Night

Night (or nighttime) is the period of time when the sun is below the horizon. The opposite of night is day (or "daytime" to distinguish it from "day" as used for a 24-hour period). The start and end times of night vary based on factors such as season, latitude, longitude and timezone. At any given time, one side of the planet Earth is bathed in light from the Sun (the daytime) and the other side of the Earth is in the shadow caused by the Earth blocking the light of the sun. This shadow is what we call the darkness of night.

Quotes



 * I am the Night, I am Batman.
 * Bruce Wayne (Batman), The Batman (2022)


 * Night comes, world-jewelled, *  *  * The stars rush forth in myriads as to wage War with the lines of Darkness; and the moon, Pale ghost of Night, comes haunting the cold earth After the sun's red sea-death—quietless.
 * Philip James Bailey, Festus (1813), scene Garden and Bower by the Sea.


 * I love night more than day—she is so lovely; But I love night the most because she brings My love to me in dreams which scarcely lie.
 * Philip James Bailey, Festus (1813), scene Water and Wood. Midnight.


 * I live among the creatures of the night I haven't got the will to try and fight Against a new tomorrow, so I guess I'll just believe it That tomorrow never comes. A safe night, I'm living in the forest of my dream I know the night is not as it would seem I must believe in something, so I'll make myself believe it That this night will never go.
 * , and, Self Control (1984)


 * Most glorious night! Thou wert not sent for slumber!
 * Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto III (1816), Stanza 93.


 * For the night Shows stars and women in a better light.
 * Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto II, Stanza 152.


 * Dark the Night, with breath all flowers, And tender broken voice that fills With ravishment the listening hours,— Whisperings, wooings, Liquid ripples, and soft ring-dove cooings In low-toned rhythm that love's aching stills! Dark the night Yet is she bright, For in her dark she brings the mystic star, Trembling yet strong, as is the voice of love, From some unknown afar.
 * George Eliot, Spanish Gypsy (1868), Song, Book I.


 * O radiant Dark! O darkly fostered ray! Thou hast a joy too deep for shallow Day.
 * George Eliot, Spanish Gypsy (1868), Book I.


 * The watch-dog's voice that bay'd the whispering wind, And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind: These all in sweet confusion sought the shade, And fill'd each pause the nightingale had made.
 * Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village (1770), line 121.


 * Why are the heavens not filled with light? Why is the universe plunged into darkness?
 * Edward Robert Harrison, Darkness at Night: a Riddle of the Universe (1987), p. 1


 * Night is an ally of sorrowful people.
 * Ivo Kozarčanin, Gruop of Authors: Velika knjiga aforizama, Prosvjeta-Globus, Vol. IV, 1984


 * It was one of those nights One of those nights When you feel the world stop turning You were standing there There was music in the air I should have been away But I knew I had to stay
 * Jeff Lynne, '', Discovery (1979)


 * Night is very old, older than the day; night was before day was even a dream in the mind of the creator. Where light and life are, night and death were and will be again.
 * David Madison, Tower of Darkness in Andrew J. Offutt (ed.) Swords Against Darkness III, p. 105


 * O thievish Night, Why shouldst thou, but for some felonious end, In thy dark lantern thus close up the stars, That nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps With everlasting oil, to give due light To the misled and lonely traveller?
 * John Milton, Comus (1637), line 195.


 * * *  *  And when night Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.
 * John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book I, line 500.


 * Where eldest Night And Chaos, ancestors of nature, hold Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise Of endless wars, and by confusion stand.
 * John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Bk II, line 894.


 * Sable-vested Night, eldest of things.
 * John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book II, line 962.


 * ... For now began Night with her sullen wings to double-shade The desert; fowls in their clay nests were couch'd, And now wild beasts came forth, the woods to roam.
 * John Milton, Paradise Regained (1671), Book I, line 499.


 * Darkness now rose, As daylight sunk, and brought in low'ring Night Her shadowy offspring.
 * John Milton, Paradise Regained (1671), Book IV, line 397.


 * It is night: now all fountains speak more loudly. And my soul too is a fountain. It is night: only now all the songs of the lovers awaken. And my soul too is the song of a lover. An unstilled, an unstillable something is in me; it wants to be heard. A craving for love is in me, which itself speaks the language of love. [...] It is night: alas that I must be light! And thirst for the nocturnal! And loneliness! It is night: now my longing breaks out of me like a well – I long to speak. It is night: now all fountains speak more loudly. And my soul too is a fountain. It is night: only now all the songs of the lovers awaken. And my soul too is the song of a lover.
 * Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1891), Night Song, translated by Adrian Del Caro


 * The uniform darkness, fount of the gods, The place from which the birds come... Open to the Duat [Underworld] that is on her northern side With her rear in the east and her head in the west.
 * Inscription addressed to the goddess Nut under a representation on the ceiling of the temple of Seti; reported in Rose Hammond, Islands in the Sky: The Four-Dimensional Journey of Odysseus through Space and Time (2013), p. 118.


 * Silence, ye wolves! while Ralph to Cynthia howls, And makes night hideous;—Answer him, ye owls!
 * Alexander Pope, The Dunciad (1813), Book III, line 165.


 * In the dead vast and middle of the night.
 * William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act I, scene 2, line 198. "Waist" in many editions; afterwards printed "waste." "Vast" in the quarto of 1603.


 * Making night hideous.
 * William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act I, scene 4, line 54.


 * 'Tis now the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world.
 * William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1600-02), Act III, scene 2, line 404.


 * And night is fled, Whose pitchy mantle overveil'd the earth.
 * William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part I (c. 1588-90), Act II, scene 2, line 1.


 * I must become a borrower of the night For a dark hour or twain.
 * William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act III, scene 1, line 27.


 * Come, seeling night, Skarf up the tender eye of pitiful day; And with thy bloody and invisible hand, Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond Which keeps me pale!
 * William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act III, scene 2, line 46.


 * Light thickens; and the crow Makes wing to the rooky wood: Good things of the day begin to droop and drowse; Whiles night's black agents to their preys do rouse.
 * William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act III, scene 2, line 50.


 * The night is long that never finds the day.
 * William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act IV, scene 3, line 240.


 * Now the hungry lion roars, And the wolf behowls the moon; Whilst the heavy ploughman snores, All with weary task foredone.
 * William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595-96), Act V, scene 1, line 378.


 * This is the night That either makes me or fordoes me quite.
 * William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act V, scene 1, line 128.


 * Come, gentle night, come, loving, blackbrow'd night.
 * William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1597), Act III, scene 2, line 20.


 * How beautiful this night! the balmiest sigh Which Vernal Zephyrs breathe in evening's ear Were discord to the speaking quietude That wraps this moveless scene. Heaven's ebon vault, Studded with stars, unutterably bright, Through which the moon's unclouded grandeur rolls, Seems like a canopy which love has spread To curtain her sleeping world.
 * Percy Bysshe Shelley, Queen Mab (1813), Part IV.


 * The night is well along; the day has drawn near. Let us therefore throw off the works belonging to darkness and let us put on the weapons of the light.
 * Paul of Tarsus, Romans 13:12, NWT


 * Come, drink the mystic wine of Night, Brimming with silence and the stars; While earth, bathed in this holy light, Is seen without its scars.
 * Louis Untermeyer, "The Wine of Night", line 1, in Challenge (New York: The Century Co., 1914), p. 74.


 * Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne, In rayless majesty, now stretches forth Her leaden sceptre o'er a slumbering world. Silence, how dead! and darkness, how profound! Nor eye, nor list'ning ear, an object finds; Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the general pulse Of life stood still, and nature made a pause; An awful pause! prophetic of her end.
 * Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night I, line 18.


 * How is night's sable mantle labor'd o'er, How richly wrought with attributes divine! What wisdom shines! what love! this midnight pomp, This gorgeous arch, with golden worlds inlaid Built with divine ambition!
 * Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night IV, line 385.


 * It was then night; the sound and quiet sleep Had through the earth the wearied bodies caught; The woods, the raging seas were fallen to rest; 	When that the stars had half their course declined; 	The fields whist, beasts, and fowls of divers hue, 	And what so that in the broad lakes remained, Or yet among the bushy thicks of brier, Laid down to sleep by silence of the night ’Gan swage their cares, mindless of travails past.
 * Description of the night. Virgil, Aeneid, IV
 * Earl of Surrey, transl., The Fourth Boke of Virgili (1554, 1557)

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

 * Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 554-57.


 * Night is a stealthy, evil Raven, Wrapt to the eyes in his black wings.
 * Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Day and Night.


 * Wan night, the shadow goer, came stepping in.
 * Beowulf, III.


 * When it draws near to witching time of night.
 * Robert Blair, The Grave, line 55.


 * The Night has a thousand eyes, The Day but one; Yet the light of the bright world dies With the dying sun.
 * F. W. Bourdillon, Light.


 * The stars are forth, the moon above the tops Of the snow-shining mountains—Beautiful! I linger yet with Nature, for the night Hath been to me a more familiar face Than that of man; and in her starry shade Of dim and solitary loveliness I learn'd the language of another world.
 * Lord Byron, Manfred, Act III, scene 4.


 * Night's black Mantle covers all alike.
 * Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, Divine Weekes and Workes, First Week, First Day, line 562.


 * A late lark twitters from the quiet skies: And from the west, Where the sun, his day's work ended, Lingers as in content, There falls on the old, gray city An influence luminous and serene, A shining peace.
 * William Ernest Henley, Margaritæ Sorori.


 * The smoke ascends In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires Shine and are changed. In the valley Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun Closing his benediction, Sinks, and the darkening air Thrills with the sense of the triumphing night,— Night with train of stars And her great gift of sleep.
 * William Ernest Henley, Margaritæ Sorori.


 * Now deep in ocean sunk the lamp of light, And drew behind the cloudy vale of night.
 * Homer, The Iliad, Book VIII, line 605. Pope's translation.


 * At night, to his own dark fancies a prey, He lies like a hedgehog rolled up the wrong way, Tormenting himself with his prickles.
 * Thomas Hood, Miss Kilmansegg and her precious Leg.


 * Watchman, what of the night?
 * Isaiah, XXI. 11.


 * Night, when deep sleep falleth on men.
 * Job, IV. 13; XXXIII. 15.


 * The night cometh when no man can work.
 * John, IX. 4.


 * 'Tis the witching hour of night, Orbed is the moon and bright, And the stars they glisten, glisten, Seeming with bright eyes to listen— For what listen they?
 * John Keats, A Prophecy, line 1.


 * I heard the trailing garments of the Night Sweep through her marble halls.
 * Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hymn to the Night.


 * O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear What man has borne before! Thou layest thy fingers on the lips of Care, And they complain no more.
 * Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hymn to the Night.


 * Then stars arise, and the night is holy.
 * Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hyperion (1839), Book I, Chapter I.


 * And the night shall be filled with music And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away.
 * Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Day is Done.


 * God makes sech nights, all white an' still Fur'z you can look or listen, Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill, All silence an' all glisten.
 * James Russell Lowell, The Courtin'.


 * Night hath a thousand eyes.
 * John Lyly, Maydes Metamorphose, Act III, scene 1.


 * Quiet night, that brings Rest to the labourer, is the outlaw's day, In which he rises early to do wrong, And when his work is ended dares not sleep.
 * Philip Massinger, The Guardian, Act II, scene 4.


 * A night of tears! for the gusty rain Had ceased, but the eaves were dripping yet; And the moon look'd forth, as tho' in pain, With her face all white and wet.
 * Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), The Wanderer, Book II, The Portrait.


 * Night is the time for rest; How sweet, when labours close, To gather round an aching breast The curtain of repose, Stretch the tired limbs, and lay the head Down on our own delightful bed!
 * James Montgomery, Night, Stanza 1.


 * Then awake! the heavens look bright, my dear; 'Tis never too late for delight, my dear; And the best of all ways To lengthen our days Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear.
 * Thomas Moore, The Young May Moon.


 * But we that have but span-long life, The thicker must lay on the pleasure; And since time will not stay, We'll add night to the day, Thus, thus we'll fill the measure.
 * Duet printed 1795. Probably of earlier date.


 * There never was night that had no morn.
 * Dinah Craik, The Golden Gate.


 * The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees, The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor, And the highwayman came riding.
 * Alfred Noyes, The Highwayman.


 * Day is ended, Darkness shrouds The shoreless seas and lowering clouds.
 * Thomas Love Peacock, Rhododaphne, Canto V, line 264.


 * O Night, most beautiful and rare! Thou giv'st the heavens their holiest hue, And through the azure fields of air Bring'st down the gentle dew.
 * Thomas Buchanan Read, Night.


 * Ce que j'ôte à mes nuits, je l'ajoute à mes jours.
 * What I take from my nights, I add to my days.
 * Ascribed to Rotrou in Venceslas (1647).


 * Qu'une nuit paraît longue à la douleur qui veille!
 * How long the night seems to one kept awake by pain.
 * Bernard-Joseph Saurin, Blanche et Guiscard, V, 5.


 * On dreary night let lusty sunshine fall.
 * Friedrich Schiller, Pompeii and Herculaneum.


 * To all, to each, a fair good night, And pleasing dreams; and slumbers light.
 * Walter Scott, Marmion (1808), Canto VI. Last lines.


 * Swiftly walk over the western wave, Spirit of Night!
 * Percy Bysshe Shelley, To Night.


 * How beautiful is night! A dewy freshness fills the silent air; No mist obscures, nor cloud nor speck nor stain Breaks the serene of heaven.
 * Robert Southey, Thalaba, Book I.


 * Dead sounds at night come from the inmost hills, Like footsteps upon wool.
 * Alfred Tennyson, Ænone, Stanza 20.


 * I was heavy with the even, When she fit her glimmering tapers Round the day's dead sanctities.
 * Francis Thompson, Hound of Heaven, line 84.


 * Now black and deep the Night begins to fall, A shade immense! Sunk in the quenching Gloom, Magnificent and vast, are heaven and earth. Order confounded lies; all beauty void, Distinction lost, and gay variety One universal blot: such the fair power Of light, to kindle and create the whole.
 * James Thomson, The Seasons, Autumn (1730), line 113.


 * When, upon orchard and lane, breaks the white foam of the Spring When, in extravagant revel, the Dawn, a Bacchante upleaping, Spills, on the tresses of Night, vintages golden and red When, as a token at parting, munificent Day for remembrance, Gives, unto men that forget, Ophirs of fabulous ore.
 * William Watson, Hymn to the Sea, Part III. 12.


 * Mysterious night! when our first parent knew Thee from report divine, and heard thy name,  Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, This glorious canopy of light and blue?
 * Joseph Blanco White, Night and Death.


 * The summer skies are darkly blue, The days are still and bright, And Evening trails her robes of gold  Through the dim halls of Night.
 * Sarah H. P. Whitman, Summer's Call.


 * Night begins to muffle up the day.
 * Withers, Mistresse of Philarete.


 * Mine is the night, with all her stars.
 * Edward Young, Paraphrase on Job, line 147.