Night time is really the best time to work. All the ideas are there to be yours because everyone else is asleep. ~Catherine O'Hara
There they stand, the innumerable stars, shining in order like a living hymn, written in light. ~N.P. Willis
I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day. ~Vincent Van Gogh
The night walked down the sky with the moon in her hand. ~Frederick L. Knowles
There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls. ~George Carlin, Brain Droppings, 1997
Most glorious night!
Thou wert not sent for slumber!
~Lord Byron, Childe Harold
Night is a world lit by itself. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
By night, an atheist half believes in God. ~Edward Young, Night Thoughts
O radiant Dark! O darkly fostered ray!
Thou hast a joy too deep for shallow Day.
~George Eliot, The Spanish Gypsy
Moonlight is sculpture. ~Nathaniel Hawthorne
Metaphor for the night sky: A trillion asterisks and no explanations. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com
Research is the name given the crystal formed when the night's worry is added to the day's sweat. ~Martin H. Fischer
Twilight drops her curtain down, and pins it with a star. ~Lucy Maud Montgomery
Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline
What I take from my nights, I add to my days. ~Leon de Rotrou, "Vencelas," translated
Mine is the night, with all her stars. ~Edward Young
One summer night, out on a flat headland, all but surrounded by the waters of the bay, the horizons were remote and distant rims on the edge of space. Millions of stars blazed in darkness, and on the far shore a few lights burned in cottages. Otherwise there was no reminder of human life. My companion and I were alone with the stars: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon. It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century, this little headland would be thronged with spectators. But it can be see many scores of nights in any year, and so the lights burned in the cottages and the inhabitants probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead; and because they could see it almost any night, perhaps they never will. ~Rachel Carson
If the Stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
O wild and wondrous midnight,
There is a might in thee
To make the charmed body
Almost like spirit be,
And give it some faint glimpses
Of immortality.
~James Russell Lowell, Midnight
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. ~Jorge Luis Borges
There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery. ~Joseph Conrad
Nothing like a nighttime stroll to give you ideas. ~J.K. Rowling, "The Egg and The Eye," Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 2000, spoken by the character Mad-Eye Moody
Is there not
A tongue in every star that talks with man,
And wooes him to be wise? nor wooes in vain;
This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,
And wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.
~Anna Letitia Barbauld, A Summer Evening's Meditation
Night is the blotting paper for many sorrows. ~Author Unknown
Learn to reverence night and to put away the vulgar fear of it, for, with the banishment of night from the experience of man, there vanishes as well a religious emotion, a poetic mood, which gives depth to the adventure of humanity. ~Henry Beston
When the moon, after covering herself with darkness as in sorrow, at last throws off the garments of her widowhood, she does not at once expose herself impudently to the public gaze; but for a time remains veiled in a transparent cloud, till she gradually acquires courage to endure the looks and admiration of beholders. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827
The night sky is a miracle of infinitude. ~Terri Guillemets
In my age, as in my youth, night brings me many a deep remorse. I realize that from the cradle up I have been like the rest of the race - never quite sane in the night. ~Mark Twain
To me at least was never evening yet
But seemed far beautifuller than its day.
~Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book
For the happiest life, rigorously plan your days, leave your nights open to chance. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
No sight is more provocative of awe than is the night sky. ~Llewelyn Powys
Night's black Mantle covers all alike. ~Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas
Some praise the Lord for Light,
The living spark;
I thank God for the Night
The healing dark.
~Robert William Service, "Weary"
Dawn seemed to follow midnight with indecent haste. ~J.K. Rowling
Night has become painful for me. It brings to light the regrets of the day. ~Grey Livingston
Look how the pale queen of the silent night
Doth cause the ocean to attend upon her....
~Charles Best, "A Sonnet of the Moon"
The stars are the street lights of eternity. ~Author Unknown
How like a queen comes forth the lonely Moon
From the slow opening curtains of the clouds
Walking in beauty to her midnight throne!
~George Croly, Diana
To seek the breast of darkness and be suckled by the night. ~Paul Simon, "A Poem on the Underground Wall"
Fooey! The porchlight is burnt out, and I can't see whether it's dark outside or not. ~Dave Beard
How long the night seems to one kept awake by pain. ~Bernard Joseph Saurin, Blanche et Guiscard, translated
Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel. ~Samuel Johnson
It is one of life's bitterest truths that bedtime so often arrives just when things are really getting interesting. ~Lemony Snicket
Day hath put on his jacket, and around
His burning bosom buttoned it with stars.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., "Evening"
Since the coming of air pollution and city lights, the stars have become much more shy than they used to be. ~Terri Guillemets
In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time. ~Somerset Maugham
Stars are the daisies that begem
The blue fields of the sky.
~D.M. Moir
Press close, bare-bosomed 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
For the night shows stars and women in a better light. ~Lord Byron, Don Juan
And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs
And as silently steal away.
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Day Is Done
How lovely are the portals of the night,
When stars come out to watch the daylight die.
~Thomas Cole, Twilight
The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve.
Lovers, to bed; 'tis almost fairy time.
~William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream
A house is never still in darkness to those who listen intently; there is a whispering in distant chambers, an unearthly hand presses the snib of the window, the latch rises. Ghosts were created when the first man awoke in the night. ~J.M. Barrie, Little Minister
'Tis midnight now. The bend and broken moon,
Batter'd and black, as from a thousand battles,
Hangs silent on the purple walls of Heaven.
~Joaquin Miller, Ina
We wake in the night, to stereophonic silence. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960
That orbed maiden, with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Cloud
Day, like a weary pilgrim, had reached the western gate of heaven, and Evening stooped down to unloose the latchets of his sandal shoon. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hyperion
Midnight! the outpost of advancing day!
The frontier town and citadel of night!
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Two Rivers
Soon as midnight brought on the dusky hour
Friendliest to sleep and silence.
~John Milton, Paradise Lost
The young moon has fed
Her exhausted horn
With the sunset's fire.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley
These blessed candles of the night. ~William Shakespeare, referring to stars, Merchant of Venice
With finger on her solemn lip,
Night hushed the shadowy earth.
~Margaret Deland
It seemed to be a necessary ritual that he should prepare himself for sleep by meditating under the solemnity of the night sky... a mysterious transaction between the infinity of the soul and the infinity of the universe. ~Victor Hugo
Acknowledgment: Thank you very much to John C. Shepard of the GIGA Quotes Home Page for sharing some of the wonderful quotations on this page!
