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Quotes

The things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist.

—Ernest Hemingway, 1929

Night is torment. That is why people go to sleep. To avoid clear sight and torment.

—Dorothy M. Richardson, 1923

By night an atheist half believes a God.

—Edward Young, c. 1745

Living is an ailment that is relieved every sixteen hours by sleep. A palliative. Death is the cure.

—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Chamfort, c. 1790

Our entire history is merely the history of the waking life of man; nobody has yet considered the history of his sleeping life.

—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, c. 1780

Never greet a stranger in the night, for he may be a demon.

—Babylonian Talmud, c. 600

The law is not the same at morning and at night.

—George Herbert, c. 1633

I’ve dreamed enough to have a drink.

—François Rabelais, 1546

Darkness endows the small and ordinary ones among mankind with poetical power.

—Thomas Hardy, 1874

Night affords the most convenient shade for works of darkness.

—John Taylor, 1750

Those who are awake have a world that is one and common, but each of those who are asleep turns aside into his own particular world.

—Heraclitus, c. 500 BC

At night comes counsel to the wise.

—Menander, c. 300 BC

What hath night to do with sleep?

—John Milton, 1637