Nighttime

Affliction comes to us all not to make us sad, but sober, not to make us sorry, but wise; not to make us despondent, but by its darkness to refresh us, as the night refreshes the day; not to impoverish, but to enrich us, as the plow enriches the field; to multiply our joy, as the seed, by planting, is multiplied a thousand-fold. ~~ Henry Ward Beecher

Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary? ~~ Sir James M. Barrie

I have always believed that the key to a happy marriage was the ability to say with a straight face,"Why, I don't know what you're worrying about. I thought you were very funny last night and I'm sure everybody else did, too." ~~ Judith Martin

There was a young lady named Bright,
Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night. ~~ Arthur Buller

Life itself, however, flows and is sequential and punishes those who try to compartmentalize it. Thus if, for any reason whatsoever, moral standards are conspicuously and unprecedentedly breached in one area of society, such as the political, it will follow as the night the day that those standards will start collapsing all down the line--in sports, entertainment, education, the armed forces, business, and government. ~~ Margaret Halsey

The world is a playground, and death is the night. ~~ Rumi

It is at night that faith in light is admirable. ~~ Edmond Rostand

What's money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night and in between he does what he wants to. ~~ Bob Dylan

I look… not into the night, but to a dawn for which no man ever rose early enough. ~~ Henry David Thoreau

[Addressing White House reporters:] I'm not going to say anything terribly important tonight, so you can all put your crayons away. ~~ Jimmy Carter

With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die. ~~ Abraham Lincoln

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry? ~~ William Blake

A light supper, a good night's sleep, and a fine morning have often made a hero of the same man who by indigestion, a restless night, and a rainy morning, would have proved a coward. ~~ Earl of Chesterfield

One night at about two o'clock in the morning my father caught a man stealing bananas from our backyard. He went over to the man with his machete, took the bananas, cut the bunch in half and said, "Here, you can have it." And then he said, "From now on, if you need anything from the back of our house, come to the front." ~~ Chi Chi Rodriguez

The night will slip away
Like sorrow or a tune. ~~ Eleanor Farjeon

An angel robed in spotless white
Bent down and kissed the sleeping night.
Night woke to blush; the sprite was gone.
Men saw the blush and called it dawn. ~~ Paul Laurence Dunbar

A dream, the other night, that the world had become dissatisfied with the inaccurate manner in which facts are reported and had employed me, with a salary of a thousand dollars, to relate things of public import exactly as they happen. ~~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

What would happen if Mozart were alive today? After composing his first symphony at the age of four he would be Time's Man of the Year. He and his family would move to the Malibu Colony. He'd host "Saturday Night Live." He'd sign with Michael Ovitz, who'd package a sitcom for him. It would fail, as all sitcoms do, and little Mozart would go on drinking sprees and end up in rehab. At the age of, say, seven, Mozart would be a regular on "Hollywood Squares." ~~ Cynthia Heimel

Faith is not making religious-sounding noises in the daytime. It is asking your inmost self questions at night--and then getting up and going to work. ~~ Mary Jean Irion [Yes, World]

Push-ups, sit-ups, run in place. Each night I keep a grueling pace. With bleak results, I must divulge--I've lost the battle of the bulge. ~~ Charles Ghigna

Quite a little puss, a gray kitten three or four months old, striped like a tiger, besides being spotted, his tail ring-streaked like a panther's, belly and muzzle white, and the end of his nose quite pink. He made his appearance one morning--Heaven alone knows where he sprang from!--a pitiable sight, lean and wretched looking. Within a very short time he recovered, and for the past fortnight has been my most devoted companion. ~~ Pierre Loti

Lately a small tabby cat has come every day and stared at me with a strange, intense look. Of course I put food out, night and morning. She is so terrified that she runs away at once when I open the door, but she comes back to eat ravenously as soon as I disappear. Yet her hunger is clearly not only for food. I long to take her in my arms and hear her purr with relief at finding shelter. Will she ever become tame enough for that, to give in to what she longs to have? It is such an intense look with which she scans my face at the door before she runs away. It is not a pleading look, simply a huge question: "Can I trust?" Our two gazes hang on its taut thread. I find it painful. ~~ May Sarton

What do you get when you cross an insomniac, a dyslexic, and an agnostic? Someone who lies awake all night wondering if there really is a Dog. ~~ Unattributed

To accomplish our destiny it is not enough to merely guard against road accidents. We must also cover before nightfall the distance assigned to each of us. ~~ Alexis Carrel

I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright. ~~ Henry Vaughan

There are nights when the wolves are silent, and only the moon howls. ~~ George Carlin

[Explaining the adrenaline rush he experiences on his nightly television program:] Way too much coffee. But if it weren't for the coffee, I'd have no identifiable personality whatsoever. ~~ David Letterman

If you have not clung to a broken piece of your old ship in the dark night of the soul, your faith may not have sustaining power to carry you through to the end of the journey. ~~ Rufus M. Jones

If left to their own devices, felines tend to nap and nibble throughout the day and night, scarcely differentiating between the two. ~~ Lynn Hollyn

[The cats] are quiet only at night. To give them a sense of security, of belonging, I treated them to crimson cushions to sleep on, but it didn't work; they sleep on me. When I lie on my left side, they sleep along the ridges formed by my arm, hip and thigh; when I roll over, they take to treading me. ~~ Katinka Loeser

Within that porch, across the way,
I see two naked eyes this night;
Two eyes that neither shut nor blink,
Searching my face with a green light.
But cats to me are strange, so strange
I cannot sleep if one is near;
And though I'm sure I see those eyes,
I'm not so sure a body's there! ~~ William Henry Davies

When you want your boyfriend to play with you, wear a full-length black nightgown with buttons all over it. Sure, it's uncomfortable. But it makes you look just like his remote control. ~~ Diana Jordan and Paul Seaburn

Youth was gone, but night had not fully arrived--and some of the glow of afternoon still lingered in his blood. ~~ Rosemary Kutak

We are reformers in Spring and Summer; in Autumn and Winter we stand by the old; reformers in the morning, conservers at night. ~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

[The night before he was assassinated:] I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. ~~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

I never married because I have three pets at home that answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog that growls every morning, a parrot that swears all afternoon, and a cat that comes home late at night. ~~ Marie Corelli

If you devote your time to study, you will avoid all the irksomeness of this life, nor will you long for the approach of night, being tired of the day; nor will you be a burden to yourself, nor your society insupportable to others. ~~ Seneca

You can't go through a deep personal transformation without some kind of dark night of the soul. ~~ Sam Keen

One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night. ~~ Margaret Mead

What if this present were the world's last night? ~~ John Donne

Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died. ~~ Steven Wright

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. ~~ Edgar Allan Poe

In point of fact, we are all born rude. No infant ever appeared yet with the grace to understand how inconsiderate it is to disturb others in the middle of the night. ~~ Judith Martin

It was one of those nights when the air is blood temperature and it's impossible to tell where you leave off and it begins. ~~ Elaine Dundy

The nearer the dawn the darker the night. ~~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

to be nobody but yourself--in a world which is doing its best,
night and day, to make you everybody else--means to fight the
hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting. ~~ e. e. cummings

The really great visual experience today is to fly over a huge city and look down into the night. It's like a tremendous jubilant Christmas tree. You just feel life is worth living--when you come down you may have some doubts. ~~ Gyorgy Kepes

I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows. ~~ Henry David Thoreau

I have walked with people whose eyes are full of light but who see nothing in sea or sky, nothing in city streets, nothing in oaks. It were far better to sail forever in the night of blindness with sense, and feeling, and mind, than to be content with the mere act of seeing. The only lightless dark is the night of darkness in ignorance and insensibility. ~~ Helen Keller

Oh, a cat's a cat. Babou's only too long when he really wants to be. Are we even sure he's black? He's probably white in snowy weather, dark blue at night, and red when he goes to steal strawberries. ~~ Colette

Love waits for love, though the sun be set,
And the Stars come out, the dews are wet,
And the night-winds moan. ~~ Walter Smith

The cold was our pride, the snow was our beauty. It fell and fell, lacing day and night together in a milky haze, making everything quieter as it fell, so that winter seemed to partake of religion in a way no other season did, hushed, solemn. ~~ Patricia Hampl

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem. They're there every night, they see it done every night, they see how it should be done every night, but they can't do it themselves. ~~ Brendan Behan

With two sons born eighteen months apart, I operated mainly on automatic pilot through the ceaseless activity of their early childhood. I remember opening the refrigerator late one night and finding a roll of aluminum foil next to a pair of small red tennies. Certain that I was responsible for the refrigerated shoes, I quickly closed the door and ran upstairs to make sure I had put the babies in their cribs instead of the linen closet. ~~ Mary Kay Blakely

Clean is the autumn wind,
Splendid the autumn moon,
The blown leaves are heaped and scattered,
The ice-cold raven starts from its roost.
Dreaming of you--when shall I see you again?
On this night sorrow fills my heart. ~~ Li Po

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. ~~ Crowfoot

It was a dark and stormy night. ~~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Baron Lytton

Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy night. ~~ Joseph L. Mankiewicz [All About Eve, film, 1950--spoken by Bette Davis]

The best time to listen to a politician is when he's on a stump on a street corner in the rain late at night when he's exhausted. Then he doesn't lie. ~~ Theodore H. White

Stephon's kiss was lost in jest,
Robin's lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin's eyes
Haunts me night and day. ~~ Sara Teasdale

Why do you think the lottery is so popular? Do you think anybody would play if the super payoff was a job on the night shift in a meat-packing plant? People play it so if they win they can be rich and idle. Like I told you years ago--if work is so good, how come they have to pay us to do it? ~~ Mike Royko

Before marriage, a man will lie awake all night thinking about something you said; after marriage, he'll fall asleep before you finish saying it. ~~ Helen Rowland

Sometimes you hug your pillow and cry at night, but this doesn't mean that life is bad. It just means that's the way it is. Life is rich. ~~ Goldie Hawn

Now at midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do. ~~ Bob Dylan [Desolation Row]

Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives. ~~ Charles Fisher

I told Carl Perkins about this friend of mine in the Air Force, a black man from Virginia named C. V. White. He used to get dressed up to go to town on Saturday night with his three-day pass. He had his blue Air Force uniform with standard-issue black shoes and he'd always say, man, don't step on my blue suede shoes, I'm going out tonight. I'd say, C. V., hold on now, they're black Air Force issue and he'd say, Tonight, they're blue suede shoes, don't step on them. I never forgot that and I told Carl, write a song about don't step on my blue suede shoes. He wrote it that night. ~~ Johnny Cash

Assumptions keep us awake nights. ~~ Earl Shorris

People who say they do not dream simply don't remember their dreams. Research shows everybody dreams, several hours a night. ~~ Deane Jordan [1,001 Facts Somebody Screwed Up]

Weather forecast for tonight: dark. ~~ George Carlin

It often happens that I wake at night and begin to think about a serious problem and decide I must tell the Pope about it. Then I wake up completely and remember that I am the Pope. ~~ Pope John XXIII (See Said Who?)

To see the earth as we now see it, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on the bright loveliness in the unending night--brothers who see now they are truly brothers. ~~ Archibald MacLeish

Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation's tears in shoulder blades. ~~ Stevens

Today Hollywood film stars--even the real lookers like Michelle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder--are shy, troubled creatures who dress like something Cat Stevens dragged in from the local Saturday night sackcloth-and-ashes hop. ~~ Julie Burchill

The human mind invents its "Puss 'n Boots" and coaches changing-into-pumpkins-at-midnight because neither the theist nor the atheist is satisfied with appearances. ~~ Andre Malraux

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 Exupery

I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me. ~~ Anna Quindlen

Money is only money, beans tonight and steak tomorrow. So long as you can look yourself in the eye. ~~ Meridel LeSueur

I've always thought a hotel ought to offer optional small animals … I mean a cat to sleep on your bed at night, or a dog of some kind to act pleased when you come in. You ever notice how a hotel room feels so lifeless? ~~ Anne Tyler

October is crisp days and cool nights, a time to curl up around the dancing flames and sink into a good book. ~~ John Sinor

Upon an Easter Morning
So early in the day,
The bird raised up his whistle
To tune the night away. ~~ Eleanor Farjeon

Make sure you never, never argue at night. You just lose a good night's sleep, and you can't settle anything until morning anyway. ~~ Rose Kennedy

[To a cat:] Stately, kindly, lordly friend
Condescend
Here to sit by me, and turn,
Glorious eyes, love's lustrous meed,
On the golden page I read
All your wondrous wealth of hair
Dark and fair,
Silken-shaggy, soft and bright
As the clouds and beams of night,
Pays my reverent hand's caress
Back with friendlier gentleness. ~~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

One night during the (1944 presidential) campaign (vice presidential candidate Harry S Truman) woke up in a cold sweat from a dream that the president had died and he was called to assume the office. ~~ James David Barber

Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever. ~~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

The fool who repeats again and again: "I am bound, I am bound," remains in bondage. He who repeats day and night: "I am a sinner, I am a sinner," becomes a sinner indeed. ~~ Ramakrishna

Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won't let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you're allowed to sleep. It's always in the middle of the bloody night, or when you're half-awake or tired, when your critical faculties are switched off. So letting go is what the whole game is. ~~ John Lennon

Listening is essential in writing and it takes a lot of practice. It's not just listening with the ear, but it's that inner sort of listening. It's like listening to yourself think when you're driving long distances through the night, or listening to yourself play an instrument. ~~ Sam Shepard

In the night the cabbages catch at the moon, the leaves drip silver, the rows of cabbages are series of little silver waterfalls in the moon. ~~ Carl Sandburg

The cat that comes to my window sill
When the moon looks cold and the night is still--
He comes in a frenzied state alone
With a tail that stands like a pine tree cone,
And says: "I have finished my evening lark,
And I think I can hear a hound dog bark.
My whiskers are froze and stuck to my chin.
I do wish you'd git up and let me in."
That cat gits in. ~~ Ben King

Acting, in general, is something most people think they're incapable of but they do it from morning to night. The subtlest acting I've ever seen is by ordinary people trying to show they feel something they don't or trying to hide something. It’s something everyone learns at an early age. ~~ Marlon Brando

[On God] Let me put it this way: I have a very good friend. I don't know who he is or what his name is, but I talk to him every single night before I go to sleep and every single day during the day. Mostly to say thank you. ~~ Betty White

Backward, flow backward, O Time, in your flight,
Make me a child again, just for tonight!
Mother, come back from the echoless shore,
Take me again to your heart, as of yore;
Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care
Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair,
Over my slumbers your loving watch keep --
Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep. ~~ Elizabeth Akers Allen

In the silence of night I have often wished for just a few words of love from one man, rather than the applause of thousands of people. ~~ Judy Garland

Average number of hours a person sleeps each night: 7.5
Average number of hours a cat sleeps: 14.8The Better Sleep Council

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it. ~~ John Steinbeck

A man who should act, for one day, on the supposition that all the people about him were influenced by the religion which they professed would find himself ruined by night. ~~ Thomas Macaulay

I climbed up the door
and I opened the stairs.
I said my pajamas
and buttoned my prayers.
I turned off the covers
and pulled up the light.
I'm all scrambled up since
she kissed me last night. ~~ [Adapted by] Bruce Lansky

At whiles it seems as if one were somewhat as the cats, which ever have appeared to me to be animals of two parts, the one of the house and the cushion and the prepared food, the other that is free of the night and runs wild with the wind in its coat and the smell of the earth in its nostrils. ~~ Una L. Silberrad

For me it's always midnight with the phone out of order and a murderer on the fire escape. What I suffer from nerves could be a Technicolor spectacle. ~~ Helen Hudson

Every so often I lose weight, and, to my utter horror and indignation, I find in the quiet of the night somebody has put it back on. ~~ Lord Goodman

Summer ends, and Autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tide always and a full moon every night. ~~ Hal Borland

The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight. ~~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal--that is your success. ~~ Henry David Thoreau

My true love brought me flowers tonight,
and I'm all smiles and song.
I guess I'm doing something right--
or he's done something wrong! ~~ Maureen Cannon

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am the thousand winds that blow.
I am diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am gentle autumnal rain.
When you waken in the morning hush.
I am the soft uplighting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry --
I am not there. I did not die. ~~ Author Unknown [Found among effects of British soldier Stephen Cummins, who was killed by an IRA landmine in Londonderry in 1989]

Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again. ~~ Og Mandino

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling into at night. I miss you like hell. ~~ Edna St Vincent Millay

Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. ~~ E. L. Doctorow

When a chap is in love, he will go out in all kinds of weather to keep an appointment with his beloved. Love can be demanding, in fact more demanding than law. It has its own imperatives--think of a mother sitting by the bedside of a sick child through the night, impelled only by love. Nothing is too much trouble for love. ~~ Desmond Tutu

Wait until it is night before saying it has been a fine day. ~~ French proverb

The question actors most often get asked is how they can bear saying the same things over and over again night after night, but God knows the answer to THAT is , don't we all ANYWAY; might as well get paid for it. ~~ Elaine Dundy