NIGHT QUOTES II
quotations about night
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse;
While night's black agents to their preys do rouse.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Macbeth
Never greet a stranger in the night, for he may be a demon.
TALMUD
Perhaps when night closes our eyes there is less order than we believe. Perhaps, indeed, it is this lack of order we perceive as darkness, a randomization of the waves of energy (like a sea), the fields of energy (like a farm) that appear to our deluded eyes -- set by light in an order of which they themselves are incapable -- to be the real world.
GENE WOLFE
The Shadow of the Torturer
The night is always treated differently to the day. When there is a problem at night, the first reaction of city officials or police commissioners is to stop it. Instead what you would do in the day is bring all the stakeholders together and try to at least make the situation a bit better.
MIRIK MILAN
"What Europe's 'Night Mayors' Can Teach New York", New York Times, August 30, 2017
Night watches calmly with her starry eyes
All tremulous with love.
ALBERT LAIGHTON
"To My Soul"
I'm waiting for the night to fall
I know that it will save us all
When everything's dark
Keeps us from the stark reality
I'm waiting for the night to fall
When everything is bearable
And there in the still
All that you feel
Is tranquility
DEPECHE MODE
"Waiting for the Night"
Some nights are made for torture, or reflection, or the savoring of loneliness.
POPPY Z. BRITE
attributed, A Thousand Fireflies
Each evening, the medieval community prepared itself for dark like a ship's crew preparing to face a gathering storm. At sunset, people began to retreat indoors, locking and bolting everything behind them. First the city gates, which had been opened at sunrise, were closed. The same thing happened in individual houses. They were locked and often the city authorities took the keys for safekeeping overnight.
WOLFGANG SCHIVELBUSCH
Disenchanted Night: The Industrialization of Light in the Nineteenth Century
God, like all highest things,
Hides light in shade,
And in the night his visitings
To sleep and dreams are clearliest made.
ARTHUR SYMONS
"To Night"
The other night is different; it is, paradoxically, within as well as beyond what we ordinarily know as day and night. Far from familiar, it is forever strange; never reassuring, it is endlessly fascinating. If day marks the beginning in which light dawns ever anew, the night beyond night is the origin from which day and night, as well as all the differences and oppositions that structure our world and render it comprehensible, emerge and to which they return. Neither light nor dark but something in between, this other night is the realm of shades that wander and drift but never settle. The darkness of this netherworld cannot be dispersed. The light of reason tries but always fails to grasp the other night with strict oppositions and precise combinations: either this or that ... both this and that. But shades always slip away--every light, we discover, casts a shadow. Shades of difference haunt our world and leave nothing clear or precise. If this placeless place that always appears by disappearing has a logic, it is fuzzy.
MARK C. TAYLOR
Field Notes from Elsewhere: Reflections on Dying and Living
Forests in the day are friendly places. They remind you of Sunday walks, swooshing leaves, holding a parent's big, warm hand, or providing that hand yourself. At night the woods take the gloves off and remind you why you're nervous in the dark. Night forests say "Go find a cave, monkey-boy, this place is not for you."
MICHAEL MARSHALL
The Upright Man
Night was the goddess of satisfaction.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Entre-Acte Reveries"
All is well, tho' faith and form
Be sunder'd in the night of fear.
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
In Memoriam
Night again. Darkness goes into you like ink into water.
GLEN DUNCAN
By Blood We Live
And night, free at last, stirred, stretching, feral.
CHRIS ABANI
Sanctificum
O night! O refreshing dark! for me you are the summons to an inner feast, you are the deliverer from anguish! In the solitude of the plains, in the stony labyrinths of a city, scintillation of stars, outburst of gaslamps, you are the fireworks of the goddess Liberty!
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"Evening Twilight"
The summer Night comes brooding down on Earth,
As Love comes brooding down on human hearts,
With bliss that hath no utterance save rich tears.
She floats in fragrance down the smiling dark,
Foldeth a kiss upon the lips of Life--
Curtaineth into rest the weary world--
And shuts us in with all our hid delights.
GERALD MASSEY
"Wedded Love"
The night is a tunnel ... a hole into tomorrow.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune
Round me too the night
In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade.
I see her veil draw soft across the day,
I feel her slowly chilling breath invade
The cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent with grey;
I feel her finger light
Laid pausefully upon life's headlong train; --
The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew,
The heart less bounding at emotion new,
And hope, once crush'd, less quick to spring again.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Thyrsis
You can't stand up to the night until you understand what's hiding in its shadows.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Onion Girl