Night Watchman Quotes & Sayings

The mental powers acquire their full robustness when the cheek loses its ruddy hue, and the limbs their elastic step; and pale thought sits on manly brows, and the watchman, as he walks his rounds, sees the student's lamp burning far into the silent night. — Thomas Guthrie

Acquainted with the Night
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night. — Robert Frost

The finest things I have seen are dead places: a shuttered amusement park I entered by bribing a night watchman with the price of a drink; an abandoned barn in which, the farmer said, half a dozen bigfoots had been living the summer before. — Neil Gaiman

For many years I have been a night watchman of the Milky Way galaxy. — Bart Bok

Once a dream did weave a shade
O'er my angel-guarded bed,
That an emmet lost its way
Where on grass methought I lay.

Troubled, wildered, and forlorn,
Dark, benighted, travel-worn,
Over many a tangle spray,
All heart-broke, I heard her say:

'Oh my children! do they cry,
Do they hear their father sigh?
Now they look abroad to see,
Now return and weep for me.'

Pitying, I dropped a tear:
But I saw a glow-worm near,
Who replied, 'What wailing wight
Calls the watchman of the night?

'I am set to light the ground,
While the beetle goes his round:
Follow now the beetle's hum;
Little wanderer, hie thee home!

- "A Dream — William Blake

The essential criterion for running a bookstore is less "Do you like books?" than "Do you like people?" Ironically, we find that having unlimited access to more reading material than we ever could have imagined means we read less. Chuck and Dee Robinson own Village Books [...]He once said in an interview with business writer Rober Spector, "If you're opening a bookstore because you love reading books, then become a night watchman because you'll be able to read more books that way." He was right. It's amazing how just the sight of so much intellectual fodder quells the appetite, let alone how little time remains to read once the shelves have been straightened, the day's swap credits assessed and put away, and the sales taxes tallied. — Wendy Welch

30. The Watchman's Dream Mr. Parker, a businessman, is leaving on a trip and stops by his office on the way to the airport, around midnight. The night watchman, Paul stops him and says, "Mr. Parker, please don't take that flight. I had a dream last night, a little after midnight, that your plane would crash and everyone would die!" The business man cancels his trip and sure enough, the plane crashes, no survivors. Mr. Parker gives Paul a $20,000 reward for saving his life, then fires him. Why? Give me a clue | Answer — Puzzleland

You can become a night watchman and live happily. It is what you are inwardly that matters. Your inner peace and joy you have to earn. It is much more difficult than earning money. No university can teach you to be yourself. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Some bears are sold for amazing sums at auction. An example is a very old stuffed individual named Mabel that had belonged to Elvis Presley (as a child or an adult?) and had been sold at auction several times after the King's death; it was made in the Steiff workshop in 1909. Its end was exceedingly sinister. Lent by its owner for an exhibition of stuffed bears in Wells, England, in which it was to be the star attraction, it provoked a hatred or jealousy of a young Doberman accompanying the night watchman after the first day of the exhibition. The dog seized the precious relic and furiously bit and clawed it to pieces. (252) — Michel Pastoureau

I know the stars by heart,
the armies of the night, and there in the lead the ones that bring us snow or the crops of summer, bring us all we have
our great blazing kings of the sky, I know them, when they rise and when the fall ... — Aeschylus

ALBA from "Langue d'Oc" When the nightingale to his mate Sings day-long and night late My love and I keep state In bower, In flower, 'Till the watchman on the tower Cry: "Up! Thou rascal, Rise, I see the white Light And the night Flies. — Ezra Pound

It's one of the tragic ironies of the theatre that only one man in it can count on steady work - the night watchman. — Tallulah Bankhead

Augie: Does everybody else know?
T.C.: About my epitaph?
Augie: About me being gay, you gink-head hoser-face!
T.C. Not everybody. There's a night watchman at a Dunkin Donuts just outside of Detroit. He doesn't know yet. — Steve Kluger

I nipped into this sanctuary late this afternoon and soon heard the dying footfalls of closing time. From now on, my only effort will be to dodge the night watchman. Poets can dodge. — John Collier

So, on the eastern summit, clad in gray, morn, like a horseman girt for travel, comes, and from his tower of mist night's watchman hurries down. — Henry Kirke White

When I was in Philadelphia during the Depression in 1930 or '31, I got a very sad job as a night watchman in a garage. The cars in the garage had been abandoned by their owners, since they had lost their jobs and couldn't keep up the payments. — Tom Glazer

How long the night to the watchman, How long the road to the weary traveller, How long the wandering of many lives To the fool who misses the way. — Gautama Buddha

In 1971, after seven years in college, with that magic piece of paper clutched triumphantly in my fist, the best job I was able to get was night watchman on a sewer project in Babylon, N.Y. guarding a hole in the ground to prevent anyone from stealing it. God bless the American educational system! — Spider Robinson

Is it thy will, thy image should keep open
My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,
While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?
Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee
So far from home into my deeds to pry,
To find out shames and idle hours in me,
The scope and tenor of thy jealousy?
O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great:
It is my love that keeps mine eye awake:
Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,
To play the watchman ever for thy sake:
For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
From me far off, with others all too near. — William Shakespeare

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain - and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain. — Robert Frost

Opportunity knocks at every man's door once. On some men's door it hammers till it breaks down the door and then it goes in and wakes him up if he's asleep, and ever afterward it works for him as a night watchman. — Finley Peter Dunne

In Fascism the State is not a night-watchman, only occupied with the personal safety of the citizens. — Benito Mussolini

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes. — James Wright

Just last night, I was troubled by a decision involving an eyedropper, a greedy night watchman, and a tray of individual custards, and this morning I am so tired that I can scarcely type these worfs. — Lemony Snicket