quotations about night
Night, o my mother, from whose womb I took my being.
AESCHYLUS
The Eumenides
No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be.
BRAM STOKER
Dracula
It was, however, the long, long nights, far more than the wonderful days, which impregnated my future--the dark, still nights full of hints and fine transitions, shadowy terrors, fleeting visions and marvelous dreams.
AMELIA E. BARR
All the Days of My Life
Thy mission is not lonely, lovely Night!
But full of sweet companionship in toil.
Wisdom, Mercy, Love, are thy handmaidens;
Minist'ring angels of thy tender care!
C. B. LANGSTON
"Night"
Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer!
Descend with broad-winged flight,
The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair,
The best-beloved Night!
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"Hymn to the Night"
It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
The Sun Also Rises
And when night, guiding her bright train of stars,
Throws o'er the sleeping world her gloomy veil,
Lonely amidst the desert and the darkness,
Musing upon the night's calm majesty;
Wrapt up in quietness, with shade and silence,
My soul more closely worshippeth Thy presence;
With an internal day I feel enlighten'd,
And hear a voice, which biddeth me to hope.
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
"Prayer", Poetical Meditations
But what after all is one night? A short space, especially when the darkness dims so soon, and so soon a bird sings, a cock crows, or a faint green quickens, like a turning leaf, in the hollow of the wave. Night, however, succeeds to night. The winter holds a pack of them in store and deals them equally, evenly, with indefatigable fingers. They lengthen; they darken. Some of them hold aloft clear planets, plates of brightness. The autumn trees, ravaged as they are, take on the flash of tattered flags kindling in the gloom of cool cathedral caves where gold letters on marble pages describe death in battle and how bones bleach and burn far away in Indian sands. The autumn trees gleam in the yellow moonlight, in the light of harvest moons, the light which mellows the energy of labour, and smooths the stubble, and brings the wave lapping blue to the shore.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
To the Lighthouse
The face of the night
will be an old wound that reopens each evening,
impassive and living. The distant silence
will ache like a soul, mute, in the dark.
We'll speak to the night as it's whispering softly.
CESARE PAVESE
"Sleeping Friend"
Man's being is the night and the night is man's being.
KOBO ABE
The Frontier Within
Some are lapped in night, where all things are undone.
AESCHYLUS
The Libation Bearers
Hail universal Lord, be bounteous still
To give us only good; and if the night
Have gathered aught of evil or concealed,
Disperse it, as now light dispels the dark.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
O holy Night! from these I learn to bear
What man has borne before!
Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care,
And they complain no more.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"Hymn to the Night"
Dear Night! this world's defeat;
The stop to busy fools; care's check and curb;
The day of spirits; my soul's calm retreat
Which none disturb!
Christ's progress, and His prayer-time;
The hours to which high Heaven doth chime.
HENRY VAUGHAN
Silex Scintillans
The night alone understands you and enfolds you in its arms. One with the shadows. Without nightmare. An inexplicable peace.
ANNE RICE
Interview with the Vampire
Press close bare-bosom'd night -- press close magnetic nourishing night!
Night of south winds -- night of the large few stars!
Still nodding night -- mad naked summer night.
WALT WHITMAN
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
Night calls to the sandhills
and gathers them under her.
She pushes away cities
because their sharp lights
hurt her soft breast.
Even candles make a sore place
when they stick in the night.
LOLA RIDGE
"Sun-Up"
Night, to the earnest soul, opens the Bible of the Universe, and on the leaves of Heaven is written--"God is everywhere!"
EDWARD BULWER-LYTTON
The Last of the Barons
Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne,
In rayless majesty, now stretches forth
Her leaden scepter o'er a slumbering world.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
Let those have night, that slily love t' immure
Their cloister'd crimes, and sin secure;
Let those have night, that blush to let men know
The baseness they ne'er blush to do;
Let those have night, that love to have a nap,
And loll in ignorance's lap;
Let those, whose eyes, like owls, abhor the light,
Let those have night.
FRANCIS QUARLES
Emblems