Quotations About / On: NIGHT

  • 41.
    She knew that Marcel needed her and that she needed this need, that it kept her alive night and day; especially at night when he did not want to be alone, or to age or to die, with that stubborn look he had, and that she sometimes recognized on other men's faces, the only look common to all the madmen hidden behind airs of reason, until the delirium rises and throws them, desperate, to a woman's body to bury, without desire, the frightening things that solitude and night have shown them.
    (Albert Camus (1913-1960), French-Algerian novelist, dramatist, philosopher. Janine on her husband Marcel, in The Fall, p. 30, Gallimard (1957).)
  • 42.
    And thus they sang their mysterious duo, sang of their nameless hope, their death-in-love, their union unending, lost forever in the embrace of night's magic kingdom. O sweet night, everlasting night of love! Land of blessedness whose frontiers are infinite!
    (Thomas Mann (1875-1955), German author, critic. originally published in Tristan. Sechs Novellen, Fischer (1903). Tristan, ch. 8, p. 118, trans. by David Luke, Bantam Classic (1988). Mann's transliteration of Richard Wagner's Liebestod theme in his opera Tristan und Isolde (1859).)
  • 43.
    The longest day must have its close—the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning. An eternal, inexorable lapse of moments is ever hurrying the day of the evil to an eternal night, and the night of the just to an eternal day.
    (Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), U.S. novelist, anti-slavery campaigner. Uncle Tom's Cabin, ch. 40 (1852).)
    More quotations from: Harriet Beecher Stowe, night, evil
  • 44.
    Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-browed night.
    Give me my Romeo, and when I shall die,
    Take him and cut him out in little stars
    And he will make the face of heaven so fine
    That all the world will be in love with night,
    And pay no worship to the garish sun.
    (William Shakespeare (1564-1616), British dramatist, poet. Juliet, in Romeo and Juliet, act 3, sc. 2, l. 20-5. Expressing her adoration of Romeo.)
  • 45.
    Lady Utterword: What a lovely night! It seems made for us. Hector: The night takes no interest in us. What are we to the night?
    (George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Anglo-Irish playwright, critic. (1919). Heartbreak House, act 3, The Bodley Head Bernard Shaw: Collected Plays with their Prefaces, vol. 5, ed. Dan H. Laurence (1972).)
    More quotations from: George Bernard Shaw, night
  • 46.
    If we dreamed the same thing every night, it would affect us much as the objects we see every day. And if a common workman were sure to dream every night for twelve hours that he was a king, I believe he would be almost as happy as a king who should dream every night for twelve hours on end that he was a common workman.
    (Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), French scientist, philosopher. repr. Encyclopedia Britannica, Chicago (1952). Pensées, no. 386 (1670), trans. J.M. Dent & Sons, London (1931).)
  • 47.
    Here is what sometimes happened to me: after spending the first part of the night at my desk—that part when night trudges heavily uphill—I would emerge from the trance of my task at the exact moment when night had reached the summit and was teetering on that crest, ready to roll down into the haze of dawn....
    (Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), Russian-born U.S. novelist, poet. "Terror," Tyrants Destroyed (1975).)
    More quotations from: Vladimir Nabokov, night, sometimes
  • 48.
    My soul is now her day, my day her night,
    So I lie down, and so I rise;
    (Karl Shapiro (b. 1913), U.S. poet, critic. Nostalgia (l. 11-12). . . New & Selected Poems, 1940-1986 [Karl Shapiro]. (1987) University of Chicago Press.)
    More quotations from: Karl Shapiro, night
  • 49.
    Our emotions
    Are only "incidents"
    In the effort to keep day and night together.
    (T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot (1888-1965), Anglo-American poet, critic. A Note on War Poetry, st. 3-4.)
  • 50.
    I awoke in the Midsummer not-to-call night, in the white and the
    walk of the morning:
    (Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), British poet. Moonrise (l. 1). . . Gerard Manley Hopkins. Catherine Phillips, ed. (1986) Oxford University Press.)
    More quotations from: Gerard Manley Hopkins, night
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