147 Night Quotes

The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long.

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day. What hours, O what black hours we have spent This night!

My opinion of my whole experience varies from time to time. In broad daylight, and at most seasons I am apt to think the greater part of it a mere dream; but sometimes in the autumn, about two in the morning when winds and animals howl dismally, there comes from inconceivable depths below a damnable suggestions of rhythmical throbbing ... and I feel that the transition of Juan Romero was a terrible one indeed.

I cannot walk through the suburbs in the solitude of the night without thinking that the night pleases us because it suppresses idle details, just as our memory does.

Thus night with all her snares passed through the upper world and baited all heads sweetly, fed all foolish hopes, for night can bring to men all shrewish day denies, wrapped as a gift in the green leaves of opiate dream.

If there's one thing I can't bear, it's when hundreds of old men come creeping in through the window in the middle of the night and throw all manner of garbage over me. I can't bear that.

How beautiful is night! A dewy freshness fills the silent air; No mist obscures; nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain, Breaks the serene of heaven: In full-orbed glory, yonder moon divine Rolls through the dark blue depths; Beneath her steady ray The desert circle spreads Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky. How beautiful is night!

Come, blessed barrier between day and day, Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!

There, by the starlit fences, The wanderer halts and hears My soul that lingers sighing About the glimmering weirs.

All night have the roses heard The flute, violin, bassoon; All night has the casement jessamine stirr'd To the dancers dancing in tune; Till a silence fell with the waking bird, And a hush with the setting moon.

The snow had begun in the gloaming, And busily all the night Had been heaping field and highway With a silence deep and white.

I can see lights in the distance Trembling in the dark cloak of night Candles and lanterns are dancing, dancing A waltz on All Souls Night.

I arise from dreams of thee In the first sweet sleep of night, When the winds are breathing low, And the stars are shining bright.

About, about, in reel and rout The death fires danced at night.

The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out: At one stride comes the dark; With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea. Off shot the spectre-bark.

Like one that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows, a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.

The moon like a flower In heaven's high bower, With silent delight, Sits and smiles on the night.

My soul has gained the freedom of the night.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before.

Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne, In rayless majesty, now stretches forth Her leaden scepter o'er a slumbering world.

By night an atheist half believes a God.

Religion was too vague. God was different. He was something real, something I could feel. But there were only certain times when I could feel it. I used to lie between cool, clean sheets at night after I'd had a bath, after I had washed my hair and scrubbed my knuckles and finger-nails and teeth. Then I could lie quite still in the dark with my face to the window with the trees in it, and talk to God. 'I am clean, now. I've never been as clean. I'll never be cleaner.' And somehow, it was God. I wasn't sure that it was: just something cool and dark and clean.

The moon is dark, and the gods dance in the night; there is terror in the sky, for upon the moon hath sunk an eclipse foretold in no books of men or of earth's gods...' There is unknown magic on Hatheg-Kla, for the screams of the frightened gods have turned to laughter, and the slopes of ice shoot up endlessly into the black heavens whither I am plunging... Hei! Hei! At last! In the dim light I behold the gods of earth!

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.

The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit. (683)

Oh, night that guided me, Oh, night more lovely than the dawn, Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover, Lover transformed in the Beloved!

So, we'll go no more a roving So late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving, And the moon be still as bright.

Though the night was made for loving, And the day returns too soon, Yet we'll go no more a roving By the light of the moon.

The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits;-on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.

While shepherds watched their flocks by night, All seated on the ground, The angel of the Lord came down, And glory shone around.

Swiftly walk over the western wave, Spirit of Night! Out of the misty eastern cave Where, all the long and lone daylight, Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear, Which make thee terrible and dear, - Swift be thy flight!

The moving Moon went up the sky, And no where did abide: Softly she was going up, And a star or two beside.

Death will come when thou art dead, Soon, too soon - Sleep will come when thou art fled; Of neither would I ask the boon I ask of thee, beloved Night - Swift be thine approaching flight, Come soon, soon!

To find themselves utterly alone at night where company is desirable and expected makes some people fearful; but a case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory, analogy, testimony, probability, induction - every kind of evidence in the logician's list - have united to persuade consciousness that it is quite in isolation.

Oft, in the stilly night, Ere Slumber's chain has bound me, Fond Memory brings the light Of other days around me; The smiles, the tears, Of boyhood's years, The words of love then spoken; The eyes that shone, Now dimm'd and gone, The cheerful hearts now broken!

The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night walkers' song After great cathedral gong; A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains All that man is, All mere complexities, The fury and the mire of human veins.

So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty, I think of Dean Moriarty.

I want to wake up with the rain Falling on a tin roof While I'm safe there in your arms So all I ask is for you To come away with me in the night Come away with me

Well it's a marvelous night for a moondance, With the stars up above in your eyes. A fantabulous night to make romance, 'Neath the cover of October skies.

Like a dog, he hunts in dreams, and thou art staring at the wall, Where the dying night-lamp flickers, and the shadows rise and fall.

Come into the garden, Maud, For the black bat, night, has flown, Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone; And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, And the musk of the rose is blown.

The three-toed tree-toad Sings his sweet ode To the moon; The funny bunny And his honey Trip in tune.

Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night.

C'etait l'heure ou l'essaim des reves malfaisants Tord sur leurs oreillers les bruns adolescents.

From high black walls, gleaming vaguely with rain, Each yellow light looked down like a golden eye. They trembled from coign to coign, and tower to tower, Along high terraces quicker than dream they flew. And some of them steadily glowed, and some soon vanished, And some strange shadows threw.

And there was one, beneath black eaves, who thought, Combing with lifted arms her golden hair, Of the lover who hurried towards her through the night; And there was one who dreamed of a sudden death As she blew out her light.

As darkness falls The walls grow luminous and warm, the walls Tremble and glow with the lives within them moving, Moving like music, secret and rich and warm. How shall we live tonight? Where shall we turn? To what new light or darkness yearn? A thousand winding stairs lead down before us; And one by one in myriads we descend By lamplit flowered walls, long balustrades, Through half-lit halls which reach no end.

Once I loved, and she I loved was darkened. Again I loved, and love itself was darkened. Vainly we follow the circle of shadowy days. The screen at last grows dark, the flutes are silent. The doors of night are closed. We go our ways.

The sky spread over with one continuous cloud, whitened by the light of the moon, which, though her dim shape was seen, did not throw forth so strong a light as to chequer the earth with shadows. At once the clouds seemed to cleave asunder, and left her in the centre of a black-blue vault. She sailed along, followed by multitudes of stars, small, and bright, and sharp.

From a magician's midnight sleeve the radio-singers distribute all their love-songs over the dew-wet lawns.

A Vastness, as a Neighbor, came, A Wisdom, without Face, or Name, A Peace, as Hemispheres at Home And so the Night became.

And the heavy night hung dark, The hills and waters o'er, When a band of exiles moored their bark On the wild New England shore.

That night, that year Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

Never could I tell, try as I might, what it actually was that I saw; nor could the still face tell, for although it must have seen more than I did, it will never speak again. But always I shall guard against the mocking and insatiate Hypnos, lord of sleep, against the night sky, and against the mad ambitions of knowledge and philosophy.

And so, by night, while we were all at rest, I think the coming sped the parting guest.

God makes sech nights, all white an' still, Fur'z you can look or listen, Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill, All silence an' all glisten.

Flow my tears, fall from your springs, Exil'd for ever: let me mourn Where night's black bird her sad infamy sings, There let me live forlorn.

Under the shady roof Of branching elm star-proof.

I walk unseen On the dry smooth-shaven green, To behold the wandering moon, Riding near her highest noon, Like one that had been led astray Through the heav'n's wide pathless way, And oft, as if her head she bowed, Stooping through a fleecy cloud.

On a dark night, Kindled in love with yearnings - oh, happy chance! - I went forth without being observed, My house being now at rest. In darkness and secure, By the secret ladder, disguised - oh, happy chance! - In darkness and in concealment, My house being now at rest.

In the happy night, In secret, when none saw me, Nor I beheld aught, Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart.

Come, blessed Darkness, come and bring thy balm For eyes grown weary of the garish day! Come with thy soft, slow steps, thy garments gray, Thy veiling shadows, bearing in thy palm The poppy-seeds of slumber, deep and calm.

A diamond kite On a diamond flight. Over the lights, under the moon. Over the lights, under the moon. Over the moon, over the moon!

I hear him, before I go to sleep And focus on the day that's been. I realise he's there, When I turn the light off and turn over.

You came out of the night, Wearing a mask in white colour. My eyes were shining On the wine, and your aura.

At night They're seen Laughing, Loving. They know The way To be Happy.

Alone he rides, alone, The fair and fatal king: Dark night is all his own, That strange and solemn thing.

And so it's there my homage's due Clutched by the still of the night And now I feel you move Every breath is full So it's there my homage's due Clutched by the still of the night Even the distance feels so near All for the love of you.

Oh night thou was my guide Oh night more loving than the rising sun Oh night that joined the lover to the beloved one transforming each of them into the other.

Upon that misty night in secrecy, beyond such mortal sight Without a guide or light than that which burned so deeply in my heart That fire t'was led me on and shone more bright than of the midday sun To where he waited still it was a place where no one else could come.

Bend low, O dusky Night, And give my spirit rest, Hold me to your deep breast, And put old cares to flight. Give back the lost delight That once my soul possest, When Love was loveliest.

You know who I always depend on? Not strangers, not friends. The telephone! That's my best friend. I seldom write letters, but I love calling friends, especially late at night, when I can't sleep.

The day in his hotness, The strife with the palm; The night in her silence, The stars in their calm.

Nocte latent mendae, vitioque ignoscitur omni, Horaque formosam quamlibet illa facit.

Tonight the small are free from the great and the great protect the small.

Thou dirge Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, Vaulted with all thy congregated might.

PETE: I had the same bloody trouble about two nights ago. I come in, about half past eleven at night. I come in, I get into bed, you see, feeling quite sleepy. I could feel the lids of me eyes beginning to droop, you see - a bit of droop in the eyes. I was about to drop off when suddenly - tap, tap, tap at the bloody window pane. I looked out. You know who it was?

Her washing ended with the day, Yet lived she at its close, And passed the long, long night away In darning ragged hose. But when the sun in all its state Illumed the Eastern skies, She passed about the kitchen grate And went to making pies.

Night makes no difference 'twixt the Priest and Clerk; Joan as my Lady is as good i' the dark.

The horned Moon, with one bright star Within the nether tip.

Beyond the shadow of the ship, I watched the water-snakes: They moved in tracks of shining white, And when they reared, the elfish light Fell off in hoary flakes.

Enchantress of the stormy seas, Priestess of Night's high mysteries.

Raven from the dim dominions On the Night's Plutonian shore, Oft I hear thy dusky pinions Wave and flutter round my door- See the shadow of thy pinions Float along the moonlit floor.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds.

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r The moping owl does to the moon complain.

The sovereign brilliancy of Sirius pierced the eye with a steely glitter, the star called Capella was yellow, Aldebaran and Betelgueux shone with a fiery red. To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world eastward is almost a palpable movement.

The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank blooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen.

That very night while gentle sleep The urchin's eyelids kissed, Two stern-faced men set out from Lynn, Through the cold and heavy mist; And Eugene Aram walked between, With gyves upon his wrist.

Somewhere deep in the middle of the night, lovers hold each other tight. Whisper in their anxious ears, words of love that disappear.

Midnight, when the monotonous tick-tock of diurnal progress is for one throbbing moment replaced by the cool but smokey honk of a saxophone, alternately seductive and threatening. Midnight. The black growth on the clock face that has to be biopsied every twenty-four hours to see whether it is malignant or benign.

Night, when tangos play on the nurse's radio and rat poison sings its own hot song behind the cellar door. Night, when the long snake feeds, when the black sedan cruises the pleasure districts, when neon flickers 'Free at Last' in a dozen lost languages, and shapes left over from childhood move furtively behind the moon-dizzy boughs of the fir.

And sometime around 2 AM you end up taking advantage of yourself. Ain't no way around that. Making a scene with a magazine.