Night Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.

G. K. Chesterton

I am rather tired, and no longer young enough to pillage the night to make up for the deficit of hours in the day...

J. R. R. Tolkien

For Isildur would not surrender it to Elrond and Círdan who stood by. They counselled him to cast it into the fire of Orodruin night at hand... But Isildur refused this counsel, saying: 'This I will have as weregild for my father's death, and my brother's. Was it not I that dealt the Enemy his death-blow?' And the Ring that he held seemed to him exceedingly fair to look on; and he would not suffer it to be destroyed.

J. R. R. Tolkien

For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.

If thou intend to do any good; tarry not till tomorrow! for thou knowest not what may chance thee this night.

It was a long and gloomy night that gathered on me, haunted by the ghosts of many hopes, of many dear remembrances, many errors, many unavailing sorrows and regrets.

Charles Dickens

The grass so little has to do,—
A sphere of simple green,
With only butterflies to brood,
And bees to entertain, And stir all day to pretty tunes
The breezes fetch along,
And hold the sunshine in its lap
And bow to everything; And thread the dews all night, like pearls,
And make itself so fine,-
A duchess were too common
For such a noticing. And even when it dies, to pass
In odors so divine,
As lowly spices gone to sleep,
Or amulets of pine. And then to dwell in sovereign barns,
And dream the days away,—
The grass so little has to do,
I wish I were a hay!

Emily Dickinson

By the apostle Paul, shadows to-night
Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard
Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers.

William Shakespeare

Last night I danced with a stranger, but she just reminded me you were the one.

Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Paddy and I had scarcely a wink of sleep, for there was a man near us who had some nervous trouble, shell-shock perhaps, which made him cry out 'Pip!' at irregular intervals. It was a loud, startling noise, something like the toot of a small motor-horn. You never knew when it was coming, and it was a sure preventer of sleep.... he must have kept ten or twenty people awake every night. He was an example of the kind of thing that prevents one from ever getting enough sleep when men are herded as they are in these lodging houses.'

We've looked and looked, but after all where are we?
Do we know any better where we are,
And how it stands between the night tonight
And a man with a smoky lantern chimney?
How different from the way it ever stood?

The stars drew light across the night sky in that little mountain village, and the silence and the cold made the darkness vanish away. It was - I don't know how to explain it - as if everything solid melted away into the ether, eliminating all individualtiy and absorbing us, rigid, into the immense darkness. Not a single cloud to lend perspective to the space blocked any portion of the starry sky.

The Brightness of her cheek would shame those stars as daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven would through the airy region stream so bright that birds would sing, and think it were not night.

William Shakespeare

Still the pine-woods scent the noon; still the catbird sings his tune;
Still the autumn sets the maple-forest blazing;
Still the grape-vine through the dusk flings her soul-compelling musk;
Still the fire-flies in the corn make night amazing!
The things that truly last when men and times have passed,
They are all in Pennsylvania this morning!

Rudyard Kipling

Then thus the bride: What fury seized on thee,
Unhappy man! to lose thyself and me?
Dragged back again by cruel destinies,
An iron slumber shuts my swimming eyes.
And now farewell! Involved in shades of night,
For ever I am ravish'd from thy sight.
In vain I reach my feeble hands to join
In sweet embraces—ah! no longer thine!

Never wear second-rate jewels, wait till the really good ones come to you.... Rather than a wretched little diamond full of flaws, wear a simple, plainly inexpensive ring. In that case you can say, 'It's a memento. I never part with it, day or night.'

I dealt with Gaddafi. I rented him a piece of land. He paid me more for one night than the land was worth for two years, and then I didn't let him use the land. That's what we should be doing. I don't want to use the word 'screwed,' but I screwed him. That's what we should be doing.

Let me have war, say I; it exceeds peace as far as day does night; it's spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy: mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war's a destroyer of men.

William Shakespeare

I begin my work at about nine or ten o'clock in the evening and continue until four or five in the morning. Night is a more quiet time to work. It aids thought.

Alexander Graham Bell

The moon is up, and yet it is not night;
Sunset divides the sky with her—a sea
Of glory streams along the Alpine height
Of blue Friuli's mountains; Heaven is free
From clouds, but of all colours seems to be
Melted to one vast Iris of the West,
Where the day joins the past eternity.

Helmer: I would gladly work night and day for you, Nora – bear sorrow and want for your sake. But no man would sacrifice his honor for the one he loves.
Nora: It is a thing hundreds of thousands of women have done.

When I am with you, we stay up all night. When you're not here, I can't go to sleep. Praise God for those two insomnias! And the difference between them.

Overhead, capricious spring clouds began to scud across the sky in mackerel shapes, promising more rain. Garraty turned up his collar and listened to the sound of his feet pounding the pavement. There was a trick to that, a subtle mental adjustment, like having better night vision the longer you were in the dark. This morning the sound of his feet had been lost to him. They had been lost in the tramp of ninety-nine other pairs, not to mention the rumble of the halftrack. But now he heard them easily. His own particular stride, and the way his left foot scraped the pavement every now and then. It seemed to him that the sound of his footfalls had become as loud to his ears as the sound of his own heartbeat. Vital, life and death sound.

For this, be sure, tonight thou shalt have cramps, Side-stitches that shall pen thy breath up. Urchins Shall forth at vast of night that they may work All exercise on thee. Thou shalt be pinched As thick as honeycomb, each pinch more stinging Than bees that made 'em.

William Shakespeare