Dark Hour Quotes & Sayings

Recklessness is beauty
Ashbery says. When a car
door opens in the dark
at ninety miles an hour
what rushes in is beauty.
The wind's hymns are
inaudible, the words
chased off by scarecrows
from the blurry fields.
The murmuring heart
beatless all those moments
waiting to see if you
will live. — Keith Althaus

Rain fell on the roofs of the just and the unjust, the saints and the sinners, those who knew peace and those in torment, and tomorrow began at a dark hour. — Robert McCammon

I get into bed and pretend to be asleep. I don't need any of them, not if they're going to react this way when I do well. If I can make it through initiation, I will be Dauntless, and I won't have to see them anymore.
I don't need them - but do I want them? Every tattoo I got with them is a mark of their friendship, and almost every time I have laughed in this dark place was because of them. I don't want to lose them. But I feel like I have already.
After at least a half hour of racing thoughts, I roll onto my back and open my eyes. The dormitory is dark now - everyone has gone to bed. Probably exhausted from resenting me so much, I think with a wry smile. — Veronica Roth

As the prospect gradually revealed itself and disclosed the scene over which the wind had wandered in the dark, like my memory over my life, I had a pleasure in discovering the unknown objects that had been around me in my sleep. At first they were faintly discernible in the mist, and above them the later stars still glimmered. That pale interval over, the picture began to enlarge and fill up so fast that at every new peep I could have found enough to look at for an hour. Imperceptibly my candles became the only incongruous part of the morning, the dark places in my room all melted away, and the day shone bright upon a cheerful landscape, prominent in which the old Abbey Church, with its massive tower, threw a softer train of shadow on the view than seemed compatible with its rugged character. — Charles Dickens

Memory revises me.
Even now a letter
comes from a place
I don't know, from someone
with my name
and postmarked years ago,
while I await
injunctions from the light
or the dark;
I wait for shapeliness
limned, or dissolution.
Is paradise due or narrowly missed
until another thousand years?
I wait
in a blue hour
and faraway noise of hammering,
and on a page a poem begun, something
about to be dispersed,
something about to come into being. — Li-Young Lee

The evening before I departed I stood on the rim of a lagoon on Isla Rabida. Flamingos rode on its dark surface like pink swans, apparently asleep. Small, curved feathers, shed from their breasts, drifted away from them over the water on a light breeze. I did not move for an hour. It was a moment of such peace, every troubled thread in a human spirit might have uncoiled and sorted itself into a graceful order. Other flamingos stood in the shallows with diffident elegance in the falling light, not feeding but only staring off toward the ocean. They seemed a kind of animal I had never quite seen before. — Barry Lopez

The ritual is designed to get a group of people through the hour without having to get close to anyone. They may, but they don't have to. It is more comfortable to go to a High Church Mass than to attend a revival service where one may be asked, "Are you saved, brother?" Sexual relations are less awkward in the dark for people for whom physical intimacy has no involvement at the level of personality. There is less chance for involvement in throwing a cocktail party than in having a dinner for six. There is little commitment, therefore little fulfillment. Rituals, like withdrawal, can keep us apart. An — Thomas A. Harris

Got here half an hour ago and had a look, eyeballin' it," Sawyer said. "It's murder, all right. Tell you something else - the sun went down, and it's as dark as the inside of a horses's ass out here."
"You're sure?"
"Well, I've never actually been inside a horses's ass. — John Sandford

I want the honest truth about something. Could you really fight with someone who did as much damage to you as my father has done to me? (Urian)
I subjected myself to the goddess who drugged me to the point I couldn't protect my sister and nephew the night they were brutally slaughtered, and they were the only two people in the universe who'd ever given two shits about me. Later that same day, she stood back and let her twin brother butcher me on the floor like an animal, yet within hours after that I sold myself to her to protect mankind. For the sake of the Dark-Hunters, I subjected myself to her cruel whims for eleven thousand years. So, yeah, Urian, I think I could manage to suck it up for an hour to protect the rest of the world. (Acheron) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Anything I run across can light up the circuitry of my brain, and set me on an adventure. To research strains of yeast; hiccup fetishists; the proper use of inverse, obverse, converse and reverse; the ratio of main narrative to tangent, of forward action to aside. What else do we do but quest, pursue meaning in the information wash? Where does that storm sewer opening from the river into the city's underneath go to, anyhow? I grab a headlamp and head in. It's long and low and dark and stinks and extends for miles. Underneath the city is another city. The one above begins to disappear. That's what we're after, isn't it? To disappear? To venture into darkness, to let what we know or think we know recede for an hour, a day, a novel's length, and see what meaning can be made of what remains? — Ander Monson

But I had only met Kraunauer recently, spent less than an hour in his company, and I didn't really know him at all, except to know that he was, in his own way, as completely without feelings as I was. I knew this from his reputation, of course. But from being in his company I had also sensed that somewhere behind his eyes there lurked that familiar Dark Emptiness. He was a predator, totally without mercy, the kind of dedicated and enthusiastic shark who didn't even need the smell of blood in the water to strike. He ripped out chunks of flesh because that's what he was made to do, and he liked it that way. Naturally enough, that kind of inborn enthusiasm struck a chord in me. — Jeff Lindsay

I had spent many nights in the jungle looking for game, but this was the first time I had ever spent a night looking for a man-eater. The length of road immediately in front of me was brilliantly lit by the moon, but to right and left the overhanging trees cast dark shadows, and when the night wind agitated the branches and the shadows moved, I saw a dozen tigers advancing on me, and bitterly regretted the impulse that had induced me to place myself at the man-eater's mercy. I lacked the courage to return to the village and admit I was too frightened to carry out my self-imposed task, and with teeth chattering, as much from fear as from cold, I sat out the long night. As the grey dawn was lighting up the snowy range which I
was facing, I rested my head on my drawn-up knees, and it was in this position my men an hour later found me fast asleep; of the tiger I had neither heard nor seen anything. — Jim Corbett

Let's just enjoy it for ourselves. Dawn is such a private hour, don't you think? Such a solitary hour. One always hears that said of midnight, but I think of midnight as remarkably companionable - everyone together, sleeping in the dark.'
'I am afraid I am interrupting your solitude,' Anna said.
'No, no,' the boy said. 'Oh, no. Solitude is best enjoyed in company.' He grinned at her, quickly, and Anna smiled back. 'Especially the company of one other soul,' he added, turning back to the sea. 'It's dreadful to feel alone and really be alone. But I love to enjoy the feeling when I'm not. — Eleanor Catton

The marvelous richness of human experience would lose
something of rewarding joy if there were no limitations to
overcome. The hilltop hour would not be half so wonderful if
there were no dark valleys to traverse. — Helen Keller

Her raised his face to the weeping sky, closed his dark eyes, and sighed deeply, a smile playing on his sensuous lips. The bloody hour is come. — Rick Yancey

The witching hour, people used to call it, that dark time when restless spirits reached for freedom. — Victoria Schwab

The Days were a clan that mighta lived long
But Ben Day's head got screwed on wrong
That boy craved dark Satan's power
So he killed his family in one nasty hour
Little Michelle he strangled in the night
Then chopped up Debby: a bloody sight
Mother Patty he saved for last
Blew off her head with a shotgun blast
Baby Libby somehow survived
But to live through that ain't much a life
- SCHOOLYARD RHYME, CIRCA 1985 — Gillian Flynn

It will be full dark soon, and I do not like the look of that sky. The temperature is falling as well," he added, rubbing his hands together briskly. "I think we shall be in for a bit of snow from the look of the cloud just over the Downs." Naturally the gentlemen had to spend another quarter of an hour debating the weather as the ladies stood shivering, Portia rolling her eyes at me behind Father's back. In the end they all agreed that, yes, it was indeed growing colder and darker and we ought to depart at once for the Abbey. — Deanna Raybourn

I am here to sing thee songs. In this hall of thine I have a corner seat.
In thy world I have no work to do; my useless life can only break out in tunes without a purpose.
When the hour strikes for thy silent worship at the dark temple of midnight, command me, my master, to stand before thee to sing.
When in the morning air the golden harp is tuned, honour me, commanding my presence. — Rabindranath Tagore

Our life consists not in the pursuit of material success but in the quest for worthy spiritual growth. Our entire earthly existence is but a transitional stage in the movement toward something higher, and we must not stumble and fall, nor must we linger fruitlessly on one rung of the ladder. Material laws alone do not explain our life or give it direction. The laws of physics and physiology will never reveal the indisputable manner in which the Creator constantly, day in and day out, participates in the life of each of us, unfailingly granting us the energy of existence; when this assistance leaves us, we die. And in the life of our entire planet, the Divine Spirit surely moves with no less force: this we must grasp in our dark and terrible hour. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

That it was no doubt a dark hour, but that he should get through it; that after all he held his destiny, evil as it might be, in his own hand; that he was master of it. He clung to that thought. — Victor Hugo

IN APRIL Again the woods are odorous, the lark Lifts on upsoaring wings the heaven gray That hung above the tree-tops, veiled and dark, Where branches bare disclosed the empty day. After long rainy afternoons an hour Comes with its shafts of golden light and flings Them at the windows in a radiant shower, And rain drops beat the panes like timorous wings. Then all is still. The stones are crooned to sleep By the soft sound of rain that slowly dies; And cradled in the branches, hidden deep In each bright bud, a slumbering silence lies. — Rainer Maria Rilke

And each night in bed I thought of her as the moon came through my window. I could have lowered my shade to make it darker and easier to sleep, but I never did. In that moonlit hour, I acquired a sense of the otherness of things. I liked the feeling the moonlight gave me, as if it wasn't the opposite of day, but its underside, its private side, when the fabulous purred on my snow-white sheet like some dark cat come in from the desert. — Jerry Spinelli

The weather is quite delicious. Yesterday, after writing to you, I strolled a little beyond the glade for an hour and a half and enjoyed myself
the fresh yet dark green of the grand Scotch firs, the brown of the catkins of the old birches, with their white stems, and a fringe of distant green from the larches, made an excessively pretty view. At last I fell asleep on the grass, and awoke with a chorus of birds singing around me, and squirrels running up the trees, and some woodpeckers laughing, and it was as pleasant and rural a scene as I ever saw, and I did not care one penny how any of the beasts or birds had been formed. — Charles Darwin

Veda began it, but when she finished it, or whether she finished it, Mildred never quite knew. Little quivers went through her and they kept going through her the rest of the night, during the supper party, when Veda sat with the white scarf wound around her throat, during the brief half hour, while she undressed Veda, and put the costume away; in the dark, while she lay there alone, trying to sleep, not wanting to sleep.
This was the climax of Mildred's life. — James M. Cain

Eyes of blue and hair of fire
Are the keys to your desire.
Angel's voice and will of steel
Shall force the dark witch to kneel.
Death to bind and bind to break
Sun and moon for all our sake.
Prince of night, daughter of day,
Bound as one the witch they'll slay.
Same hour they their first breath drew,
On her last, the witch will rue.
Join the two named in this verse
And see the end of the curse. — Danielle L. Jensen

Upon This Age, That Never Speaks Its Mind

Upon this age, that never speaks its mind,
This furtive age, this age endowed with power
To wake the moon with footsteps, fit an oar
Into the rowlocks of the wind, and find
What swims before his prow, what swirls behind -
Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned, uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun; but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric; undefiled
Proceeds pure Science, and has her say; but still
Upon this world from the collective womb
Is spewed all day the red triumphant child. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

At the approach of a certain dark hour, the light of Heaven fills those who are quitting the light of Earth. — Victor Hugo

Books, books, books! I had found the secret of a garret room Piled high with cases in my father's name; Piled high, packed large,
where, creeping in and out Among the giant fossils of my past, Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there At this or that box, pulling through the gap, In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, The first book first. And how I felt it beat Under my pillow, in the morning's dark, An hour before the sun would let me read! My books! — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

In that dark hour I was aghast to realise that something within me, long sickening, had quietly died. I suddenly knew I had no desire or tenderness or esteem. Nothing remained except the chill bonds of law and duty an custom. — Evelyn Waugh

Time that is moved by little fidget wheels Is not myTime, the flood that does not flow. Between the double and the single bell Of a ship's hour, between a round of bells From the dark warship riding there below, I have lived many lives, and this one life Of Joe, long dead, who lives between five bells. — Adam Skirving

I said that we should be all right if we had some cigarettes. I only meant this as a joke; nevertheless half an hour later McNair appeared with two packets of Lucky Strike. He had braved the pitch-dark streets, roamed by Anarchist patrols who had twice stopped him at the pistol's point and examined his papers. I shall not forget this small act of heroism. We were very glad of the cigarettes. — George Orwell

Dawn is such a private hour, don't you think? Such a solitary hour. One always hears that said of midnight, but I think of midnight as remarkably companionable - everyone together, sleeping in the dark." "I am afraid I am interrupting your solitude," Anna said. "No, no," the boy said. "Oh, no. Solitude is a condition best enjoyed in company." He grinned at her, quickly, and Anna smiled back. "Especially the company of one other soul," he added, turning back to the sea. — Eleanor Catton

For an hour or more he was neither human nor vampire, just a howling, hungry creature of dark delights. — Darren Shan

Every night, the dreams pour down and engulf me. An hour, or a day, or even a whole week from my past spills out from the dark, wrapping up my mind in a cocoon of old sensations I thought I'd left behind. Like there's a time machine in my head, I'll be catapulted backward, uncomfortably squeezed into my younger skins like shoes that I've outgrown. — S. Harrison

The foolish took their lamps, but took no oil (pursued ministry as their priority over getting oil). The wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps (pursued oil as their priority before ministry). At the dark midnight hour of history, the Spirit will raise up forerunners who cry out that Jesus is coming as a Bridegroom God and that we must go out to meet Him (make the necessary effort to encounter Him). They all slept which speaks of living in context to the natural processes of life. — Mike Bickle

Other sound than the owl's voice there was none, save the falling of a fountain into its stone basin; for, it was one of those dark nights that hold their breath by the hour together, and then heave a long low sigh, and hold their breath again. — Charles Dickens

The house clock, place certain there at the bottom of things, strikes the half hour dry and null. All is so much, all is so deep, all is so dark and cold! — Fernando Pessoa

Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights, before the dark hour of reason grows. — John Betjeman

Judd returned during the last hour of my Friday shift. Without seeing him coming as I wiped a table, I knew something was up because two large burly men flinched.
Turning, I found Judd moving fast towards me. Before I could speak, his hands cupped my face and his lips were on mine.
Murmuring at the deepening kiss, I tossed aside the wash towel and wrapped my arms around his waist. He felt like perfection.
Judd pulled away and stated to speak then his gaze focused on the two men watching us and smiling. His dark stare killed their enthusiasm and they returned to eating.
"Back less than a minute and you're already losing me tips," I teased, causing Judd to smile grudging. "You taste like peppermint."
"I slept for shit and chewing gum keeps me alert."
Caressing his lips, I couldn't stop grinning. "You're so fucking beautiful and you're mine. How did that happen?"
Judd finally gave me a great smile. "I laid eyed on you and was done for. — Bijou Hunter

It's more about when you come back from being out somewhere; in a minicab or a night bus, or with someone, or walking home across London late at night, dreamlike, and you've still got the music kind of echoing in you, in your bloodstream, but with real life trying to get in the way. I want it to be like a little sanctuary. It's like that 24-hour stand selling tea on a rainy night, glowing in the dark. It's pretty simple. — Burial

Saturday, May 22d.---It is now Saturday night, and I must prepare for the holy Sabbath. My Bible and Confession of Faith are my traveling companions, and precious friends have they been to me. I bless God for that glorious summary of Christian doctrine contained in our noble standards. It has cheered my soul in many a dark hour, and sustained me in many a desponding moment. I love to read it, and ponder carefully each proof text as I pass along. — James Henley Thornwell

Uriah looked better than he did an hour ago
he washed the blood from his mouth, and some of the color returned to his face. I'm struck, suddenly, by how handsome he is
all his features are proportionate, his eyes dark and lively, his skin bronze-brown. And he has probably always been handsome. Only boys who have been handsome from a young age have that arrogance in their smile. Not like Tobias, who is almost shy when he smiles like he is surprised you bothered to look at him from the first place. — Veronica Roth

Thy soul shall find itself alone
'Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone
Not one, of all the crowd, to pry
Into thine hour of secrecy.
Be silent in that solitude,
Which is not loneliness - for then
The spirits of the dead who stood
In life before thee are again
In death around thee - and their will
Shall overshadow thee: be still. [ ... ] — Edgar Allan Poe

Since you walked out on me I'm getting lovelier by the hour. I glow like a corpse in the dark. No one sees how round and sharp my eyes have grown how my carcass looks like a glass urn, how I hold up things in the rags of my hands, the way I can stand through crippled by lust. No, there's just your cruelty circling my head like a bright rotting halo. — Nina Cassian

THE OWLS
by: Charles Baudelaire
UNDER the overhanging yews,
The dark owls sit in solemn state,
Like stranger gods; by twos and twos
Their red eyes gleam. They meditate.
Motionless thus they sit and dream
Until that melancholy hour
When, with the sun's last fading gleam,
The nightly shades assume their power.
From their still attitude the wise
Will learn with terror to despise
All tumult, movement, and unrest;
For he who follows every shade,
Carries the memory in his breast,
Of each unhappy journey made.
'The Owls' is reprinted from The Poems and Prose Poems of Charles Baudelaire. Ed. James Huneker. New York: Brentano's, 1919. — Charles Baudelaire

Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts ... they lie unquestioned, uncombined
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun, but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I don't ever want to make the mistake of needing him as much as or more than he needs me. But there's no denying that sometimes, when we sleep together in the dark cavern of the bottom bunk, his big brother thrashing around on top, the white noise machine grinding out its fake rain, the green digital clock announcing every hour, Iggy's small body holds mine. — Maggie Nelson

As he played it off to Nat, Archy knew - felt, like the baby-shaped ache in his left arm - that neither his ability nor his willingness to care for Rolando English for an hour, a day, a week, had anything whatsoever to do with his willingness or ability to be a father to the forthcoming child now putting the finishing touches on its respiratory and endocrine systems in the dark laboratory of his wife's womb. Wiping — Michael Chabon

There is in every true woman's heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity; but which kindles up, and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity. — Washington Irving

A hallowed frequency within
That, even in your darkest hour,
You can always turn to. — Scott Hastie

Standing out there in th dark, I felt many different things. One of them was pride in my fellow Americans, ordinary people who rose to the moment, knowing it was their last. One was humility, for I was alive and untouched by the horrors of that day, free to continue my happy life as a husband and father and writer. In the lonely blackness, I could almost taste the finiteness of life and thus it's preciousness. We take it for granted, but it is fragile, precarious, uncertain able to cease at any instant without notice. I was reminded of what should be obvious but too often is not, that each today, each hour and minute, is worth cherishing. — John Grogan

Then, in the dark hour before dawn, sirens blared. They were announcing departures for a world that now and forever meant nothing to me. — Albert Camus

The hour before bed should be peaceful. Your routine should be done in rooms with dim lights. Your last step should end in the quiet, dark bedroom with little talking and your usual go-to-sleep technique. Write down your routine, and make it very specific. — Elizabeth Pantley

And it is not always good to be healed in body. Nor is it always evil to die in battle, even in bitter pain. Were I permitted, in this dark hour I would choose the latter. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Now,' he says, when finished, 'let the wind blow and let the light come from the dark. I'll sit here with my hen's egg and watch with safety even if the sky falls apart.' Every hour of the day after that, he holds the egg next to his breast, except when hunting for food. When it's cold, or it rains, he never leaves at all, fearing a moment's neglect might prove fatal. To him, this egg is Sally, — Peter Gray

I even started a few rumors that were pure nonsense, lies so outrageous that people would repeat them despite the fact that they were obviously untrue.
I had demon blood in me.
I could see in the dark.
I only slept an hour each night.
When the moon was full I would talk in my sleep, speaking a strange language no one could understand. — Patrick Rothfuss

Just to be tender, just to be true, Just to be glad the whole day through, Just to be merciful, just to be mild, Just to be trustful as a child, Just to be gentle and kind and sweet, Just to be helpful with willing feet, Just to be cheery when things go wrong, Just to drive sadness away with song, Whether the hour is dark or bright, Just to be loyal to God and right Just to believe that God knows best, Just in His promise ever to rest, Just to let love be our daily key, That is God's will for you and me. Our Father and our God, You have shown me such great kindness and gentle mercy. Teach me to be gentle and kind too. Help me reach out to the lost in compassion and love to bring them gently to You through the person of Jesus Christ, through whom I pray. — Billy Graham

I am alone in the world, and yet not alone enough to make each hour holy. I am lowly in this world, and yet not lowly enough for me to be just a thing to you, dark and shrewd. I want my will and I want to go with my will as it moves towards action. — Maggie Stiefvater

Now you comprehend your first and final lover / in the dark receding planets of his eyes, / and this is the hour when you know moreover / that the god you have loved always / will descend and lie with you in paradise. — Gwendolyn MacEwen

You start realizing that maybe you're the one night a month that people have out, and they don't need to hear your political views or how dark you can get. They just want to laugh for an hour and go home. Once I wrapped my head around that, my act evolved accordingly. — Billy Gardell

We see, surrounding the narrow raft illuminated by the flickering light of human comradeship, the dark ocean on whose rolling waves we toss for a brief hour; all the loneliness of humanity amid hostile forces is concentrated on the individual soul, which must struggle alone, with what of courage it can command, against the whole weight of a universe that cares nothing for its hopes and fears. Victory, in this struggle with the powers of darkness, is the true baptism into the glorious company of heroes, the true initiation into the overmastering beauty of human existence. — Bertrand Russell

To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, every inch of space is a miracle, every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, every cubic foot of the interior swarms with the same; every spear of grass-the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them, all these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles. — Walt Whitman

A dark hour makes Jesus bright. — Robert Murray M'Cheyne

This sweet, blessed, God-inspired place called America is a champion that has absorbed some blows. But while we bend, we don't break. This is no dark hour; this is the dawn before we remember who we are. — Artur Davis

The saddest thing of all was that their party represented a deviation from the conditions of the time. It was impossible to imagine that in the houses across the lane people were eating and drinking in the same way at such an hour. Beyond the window lay mute, dark, hungry Moscow. Her food stores were empty, and people had even forgotten to think of such things as game and vodka.
And thus it turned out that the only true life is one that resembles the life around us and drowns in it without leaving a trace, that isolated happiness is not happiness, so that duck and alcohol, when they seem to be the only ones in town, are not alcohol and a duck at all. — Boris Pasternak

The great man seemed so peaceful. Margaret studied his face. His eyebrows were darker than his hair, arched boldly above his eyes, masculine yet not too thick. Due to the lateness of the hour, a dark shadow deepened the angular contour of his jaw, surrounding his perfectly formed lips. Oh how she remember kissing those lips. Not brutally, but softly, reverently, with passion. What could she do to entice him to kiss her again? — Amy Jarecki

If he died now, Grainier probably wouldn't know it until they came into the light of the gas lamps either side of the doctor's house. After they'd moved along for nearly an hour without conversation, listening only to the creaking wagon and the sound of the nearby river and the clop of the mares, it grew dark. — Denis Johnson

Write about a terrible experience until you find value in having gone through it. Then you will appreciate every dark hour. — Jan Marquart

The hour has come to leave for the meeting place where I show him my face. He shall see the dark fire of my eyes and hear the wild wind in my voice. He will feel my presence full of stars, scanning his soul, and he shall know my raw power in his bones. I go to the meeting place where he will surrender to my fierce energy. The dancing, brooding passion goes in the cloak of night to where the human dares not go, but must. I am his destiny and his death, and he knows not my name. — Robert Lloyd

T is the work of many a dark hour, many a prayer, to bring the heart back from an infant gone. — Nathaniel Parker Willis

A year earlier my parents had moved us out of the city to a split-level on Long Island, their idea of the American dream, which meant it as now an hour-and-a-half commute via the 7:06 Hicksville to Penn Station every morning. (Dark City Lights) — Jonathan Santlofer

From up above, in a plane passing over, you'd just see one little light in all this dark, with no idea of the lives that were being lived within it, and in the house beside, and beside that one. So much happening in the world, night and day, hour by hour. It was no wonder we were meant to sleep, if only to check out of it for a little while. — Sarah Dessen

God's ways seem dark, but, soon or late, They touch the shining hills of day; The evil cannot brook delay, The good can well afford to wait, Give ermined knaves their hour of crime; Yet have the future grand and great, The safe appeal of Truth to Time! — John Greenleaf Whittier

Good evening, Miss Fairmont."
She saw Black sprawled out in a wingback chair, jacketless, the white shirt he wore unbuttoned to the waist, revealing an enticing view of his chest and the fine black hair that was hidden beneath. "I was beginning to wonder if you would come tonight. It is midnight after all."
On cue the large pendulum clock in the hall began to chime out the hour. Isabella met his gaze, marveled at the dark layers in his eyes. He appeared at once indolent, yet supremely masculine, and in his state of dishabille he was utterly breathtaking. — Charlotte Featherstone

Ere we had reach'd the wish'd-for place, night fell: We were too late at least by one dark hour, — William Wordsworth

She saw the snowy poles of moonless Mars, That marvellous round of milky light Below Orion, and those double stars Whereof the one more bright

Is circled by the other — Alfred Tennyson

Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupations, That is known as the Children's Hour. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I wanted to lie hour after hour on a couch, pouring out the dark, secret places of my heart
do this feeling that over my shoulder sat humanity and wisdom and generosity, a munificent heart
do this until that incredibly lovely day when the great man would say to me, his voice grave and dramatic with discovery: This is you, Exley. Rise and go back into the world a whole man. — Frederick Exley

We salute our veterans of Pearl Harbor and World War II, whose sacrifices saved democracy during a dark hour. In their memory, a new generation of our Armed Forces goes forward against new enemies in a new era. Once again, we pledge to defend freedom, secure our homeland, and advance peace around the world. Americans have been tested before, and our Nation will triumph again. — George W. Bush

Louisville, an hour after dark, is a carpet of gilt thumbtacks below them, with straight, twinkling lines like strings of beads leading out from it. Southeastward now, toward the Tennessee state-line. ("Jane Brown's Body") — Cornell Woolrich

We have raised the bar so high on how church is done that few believe they could ever do it themselves. The dark side of this endeavor is that we have lowered the bar of what is means to be a Christian, such that simply showing up to the weekly one-hour event with some regularity and a checkbook is all it takes. — Neil Cole

Having a baby isn't so bad. If you're a female Emperor penguin in the Antarctic. She lays the egg, rolls it over to the father, then takes off for warmer weather where she eats and eats and eats. For two months, the father stands stiff, without food, blind in the 24-hour dark, balancing the egg on his feet. After the little penguin is hatched, the mother sees fit to come home. — L. M. Boyd

Happiness increases and decreases depending on the level of power one has. When you have more power, more control on your life, you feel more happy and self-confident, as your power decreases and the control of your life slips away, you get less and less happy and when you no longer have any power to rely on you reach depression and despair. This is the point where your power meter has hit 0. You now need to rely on the good favors of others to live. For those who believe in the power of god, it sustains them through this dark hour. For those who do not believe, they think they have reached the end and may take their lives. That's why all conflict in life is about power and many lose life in its pursuit. Power is life itself. — Bangambiki Habyarimana

And why is Heather wearing pink? Come on, people."
Heather rolled her eyes and disappeared back inside the tent, reappearing a minute later with a dark gray T-shirt on.
"Better?" She cocked her head at tristan.
"Yes. You've just extended your life by at least an hour. — Chelsea Fine

The day my father died seemed longer than my entire childhood. The day I felt my first success seemed fleeting, hour-long, not long enough perhaps. I wondered where it went. Even the cycle of time confounds me. I work the dark until sunrise on most days and fall asleep as the world awakens to light. My friends call me an owl, I like to think of myself as a bat ... Batman ... the prince of darkness. — Shahrukh Khan

There is no abstract Evil; you have to understand that! Its roots are here, all around us, in this herd that goes on chewing and having a good time only an hour after a murder! That's what you have to fight for. For people. Evil is a hydra with many heads, and the more of them you cut off, the more it grows! Hydras have to be starved to death, do you understand that? Kill a hundred Dark Ones, and a thousand more will take their place. — Sergei Lukyanenko

On the night of the winter solstice, when the dead get their annual reprieve, they go up to the 24-hour donut shop and wedding chapel to get hitched. Marriage is a good and proper pursuit for dead people. For a while, it relieves the dark, shuddering loneliness of the afterlife. — Rachel Swirsky

A thousand happy moments succumbed to history. It was the happiest hour of the year, worst time of our lives. I can still smell the ruins from that cold dark brute stormy October night. — Parul Wadhwa

All it takes for us to be guilty of theft is one misspent hour at work; one item we "forgot" to return from the office; one personal long-distance phone call we made at the company's expense; one overpriced item in our store. We see our sinless Lord, crucified for thieves not unlike the one hanging next to Him. Here was one person who never took what did not belong to Him, and who fulfilled all His obligations and paid debts He did not owe, and yet He hangs here next to a common thief, bearing His shame and guilt before God as though He had committed the crime. The thief crucified next to our Lord may have experienced the wrath of Rome that dark Friday afternoon, but because of the crucifixion of a Man just feet from him, he would not have to endure the wrath of heaven. All thieves who trust in Christ can expect to hear those same words on their death-bed from the spotless Lamb: "Today you shall be with me in Paradise. — Michael S. Horton

The weeks up there were almost the most beautiful in my life. I breathed the pure, clear air, drank the icy water from streams and watched the herds of goats grazing on the steep slopes, guarded by dark-haired, musing goatherds. At times I heard storms resound through the valley and saw mists and clouds at unusually close quarters. In the clefts of rocks I observed the small, delicate, bright coloured flowers and the many wonderful mosses, and on clear days I used to like to walk uphill for an hour until I could see the clearly outlined distant peaks of high mountains, their blue silhouettes, and white, sparkling snow fields across the other side of the hill. — Hermann Hesse

A man's subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for the greater part of his life in some dark den of its own, hidden away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery of a miserable hour. — P.G. Wodehouse

We probably ought to be careful about deciding we're feeling offended; it can get old after a while. We become offended in all the ways God isn't. The seat of offendedness (like the seat of judgment) can be a real tricky spot to occupy. Before we know it, it can become a twenty-four-hour-a-day job. It becomes all we're known for, and when we're all caught up in all the things we're against, we forget the beauty of the things we're supposed to be for. We forget what the kingdom of God looks like and all the wonderfully odd characters taking up residence there. We forget to revel in dappled things. We forget we're dappled. — David Dark

Dark as is this hour, there is shining through the heavy overcast of fear and anger the solemn and wonderful image of the Son of God, the Savior of the World, the Prince of Peace, the exemplar of universal love, and it is to Him that we look in these circumstances. It was He who gave His life that all might enjoy eternal life — Gordon B. Hinckley

I looked. George Shearing. And as always he leaned his blind head on his pale hand, all ears opened like the ears of an elephant, listening to the American sounds and mastering them for his own English summer's-night use. Then they urged him to get up and play. He did. He played innumerable choruses with amazing chords that mounted higher and higher till the sweat splashed all over the piano and everybody listened in awe and fright. They led him off the stand after an hour. He went back to his dark corner, old God Shearing, and the boys said, 'There ain't nothin left after that. — Jack Kerouac

My life is not this steeply sloping hour,
in which you see me hurrying.
Much stands behind me; I stand before it like a tree;
I am only one of my many mouths,
and at that, the one that will be still the soonest.
I am the rest between two notes,
which are somehow always in discord
because Death's note wants to climb over
but in the dark interval, reconciled,
they stay there trembling.
And the song goes on, beautiful. — Rainer Maria Rilke

So he stopped at the first of them, a frigid hothouse whose front tipped forward over the street in defiance of gravity, taste, and ordinance; inside, the tender daytime flowers could be seen huddling in family groups beneath a constant, unseen sun, and behind them was the hermetic door to the dark Cactus Room where the shy nocturnal plants, genus cereus, could bloom in privacy at any hour. Vivien, once out of the car, appeared less constrained. She did not have that stiffness so many have on first entering bars, that air of waiting stubbornly for alcohol to loosen them, which so often presages their manner when it comes' time for bed. She was already excited when the martinis came. — Douglas Woolf

first seek ye the kingdom of pure practical intelligence

shreds of posters and headlines
shards of gramophone records feathers

lights shining arcs
the well-lit borders

when the rush-hour comes
and the hour of the pile-up
and the sounds of breaking steel-plate and people
are heard in the dark

when the journey is broken, no one is on the right road — Pentti Saarikoski

Kovacs to a female believer in New Revelation: ..I'm calling you a gutless betrayer of your sex. I can see your husband's angle, he's a man, he's got everything to gain from this crapshit. But you? You've thrown away centuries of political struggle and scientific advance so you can sit in the dark and mutter your superstitions of unworth to yourself. You'll let your life, the most precious thing you have, be stolen from you hour by hour and day by day as long as you can eke out the existence your males will let you have. And then, when you finally die, and I hope it's soon, sister, I really do, then at the last you'll spite your own potential and shirk the final power we've won for ourselves to come back and try again. You'll do all of this because of your fucking faith, and if that child in your belly is female, then you'll condemn her to the same fucking thing — Richard K. Morgan

Sometimes I get lonesome for a storm. A full blown storm where everything changes. The sky goes through four days in an hour, the trees wail, little animals skitter in the mud and everything gets dark and goes completely wild. But it is really God - playing music in his favourite cathedral in heaven - shattering stained glass - playing a gigantic organ - thundering on the keys - perfect harmony - perfect joy. — Joan Baez