night Quotes

“The witching hour, somebody had once whispered to her, was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world all to themselves.”

“Stars and shadows ain’t good to see by.”

“All nights are dark days, because night is simply a badly lit version of day.”

“Wild nights are my glory!”

“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...”

“This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless, Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done, Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best. Night, sleep, and the stars.”

″[T]he night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started.”

“The air was full of all the night noises that, taken together, make one big silence.”

“I like the night. Without the dark, we’d never see the stars.”

“Twilight, again,” he murmured. “Another ending. No matter how perfect the day is, it always has to end.”

“A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east.”

“Four days will quickly steep themselves in nights; Four nights will quickly dream away the time.”

“Tonight I’m gonna lay right here and look up. I like it.”

“Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it.”

“A guy sets alone out here at night, maybe readin’ books or thinkin’ or stuff like that.”

“Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make!”

“No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear to his heart and eye the morning can be.”

“And on special dank midnights in August, he peeks out of the shutters and sometimes he speaks.”

In the cold and the darkness, a poor little girl, with bare head and naked feet, roamed through the streets.

“I like to hop all day and night from right to left and left to right.”

“So, surrender to sleep at last. What a misery, keeping watch through the night, wide awake -- you’ll soon come up from under all your troubles.”

“All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely preambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils.”

His descent was like nightfall.

“Home is behind, the world ahead, And there are many paths to tread Through shadows to the edge of night, Until the stars are all alight.”

“Let him not vow to walk in the dark, who has not seen the nightfall.”

“In that moonlit hours, I acquired a sense of the otherness of things. I liked the feeling the moonlight gave me, as if it wasn’t the opposite of day, but its underside, its private side, when the fabulous purred on my snow-white sheet like some dark cat come in from the desert.”

“Many nights I drifted off to sleep to his rumbling voice reading from a book of battle strategy. And despite myself, despite what he’d done and what he was, I came to love him. It’s just not a comfortable kind of love.”

“We often sneaked out at night to, for example, sing ‘American Pie’ beneath the window of the captain of the cheerleading team. (Her father was a local minister and so, we reasoned, less likely to shoot). After I was caught returning at dawn from one such late-night escapade, my worried mother thoroughly interrogated me regarding every drug teenagers take, never suspecting that the most intoxicating thing I’d experienced, by far, was the volume of romantic poetry she’d handed me the previous week.”

“Dusk is just an illusion because the sun is either above the horizon or below it. And that means that day and night are linked in a way that few things are there cannot be one without the other yet they cannot exist at the same time. How would it feel I remember wondering to be always together yet forever apart?”

’Later that night, Dad stopped the car out in the middle of the desert, and we slept under the stars. We had no pillows, but Dad said that was part of his plan. He was teaching us to have good posture. The Indians didn’t use pillows, either, he explained, and look how straight they stood. We did have our scratchy army-surplus blankets, so we spread them out and lay there, looking up at the field of stars. I told Lori how lucky we were to be sleeping out under the sky like Indians. ‘We could live like this forever,’ I said. ‘I think we’re going to,’ she said.”

“All alone, in the middle of the night, Coraline began to cry. There was no other sound in the empty flat.”

“Just because a man glances up at the sky at night does not make him an astronomer, you know.”

“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.”

“I spent a long time trying to find my center until I looked closely at it one night & found it had wheels and moved easily in the slightest breeze. So now I spend less time sitting and more time sailing. ”

“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.”

“Goodnight room Goodnight moon”

“Goodnight stars Goodnight air Goodnight noises everywhere”

“In the great green room There was a telephone And a red balloon”

“And goodnight to the old lady whispering ‘hush’”

“Your mind will keep you up at night, make you cry, destroy you over and over again. You need to convince your mind that it has to let go…because your heart already knows how to heal.”

“The blacker the night around us grew, the brighter and truer and more beautiful burned the word of God.”

“Be inside by nightfall. Lock all doors and windows. Deny entry to strangers. Shed light inside and out. Prepare candles and lanterns fro when the electricity fails. Wear silver. If caught outdoors, find running water.

“There was something to be said about the quietness of night. About the stillness. Everything was tranquil and unmoving as though the world had come to a temporary stop in its rotation—ceased its constant spiral of madness.”

“He came in to demand an answer and I told him the truth. That I have fought with myself over that night, one half of me swearing blind that I tied a simple slipknot, the other half convinced that I tied the Langford double. I can never know for sure.”

“To know the darkness is to love the light, to welcome dawn and fear the coming night.”

“Night has patterns that can be read less by the living than by the dead.”

“And if at night one holds you closely pressed, locked in his prayers so you cannot stray, …..you are the guest …..who comes, but not to stay.”

“This is how I think of us, when I remember our nights at Troy: Achilles and I beside each other, Phoinix smiling and Automedon stuttering through the punch lines of jokes, and Briseis with her secret eyes and quick, spilling laughter.”

“This is the War’s evensong, the War’s canonical hour, and the night is real.

“This only was wanting. Now comes the night.”

“For May will have no sluggardry at night, Season that pricks in every gentle heart, Awaking it from sleep, and bids it start”

“Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness.”

“Sully strains to say his phrases, sickened by the sounds he raises, strings of thoughts come out in knots, he solves his sentences like mazes. At night, he writes his thoughts instead and sighs as they steadily rush from his head.”

“You look like a winter night”, he had told her when he had given it to her. “I could sleep inside the cold of you”.”

“I was a loosened, a top whirling around and around, and I didn’t know who I danced with or what they looked like, only that I had become the music and the fire and the night, and there was nothing that could slow me down.”

“There is no sun without the shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his efforts will henceforth be unceasing.”

“Do you lie awake at night to come up with all you witty replies for the following day?”

“I had a dream about you last night. I could fly. I was going to use this power to impress you, but you were too heavy to carry, so I won you over with my personality instead.”

“‘Good night, good night, parting is such sweet sorrow,’ she whispered. ‘That I shall say good night till it be morrow,’ Harry replied.”

“I done me best when I was let. Thinking always if I go all goes. A hundred cares, a tithe of troubles and is there one who understands me? One in a thousand of years of the nights? All me life I have been lived among them but now they are becoming lothed to me.”

“This is ... this is going to be a fun night.”

“I was starving until one night My love tricked God Himself To fall into my bowl.”

“Stay home and the crooks win. They get the night, by default and concession, the night which should rightly belong to all of us.”

“In those hours he is awake and prowling through the building, he sometimes feels he is a demon who has disguised himself as a human, and only at night is it safe to shed the costume he must wear by daylight, and indulge his true nature.”

“How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: *was* I the same when I got up this morning?”

“My uncle sat and looked at the moon, its silvery light spilling over the mountains, making all things quietly beautiful.”

“In the middle of the night Miss Clavel turned on her light and said, ‘Something is not right!’ ”

“When the polar bears heard, they danced until dawn.”

“Heaven blew every trumpet and played every horn on the wonderful, marvelous night you were born.”

″ In a car with a red light they drove out into the night.”

“On the night you were born, the moon smiled with such wonder that the stars peeked in to see you and the night wind whispered, ‘Life will never be the same.’ ”

“Now it is night. Night is not a time for play. It is time for sleep. The dogs go to sleep. They will sleep all night.”

“But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight— ‘Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!’ ”

“And the Bad Baby went to bed.”

“That night I showed my mother and father our new poster. They thought it was great. Especially our silver-sparkle airplane. My mother put the poster on top of the refrigerator so it would be safe until the next day, when I would take it to school.”

“Night followed day and day followed night over and over again. Sylvester on the hill woke up less and less often. When he was awake, he was only hopeless and unhappy.”

“When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter, I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.”

“You can think about Night, a night in Na-Nupp. The birds are asleep and the three moons are up.”

“Then he looked beyond the thornbushes, out into the big dark night. Nothing could be farther than the sky.”

“I didn’t ask what kind of things hide behind black trees in the middle of the night. When you go owling you have to be brave.”

“It was late one winter night, long past my bedtime, when Pa and I went owling. There was no wind. The trees stood still as giant statues. And the moon was so bright the sky seemed to shine.”

“ ‘Frog is late,’ said Toad. Toad looked at his clock. He remembered it was broken. The hands of the clock did not move. Toad opened the front door. He looked out into the night. Frog was not there. ‘I am worried,’ said Toad.”

“That night Frog and Toad were both happy when they each turned out the light and went to bed.”

“One rascally night between midnight and four, Slinky Malinki stole MORE than before.”

“NEVER again did he answer the call, when moon shadows danced, over garden and wall.”

“Sleeping on Tar Beach was magical. Lying on the roof in the night, with stars and skyscraper buildings all around me, made me feel rich, like I owned all that I could see.”

“What was he up to? At night, to be brief, Slinky Malinki turned into a THIEF.”

“Tonight we’re going up to Tar Beach. Mommy is roasting peanuts and frying chicken, and Daddy will bring home a watermelon. Mr. and Mrs. Honey will bring the beer and their old green card table. And then the stars will fall around me, and I will fly to the union building.”

“That night Treehorn was watching TV. As he reached over to change channels, he noticed that his hand was bright green. He looked in the mirror that was hanging over the television set. His face was green. His ears were green. His hair was green. He was green all over.

“And Mommy can laugh and sleep late like Mrs. Honey, and we can have ice cream every night for dessert.”

“Every day Leo’s father watched him for signs of blooming. And every night Leo’s father watched him for signs of blooming.”

“Every night, Felix has a visitor. It’s the Worrier, who comes to remind Felix about the little black spot on his tooth and other troublesome things.”

“Camp fires, like red, peculiar blossoms, dotted the night.”

“That night, when all the animals were tucked in bed, Bramwell thought about the day’s adventures and looked at the others. Rabbit was dreaming exciting dreams about bouncing as high as an airplane. Duck was dreaming that he could really fly and was rescuing bears from all sorts of high places. Little Bear was dreaming of all the interesting things he had seen in the attic, and Old Bear was dreaming about the good times he would have now that he was back with his friends. ‘I knew it was going to be a special day,’ said Bramwell Brown to himself...”

“In the dark night of the soul, bright flows the river of God.”

“The night before her birthday, Hannah went to bed tingling with excitement – she had asked her father for a gorilla! In the middle of the night, Hannah woke up and saw a very small parcel at the foot of the bed. It was a gorilla but it was just a toy.”

The day is short, The night is long, Why do we work so hard, To get what we don’t even want?

“Father Pig went out into the night and carried the blanket bundle to the middle of the bridge. There he leant over the parapet and shook Mrs Wolf into the swirling depths of the big river. And she was not heard of again for a very long time.”

“One night there was a storm warning. ‘Did you hear that, Stina?’ asked Grandpa. ‘We’re in for a real blow’. “

“Even at night, in moonlight, I have no rest... Why did they trouble me? Oh, gods, gods...”

″ ‘What’s all the fuss? I’m Mickey the pilot! I get milk the Mickey way!’ And he grabbed the cup as he flew up and up and up and over the top of the milky way in the night kitchen.”

“Thomas used to grumble in the shed at night. ‘I’m tired of pushing coaches. I want to see the world.’ The others didn’t take much notice, for Thomas was a little engine who talked big,”

“Now Mickey in the night kitchen cried ‘cock-a-doodle doo!’ and slid down the slide straight into bed cakefree and dried”

“Did you ever hear of Mickey, how he heard a racket in the night and shouted, ‘Quiet down there!’ and fell through the dark, out his clothes, past the moon & his mama & papa sleeping tight into the light of the night kitchen?”

“Now it was Mother Owl who woke the sun each day so that the dawn could come. But this time, when she should have hooted for the sun, she did not do it. The night grew longer and longer. The animals of the forest knew it was lasting much too long. They feared that the sun would never come back.”

“You don’t find lions in closets very often. Good night, sleep tight, and don’t call me anymore because now I’m quite tired.”

“Here is Alfie Atkins, four years old. He is sometimes cranky, and sometimes nice. Tonight he is cranky; he doesn’t want to go to sleep.”

“Here is daddy. He is mostly nice. Almost too nice. Like tonight; although it’s late he reads a good, long story about a horse. Then he gives Alfie a hug and turns off the light when he leaves.”

“And at night by the light of the Mulberry Moon, they danced to the Flute of the Blue Baboon on the broad green leaves of the Crumpetty Tree and all were happy as happy could be with the Quangle Wangle Quee.”

“When the children have been good, That is, be it understood, Good at meal-times, good at play, Good all night and good all day, - They shall have the pretty things Merry Christmas always brings.”

“It says, ‘Good night, God keep you all the night!’ -- Just what she used to say when we were together. Every night she used to say that to me, and every morning she said, ‘God bless you all the day!’ So you see I am quite safe all the time.”

It’s night and the dark is filled with strange sounds as Shane makes his way home. On a fence he finds a stray cat that at first growls and spits at him.

“Perhaps she too felt the loneliness that came with the wind as it passed the cabin outside, and the closeness of the world whose farthest border in the night was the place where the lamp light ended, at the edge of the cabin walls.”

“So just as the sun began to smile and chase away the sky’s heavy tears, they all went to bed again to make up for the broken night, and it was:six o’clock and tea time before any of them opened their eyes again.”

“Like silent, hungry sharks that swim in the darkness of the sea, the German submarines arrived in the middle of the night.”

“Then silence, and stillness, and night were the universe.”

“The dark night into which the world was plunging was not a sleep but an awakening.”

″‘Night here,’ he said, ‘is so dark, so terribly dark, that it is impossible for a mere bird to survive one glimpse of it.‘”

“Every night when it’s time to go to bed Nanny yawns out loud and says she is tired tired tired I make as much noise as I possibly can by turning on the phonograph real loud and hollering a lot”

“Now, as we have no passports, we shall have to cross the frontier by night, when no one can see us. We shall leave at dusk and should be there by dawn.”

“Every morning the birds sing, and the Owl flies back to his dark hole. When the birds see him, they mob him, remembering his trick. He dare only come out at night, to scrape a bare living on rats, mice and beetles.”

“Borka explained that she only wanted to stay under cover for the night, so Fowler showed her into a part of the hold where there were some old sacks for her to lie on.”

“I was winding it up one night, when suddenly it gave a little gasp and a long sigh, like a soul departing from the body; and it wouldn’t go after that. Sometimes, from force of habit, I take it out at night and start to wind it. Then I miss its genial tick, and I feel as if I am looking at the face of a dead friend.”

“We made it a law here that every family shall go to a different restaurant every night of the month, around the village square in rotation. In this way no family of Krakatoa has to work more than once every twenty days, and every family is assured a great variety of food.”

“What a day it was! There was so many letters to be read, so many of the world’s doings to be caught up with. That night as they sat about the fire, even nuts and candle lighters were forgotten.”

“It seemed to the children that the ceiling above them opened into a forest in a tropical night: they could see giant trees, with the stars in their boughs and fireflies gleaming out and ceasing to gleam among the lower sprays.”

“Windy Nights Whenever the moon and stars are set, Whenever the wind is high, All night long in the dark and wet, A man goes riding by, Late in the night when the fires are out, Why does he gallop and gallop about? Whenever the trees are crying aloud, And ships are tossed at sea, By, on the highway, low and loud, By at the gallop goes he, By at the gallop he goes, and then By he comes back at the gallop again.”

“The moon was now shining brightly and all the bush was hushed, except for the sound of those little animals who are always busy at night-time. Angelina sniffed the night air with delight and felt very happy as she thought of the baby in her pouch.”

“A chilly breeze rippled the dark water and the soggy wet bear shivered and shook from the cold and also from fright. Bruce knew that the night hunters were already out on the prowl, and now he was fair game.”

″...and when the moon gets up and night comes, he is the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him. Then he goes out to the Wet Wild Woods or up the Wet Wild Trees or on the Wet Wild Roofs, waving his wild tail and walking by his wild lone.”

“The moonbeam was like a silver blade slicing through the room on to her face.”

“If you can think of anything more terrifying than that happening to you in the middle of the night, then let’s hear about it.”

“The night and stars lull Tom to sleep, and when he wakes, he has ridden his foam raft all the way to the ridge, where the stream dives underground.”

He would have liked to say something about solitude, about night, about the mesa lying pale under the moon, about the precipice, the plunge into shadowy darkness, about death. He would have liked to speak; but there were no words. Not even in Shakespeare.

“Well, it’s the middle of the night, which is a good time for going to sleep.”

“Listen to them—the children of the night. What music they make!

And, mother, the old dame said that this scarlet letter was the Black Man’s mark on thee, and that it glows like a red flame when thou meetest him at midnight, here in the dark wood.

When I had lain awake a little while, those extraordinary voices with which silence teems began to make themselves audible. The closet whispered, the fireplace sighed, the little washing-stand ticked, and one guitar-string played occasionally in the chest of drawers.

“He came naked, by night, alone and very hungry; yet he was not afraid!

“Tend to him if he grows restless in the night,”

“At night I had no light, I lay in the dark and I wouldn’t earn money for candles.

Come, night, come Romeo; come, thou day in night;