Night quotes
8.4K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside night — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"On your eyelids crown the god of sleep, Charming your blood with pleasing heaviness, Making such difference 'twixt wake and sleep As is the difference betwixt day and night The hour before the heavenly-harness'd team Begins his golden progress in the east."
"GLOUCESTER: I do not know that Englishman alive With whom my soul is any jot at odds, More than the infant that is born to-night: I thank my God for my humility."
"As I hope For quiet days, fair issue, and long life, With such love as 'tis now, the murkiest den, The most opportune place, the strong'st suggestion Our worser genius can, shall never melt Mine honour into lust, to take away The edge of that day's celebration, When I shall think or Phoebus' steeds are founder'd Or Night kept chain'd below."
"Day, night, late, early, At home, abroad, alone, in company, Waking or sleeping, still my care hath been To have her match'd; and having now provided A gentleman of princely parentage, Of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly train'd, Stuff'd, as they say, with honourable parts, Proportion'd as one's thought would wish a man- And then to have a wretched puling fool, A whining mammet, in her fortune's tender, To answer 'I'll not wed, I cannot love; I am too young, I pray you pardon me'!"
"Faith, stay here this night; they will surely do us no harm; you saw they speak us fair, give us gold; methinks they are such a gentle nation that, but for the mountain of mad flesh that claims marriage of me, could find in my heart to stay here still and turn witch."
"Winding up days with toil and nights with sleep."
"Hung be the heavens with black! Yield, day, to night!"
"Shorten my days thou canst with sullen sorrow, And pluck nights from me, but not lend a morrow; Thou canst help time to furrow me with age, But stop no wrinkle in his pilgrimage."
"Time is a very bankrupt and owes more than he's worth to season. Nay, he's a thief too: have you not heard men say, That Time comes stealing on by night and day?"
"What, keep a week away? Seven days and nights, Eightscore-eight hours, and lovers' absent hours More tedious than the dial eightscore times! O weary reckoning!"
"To die, is to be banish'd from myself; And Silvia is myself: banish'd from her, Is self from self: a deadly banishment! What light is light, if Silvia be not seen? What joy is joy, if Silvia be not by? Unless it be to think that she is by, And feed upon the shadow of perfection. Except I be by Silvia in the night, There is no music in the nightingale; Unless I look on Silvia in the day, There is no day for me to look upon; She is my essence, and I leave to be, If I be not by her fair influence Foster'd, illumin'd, cherish'd, kept alive."
"We will meet; and there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously."
"I have almost forgotten the taste of fears: The time has been, my senses would have cool’d to hear a night-shriek; and my fell of hair would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir as life were in’t: I have supt full with horrors; Direness, familiar to my slaughterous thoughts, cannot once start me."
"It is not night when I do see your face, Therefore I think I am not in the night; Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company, For you in my respect are all the world: Then how can it be said I am alone, When all the world is here to look on me?"
"For precious friends hid in death's dateless night."
"A great cause of the night is lack of the sun."
"I am thy father's spirit; Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night And, for the day, confin'd to fast in fires, Till the foul crimes, done in my days of nature, Are burnt and purg'd away."
"Then was I as a tree whose boughs did bend with fruit; but in one night, a storm or robbery, call it what you will, shook down my mellow hangings, nay, my leaves, and left me bare to weather."
"The iron tongue of Midnight hath told twelve lovers, to bed; 'tis almost fairy time. I fear we shall outstep the coming morn as much as we this night over-watch'd."
"This night I hold an old accustomed feast, Whereto I have invited many a guest, Such as I love; and you among the store, One more, most welcome, makes my number more."
