Quotes about morning
page 2

Jesse Owens photo
Rabindranath Tagore photo
Ozzy Osbourne photo

“Tell me I'm a sinner I got news for you
I spoke to God this morning and he don't like you
You telling all the people the original sin
He says he knows you better that you'll ever know him”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

I Don't Want to Change the World, written by Ozzy Osbourne, Zakk Wylde, Randy Castillo and Lemmy Kilmister
Song lyrics, No More Tears (1991)

Emil M. Cioran photo
Mark Twain photo
Volodymyr Melnykov photo
Warren Zevon photo
Rabindranath Tagore photo
Ronald Reagan photo

“George [H. W. Bush] brought his ne'er-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida. The one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Cited to a Reagan diary entry in 1986, but actually from a parody written by Michael Kinsley in June 2007.
Misattributed

Barack Obama photo
Lady Gaga photo
Herman Melville photo
Emil M. Cioran photo

“This morning I thought, hence lost my bearings, for a good quarter of an hour.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

José Saramago photo
Béla Lugosi photo
Ronald Reagan photo

“Every morning Nancy and I turn to see what he has to say about people of our respective birth signs.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Regarding his friend Hollywood astrologer Carroll Righter, in Where's the Rest of Me? (1965)
1960s

Dana White photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Hans Christian Andersen photo
Emil M. Cioran photo

“All morning, I did nothing but repeat: "Man is an abyss, man is an abyss." - I could not, alas, find anything better.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

Mark Twain photo
Barack Obama photo
Benjamin Franklin photo

“Remember that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, rather thrown away, five shillings, besides.
“Remember, that credit is money. If a man lets his money lie in my hands after it is due, he gives me interest, or so much as I can make of it during that time. This amounts to a considerable sum where a man has good and large credit, and makes good use of it.
“Remember, that money is of the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on. Five shillings turned is six, turned again it is seven and three pence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred pounds. The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise quicker and quicker. He that kills a breeding sow, destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation. He that murders a crown, destroys all that it might have produced, even scores of pounds.”
“Remember this saying, The good paymaster is lord of another man’s purse. He that is known to pay punctually and exactly to the time he promises, may at any time, and on any occasion, raise all the money his friends can spare. This is sometimes of great use. After industry and frugality, nothing contributes more to the raising of a young man in the world than punctuality and justice in all his dealings; therefore never keep borrowed money an hour beyond the time you promised, lest a disappointment shut up your friend’s purse for ever.
“The most trifling actions that affect a man’s credit are to be regarded. The sound of your hammer at five in the morning, or eight at night, heard by a creditor, makes him easy six months longer; but if he sees you at a billiard table, or hears your voice at a tavern, when you should be at work, he sends for his money the next day; demands it, before he can receive it, in a lump. ‘It shows, besides, that you are mindful of what you owe; it makes you appear a careful as well as an honest man, and that still increases your credit.’
“Beware of thinking all your own that you possess, and of living accordingly. It is a mistake that many people who have credit fall into. To prevent this, keep an exact account for some time both of your expenses and your income. If you take the pains at first to mention particulars, it will have this good effect: you will discover how wonderfully small, trifling expenses mount up to large sums, and will discern what might have been, and may for the future be saved, without occasioning any great inconvenience.
“For six pounds a year you may have the use of one hundred pounds, provided you are a man of known prudence and honesty.
“He that spends a groat a day idly, spends idly above six pounds a year, which is the price for the use of one hundred pounds.
“He that wastes idly a groat’s worth of his time per day, one day with another, wastes the privilege of using one hundred pounds each day.
“He that idly loses five shillings’ worth of time, loses five shillings, and might as prudently throw five shillings into the sea.
“He that loses five shillings, not only loses that sum, but all the advantage that might be made by turning it in dealing, which by the time that a young man becomes old, will amount to a considerable sum of money.””

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …
James Macpherson photo
Karl Marx photo

“O early one morning I walked out like Agag,
Early one morning to walk through the fire
Dodging the pythons that leaked on the pavements
With tinkle of glasses and tangle of wire.”

Louis MacNeice (1907–1963) poet

"The Streets of Laredo", line 1, from Holes in the Sky (1948)
MacNeice’s poem, a grotesque vision of the London Blitz, is not to be confused with the cowboy ballad "The Streets of Laredo".

Malcolm X photo

“The pilgrimage to Mecca, known as the Hajj, is a religious obligation that every orthodox Muslim fulfills, if able, at least once in his or her lifetime.
The Holy Quran says it, "Pilgrimage to the House [of God built by the prophet Abraham] is a duty men owe to God; those who are able, make the journey." (3:97)

Allah said: "And proclaim the pilgrimage among men; they will come to you on foot and upon each lean camel, they will come from every deep ravine" (22:27).

Every one of the thousands at the airport, about to leave for Jeddah, was dressed this way. You could be a king or a peasant and no one would know. Some powerful personages, who were discreetly pointed out to me, had on the same thing I had on. Once thus dressed, we all had begun intermittently calling out "Labbayka! (Allahumma) Labbayka!" (Here I come, O Lord!) Packed in the plane were white, black, brown, red, and yellow people, blue eyes and blond hair, and my kinky red hair -- all together, brothers! All honoring the same God, all in turn giving equal honor to each other….

That is when I first began to reappraise the "white man." It was when I first began to perceive that "white man," as commonly used, means complexion only secondarily; primarily it described attitudes and actions. In America,"white man" meant specific attitudes and actions toward the black man, and toward all other non-white men. But in the Muslim world, I had seen that men with white complexions were more genuinely brotherly than anyone else had ever been. That morning was the start of a radical alteration in my whole outlook about "white" men.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Text of a letter written following his Hajj (1964)

Ferruccio Lamborghini photo

“A normal chap, a man who likes creating things. A good worker in the morning, and a man who likes enjoying himself in the afternoon.”

Ferruccio Lamborghini (1916–1993) Italian industrialist

In response to the question, "So, Mr. Lamborghini, in short what type of man are you?" asked by a television reporter, broadcast on RAI. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YLcUtwN38U&feature=player_embedded

C.G. Jung photo
Chris Cornell photo
Pedro Calderón de la Barca photo

“These flowers, which were splendid and sprightly,
Waking in the dawn of the morning,
In the evening will be a pitiful frivolity,
Sleeping in the cold night’s arms.”

Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600–1681) Spanish dramatist

Éstas que fueron pompa y alegría
despertando al albor de la mañana,
a la tarde serán lástima vana
durmiendo en brazos de la noche fría.
A las flores ("Éstas, que fueron pompa y alegría") http://es.wikisource.org/wiki/A_las_flores_%28Calder%C3%B3n_de_la_Barca%29.

Karl Dönitz photo
Bashō Matsuo photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Ozzy Osbourne photo

“I like the smell of armpits in the morning. It's like victory.”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

The Osbournes television show

Margaret Thatcher photo

“Marxists get up early in the morning to further their cause. We must get up even earlier to defend our freedom.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Article for Hamburger Abendblatt (13 May 1978) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/103683
Leader of the Opposition

Gerry Rafferty photo
Ronald Reagan photo

“We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them — this morning, as they prepared for their journey, and waved good-bye, and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Speech about the Space Shuttle disaster http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1986/12886b.htm(28 January 1986)
1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989)

Claude Monet photo

“I have at last found a suitable spot and settled her. I have already spend a few days working and started eight canvases, which I hope, if the weather favours me, will give an idea of Norway and the environs of Christiania... This morning I was painting under constant falling snow. You would have burst out laughing seeing me white all over, my beard overgrown with icicles.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in his letter from Sandviken to Gustave Geffroy, late January 1895; (Geoffrey, 1922, vol 2 pp. 87-88); as cited in: Nathalia Brodskaya, Claude Monet, 2011, p. 106
Similar translation:
One should live here for a year in order to accomplish something of value, and that is only after having seen and gotten to know the country. I painted today, a part of the day, in the snow, which falls endlessly. You would have laughed if you could have seen me completely white, with icicles hanging from my beard like stalactites.
1890 - 1900
Source: Claude Monet, ‎Charles F. Stuckey (1985) Monet: a retrospective, p. 169

Thomas Paine photo

“Let me have none of your Popish stuff! Get away with you, good morning.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

Last words (June 1809), as quoted in The Fortnightly https://books.google.com/books?id=aCYzAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA398&lpg=PA398&dq=%22Let+me+have+none+of+your+Popish+stuff%22&source=bl&ots=D0WFax-dxc&sig=Ai90qOuOHYdsoVtR1tIIP_pwgUM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiii9momsrLAhWlmoMKHVxUBS0Q6AEIJDAE#v=onepage&q=%22Let%20me%20have%20none%20of%20your%20Popish%20stuff%22&f=false, Volume 25; Volume 31, p. 398
1800s

James A. Michener photo
Vladimir Putin photo
Claude Monet photo
Bahá'u'lláh photo
Hunter S. Thompson photo
Gottlob Frege photo
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien photo

“Every morning I wake up and think good, another 24 hours' pipe-smoking.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

A rare interview with Tolkien (1966) — "Tolkien's shire" by John Ezard, The Guardian (28 December 1991) http://www.theguardian.com/books/1991/dec/28/jrrtolkien.classics

Jim Caviezel photo
W.B. Yeats photo

“And God stands winding His lonely horn,
And time and the world are ever in flight;
And love is less kind than the grey twilight,
And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Into The Twilight http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1519/, st. 4
The Wind Among the Reeds (1899)

Barack Obama photo

“But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn't make it - those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations - those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their world-view in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years.
That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop, or the beauty shop, or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician's own failing. And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright's sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour of American life occurs on Sunday morning.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2008, A More Perfect Union (March 2008)

Lewis Carroll photo
Rich Mullins photo
Lady Gaga photo

“It takes time to become myself every morning.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

Interview for Billboard Magazine, February 2011.

Laozi photo
Deval Patrick photo
Friedrich Schiller photo

“Only through Beauty's morning gate, dost thou enter the land of Knowledge.”

Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright

Die Künstler (The Artists)

José Saramago photo
Charles Spurgeon photo

“If religion be false, it is the basest imposition under heaven; but if the religion of Christ be true, it is the most solemn truth that ever was known! It is not a thing that a man dares to trifle with if it be true, for it is at his soul's peril to make a jest of it. If it be not true it is detestable, but if it be true it deserves all a man's faculties to consider it, and all his powers to obey it. It is not a trifle. Briefly consider why it is not. It deals with your soul. If it dealt with your body it were no trifle, for it is well to have the limbs of the body sound, but it has to do with your soul. As much as a man is better than the garments that he wears, so much is the soul better than the body. It is your immortal soul it deals with. Your soul has to live for ever, and the religion of Christ deals with its destiny. Can you laugh at such words as heaven and hell, at glory and at damnation? If you can, if you think these trifles, then is the faith of Christ to be trifled with. Consider also with whom it connects you—with God; before whom angels bow themselves and veil their faces. Is HE to be trifled with? Trifle with your monarch if you will, but not with the King of kings, the Lord of lords. Recollect that those who have ever known anything of it tell you it is no child's play. The saints will tell you it is no trifle to be converted. They will never forget the pangs of conviction, nor the joys of faith. They tell you it is no trifle to have religion, for it carries them through all their conflicts, bears them up under all distresses, cheers them under every gloom, and sustains them in all labour. They find it no mockery. The Christian life to them is something so solemn, that when they think of it they fall down before God, and say, "Hold thou me up and I shall be safe." And sinners, too, when they are in their senses, find it no trifle. When they come to die they find it no little thing to die without Christ. When conscience gets the grip of them, and shakes them, they find it no small thing to be without a hope of pardon—with guilt upon the conscience, and no means of getting rid of it. And, sirs, true ministers of God feel it to be no trifle. I do myself feel it to be such an awful thing to preach God's gospel, that if it were not "Woe unto me if I do not preach the gospel," I would resign my charge this moment. I would not for the proudest consideration under heaven know the agony of mind I felt but this one morning before I ventured upon this platform! Nothing but the hope of winning souls from death and hell, and a stern conviction that we have to deal with the grandest of all realities, would bring me here.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

Religion—a Reality part II. Secondly, "It is not a vain thing"—that is, IT IS NO TRIFLE. (June 22nd, 1862) http://www.biblebb.com/files/spurgeon/0457.HTM

Chris Colfer photo
Barack Obama photo
Mark Twain photo
Douglas Coupland photo
Bertrand Russell photo

“I have always thought respectable people scoundrels, and I look anxiously at my face every morning for signs of my becoming a scoundrel.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Quoted in Alan Wood Bertrand Russell: The Passionate Skeptic: A Biography, Vol. 2 (1958), p. 233
1950s

Heath Ledger photo
Alejandro Jodorowsky photo
Henry Clay Work photo
Bobby Fischer photo
Nastassja Kinski photo
Emil M. Cioran photo
Malcolm X photo
John Henry Newman photo

“And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.”

John Henry Newman (1801–1890) English cleric and cardinal

The Pillar of the Cloud http://www.bartleby.com/236/75.html, st. 3 (1833).

Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“As soon as it becomes possible, by dint of a strong will, to overthrow the entire past of the world, then, in a single moment, we will join the ranks of independent gods. World history for us will then be nothing but a dreamlike otherworldly being. The curtain falls, and man once more finds himself a child playing with whole worlds—a child, awoken by the first glow of morning, who laughingly wipes the frightful dreams from his brow.”

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

Sobald es aber möglich wäre, durch einen starken Willen die ganze Weltvergangenheit umzustürzen, sofort träten wir in die Reihe der unabhängigen Götter, und Weltgeschichte hieße dann für uns nichts als ein träumerisches Selbstentrücktsein; der Vorhang fällt, und der Mensch findet sich wieder, wie ein Kind mit Welten spielend, wie ein Kind, das beim Morgenglühen aufwacht und sich lachend die furchtbaren Träume von der Stirn streicht.
"Fatum und Geschichte," April 1862

Daryl Hannah photo
Steve Martin photo
Albert Schweitzer photo
Willem Dafoe photo
William Wordsworth photo

“Another morn
Risen on mid-noon.”

Bk. VI, l. 197.
The Prelude (1799-1805)

George Gordon Byron photo

“I awoke one morning and found myself famous.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Memorandum reference to the instantaneous success of Childe Harold and quoted in Letters and Journals of Lord Byron by Thomas Moore (1830), chapter 14.

Ozzy Osbourne photo
Edvard Munch photo
Marcel Proust photo
Lewis Carroll photo
Bertrand Russell photo
Pierre Bonnard photo
Novalis photo

“The spirit of Poesy is the morning light, which makes the Statue of Memnon sound.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

Novalis (1829)

Christopher Morley photo
Barack Obama photo
Origen photo
Barack Obama photo
Lewis Carroll photo
Steve Jobs photo

“I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

2005-09, Address at Stanford University (2005)
Context: When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

William Saroyan photo

“One day, back there in the good old days when I was nine and the world was full of every kind of magnificence, and life was still a delightful and mysterious dream, my cousin Mourad, who was considered crazy by everybody who knew him except me, came to my house at four in the morning and woke me up by tapping on the window of my room.”

"The Summer of the Beautiful White Horse".
My Name Is Aram (1940)
Context: One day, back there in the good old days when I was nine and the world was full of every kind of magnificence, and life was still a delightful and mysterious dream, my cousin Mourad, who was considered crazy by everybody who knew him except me, came to my house at four in the morning and woke me up by tapping on the window of my room.
"Aram," he said.
I jumped out of bed and looked out the window.
I couldn't believe what I saw.
It wasn't morning yet, but it was summer and with daybreak not many minutes around the corner of the world it was light enough for me to know I wasn't dreaming.
My cousin Mourad was sitting on a beautiful white horse.

Henri Barbusse photo

“All we can see is only a speck. You've got to remember that this morning there's three thousand kilometers of equal evils, or nearly equal, or worse.”

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 24 - The Dawn
Context: Paradis, possessed by his notion, waved his hand towards the wide unspeakable landscape. and looking steadily on it repeated his sentence, 'War is that. It is that everywhere. What are we, we chaps, and what's all this here? Nothing at all. All we can see is only a speck. You've got to remember that this morning there's three thousand kilometers of equal evils, or nearly equal, or worse."
"And then," said the comrade at our side, whom we could not recognize even by his voice, "to-morrow it begins again. It began again the day before yesterday, and all the days before that!"

Zhuangzi photo

“You and Confucius are both dreaming, and I who say you are a dream am also a dream. Such is my tale. It will probably be called preposterous, but after ten thousand generations there may be a great sage who will be able to explain it, a trivial interval equivalent to the passage from morning to night.”

Zhuangzi (-369–-286 BC) classic Chinese philosopher

Context: How do I know that enjoying life is not a delusion? How do I know that in hating death we are not like people who got lost in early childhood and do not know the way home? Lady Li was the child of a border guard in Ai. When first captured by the state of Jin, she wept so much her clothes were soaked. But after she entered the palace, shared the king's bed, and dined on the finest meats, she regretted her tears. How do I know that the dead do not regret their previous longing for life? One who dreams of drinking wine may in the morning weep; one who dreams weeping may in the morning go out to hunt. During our dreams we do not know we are dreaming. We may even dream of interpreting a dream. Only on waking do we know it was a dream. Only after the great awakening will we realize that this is the great dream. And yet fools think they are awake, presuming to know that they are rulers or herdsmen. How dense! You and Confucius are both dreaming, and I who say you are a dream am also a dream. Such is my tale. It will probably be called preposterous, but after ten thousand generations there may be a great sage who will be able to explain it, a trivial interval equivalent to the passage from morning to night.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. photo

“There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) United States Supreme Court justice

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Kessinger Publishing (2005).
Misattributed

Barack Obama photo

“Heroism is here, all around us, in the hearts of so many of our fellow citizens, just waiting to be summoned — as it was on Saturday morning.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, Tucson Memorial Address (January 2011)
Context: These men and women remind us that heroism is found not only on the fields of battle. They remind us that heroism does not require special training or physical strength. Heroism is here, all around us, in the hearts of so many of our fellow citizens, just waiting to be summoned — as it was on Saturday morning.

“LATER than usual one summer morning in 1984, Zoyd Wheeler drifted awake in sunlight through a creeping fig that hung in the window, with a squadron of blue jays stomping around on the roof. In his dream these had been carrier pigeons from someplace far across the ocean, landing and taking off again one by one, each bearing a message for him, but none of whom, light pulsing in their wings, he could ever quite get to in time.”

First lines
Vineland (1990)
Context: LATER than usual one summer morning in 1984, Zoyd Wheeler drifted awake in sunlight through a creeping fig that hung in the window, with a squadron of blue jays stomping around on the roof. In his dream these had been carrier pigeons from someplace far across the ocean, landing and taking off again one by one, each bearing a message for him, but none of whom, light pulsing in their wings, he could ever quite get to in time. He understood it to be another deep nudge from forces unseen, almost surely connected with the letter that had come along with his latest mental-disability check, reminding him that unless he did something publicly crazy before a date now less than a week away, he would no longer qualify for benefits. He groaned out of bed.

Marcin Malek photo