Quotes about morning
page 6

“I don't ask for the meaning of the song of a bird or the rising of the sun on a misty morning. There they are, and they are beautiful.”

Pete Hamill (1935) American journalist, novelist, essayist, editor and educator

Beauty, Bird, Sun

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into an enormous insect.”

Franz Kafka book The Metamorphosis

Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt.
First lines
Variant translation (by David Wyllie): One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.
Source: The Metamorphosis (1915)

Dreams

“I thought you couldn't make it here until morning," I said.
"I hurried.”

Patricia Briggs book Blood Bound

Source: Blood Bound

“Next morning I went over to Paul’s for coffee and told him I had finished. “Good for you,” he said without looking up. “Start the next one today.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

Coffee

“Good night, Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

Sleep, Night

“Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

Life, Nature, Good Morning

“I’m frightened that one morning there will not be enough to keep me going.”

Melina Marchetta book On the Jellicoe Road

Source: On the Jellicoe Road

“Tell me about our legal issues. And use small words. I don't like to think at this hour of the morning. It hurts."

~Leo to Merripen”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Married By Morning

Thinking, Hurt

“Could I have a Sloe Gin Fizz, without the gin?"

"What's the point of that, Miss?" the waiter said.

"Tomorrow morning," Mabel said.”

Libba Bray book The Diviners

Source: The Diviners

“But just let me tell you something, son, a woman's love is like the morning dew, it's just as apt to settle on a horse turd as it is on a rose. So you better just get over it.”

Larry McMurtry (1936) American novelist, essayist, bookseller and screenwriter

Source: Leaving Cheyenne

Love, Horse

“I had an inspiration once. I woke up one morning and I knew that it was my task to swallow fifty asprin. It was my task:my job for the day.-17 Girl Interrupted”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted

Girl

“The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Good Morning, Back To Work, For Team

“If man be sensible and one fine morning, while he is lying in bed,
counts at the tips of his fingers how many things in this life truly will
give him enjoyment, invariably he will find food is the first one.”

Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese writer

Life, Food, Lying

“Every night when I go to bed I think, In the morning I will wake up in my own house and things will be back the way they were.
It hasn’t happened this morning, either.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Way, Thinking, Housing, Night

“Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

Lie, Reading

“He who every morning plans the transactions of that day and follows that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Life, Business

“This one looks good,” said Chong over breakfast the next morning.
Benny read out loud from the paper. “‘Pit Thrower.’ What’s that?”
“I don’t know,” Chong said with a mouth full of toast. “I think it has something to do with barbecuing.”
It didn’t.”

Jonathan Maberry book Rot & Ruin

Source: Rot & Ruin

Thinking, Reading

“For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Source: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Others

Life, Coffee

“The first coffee of the morning is never, ever, ready quickly enough. You die before it’s ready and then your ghost pours the resurrection potion out of the moka pot.”

Helen Oyeyemi book Boy, Snow, Bird

Source: Boy, Snow, Bird

Coffee

“I shall keep my book on the table here, and read a little every morning as soon as I wake, for I know it will do me good, and help me through the day.”

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) American novelist

Books, Reading, Help

“I have been quite put out of temper this morning and someone ought to die for it.”

Susanna Clarke book Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Source: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

“Chiron insisted that we talk about the Labyrinth in the morning which is like 'Hey, your life's in mortal danger. Sleep tight!”

Rick Riordan book The Battle of the Labyrinth

Source: The Battle of the Labyrinth

Life, Sleep

“me: why is it upset? shouldn't it be downset?
gideon: i will file a lawsuit against the dictionaries first thing tomorrow morning. we're going to tear merriam a new asshole and throw webster inside of it.”

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Tear

“The person who doesn't scatter the morning dew will not comb grey hairs”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Personality

“Runes, runes, runes… Runes. An inverted Algiz rune. The caption next to it said “Chernobog.” The Black God. Right. Of course, it wouldn’t be Chernobog, God of Morning Dew on the Rose Petals, but a woman could always hope.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Slays

God, Hope

“There's a hazardous sadness to the first sounds of someone else's work in the morning; it's as if stillness experiences pain in being broken.”

Jonathan Franzen book Freedom

Source: Freedom

Pain, Sadness

“For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Love, Health, Food, Light

“Egyptians believe in the power of the sunrise. They believe each morning begins not just a new day, but a new world.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

World

“I dreamt we walked together along the shore. We made satisfying small talk and laughed. This morning I found sand in my shoe and a seashell in my pocket. Was I only dreaming?”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Dreams, Shoe

“Colors shone with exceptional clarity in the rain. The ground was a deep black, the pine branches a brilliant green, the people wrapped in yellow looking like special spirits that were allowed to wander over the earth on rainy mornings only.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

People, Color

“Morning is wonderful. Its only drawback is that it comes at such an inconvenient time of day.”

Glen Cook book Sweet Silver Blues

Source: Sweet Silver Blues

Time

“We look too much to museums. The sun coming up in the morning is enough.”

Ralph Ellison book Shadow and Act

Source: Shadow and Act

Sun

“A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Coffee, Support, Bird, Sun

“In the morning it was morning and I was still alive.
Maybe I'll write a novel, I thought.
And then I did.”

Charles Bukowski book Post Office

Source: Post Office

“Listen," I told him. "Don't be so tough so early in the morning. I'm sure you've cut plenty of people's throats. I haven't even had my coffee yet.”

Ernest Hemingway book To Have and Have Not

Source: To Have and Have Not

People, Coffee

“There is nowhere morning does not go.”

Leah Hager Cohen American writer

Source: Glass, Paper, Beans: Revolutions on the Nature and Value of Ordinary Things

“That morning she pours Teacher's over my belly and licks it off. That afternoon she tries to jump out the window.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

Teachers

“In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Crack-Up

Variant: In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning.
Source: Quoted, The Crack-Up (1936)

Soul, Night

“In case you still haven't figured it out, he loves you. Your tiger will be back in the morning, and you can thank me anytime. Now, do I have to paint another picture for you, or do you think you can take it from here by yourself without screwing up?”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: Kiss an Angel

Love, Thinking, Painting

“You whispered my full name and we fell asleep in each other's arms and I remember how the next morning you were gone, completely gone, and nothing in my bed or the house could have proven otherwise.”

Junot Díaz book This Is How You Lose Her

Source: This Is How You Lose Her

Housing

“In the morning it was morning and I was still alive.”

Charles Bukowski book Post Office

Source: Post Office

Good Morning

“Its three in the morning,' she noted with dismay. 'Do you think Simon’s all right?'
'I think he‘s weird, actually,' said Jace. 'Though that has little to do with time.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Thinking, Time

“How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the grey light unwinds in turning fans.”

Pablo Neruda book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Source: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Soul, Star, Kiss, Light

“I am not a morning person.”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

Personality

“Your body is like a dew-drop on the morning grass, your life is as brief as a flash of lightning. Momentary and vain, it is lost in a moment. (From 'Fukan zazengi')”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

Life, Grass

“The mind does most of its best thinking when we aren't there. The answers are there in the morning.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Thinking

“Tell the story that's been growing in your heart, the characters you can't keep out of your head, the tale story that speaks to you, that pops into your head during your daily commute, that wakes you up in the morning.”

Jennifer Weiner (1970) American writer

Heart

“If everything's the same, then there aren't any choices! I want to wake up in the morning and decide things!”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

“I'm going to take you out of here… I'm going to take you home, to the world where you belong, where cats with bent tails live, and there are little backyards, and alarm clocks ring in the morning.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

World, Home, Cats

“I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately I am inspired at 9 o'clock every morning.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

“The next morning I woke up at oh eight oh oh hours, my brothers, and as I still felt shagged and fagged and fashed and bashed and my glazzies were stuck together real horrorshow with sleepglue, I thought I would not go to school.”

Anthony Burgess book A Clockwork Orange

Source: A Clockwork Orange

School

“It was clearly one of those mornings when I was particularly American.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: The Name of the Star

“At fifteen you had the radiance of early morning, at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon, and when you are my age you will give out, as I do, the genial golden warmth of 4 p. m.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book This Side of Paradise

Source: This Side of Paradise

Age

“I remember, I remember
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon
Nor brought too long a day;
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away.”

Thomas Hood (1799–1845) British writer

I Remember, I Remember, st. 1 (1827).
1820s

Sun, Housing, Night

“If you think, from this prelude, that anything like a romance is preparing for you, reader, you never were more mistaken. Do you anticipate sentiment, and poetry, and reverie? Do you expect passion, and stimulus, and melodrama? Calm your expectations; reduce them to a lowly standard. Something real, cool and solid lies before you; something unromantic as Monday morning, when all who have work wake with the consciousness that they must rise and betake themselves thereto.”

Charlotte Brontë book Shirley

Source: Shirley (1849), Ch. 1: Levitical

Thinking, Passion

“I have the right to do whatever I wish with my property. If I own a pile of wood, I can set fire to it even if it is currently nailed together in the shape of a barn. Cigarettes may not be healthy for me in the long run, but I have the freedom to smoke them anyway. Drinking alcohol may or may not have negative side effects, but even if it does, the government has no authority to prohibit you from consuming it, even if it is "in your own best interest." Since when do we let the government decide what is or isn't good for us? What the hell does Congress know about nutrition, anyway? (For that matter, what does Congress know about the Constitution?) If the government can use force whenever something is "in our best interest" then government should force everyone to wake up at 6am every morning for calisthenics in the front yard. Fast food establishments should be torn down and replaced with bars that serve carrot juice and alfalfa sprouts, since - "it's in your best interest."”

Michael Badnarik (1954) American software engineer

This paternalistic attitude that "the government knows best" and that you are merely a helpless child is insulting and reprehensible. Hitler used the same attitude to persuade the Germans to subjugate themselves to the "Fatherland."
Source: Good to be King (2004)

Alcohol, Food, Hell, Drink

“My tea's gone cold, I'm wondering why I got out of bed at all
the morning rain clouds up my window and I can't see at all
And even if I could it'd all be grey, but your picture on my wall
it reminds me that it's not so bad
it's not so bad”

Dido (1971) English singer-songwriter

Thank You
Song lyrics, No Angel (1999)

Tea

“I'm still at work with my hand to the plough and my face to the future. The shadows of evening … lengthen about me but morning is in my heart. … the testimony I bear is this: that the castle of enchantment is not yet behind me, it is before me still and daily I catch glimpses of its battlements and towers. The best of life is always further on. The real lure is hidden from our eyes, somewhere behind the hills of time.”

William Mulock (1843–1944) Canadian politician, judge, academic administrator

At age 87, [A Complimentary Luncheon to The Right Honourable Sir William Mulock …, The Empire Club of Canada Addresses, http://speeches.empireclub.org/60525/data, 13 February 1930]

Life, Time, Future, Heart

“You should work, no doubt. Work saves the mind from going astray. But prayer and meditation also are necessary. You must sit for meditation at least once in the morning and once in the evening. That will be like the helm of a boat. When one sits in meditation in the evening, there is self-examination in respect of the work done in the course of the day.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

Women Saints of East and West

“The City is of Night; perchance of Death,
But certainly of Night; for never there
Can come the lucid morning's fragrant breath
After the dewy dawning's cold grey air.”

James Thomson (B.V.) (1834–1882) Scottish writer (1834-1882)

Part I
The City of Dreadful Night (1870–74)

Death, Night

“Here in the UK, we've now got an evangelical television channel — it's the kind of thing that will be very familiar to everyone in the United States, especially if you've ever turned on your TV set on a Sunday morning, and seen one holy man after another, urging you to send money so that Jesus can buy a new Cadillac. Apparently, Jesus can't save the world until he's been properly kitted out with a million-dollar mansion, and a private jet — some small print in the Gospels that we must have missed.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"In Jesus' name" (25 April 2007) http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qZO2u-jDNpQ <br class="br">2007

Money, World

“At length the morn and cold indifference came.”

Nicholas Rowe The Fair Penitent

Act i, scene 1. Compare: "But with the morning cool reflection came", Sir Walter Scott, Chronicles of the Canongate, chap. iv. Scott also quotes this in his notes to "The Monastery", chapter iii, note 11; and with "calm" substituted for "cool" in "The Antiquary", chapter v.; and with "repentance" for "reflection" in "Rob Roy", chapter xii.
The Fair Penitent (1703)

Indifference

“If you will take the second chapter — let me have the book. [Reaches for a Bible. ] The fourth verse of the second chapter says: "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth, when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens," the word day there in the very next chapter is used to describe a period. I do not see that there is any necessity for construing the words, "the evening and the morning," as meaning necessarily a 24-hour day, "in the day when the Lord made the heaven and the earth."… I think it would be just as easy for the kind of God we believe in to make the earth in six days as in six years or in 6 million years or in 600 million years. I do not think it important whether we believe one or the other. … My impression is they were periods, but I would not attempt to argue against anybody who wanted to believe in literal days.”

William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) United States Secretary of State

Scopes Trial (1925), Day 7

God, Books, Thinking

“Early every morning a van calls to take his brief bag up to the Parliament House, where his papers are trustingly displayed in his box in the public corridor of the Courts and whence they are brought home again after the day's work.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), At the Scottish bar, p. 44

Home, Housing, Box

“I believe in you even on the morning after.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Slow Train Coming (1979), I Believe in You

“Lying down to sleep on the earthen riverbank, I thought, Vrindavan is attracting my heart like no other place. What is happening to me? Please reveal Your divine will. With this prayer, I drifted off to sleep.
Before dawn, I awoke to the ringing of temple bells, signaling that it was time to begin my journey to Hardwar. But my body lay there like a corpse. Gasping in pain, I couldn’t move. A blazing fever consumed me from within, and under the spell of unbearable nausea, my stomach churned. Like a hostage, I lay on that riverbank. As the sun rose, celebrating a new day, I felt my life force sinking. Death that morning would have been a welcome relief. Hours passed.
At noon, I still lay there. This fever will surely kill me, I thought.
Just when I felt it couldn’t get any worse, I saw in the overcast sky something that chilled my heart. Vultures circled above, their keen sights focused on me. It seemed the fever was cooking me for their lunch, and they were just waiting until I was well done. They hovered lower and lower. One swooped to the ground, a huge black and white bird with a long, curving neck and sloping beak. It stared, sizing up my condition, then jabbed its pointed beak into my ribcage. My body recoiled, my mind screamed, and my eyes stared back at my assailant, seeking pity. The vulture flapped its gigantic wings and rejoined its fellow predators circling above. On the damp soil, I gazed up at the birds as they soared in impatient circles. Suddenly, my vision blurred and I momentarily blacked out. When I came to, I felt I was burning alive from inside out. Perspiring, trembling, and gagging, I gave up all hope.
Suddenly, I heard footsteps approaching. A local farmer herding his cows noticed me and took pity. Pressing the back of his hand to my forehead, he looked skyward toward the vultures and, understanding my predicament, lifted me onto a bullock cart. As we jostled along the muddy paths, the vultures followed overhead. The farmer entrusted me to a charitable hospital where the attendants placed me in the free ward. Eight beds lined each side of the room. The impoverished and sadhu patients alike occupied all sixteen beds. For hours, I lay unattended in a bed near the entrance. Finally that evening the doctor came and, after performing a series of tests, concluded that I was suffering from severe typhoid fever and dehydration. In a matter-of-fact tone, he said, “You will likely die, but we will try to save your life.””

Radhanath Swami (1950) Gaudiya Vaishnava guru

Republished on The Journey Home website.
The Journey Home: Autobiography of an American Swami (Tulsi Books, 2010)

Life, Death, Pain, Hope

“I'm a very driven person. I'm always going after my goals. You just get up in the morning and kick yourself in the butt. I'd like to show people that they can have that same drive to go where they want to go. It's up to you and not to anybody else.”

Heidi Klum (1973) German model, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and actress

Quoted in Parade Magazine 10 July 2008 http://www.parade.com/celebrity/celebrity-parade/archive/pc_0194.html.

People, Personality

“Just yesterday morning, they let me know that you were gone.
Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you.
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song,
I just can't remember who to send it to. I've seen fire and I've seen rain.
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end.
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend.
But I always thought that I'd see you again.”

James Taylor (1948) American singer-songwriter and guitarist

"Fire and Rain" · Live performance (1970) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOIo4lEpsPY <br class="br">Song lyrics, Sweet Baby James (1970)

Time

“Well morning came, and it dressed the sky in a lovely yellow gown.
Shopping malls are opening in that narrow hallway of downtown,
filled with people who are shopping for their lovers and their friends,
singing "I won't ever be lonely again"”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

I Won't Ever be Happy Again
Insound Tour Support No.12 (2000)

Love, People, Lovers, Singing

“Now the creed to which I subscribe is like a battle cry, engraved on my heart - the Credo of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Before, in those former times, I could say, "I shall sleep in the dust: and if thou seek me in the morning, I shall not be" (Job 7:21). Now I can say, "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and the last day I shall rise out of the earth. And I shall be clothed with my skin, and in my flesh I shall see God. Whom I myself shall see and my eyes shall behold, and not another: this my hope is laid up in my bosom" (Job 19:25-27).”

Dorothy Day (1897–1980) Social activist

From Union Square to Rome (1938), p. 145

God, Hope, Sleep, Time

“I get to my desk at eight in the morning and I leave it at seven in the evening and I just work away. I'm a work machine.”

Gyles Brandreth (1948) British writer, broadcaster and former Member of Parliament

WhatsonStage interview, 2010

“We often hear, “Rape is rape, right?” No. A stranger forcing himself on a woman at knife point is different from a man and woman having sex while drunk and having regrets the morning. What is different? When a woman agrees to a date, she does not make a choice to be sexual, but she does make a choice to explore sexual possibilities. The woman makes no such choice with a stranger or an acquaintance.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 315.

Sex

“What foreigners like most about Britain is not multiculturalism or tolerance or any of that new Labour nonsense. No, what they like is our history. Shakespeare. Blenheim Palace. Soldiers in preposterous hats who don't move. Yes, they may go and see some dead dogs in a modern art gallery but that's only because they've spent the morning on top of a sightseeing bus and they're freezing.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

Source: For Crying Out Loud! The World According to Clarkson Volume Three (2008), p. 17

Dogs, Art, History, Dead

“I have long believed that it is only right and appropriate that before one sleeps with someone, one should be able – if called upon to do so – to make them a proper omelet in the morning. Surely that kind of civility and selflessness would be both good manners and good for the world.”

Anthony Bourdain (1956–2018) Chef and food writer

Medium Raw (2010)

World, Sleep

“I know no better way, my dearest Edward, of thanking you for your affectionate concern for me during my illness than by telling you myself, as soon as possible, that I continue to get better. I will not boast of my handwriting; neither that nor my face have yet recovered their proper beauty, but in other respects I am gaining strength very fast. I am now out of bed from 9 in the morning to 10 at night: upon the sofa, 'tis true, but I eat my meals with Aunt Cass in a rational way, and can employ myself, and walk from one room to another. Mr. Lyford says he will cure me, and if he fails, I shall draw up a memorial and lay it before the Dean and Chapter, and have no doubt of redress from that pious, learned, and disinterested body.”

Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist

Letter to J. Edward Austen (1817-05-27) [Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters: A Family Record]
Letters

Beauty, Way, Learning, Memory

“When I asked Bhutto what he thought of Assad, he described the Syrian leader as “The Levanter.” Knowing that, like himself, I was a keen reader of thrillers, the Pakistani Prime Minister knew that I would get the message. However, it was only months later when, having read Eric Ambler’s 1972 novel The Levanter that I understood Bhutto’s one-word pen portrayal of Hafez Al-Assad. In The Levanter the hero, or anti-hero if you prefer, is a British businessman who, having lived in Syria for years, has almost “gone native” and become a man of uncertain identity. He is a bit of this and a bit of that, and a bit of everything else, in a region that is a mosaic of minorities. He doesn’t believe in anything and is loyal to no one. He could be your friend in the morning but betray you in the evening. He has only two goals in life: to survive and to make money… Today, Bashar Al-Assad is playing the role of the son of the Levanter, offering his services to any would-be buyer through interviews with whoever passes through the corner of Damascus where he is hiding. At first glance, the Levanter may appear attractive to those engaged in sordid games. In the end, however, the Levanter must betray his existing paymaster in order to begin serving a new one. Four years ago, Bashar switched to the Tehran-Moscow axis and is now trying to switch back to the Tel-Aviv-Washington one that he and his father served for decades. However, if the story has one lesson to teach, it is that the Levanter is always the source of the problem, rather than part of the solution. ISIS is there because almost half a century of repression by the Assads produced the conditions for its emergence. What is needed is a policy based on the truth of the situation in which both Assad and ISIS are parts of the same problem.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Opinion: Like Father, Like Son http://www.aawsat.net/2015/02/article55341622/opinion-like-father-like-son, Ashraq Al-Awsat (February 20, 2015).

Life, Money, Truth, Game

“Across this dazzling
Mediterranean
August morning
The dolphins write such
Ideograms:
With power to wake
Me prisoned in
My human speech
They sign: 'I AM!”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"Dolphins"

“Could man be drunk for ever
With liquor, love, or fights,
Lief should I rouse at mornings
And lief lie down of nights.
But men at whiles are sober
And think by fits and starts,
And if they think, they fasten
Their hands upon their hearts.”

A.E. Housman (1859–1936) English classical scholar and poet

No. 10, st. 2. <br class="br"> Last Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8lspm10.txt (1922)

Love, Men, Lie, Thinking

“Once the experience of war makes visible the possibility of death that lies locked up in each moment, our thoughts cannot travel from one day to the next without meeting death's face. The mind is then strung up to a pitch it can stand for only a short time; but each new dawn introduces the same necessity; and days piled on days make years. On each one of these days the soul suffers violence. Regularly, each morning, the soul castrates itself of aspiration, for thought cannot journey through time without meeting death on the way. Thus war effaces all conceptions of purpose or goal, including even its own "war aims." It effaces the very notion of war's being brought to an end. Consequently, nobody does anything to bring this end about. In the presence of an armed enemy, what hand can relinquish its weapon? The mind ought to find a way out, but the mind has lost all capacity to so much as look outward. The mind is completely absorbed in doing itself violence. Always in human life, whether war or slavery is in question, intolerable sufferings continue, as it were, by the force of their own specific gravity, and so look to the outsider as though they deprived the sufferer of the resources which might serve to extricate him.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Iliad or The Poem of Force (1940-1941), p. 181

Life, Death, War, Way

“He wakes up in the morning
Does his teeth, bite to eat and he's rolling
Never changes a thing.
The week ends the week begins
She thinks, we look at each other
Wondering what the other is thinking
But we never say a thing
These crimes between us grow deeper.”

Dave Matthews (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

Ants Marching
Remember Two Things (1993)

Thinking, Change

“Deep in my morning time he made his mark
And still he comes uncalled to be my guide
In devastated regions
When the brain has lost its bearings in the dark
And broken in it’s body’s pride
In the long campaign to which it had sworn allegiance.”

Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) English poet, diarist and memoirist

Source: Collected Poems (1949), Revisitation, Lines from a draft version of "Revisitation" omitted from final version.

Time

“A pencil is a simple and predictable piece of technology. There's only one way of it working (it will function when it is sharp), and an obvious failure model(too short, too blunt, no lead). With a car, especially the kind of limp-along rust bucket most of us got for our first ride, it's more complex. There's coaxing involved, especially on cold mornings. There's that noise that never amounts to anything but never goes away, random stalls you begin to put down to the cast of the moon. None of it means it's broken, just that it requires friendly attention, that it has needs. Gradually you acquire a ritualized relationship to it, a bond forged by its unpredictability, by the fact it has to be dealt with. Which is how you come to know people, after all: not by things they have in common with everyone else, but through learning your way around their eccentricities, their hard edges and unpredictable softnesses, the things that make them different from everybody else.”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Source: The Lonely Dead (2004), Ch. 11

People, Cars, Way, Failure

“I oscillate between loathing Vladimir Nabokov ’s novels (when I think he’s showing off or insisting on making his presence felt) and loving them. This morning, I can’t stand a word of his fiction. But Nabokov’s “Letters to Vera” is not fiction. The showing off, such as there is, is that of a man to his lover, whose absence is felt. The fact that these are the words—such beautiful words—of a writer to his beloved of more than 46 years readies you for the spirit of sincerity in which they were written. Besides, I’m a sucker for a love story.”

Zia Haider Rahman British novelist

"12 Months of Reading", Who read what in 2014, December 13, 2014 Who is Reading what in 2014 http://www.wsj.com/articles/who-read-what-in-2014-1418426064 13 December 2014 "The Wall Street Journal". Retrieved on 2014-12-20.

Love, Beauty, Lovers, Thinking

“Catholics in our age when confronted with dogma do not react or yield; they stay neutral, and receive it as one news item among others, as if it were a simple formality. It is as if they lacked the background needed in order to understand. It was the highest point of the Holy Year, the summit to be attained on that morning of All Saints. The prize, the great reward of those who had followed it in faith and fervor. The Pontiff's words flew over the square with a swish of wings, as if a multitude of doves had been released. One had only to close his eyes and let himself be carried away in an ecstasy of light. Instead, it became a perfect example of the contradiction inherent in our age, when man has learned to fly with his body only to forget the great flights of the soul. The people in Saint Peter's square looked like birds with severed wings.”

Aldo Palazzeschi book Roma

Page 182, "1950"
Roma (1953)

People, Age, Faith, Soul

“Ah, the immortal ocean.
Consider the instructive metaphor: every conceivable terror dwells in her depths; she receives all wreckage, refuse, corruption of every kind, she pulls down into her depths human calamity indescribable; but none of this is any consideration to the sea. Let the screaming mortal passengers fight for room in the lifeboats, as the wreck belches flame and settles below the extinguishing wave; next morning she’ll still be beautiful and serene, her combers no less white, her distances as blue, her seabirds no less graceful as they wheel in the pure air. What perfection, to be so heartless. An inspiration to any lesser immortal.”

Kage Baker book The Children of the Company

Source: The Children of the Company (2005), Chapter 4, “Son Observe the Time” (p. 165)

Beauty, Fight, Perfection, Sea

“Hail the mild morning, where the dawn began,
The full fruition of the hopes of man.
Where sage Experience seals the sacred cause,
And that rare union, Liberty and Laws,
Speaks to the reas'ning race “to freedom rise,
Like them be equal, and like them be wise."”

Joel Barlow (1754–1812) American diplomat

The Conspiracy of Kings (1792)

Law, Hope, Freedom

“[Concerning an aurora, "vivid crimson … indescribably rich and deep":] The white, rayless light of morning, seen when I was alone amid the peaks of the California Sierra, had always seemed to me the most telling of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. But here the mountains themselves were made divine, and declared His glory in terms still more impressive.”

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

Travels in Alaska http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/travels_in_alaska/ (1915), chapter 9: The Discovery of Glacier Bay <br class="br">1910s

God, Mountain, Light

“What beauty can compare to that of a cantina in the early morning?”

Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano

Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. II (p. 49)

Beauty

“As the light of morning strikes now one peak and then another, some being illuminated while others are in the shadow, so the light of the essential moral principle shines now upon one duty and then upon another, while others are in the shadow.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 4 : Moral Ideals
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)

Light

“'Kant ought to be arrested and given three years in Solovki asylum for that "proof" of his!' Ivan Nikolayich burst out completely unexpectedly. 'Ivan!' whispered Berlioz, embarrassed. But the suggestion to pack Kant off to an asylum not only did not surprise the stranger but actually delighted him. 'Exactly, exactly!' he cried and his green left eye, turned on Berlioz glittered. 'That's exactly the place for him! I said to him myself that morning at breakfast: "If you'll forgive me, professor, your theory is no good. It may be clever but it's horribly incomprehensible. People will think you're mad."' Berlioz's eyes bulged. At breakfast… to Kant?”

Mikhail Bulgakov book The Master and Margarita

Book One in 'Never Talk to Strangers', MG, here Woland, Berlioz and Ivan are talking about Kant's views on existence of God
The Master and Margarita (1967)

People, Forgiveness, Thinking, Madness

“I sought not in her visage, for the tinge of the morning, and the lustre of heaven. These had vanished with life; but I hoped for liberty to print a last kiss upon her lips. This was denied me; for such had been the merciless blow that destroyed her, that not a lineament remained!”

Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810) American novelist, historian and editor

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)

Life, Hope, Kiss

“As morning branded the sea, darkness fell away at the far side of the beach. I turned to follow it.”

Samuel R. Delany book The Einstein Intersection

Section 13 (closing words)
The Einstein Intersection (1967)

Sea

“Dream within a dream,
Our dream deferred.
Good morning, daddy!
Ain’t you heard?”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

"Island"
Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)
Variant: What happens
to a dream deferred?
Daddy, ain’t you heard?

Dreams

“[Nelson, to Annabelle] "The misery of the world," he says, reaching into himself to overcome her resistance. "That's what I kept thinking during my group this morning – the pity of everything, all of us, these confused souls trying so pathetically hard to break out of the fog – to see through our compulsions, our needs as they chew us up…"”

John Updike book Rabbit Remembered

Rabbit Remembered (2000)

World, Soul, Thinking

“Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he’s in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this.”

William G. Boykin (1948) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

atheism.about.com http://atheism.about.com/b/a/035044.htm, 2003.

God, Time, Housing

“Errol Flynn was an excellent fencer. He also knew his lines, something I greatly respect in an actor. Of course there was one glaring inconsistency with his professionalism. Errol also drank on the set, something I greatly disliked. You couldn't stop him. If the director prohibited alcohol on the set, then Errol would inject oranges with booze and eat during breaks. Everything good that we got on film was shot early in the day. He started gulping his water early in the morning and by four P. M. was in no shape to continue filming.”

Maureen O'Hara (1920–2015) Irish-American film actress and singer

Source: Tis Herself (2004), p.214-215

Alcohol, Water

“O, to have the soul bathed all day long in this thought, " as the pebble in the willow brook " until the words come like the tears, because the heart is full, and we cannot help it; to feel, in the darkest hour, that there is an unseen Spectator whose eyes rest on us like morning on the flowers; and that in the severest sorrow, we can sink into a presence full of love and sympathy, deeper than ever breathed from earth or sky or loving hearts— a presence in which all fears and anxieties melt away as ice-crystals in the warm ocean. This is heaven.”

Edward Thomson (1810–1870) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 432.

Love, Fear, Feeling, Soul

“We were running with the night;
Playing in the shadows.
Just you and I,
Till the morning light.”

Lionel Richie (1949) American singer-songwriter, musician, record producer and actor

Running with the Night, co-written with Cynthia Weil.
Song lyrics, Can't Slow Down (1983)

Light, Night

“Once early in the morning, at two or three in the morning, when the master was asleep, the books in the library began to quarrel with each other as to which was the king of the library. The dictionary contended quite angrily that he was the master of the library because without words there would be no communication at all. The book of science argued stridently that he was the master of the library for without science there would have been no printing press or any of the other wonders of the world. The book of poetry claimed that he was the king, the master of the library, because he gave surcease and calm to his master when he was troubled. The books of philosophy, the economic books, all put in their claims, and the clamor was great and the noise at its height when a small low voice was heard from an old brown book lying in the center of the table and the voice said "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want."”

Louis Nizer (1902–1994) American lawyer

And all of the noise and the clamor in the library ceased, and there was a hush in the library, for all of the books knew who the real master of the library was.
"Ministers of Justice", Address delivered at the Eighty-Second Annual Convention of the Tennessee Bar Association at Gatlinburg, June 5, 1963; published in 31 Tennessee Law Review 1 (Fall 1963), p. 19.

Books, World, Communication, Lying

“THOUGH the sun was hot on this July morning Mrs Lucas preferred to cover the half-mile that lay between the station and her house on her own brisk feet, and sent on her maid and her luggage in the fly that her husband had ordered to meet her.”

E. F. Benson book Queen Lucia

. p. 7.
Queen Lucia (1920)

Sun, Housing, Flying

Quotes about morning page 6

Quotes about morning
page 6