white clouds of its zone”

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

Rosalie.
The Improvisatrice (1824)

Sleep, Summer, Sea, Night

“That spirit, that feeling for one's comrades in the snow, the moonlight, under the blossoms, is also basic to the tea ceremony. A tea ceremony is a coming together in feeling, a meeting of good comrades in a good season. I may say in passing, that to see my novel Thousand Cranes as an evocation of the formal and spiritual beauty of the tea ceremony is a misreading. It is a negative work, and expression of doubt about and warning against the vulgarity into which the tea ceremony has fallen.”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

Japan, the Beautiful and Myself (1969)

Beauty, Feeling, Tea, Season

“I linger on the flathouse roof, the moonlight is divine.
But my heart is all aflutter like the washing on the line.”

Nathalia Crane (1913–1998) American writer

"The Flathouse Roof"
The Janitor's Boy And Other Poems (1924)

Heart

“That is what he used to do, what he is doing now for the last hears. He is the only painter who paints like that.... like the wind, like the ocean, like the light, like the sunlight, like the moonlight, far away from everything, without any image..”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

quotes from Appel's poem '..and now I want to talk about Willem de Kooning, February 1990 http://beeldgedicht.info/Reprocitaat/appel-kooning.htm

Light, Painting

“A dreamer of pictures
I run in the night.
You see us together,
Chasing the moonlight,
My cinnamon girl.”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

Cinnamon Girl
Song lyrics, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969)

Girl, Night

“In this decayed hole among the mountains
In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land (1922), Line 385 et seq.

Home, Grass

“I looked down at the poor calf. Its hide was spotted black and white and it had the most delicate ankles. From the slightly open mouth there appeared a pink tongue. I closed my eyes and ran out of Hellfrick's room and threw myself on the floor in my room. I lay there and shuddered, thinking of the old cow alone in the field in the moonlight, old cow mooing for her calf. Murder!”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Source: Ask the Dust (1939), Chapter Thirteen

Thinking, Appearance

“Immeasurable pain!
My dreaming soul last night was king again.
As in past days
I wandered through the Palace of Delight,
And in my dream
Down grassy garden-ways
Glided my chariot, smoother than a summer stream;
There was moonlight,
The trees were blossoming,
And a faint wind softened the air of night,
For it was spring.”

Li Yu (Southern Tang) (937–978) ruler of the Southern Tang Kingdom in ancient China

《望江南》 ("Immeasurable Pain"), as translated by Arthur Waley in The Temple (1923), p. 144

Pain, Dreams, Way, Soul

“I ran home [from Cloud's Rest to Yosemite Valley] in the moonlight, with long, firm strides; for the sun-love made me strong. Down through the junipers — down through the firs; now in jet-shadows, now in white light; over sandy moraines and bare, clanking rock; past the huge ghost of South Dome, rising weird through the firs — past glorious Nevada — past the groves of Illilouette — through the pines of the valley; frost-crystals flashing all the sky beneath, as star-crystals on all the sky above. All of this mountain-bread for one day!”

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

letter to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr (December 1872); published as " A Geologist's Winter Walk http://books.google.com/books?id=OAEbAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA355", Overland Monthly, volume 10, number 4 (April 1873) pages 355-358 (at page 358); modified slightly and reprinted in Steep Trails (1918), chapter 2 <br class="br">1870s

Love, Home, Mountain, Star

“I’ve made some things for you, Constant Reader; you see them laid out before you in the moonlight. But before you look at the little handcrafted treasures I have for sale, let’s talk about them for a bit, shall we? It won’t take long. Here, sit down beside me. And do come a little closer. I don’t bite.
Except … we’ve known each other for a very long time, and I suspect you know that’s not entirely true.
Is it?”

Stephen King book The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, Introduction (2015)

Time

“There was a sculptured form; the feet were placed
Upon a finely-carved rose wreath; the arms
Were raised to Heaven, as if to clasp the stars
EULALIA leant beside; 'twas hard to say
Which was the actual marble: when she spoke,
You started, scarce it seem'd a human sound;
But the eyes' lustre told life linger'd still;
And now the moonlight seem'd to fill their depths.”

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

A History of the Lyre
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Life, Star

“The moonlight rolls down like a river,
The silence streams out like a sea;
And far where the eastern winds quiver,
My farewell goes floating to thee.”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

And Thou Too (1888)

Silence, Sea

“The very sound of his own steps disturbed him; and he flung himself on a couch, to enjoy without interruption the exquisite melody. The intense perfume of the flowers intoxicated him like wine. He felt as if lulled in a delicious trance, in which one image became more and more distinct — the pale but lovely face of his hostess. His heart was filling with love for those radiant eyes. A softer fragrance breathed around him — it was her breath. He looked, and she was again bending over him; he saw himself mirrored in the moonlight of her eyes.”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Love, Flowers, Wine, Heart

“Sing again, with your dear voice revealing
A tone
Of some world far from ours,
Where music and moonlight and feeling
Are one.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

To Jane. The keen Stars were twinkling; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

World, Music, Feeling, Singing

“Let the divine reign of Electric Light finally commence, liberating Venice from its venal moonlight of furnished rooms”

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

1910's
Source: 'Contra Venezia passatista', ('Against Venice, mired in the past') 27 April, 1910; as quoted in The Other Futurism: Futurist Activity in Venice, Padua and Verona, Willard Bohn, University of Toronto Press Incorporated, 2004, ISBN 0-8020-8816-3, p. 8

Light

“There was a rock that since the creation of the world had been worked upon by the pure essences of Heaven and the fine savours of Earth, the vigour of sunshine and the grace of moonlight, till at last it became magically pregnant and one day split open, giving birth to a stone egg, about as big as a playing ball. Fructified by the wind it developed into a stone monkey, complete with every organ and limb.”

Arthur Waley (1889–1966) British academic

Source: Translations, Monkey: Folk Novel of China (1942), Ch. 1 (p. 11)

World, Birth

“In this uncertain space between birth and death, especially here at the end of the world in Moonlight Bay, we need hope as surely as we need food and water, love and friendship. The trick, however, is to remember that hope is a perilous thing, that it's not a steel and concrete bridge across the void between this moment and a brighter future. Hope is no stronger than tremulous beads of dew strung on a filament of spider web, and it alone can't long support the terrible weight of an anguished mind and a tortured heart.”

Dean Koontz book Seize the Night

Source: Seize the Night (1999), Chapter 4; musings of Christopher Snow

Love, Death, Friendship, World

Wú Chéng'ēn book Monkey

Monkey, chapter 1 (trans. Arthur Waley)
Journey to the West [Xiyouji] (1592)

World, Birth

“The moon appeared for some time [in the Savoy, Switzerland] and the rocks seemed to be much bigger than they were. The mountains were silvery illuminated and appeared gently against the mysterious blue of the sky - that blue color with moonlight, that has such an indefinable, deep tone; actually it is not a blue.”

Gerard Bilders (1838–1865) painter from the Netherlands

Source: 1850's, Vrolijk Versterven' (from Bilders' diary & letters), p. 19 - quote of Bilder's letter to his maecenas Johannes Kneppelhout, from Savoy, near Geneva, Switzerland, September 1858

Color, Mountain, Appearance, Time

“The huge dome of St. Paul's arose bathed in the moonlight, that giant fane of a giant city, a hundred spires were shining silvery in the soft gleam, and all meaner objects were touched with a picturesque obscurity: all around was silence and rest. The myriad voices of London were still, and nothing vexed the lulled ear of midnight.”

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

The Monthly Magazine

Silence

“Thy light alone like mist o'er mountains driven,
Or music by the night-wind sent
Through strings of some still instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream,
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

St. 3
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty (1816)

Life, Truth, Dreams, Music

“She turned again, and this time she was closer. Her head nestled against my shoulder and she moved my hand up her body until I knew there was no marvel of engineering connected to the bra because there was no bra. And the studded belt she wore was the keystone to the whole ensemble, and when it was unsnapped the whole affair came apart in a whisper of black satin that folded back against the sand until all of her reflected the moonlight from above until I eclipsed the pale brilliance, and there was no sound except that of the waves and our breathing. Then soon even the waves were gone, and there was only the warmth of white skin and little muscles that played under my hand and the fragrance that was her mouth. The redhead had been right.”

Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) American writer

My Gun is Quick (1950)

Time

“It was a beautiful embodied thought,
A dream of the fine painter, one of those
That pass by moonlight o'er the soul, and flit
'Mid the dim shades of twilight, when the eye
Grows tearful with its ecstasy.”

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

(1st June 1822) Poetic Sketches. Second Series - Sketch the Fifth. Mr. Martin’s Picture of Clytie
8th June 1822) The Deserter see The Improvisatrice (1824
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822

Beauty, Dreams, Soul, Tear

“Under this cold moonlight he felt the shimmer of self. He felt no guilt, no pain, no remorse for what he'd done. He could have killed if he wanted to, but he did not. He felt as if he understood men, their discontent, their need to see what they'd not seen before, their need to be where they'd never been. He was one of them. He'd lived in a world of killing and blood and this world was returned to him. He'd lived in the silence and ineluctable mystery of violence. He knew the hold war had on him, the gore that would never come off in this world. He knew he could have killed Mercy's brother with his hands and it was the knowledge that gave him peace.”

Robert Olmstead (1954) American writer

Source: The Coldest Night (2012), p. 243

Men, Pain, War, World

“I think there are some objective [musical] qualities… how complex something is, how melodic, how diverse the tonality is, et cetera. But I could also make a piece of music that contains all of those and yet isn't "good" from a subjective viewpoint. For example, take Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata", Beatles "Yesterday", and Underworld's "Born Slippy", and play them all on top of each other at the same time. Great music in their own right, but terrible sounding together.”

Andrew Sega (1975) musician from America

Andrew Sega Shrine interview, 2011

Music, Thinking, Time

“My specialty is really painting moonlight – but I will not forget the sunshine.”

Johan Jongkind (1819–1891) Dutch painter and printmaker regarded as a forerunner of Impressionism

Jongkind's quote in an early letter (1840's), to his Dutch friend Eugène Smits; as cited by nl:Victorine Hefting, in Jongkinds's Universe, Henri Scrépel, Paris, 1976, p. 69

Painting, Forgetting

“Sunlight falling bright
Over village garden walls
Moonlight shower's gold
where leaving waterfalls
People walk in splendour
Under trees hung in starlight.”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Children of the Sun (1969)

People, Tree

“The idea so possessed my mind, that a thrill of fear ran through me, and I wished to exchange the ghastly image of my fancy for the realities around. I see them still; the very room, the dark parquet, the closed shutters, with the moonlight struggling through, and the sense I had that the glassy lake and white high Alps were beyond.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer

Introduction http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/1831v1/intro.html to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

Fear, Idea, Reality, Sense

“Cause it's a good night
To be out there soakin' up the moonlight.
Stake out a little piece of shoreline.
I've got the perfect place in mind.
It's in the middle of nowhere; only way to get there
You got to get a little mud on the tires.”

Brad Paisley (1972) American country music singer

Mud on the Tires, written by Brad Paisley and Chris DuBois.
Song lyrics, Mud on the Tires (2003)

Way, Perfection, Night

“Home from Guatemala, back at the Waldorf.
This arrival in the wild country of the soul,
All approaches gone, being completely there,
Where the wild poem is a substitute
For the woman one loves or ought to love,
One wild rhapsody a fake for another.You touch the hotel the way you touch moonlight
Or sunlight and you hum and the orchestra
Hums and you say "The world in a verse,A generation sealed, men remoter than mountains,
Women invisible in music and motion and color,"
After that alien, point-blank, green and actual Guatemala.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"Arrival at the Waldorf"
Parts of a World (1942)

Love, Women, Men, World

“Moonlighting was funny, innovative, genre-busting chaos. Also, apparently, unsustainable. Sigh.”

Jane Espenson (1964) American television writer and producer

Ain't It Cool News interview (17 July 2003) http://www.whedon.info/Jane-Espenson-Buffy-Tv-Series.h

“And as the moon rises he sits by his fire
Thinking about women and glasses of beer.
And closing his eyes as the dogies retire,
He sings out a song which is soft but it's clear,
As if maybe someone could hear.Goodnight you moonlight ladies.
Rockabye sweet baby James.
Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose.
Won't you let me go down in my dreams?
And rockabye sweet baby James.”

James Taylor (1948) American singer-songwriter and guitarist

"Sweet Baby James"
Song lyrics, Sweet Baby James (1970)

Women, Dreams, Color, Beer

“The maiden---pure and without stain--lay sleeping on the small couch that occupied one corner of the closet. Her fair limbs were enshrouded in the light folds of a night-robe, and she lay in an attitude of perfect repose, one glowing cheek resting upon her uncovered arm, while over the other, waved the loosened curls of her glossy hair. The parting lips disclosed her teeth, white as ivory, while her youthful bosom came heaving up from the folds of her night-robe, like a billow that trembles for a moment in the moonlight, and then is suddenly lost to view. She lay there in all the ripening beauty of maidenhood, the light falling gently over her young limbs, their outlines marked by the easy folds of her robe, resembling in their roundness and richness of proportion, the swelling fulness of the rose-bud that needs but another beam of light, to open it into its perfect bloom.”

George Lippard (1822–1854) Novelist, journalist

The Quaker City; or, the Monks of Monk Hall, part 1, chapter 9 "The Bride" (1844)

Youth, Beauty, Sleep, Light

“I think I'm getting into the real mood and atmosphere of Worpswede now. What I used to call my Sunken Bell mood, the spell I was under when I first got here, was sweet, very sweet – but it was really only a dream, and one that couldn't last long in any sort of active life. Then came the reaction to it, and after that something truer – serious work and serious living for my art, a battle I must fight with all my strength. I am filled with the sun, every part of me, and with the breezy air, intoxicated with the moonlight on the bright snow... Nature was speaking with me and I listened to her, happy and vibrant. Life.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

excerpt of her Journal, Worpswede 1897; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, pp. 193-194
1897

Life, Happiness, Dreams, Art

“I know that as night and shadows are good for flowers, and moonlight and dews are better than a continual sun, so is Christ's absence of special use, and that it hath some nourishing virtue in it, and giveth sap to humility, and putteth an edge on hunger, and furnisheth a fair field for faith to put forth itself.”

Samuel Rutherford (1600–1661) Scottish Reformed theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 277.

Hunger, Faith, Flowers, Sun

“Walked way out in the plains in the moonlight – there is no wind – so still – And so light – I wish you could see it – with miss Hibbits – she was born in Ireland –... The plains start right across the roads from this house – there is just nothing out there – she says she has often ridden till ten or eleven o'clock at night – alone – nothing to be afraid of – because there is nothing out there – Its great – I am not even having the smallest wish for N. Y. …”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Canyon, Texas, September, 1916, pp. 207, 208
1915 - 1920, Letters to Anita Pollitzer' (1916)

Way, Light, Housing, Night

“When first the world from chaos rose,
Tell me, how did love begin?
The wind and moonlight first did love compose.”

Cao Xueqin book Dream of the Red Chamber

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (c. 1760), Chapter 5

Love, World

“It must however always be borne in mind that translators are but traitors at the best, and that translations may be moonlight and water while the originals are sunlight and wine.”

Herbert Giles Gems of Chinese Literature

Gems of Chinese Literature, Preface to the first edition (dated 16 October 1883)

Water, Wine

“I have all my life been an indweller of the town, and I frankly confess, for a constant residence, I like it better than all the pastoral charms that ever made the morality of an essay, or gave grace to poetry; still there is that about the country to which the heart always turns with a feeling of freshness and renovation. The moonlight walk through the green wood, would come back upon the memory with a spell which would not belong to a lamp-lighted ramble. The green-leaf would give its freshness, the wild-flower its sweetness; on the ear would arise the murmur of the wind in the boughs — or the song of the brook singing like a child for very gladness.”

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

Literary Remains

Life, Feeling, Flowers, Light

“I've thought upon thy brow when Night
Threw o'er my pallet her summer moonlight,
And I have looked on the midnight sky
To catch the depth and light of thy eye;
I painted from these and from memory,
For I could not paint when I looked on thee.”

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

28th April 1824) Raphael Showing his Mistress her Portrait By Mr. Brockedon. (British Gallery.
The London Literary Gazette, 1824

Light, Memory, Summer, Painting

“Enduring as heaven and earth—no love however ancient can ever die;
Timeless as light and shadow—no debt of breeze and moonlight can ever be repaid.”

Wang Chi-chen (1899–2001)

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (1958), p. 42

Love, Light

“All these relics gave… Thornfield Hall the aspect of a home of the past: a shrine to memory. I liked the hush, the gloom, the quaintness of these retreats in the day; but I by no means coveted a night's repose on one of those wide and heavy beds: shut in, some of them, with doors of oak; shaded, others, with wrought old-English hangings crusted with thick work, portraying effigies of strange flowers, and stranger birds, and strangest human beings, — all which would have looked strange, indeed, by the pallid gleam of moonlight.”

Charlotte Brontë book Jane Eyre

Jane (Ch. 11)
Jane Eyre (1847)

Home, Flowers, Bird, Memory

“He who would see old Hoghton right
Must view it by the pale moonlight.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

William Carew Hazlitt, English Proverbs and Provincial Phrases, (London, 1882) http://books.google.com/books?vid=0BwDL0yjf1gG1Sn05IQSrM4&id=mmkKAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA205&lpg=PA205&dq=%22He+who+would+see+old+Hoghton+right%22#PPA205,M1 <br class="br">Misattributed

“Steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last enchantments of the Middle Age, who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us nearer to the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection, — to beauty, in a word, which is only truth seen from another side? — nearer, perhaps, than all the science of Tübingen. Adorable dreamer, whose heart has been so romantic who hast given thyself so prodigally, given thyself to sides and to heroes not mine, only never to the Philistines! home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties!”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

Preface to the Second Edition (1869)
Essays in Criticism (1865)

Truth, Age, Beauty, Home

“When it came night, the white waves paced to and fro in the moonlight, and the wind brought the sound of the great sea's voice to the men on shore, and they felt that they could then be interpreters.”

Stephen Crane book The Open Boat

Pt. VII
The Open Boat (1894)

Men, Sea, Night

“I am overwhelmed by an irresistible temptation to do my climb by moonlight and unroped. This is contrary to all my rock climbing teaching & does not mean poor training, but only a strong-headedness.”

William Shockley (1910–1989) American physicist and inventor

Memo to himself in 1947, regarding work on the transistor, as quoted in Broken Genius : The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age (2006) by Joel N. Shurkin, Ch. 7, p. 125.

Strong, Training

“Beautiful wreck! for still thy face,
Though changed, is very fair;
Like beauty's moonlight, left to shew
Her morning sun was there.”

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

The Change from The London Literary Gazette (16th February 1828)
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Beauty, Change, Sun

“If thou would'st view fair Melrose aright,
Go visit it by the pale moonlight.”

Walter Scott The Lay of the Last Minstrel

Canto II, stanza 1.
The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805)