Quiet Night In Quotes & Sayings

I tensed, waiting for the fury - both his and mine - but it was only quiet and calm in the darkness of his room. I could almost taste the sweetness of reunion in the air, a separate fragrance from the perfume of his breath; the emptiness when we were apart left its own bitter aftertaste, something I didn't consciously notice until it was removed.
There was no friction in the space between us. The stillness was peaceful - not like the calm before the tempest, but like a clear night untouched by even the dream of a storm. — Stephenie Meyer

Everyone carries a room about inside him. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one's ears and listens, say in the night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall. — Franz Kafka

Pedaling down Dune Drive on a red beach cruiser, Dani ahead of her and Vanessa behind her, is a transporting experience. The night is quiet; the air on her face is soft; her hair streams behind her; the stars above are as brilliant as stars in a children's book. They could be nine years old, or fifteen, or twenty-one; they've ridden bikes down Dune Drive at all of those ages and all of the ones in between. There must have been so much more to those summers, but what she remembers are the two weeks she spent in Avalon with Dani and Vanessa - two weeks that always went by too quickly, but that in memory stretch to fill an entire season. — Meg Donohue

Sometimes it's nice just being in your own room and having a quiet night and relaxing and getting ready for the game. — Patrick Kane

He lowered the window, and looked out at the rising sun. There was a ridge of ploughed land, with a plough upon it where it had been left last night when the horses were unyoked; beyond, a quiet coppice-wood, in which many leaves of burning red and golden yellow still remained upon the trees. Though the earth was cold and wet, the sky was clear, and the sun rose bright, placid, and beautiful. — Charles Dickens

Sounds of a San Juan night, drifting across the city through layers of humid air; sounds of life and movement, people getting ready and people giving up, the sound of hope and the sound of hanging on, and behind them all, the quiet, deadly ticking of a thousand hungry clocks, the lonely sound of time passing in the long Caribbean night. — Hunter S. Thompson

I gave his a squeeze and relaxed beside him, wondering if this was how it felt.
If this was how it felt to get what you wanted for a lifetime.
Have it stretched out beside you.
The promise of it there all night so you'd wake up to it in the morning.
The promise of it going to work the next day with you knowing it was coming back.
A promise that would stay a promise-beautiful, forever there, beckoning, even as minute by minute it was being fulfilled, leaving you taking your last breath on earth knowing you lived a life filled with beauty.
If it was, it was weirdly serene.
You'd think something that magnificent would be about fireworks.
But if this was it, it wasn't.
It was quiet, tranquil, comfortable.
Beauty. — Kristen Ashley

I'm very low-key. I don't really blend in, so it's difficult to go out in public. I like to do things that are kind of quiet, whether it's a dinner at my house or a restaurant, or a movie night at home. — Dwayne Johnson

Perhaps on some quiet night the tremor of far-off drums, sinking, swelling, a tremor vast, faint; a sound weird, appealing, suggestive and wild - and perhaps with as profound a meaning as the sound of bells in a Christian country. — Joseph Conrad

This was where war happened, in someone's backyard. Sometimes it was yours. Often, it was someone's a world away. But it did happen. In this moment. In the next breath. Every day.
Every day, someone lived in the midst of destruction and chaos. Every day, someone's flower boxes filled with gunpowder's haze, a child's laughter turned to tears. There had been a day when someone watered those flowers in the evening's peaceful quiet and the children caught fireflies in mason jars. And that day will come again, when the crickets and the bullets no longer have to compete for the night's stage. But for now, all anyone could do was fight on the crickets' behalf. — Kelseyleigh Reber

There are very few friends that will lie down with you on empty streets in the middle of the night, without a word. No questions, no asking why, just quietly lay there with you, observing the stars, until you're ready to get back up on your feet again and walk the last bit home, softly holding your hand as a quiet way of saying "I'm here".
It was a beautiful night. — Charlotte Eriksson

night, I think I can hear the stars scraping against the sky. That's how quiet it is. After a while it's almost more than I can stand. I want to scream at the top of my lungs. I want to sing, shout, stamp my feet, clap my hands, anything to declare my presence. My conversation with the soldier had been the first words I'd said aloud in weeks. The Hum died on the tenth day after the Arrival. I was sitting in third period texting Lizbeth the last text I — Rick Yancey

Mature readers consider reading an integral part of life. It is not something they do only to relax or to escape or if there is nothing good on television. It is something they plan for in each day, and if the day develops so that they have no time for it, they may become restless, rather like joggers who miss their run. Some - busy parents, for example - stay up late at night to read their daily quota after the house is quiet, acknowledging that having balance in their lives is more dependent on reading time than on sleep. — Judith Wynn Halsted

The dog continued to bark at night, sometimes far away, sometimes close to the house. Towards morning, he would howl. It could be quiet for hours, but there were those who lay in bed waiting for the next howl, and they would say, "Did you hear that? It's like having a wolf in the woods. An unhappy woman has an unhappy dog. It ought to be shot."
Katri did not talk about the dog, but she put out food and water in the yard. Sometimes at night Mats would wait by the kitchen window with the light off and the door open. He saw the dog only once, just as it was growing light, and he went very slowly out on the steps and tried to coax it in. But it ran off into the woods, so he gave up. — Tove Jansson

Let me tell you girls a story, short and sweet. In high school, I was a junior varsity cheerleader dating a senior who was up for football scholarships. I'd slept with him several times willingly. One night I wasn't in the mood, but he was. So he held me down and forced me. The few people I told about it - including my best friend - pointed out what would happen to him if I told. They stressed the fact that I hadn't been a virgin, that we were dating, that we'd had sex before. So I kept quiet. I never even told my mother. That boy put bruises on my body. I was crying and begging him to stop and he didn't. That's called rape, ladies. — Tammara Webber

Last night, Bree had been taken. Thoroughly, utterly taken. Gently or roughly, it didn't matter. This man had reached into the darkest part of her mind, had brought out and laid bare the desires she admitted to no one but herself in her most secret, quiet moments. Her hunger had been allowed to run free. There'd been no guilt, no remorse. Nothing was 'wrong'. And God, the feeling of freedom was damned addictive. What did that say about her? How could she love Michael, yet give a part of her she'd never felt comfortable sharing with Michael to this stranger. — E. Jamie

Rhythm. Life is full of it; words should have it, too. But you have to train your ear. Listen to the waves on a quiet night; you'll pick up the cadence. Look at the patterns the wind makes in dry sand and you'll see how syllables in a sentence should fall. Arthur Gordon — Arthur Gordon

Sometimes at night, when I was alone, or when I was at the pool, in the quiet stillness underwater, my mind would go to that place. To the hospital, to the people there. It was as if my heart could travel, over the miles, over the months that had passed, and I was back with her. Olivia — Cylin Busby

At night when I lie awake I can hear it, quiet but unrelenting, undeniable: a whisper in my head, Slip away. When I close my eyes, my head is filled with images of past and future lives, the things I dreamed I wanted, the things I had and threw away. — Paula Hawkins

I don't really go out at night in terms of noisy, busy places; I prefer more of a quiet corner somewhere. — Karl Pilkington

Today is one of the days when Ma is Gone.
She won't wake up properly. She's here but not really. She stays in Bed with the pillows on her head.
Silly Penis is standing up, I squish him down.
I eat my hundred cereal and I stand on my chair to wash the bowl and Meltedy Spoon. It's very quiet when I switch off the water. I wonder did Old Nick come in the night. I don't think he did because the trash bag is still by Door, but maybe he did only he didn't take the trash? Maybe Ma's not just Gone. Maybe he squished her neck even harder and now she's -
I go up really close and listen till I hear breath. I'm just one inch away, my hair touches Ma's nose and she puts her hand up over her face so I step back.
I don't have a bath on my own, I just get dressed.
There's hours and hours, hundreds of them.
Ma gets up to pee but not talking, with her face all blank. I already put a glass of water beside Bed but she just gets back under Duvet. — Emma Donoghue

They send a person who can never stay,: she whispered. "Who can never accept my offer of companionship for more than a little while. They send me a hero I can't help ... Just the sort of person I can't help falling in love with." The night was quiet except for the gurgle of the fountains and waves lapping on the shore. It took me a long time to realize what she was saying. "Me?" I asked. "If you could see your face." She suppressed a smile, though her eyes were still teary. "Of course, you." "That's why you've been pulling away all this time?" "Itried very hard. But I can't help it. The Fates are cruel. They sent you to me, my brave one, knowing that you would break my heart." "But ... I'm just ... I mean, I'm just me." "That is enough," Calypso promised. — Rick Riordan

What a night it was! The jagged masses of heavy dark cloud were rolling at intervals from horizon to horizon, and thin white wreaths covered the stars. Through all the rush of the cloud river the moon swam, breasting the waves and disappearing again in the darkness.
I walked up and down, drinking in the beauty of the quiet earth and the changing sky. The night was absolutely silent. Nothing seemed to be abroad. There was no scurrying of rabbits, or twitter of the half-asleep birds. And though the clouds went sailing across the sky, the wind that drove them never came low enough to rustle the dead leaves in the woodland paths. Across the meadows I could see the church tower standing out black and grey against the sky. ("Man Size In Marble") — E. Nesbit

Are you afraid of the tigers? Do you hear them padding all round you on their fierce fine velvet feet? The speed of growth of tigers in the nightland is a thing which ought to be investigated some time by the competent authority. You start off with one, about the size of a mouse, and before you know where you are he's twice the size of the Sumatra tiger which defeats all comers in that hemisphere. And then, before you can say Knife (not a very tactful thing to say in the circumstances anyhow), all his boy and girl friends are gathered round, your respectable quiet decorous docile night turns itself into a regular tiger-garden. — Anna Kavan

When you have moments on your own or spaces in your time, just focus on the well at the root of your soul. Imagine that nourishing stream of belonging, ease, peace, and delight. Feel, with your visual imagination, the refreshing waters of that well gradually flowing up through the arid earth of the neglected side of your heart. It is helpful to imagine this particularly before you sleep. Then during the night you will be in a constant flow of enrichment and belonging. You will find that when you awake at dawn, there will be a lovely, quiet happiness in your spirit. One — John O'Donohue

Oh sober-minded reader, never sneer at such fantasies. In the quiet of your mind, when the deep night is at it's blackest, are you always so certain of what is real? — Ann Eliza Young

It could be enough, maybe, or at least a start, but the problem is that at night I tumble into dreams that aren't dreams at all. I tumble into memories and wake up aching for a dying world and a quiet, cold life that offered me nothing but sitting in a still room. — Elizabeth Scott

Ah! I had been screaming. I realized it. Lots of mortals around me, high up in the night, were telling me to be quiet. — Anne Rice

There was a succession of roommates, never chosen with her input and all with cognitive impairments. Some were quiet. One kept her up at night. She felt incarcerated, like she was in prison for being old. The — Atul Gawande

For mental and emotional health, quiet time is very important to me. I need a point in every day that I disconnect from all electronics and reconnect to my center. I pray and meditate. I drink a ton of water and believe in a good night's sleep. — Erica Tazel

The universe dilated within him, above him. Something like joy stirred in Lancaster's being, a sublime ecstasy born of terror. His heart felt as if it might burst, might leap from his chest. His cheeks were wet. Drops of blood glittered on his bare arms, the backs of his hands, his thighs, his feet. Black as the blackest pearls come undone from a string, the droplets lifted from him, drifted from him like a slow motion comet tail, and floated toward the road, the fields. For the first time in an age he heard nothing but the night sounds of crickets, his own breath. His skull was quiet. — Laird Barron

There are such a lot of things that have no place in summer and autumn and spring. Everything that's a little shy and a little rum. Some kinds of night animals and people that don't fit in with others and that nobody really believes in. They keep out of the way all the year. And then when everything's quiet and white and the nights are long and most people are asleep - then they appear. — Tove Jansson

There are moments when it's too quiet. Particularly late at night or early in the mornings. That's when you know there's something lacking in your life. You just know. — Frank Sinatra

But the moon came slowly up in all her gentle glory, and the stars looked out, and through the small compass of the grated window, as through the narrow crevice of one good deed in a murky life of guilt, the face of Heaven shone bright and merciful. He raised his head; gazed upward at the quiet sky, which seemed to smile upon the earth in sadness, as if the night, more thoughtful than the day, looked down in sorrow on the sufferings and evil deeds of men; and felt its peace sink deep into his heart. — Charles Dickens

We needed coffee but we'd got ourselves convinced that the later we left it the better it would taste, and, as the country grew flatter and the roads became quiet and dusk began to colour the sky, you could guess from the way we retuned the radio and unfolded the map or commented on the view that the tang of determination had overtaken our thoughts, and when, fidgety and untalkative but almost home, we drew up outside the all-night restaurant, it felt like we might just stay in the car, listening to the engine and the gentle sound of the wind — Matthew Welton

By then the streets are empty and quiet, night about to fall, curfew about to come down like a giant warm embrace, keeping us all in our places, keeping us all safe. — Lauren Oliver

In the evening a strange thing happened: the twenty families became one family, the Children were the children of all. The loss of home became one loss, and the golden time in the West was one dream. And it might be that a sick child threw despair into the hearts of twenty families, of a hundred people; that a birth there in a tent kept a hundred people quiet and awestruck trough the night and filled a hundred people with the birth-joy in the morning ... Every night a world created, complete with furniture- friends made and enemies established; a world complete with braggarts and with cowards, with quiet men, with humble men, with kindly men. Every night relationships that make a world, established; and every morning the world torn down like a circus. — John Steinbeck

Yes indeed! My desires were fulfilled beyond measure. My lover and I emerged from the Bedouin tent a little before sunrise. Finding a quiet spot, we sat in silence, witnessing the morning sun rise above the mountain of Moses, while our host slept peacefully, after an exhausting night of love. — Young

Be quiet, Ash. I am trying to remember you."
In the lamplight, shadows collected on his face as his eyebrows drew down. He must have taken her meaning, because he shook his head. "Well. I am trying to have you." His voice was fiercely possessive. "Not for one night, nor even two. I want you every evening - mine outright, not a few hours stolen here or there. I want you during the day, on my arm. I want to know that when we're apart you're missing me; I want to know when we're together, I'm the one who puts the smile on your face." He punctuated each phrase with a kiss - against her chin, the line of her jaw, the hollow of her neck. — Courtney Milan

In the expectant quiet, there were only the usual sounds of the night. Wind in the big trees out past the school wall, starting to rise as the sky darkened, Crickets beginning to chirp. Then Sabriel heard it
the massed grinding of Dead joints, no longer joined by gristle; the padding of Dead feet, bones like hobnails clicking through necrotic flesh. — Garth Nix

I painted stars and the moon and clouds and just endless, dark sky." I finished the sixth, and was well on my way sawing through the seventh before I said, "I never knew why. I rarely went outside at night - usually, I was so tired from hunting that I just wanted to sleep. But I wonder ... " I pulled out the seventh and final arrow. "I wonder if some part of me knew what was waiting for me. That I would never be a gentle grower of things, or someone who burned like fire - but that I would be quiet and enduring and as faceted as the night. That I would have beauty, for those who knew where to look, and if people didn't bother to look, but to only fear it ... Then I didn't particularly care for them, anyway. I wonder if, even in my despair and hopelessness, I was never truly alone. I wonder if I was looking for this place - looking for you all. — Sarah J. Maas

Beauty: "You called me beautiful last night."
Beast: "You do not believe me then?"
Beauty: "Well - no. Any number of mirrors have told me otherwise."
Beast: "You will find no mirrors here, for I cannot bear them: nor any quiet water in ponds. And since I am the only one who sees you, why are you not then beautiful? — Robin McKinley

Did you eat my Twinkies?"
She gulped. Keeping her eyes glued to the whip, she said, "Exactly what Twinkies are we talking about?"
"The Twinkies in the cupboard over the sink. The only Twinkies in the trailer." His fingers convulsed around the coils of leather.
Oh, Lord, she thought. Flayed to death for a Twinkle.
"Well?"
"It, uh - it won't happen again, I promise you. But they didn't have any special marking on them, so there was no way I could tell they were yours." Her eyes remained riveted on the whip. "And normally I wouldn't have eaten them - I never eat junk food- - but I was hungry last night, and, well, when you think about it, you'll have to admit I did you a favor because they're clogging my arteries now instead of yours."
His voice was quiet. Too quiet. In her mind she heard the howl of a rampaging Cossack baying at a Russian moon. "Don't touch my Twinkies. Ever. If you want Twinkies, buy your own. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

The night is quiet. Like a camp before battle. The city beset by a thing unknown and will it come from forest or sea? The murengers have walled the pale, the gates are shut, but lo the thing's inside and can you guess his shape? Where he's kept or what's the counter of his face? Is he a weaver, bloody shuttle shot through a time warp, a carder of souls from the world's nap? Or a hunter with hounds or do bone horses draw his dead cart through the streets and does he call his trade to each? Dear friend he is not to be dwelt upon for it is by just such wise that he's invited in — Cormac McCarthy

I cared that at night, when everything was quiet and I started thinking about him, my heart would start hurting so much that I was afraid that there was nothing in this world that would ever make it stop. — Susan Gregg Gilmore

I couldn't meet his gaze. I stared at the table just behind him
the mess of cards on it, the lantern giving off its quiet glow. "When you gave me your shirt to wear that night, I could feel you. I could feel your essence."
The world went still. We were standing only inches from each other, not touching. Outside, I could hear the faint murmur of the wind blowing through the trees.
"What did it feel like?" he asked in a low voice.
"Like ... coming home," I admitted. — L.A. Weatherly

They checked Westish Field, and then the big stone bowl of the football stadium. Nothing. There weren't many electric lights nearby, and the moon that hung between banks of clouds was as slender as an eyelash. Schwartz had never experienced this kind of darkness before enrolling at Westish; in his first days on campus he'd been afraid to fall asleep, as if the night and the quiet might swallow him whole. Now he wondered whether he could ever live in a city again. "I don't suppose he's out drowning his sorrows," Owen said. Henry never went to the bars unless he — Chad Harbach

Just Tits over and over. During tests it sounded like a forest at night in the classroom. Voices rising singly or several at a time from the focused quiet. Tits. Tits. Titssss. — John Darnielle

I don't tell my mother what happened the night before. I'm too embarrassed to tell her that I allowed that fat nasty man to stick his tongue in my mouth. A small part of me is afraid to tell her the truth. What if she doesn't do anything with the information? She isn't protecting me from Billy Dean so why would I think she would call the police on Big Ray? It's easier to remain quiet and optimistic and think that if I had told her then maybe she would have become enraged and driven to his house and cracked him over the head with that blaring television set. Although I can't imagine my mother capable of that level of passion, part — Marlayna Glynn

Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully. — Norton Juster

In an extroverted society, we rarely see ourselves in the mirror. We get alienating feedback. Alienating feedback comes in the form of repeated encouragement to join or talk, puzzled expressions, well-intended concern, and sometimes, all-out pointing and laughing. Alienating feedback happens when we hear statements like, "What kind of loser would be home on a Saturday night?" Alienating feedback happens where neighborhoods, schools, and offices provide no place to retreat. Alienating feedback happens when our quiet spaces and wilderness sanctuaries are seen as places to colonize. — Laurie A. Helgoe

Oh, if I had had a friend at this moment, a friend in an attic room, dreaming by candlelight and with a violin lying ready at his hand! How I should have slipped up to him in his quiet hour, noiselessly climbing the winding stair to take him by surprise, and then with talk and music we should have held heavenly festival throughout the night! — Hermann Hesse

Be deaf unto the suggestions of tale-bearers, calumniators, pick-thank or malevolent detractors, who, while quiet men sleep, sowing the tares of discord and division, distract the tranquillity of charity and all friendly society. These are the tongues that set the world on fire
cankerers of reputation, and, like that of Jonah's gourd, wither a good name in a single night. — Thomas Browne

Tsukuru's mind grew still and tranquil. A quiet feeling, like a frozen tree on a windless winter night. But there was little pain mixed in. Over the years Tsukuru had grown used to this mental image, so much so that it no longer brought him any particular pain. — Haruki Murakami

I walked to the windows and pulled the shades up and opened the windows wide. The night air came drifting in with a kind of stale sweetness that still remembered automobile exhausts and the streets of the city. I reached for my drink and drank it slowly. The apartment house door closed itself down below me. Steps tinkled on the quiet sidewalk. A car started up not far away. It rushed off into the night with a rough clashing of gears. I went back to the bed and looked down at it. The imprint of her head was still in the pillow, of her small corrupt body still on the sheets. I put my empty glass down and tore the bed to pieces savagely. — Raymond Chandler

By the end of October, the night riders had forced out all but a handful of the 1,098 members of the African American community - who left in their wake abandoned homes and schools, stores and livestock, and harvest-ready crops standing in the fields. Overnight, their churches stood empty, the rooms where they used to sing 'River of Jordan' and 'Go Down Moses' now suddenly, eerily quiet. — Patrick Phillips

Much of her life had been lived like a balancing act on a spearpoint fence, and on a particularly difficult night when she was twelve, she had decided that instinct was, in fact, the quiet voice of God. Prayers did receive replies, but you had to listen closely and believe in the answer. At twelve, she wrote in her diary: God doesn't shout; He whispers, and in the whisper is the way. — Dean Koontz

On a frosty winter afternoon, I rode in sight of Thornfield Hall. On a stile in Hay Lane I saw a quiet little figure sitting by itself. I had no presentiment of what it would be to me; no inward warning that the arbitress of my life
my genius for good or evil
waited there in humble guise.
When once I had pressed the frail shoulder, something new
a fresh sap and sense
stole into my frame. It was well I had learnt that this elf must return to me
that it belonged to my house down below- -or I could not have felt it pass away from under my hand, and seen it vanish behind the dim hedge, without singular regret. I heard you come home that night, Jane, though probably you were not aware that I thought of you or watched for you. — Charlotte Bronte

It was a quiet way -
He asked if I was his -
I made no answer of the tongue
But answer of the eyes -
And then He bore me on
Before this mortal noise
With swiftness, as of Chariots
and distance, as of Wheels.
This World did drop away
As acres from the feet
of one that leaneth from Balloon
Upon an Ether Street.
The Gulf behind was not,
The Continents were new -
Eternity was due.
No Seasons were to us -
It was not Night nor Morn -
But Sunrise stopped upon the place
And Fastened in Dawn. — Emily Dickinson

set up an appointment with yourself in the morning, during a busy work schedule, or at night to find a quiet space and practice mindfulness. It's as easy as being still, listening, focusing on your breathing, and emptying your thoughts, while practicing non-judgment. Every time a thought pops up, just let it go, without judgment, and return your attention to the moment. Build this up and practice every day. This may be one of the hardest things you'll ever do. If you can stick with it, your life (and brain, whoo hoo!) will begin to change in amazing ways. Tool #6: Compassionate Self-Talk "A moment of self-compassion can change your entire day. — Sarah Owens

The whole game is undone, this nightmare of evolution, and you are exactly where you were prior to the beginning of the whole show. With a sudden shock of the utterly obvious, you recognize your own Original Face, the face you had prior to the Big Bang, the face of utter Emptiness that smiles as all creation and sings as the entire Kosmos - and it is all undone in that primal glance, and all that is left is the smile, and the reflection of the moon on a quiet pond, late on a crystal clear night. — Ken Wilber

When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash - at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance. — Thomas Merton

Behind those homes was Mass General, where my father and I had gone together so many times. A phone call had woken us in the early hours one morning, and we had driven down to Boston just as the first light was intruding with harsh orange streaks in the sky. She looked the same as the night before, lying in the bed with her eyes closed, only all the machines were shut off, making the room in which we had spent so many quiet hours all the more silent. Her skin felt chilled when I touched it, as if she had just returned from a brisk walk in winter. I looked up now at the windows of the hospital, but my father turned toward Chitra. — Anonymous

Filled with rapture, his soul yearned for freedom, space, vastness. Over him the heavenly dome, full of quiet, shining stars, hung boundlessly. From the zenith to the horizon the still-dim Milky Way stretched its double strand. Night, fresh and quiet, almost unstirring, enveloped the earth. The white towers and golden domes of the church gleamed in the sapphire sky. The luxuriant autumn asleep till morning. The silence of the earth seemed to merge with the silence of the heavens and the mystery of the earth touched the mystery of the stars. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The expression 'quiet as mice' is a puzzling one, because mice can often be very noisy, so people who are being quite as mice may in fact be squeaking and scrambling around. The expression 'quiet as mimes' is more appropriate, because mimes are people who perform theatrical routines without making a sound. Mimes are annoying and embarrassing, but they are much quieter than mice, so 'quiet as mimes' is a more proper way to describe how Violet and Sunny got up from their bunk, tiptoed across the dormitory, and walked out into the night. — Lemony Snicket

Like a forest rose the huge peaks above the slumbering village, measuring the night and heavens. They beckoned him. And something born of the snowy desolation, born of the midnight and silent grandeur, born of the great listening hollows of the night, something that lay 'twixt terror and wonder, dropped from the vast wintry spaces down into his heart
and called him. Very softly, unrecorded in any word or thought his brain could compass, it laid its spell upon him. Fingers of snow brushed the surface of his heart. The power and quiet majesty of the winter's night appalled him ...
-The Glamour of the Snow — Algernon Blackwood

Bellow

"Tell the range and all that's howling,
the flickers of life beyond the weeds,
the vulture's furrowed brow of flight,
the blasted sticky Canadian lawn thistle;
tell the clowned-out clouds and the rain,
and all that makes you go quiet again,
tell them that you didn't come here
to make a fuss, or break, or growl, or
scream; tell them-crazy sky and stars
between-tell them you didn't come
to disturb the night air and throw a fit,
then get down in the dark and do it. — Ada Limon

On the second night here, the Koreans played and the streets had to be closed down to traffic for half a day before the game. In a remarkable coincidence, everyone came to town wearing the same type of red T-shirt. The Koreans gathered like a huge blob of ketchup and went mad in a quiet, Dufferlike way. You haven't seen crowds until you've seen Korean crowds. They gathered. They cheered in unison. They clapped and exuberated.
Then they tidied up after themselves and went home.
If you ever have to have half-a-million people in your house for a function, make sure they are Koreans. — Tom Humphries

Better, Cilla thought, to be alone on a quiet night than to be alone in a crowd. Much better. — Nora Roberts

Plain words on plain paper. Remember what Orwell says, that good prose is like a windowpane. Cut every page you write by at least a third. Stop constructing those piffling little similes of yours. Work out what you want to say. Then say it in the most direct and vigorous way you can. Eat meat. Drink blood. Give up your social life and don't think you can have friends. Rise in the quiet hours of the night and prick your fingertips and use the blood for ink; that will cure you of persiflage! But do I take my own advice? Not a bit. Persiflage is my nom de guerre. (Don't use foreign expressions. It's elitist.) — Hilary Mantel

There are beauties of character which, like the night-blooming cereus, are closed against the glare and turbulence of every-day life, and bloom only in shade and solitude, and beneath the quiet stars. — Henry Theodore Tuckerman

I have never seen the sea quiet round Treasure Island. The sun might blaze overhead, the air be without a breath, the surface smooth and blue, but still these great rollers would be running along all the external coast, thundering and thundering by day and night; and I scarce believe there is one spot in the island where a man would be out of earshot of their noise. — Robert Louis Stevenson

V. Grant, Lord, a blessing. Benediction . May almighty God grant us a quiet night and a perfect end. Amen. Short reading 1 Pet 5:8-9 Brothers: Be sober and watch: because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour. Whom resist ye, strong in faith: — V. Rev. Gregory Bellarmine SSJC+

When I look at him, I don't see the cowardly young man who sold me out to Jeanine Matthews, and i don't hear the excuses he gave afterward.
When I look at him, I see the boy who held my hand in the hospital when our mother broke her wrist and told me it would be all right. I see the brother who told me to make my own choices, the night before the Choosing Ceremony. I think of all the remarkable things he is
smart and enthusiastic and observant, quiet and earnest and kind. — Veronica Roth

Last night your thin walls invited me to the party next door / reminded me I am a quiet person in a quiet life. — Drew Myron

Lord our God, restore us again by the repose of sleep after the fatigue of our daily work, so that, continually renewed by your help, we may serve you in body and soul. Through Christ our Lord, Amen. The Lord grant us a quiet night and a perfect end. AMEN — Uniersalis Publishing

Concentrate on sharpening your memory and peeling your sensibility. Cut every page you write by at least one third. Stop constructing those piffling little similes of yours. Work out what it is you want to say. Then say it in the most direct and vigorous way you can. Eat meat. Drink blook. Give up your social life and don't think you can have friends. Rise in the quiet hours of the night and prick your fingertips and use the blood for ink; that will cure you of persiflage! — Hilary Mantel

If you're putting that energy into performance," he said, "you're also getting it back out again, right? You're giving so you can receive." He spread his arms wide. "If you were writing songs with it, you'd be holed up in your room in the middle of the night, scribbling them in a notebook and feeling self-important. You'd think you were getting it out, but really you'd be keeping it inside and quiet. You'd take what upset you and turn it into art, and now it would fester, because you think other people ought to share your outrage at what happened to you. — Jennifer Echols

An awe so quiet I don't know when it began.
A gratitude had begun to sing in me.
Was there some moment dividing song from no song?
When does dewfall begin?
When does night fold its arms over our hearts to cherish them?
When is daybreak? — Denise Levertov

No matter what night preceded it, she had never known a morning when she did not feel the rise of a quiet excitement that became a tightening energy in her body and a hunger for action in her mind - because this was the beginning of day and it was a day of her life. — Ayn Rand

The railway hit Harrow on the Hill in 1880 and it's been downhill ever since, culminating in one of those formless red brick shopping centres which artfully combines a complete lack of aesthetic quality with a total disregard for the utilitarian function for which it is built. As a result, your average shopper has only to spend ten minutes inside to be reduced to a state of quiet desperation. Primark has the right idea, being right by the entrance so that fleeing punters would grab the closest approximation to whatever it was they wanted before running screaming into the night. I'm — Ben Aaronovitch

But now when I think about that night, I think about something my stepdad once said when my mom yelled at him for quitting AA. He just told her in this sad, quiet voice, Sometimes the sickest part of me just seems like the truest part. — Anna North

And then more quiet, silence so deep it almost drowned out the roar of the night music that pounded away in my secret self. — Jeff Lindsay

The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. It was very quiet there. At night sometimes the roll of drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air high over our heads, till the first break of day. Whether it meant war, peace, or prayer we could not tell. The dawns were heralded by the descent of a chill stillness; the wood-cutters slept, their fires burned low; the snapping of a twig would make you start. We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet. We could have fancied ourselves the first of men taking possession of an accursed inheritance, to be subdued at the cost of profound anguish and of excessive toil. — Joseph Conrad

Many a night that summer she left Dr. Archie's office with a desire to run and run about those quiet streets until she wore out her shoes, or wore out the streets themselves; when her chest ached and it seemed as if her heart were spreading all over the desert. When she went home, it was not to go to sleep. She used to drag her mattress beside her low window and lie awake for a long while, vibrating with excitement, as a machine vibrates from speed. Life rushed in upon her through that window
or so it seemed. In reality, of course, life rushes from within, not from without. There is no work of art so big or so beautiful that it was not once all contained in some youthful body, like this one which lay on the floor in the moonlight, pulsing with ardor and anticipation. It was on such nights that Thea Kronborg learned the thing that old Dumas meant when he told the Romanticists that to make a drama he needed but one passion and four walls. — Willa Cather

It seemed so simple in a lot of ways, to use a basic melody to pull away from myself. To ease the pain and hide my feelings deep within a metaphor that only I understood. I couldn't have foreseen that my quiet and dark night of the soul would start me down a path of expression through song. — Mike Ericksen

Come then, come with us, out into the night. Come now, America the lovesick, America the timid, the blessed, the educated, come stalk the dark backroads and stand outside the bright houses, calm as murderers in the yard, quiet as deer. Come, you slumberers, you lumps, arise from your legion of sleep and fly. Come, all you dreamers, all you zombies, all you monsters. What are you doing anyway, paying the bills, washing the dishes, waiting for the doorbell? Come on, take your keys, leave the bowl of candy on the porch, put on the suffocating mask of someone else and breathe. Be someone you don't love so much, for once. Listen: like the children, we only have one night. — Stewart O'Nan

Don't be upset," he whispered.
"I couldn't stop it from happening," she said in a plaintive voice.
"You weren't supposed to," he said tenderly. "I was playing with you. Teasing you."
"But I wanted it to last longer. It's our wedding night, and it's already over." Pausing, Beatrix added glumly, "At least my part of it is."
Christopher averted his face, but she could see that he was struggling to contain a laugh. When he had mastered himself, he looked down at her with a slight smile and smoothed her hair back from her face. "I can make you ready again."
Beatrix was quiet for a moment as she evaluated her spent nerves and limp body. "I don't think so," she said. "I feel like a wrung-out kitchen mop."
"I promise to make you ready again," he said, his voice threaded with amusement.
"It will take a long time," Beatrix said, still frowning.
Gathering her into his arms, Christopher crushed his mouth over hers. "I can only hope so. — Lisa Kleypas

For there's a part of me would like no better than to take you and the bairn and go far away, to spend the rest of my life working the fields and the beasts, to come in in the evenings and lie beside ye, quiet through the night. — Diana Gabaldon

On nights like this, when he rode out from the dark, silent house to the dark, deserted park, he could
forget.
He could be nothing but a solitary rider on a fast horse, wind in his face and the world open around him.
No walls, no bars, no quiet weeping or screams or death. None of that could catch him. On a night like
this, none of it could find him. — Suzanne Enoch

Look around you
there are people around you. Maybe you will remember one of them all your life and later eat your heart out because you didn't make use of the opportunity to ask him questions. And the less you talk, the more you'll hear. Thin strands of human lives stretch from island to island of the Archipelago. They intertwine, touch one another for one night only in just such a clickety-clacking half-dark car as this and then separate once and for all. Put your ear to their quiet humming and the steady clickety-clack beneath the car. After all, it is the spinning wheel of life that is clicking and clacking away there. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

When stars are in the quiet skies, Then most I pine for thee; Bend on me, then, thy tender eyes, As stars look on the sea. — Ernst Gottlieb Baron

We are two men, two minute sparks of life; outside is the night and the circle of death. We sit
on the edge of it crouching in danger, the grease drips from our hands, in our hearts we are close
to one another, and the hour is like the room: flecked over with the lights and shadows of our
feelings cast by a quiet fire. What does he know of me or I of him? formerly we should not have
had a single thought in common--now we sit with a goose between us and feel in unison, are so
intimate that we do not even speak. — Erich Maria Remarque

The world was different in the morning. Quiet, unassuming, and somehow bigger, as if it was brimming with possibility. It was, she thought, as if during the day the world went through a shrinking process, gradually condensing the morning's expansion, only to inflate again during the night — H.J. Gerald

Singing is my pleasure, but not in church, for the parson said the gargoyles must remain on the outside, not seek room in the choir stalls. So I sing inside the mountain of my flesh, and my voice is as slender as a reed and my voice has no lard in it. When I sing the dogs sit quiet and people who pass in the night stop their jabbering and discontent and think of other times, when they were happy. And I sing of other times, when I was happy, though I know that these are figments of my mind and nowhere I have been. But does it matter if the place cannot be mapped as long as I can still describe it? — Jeanette Winterson

How strange it was, I thought, that when the tiny though thousandfold beauties of the Earth disappeared and the immeasurable beauty of outer space rose in the distant quiet splendor of light, man and the greatest number of other creatures were supposed to be asleep! Was it because we were only permitted to catch a fleeting glimpse of those great bodies and then only in the mysterious time of a dream world, those great bodies about which man had only the slightest knowledge but perhaps one day would be permitted to examine more closely? Or was it permitted for the great majority of people to gaze at the starry firmament only in brief, sleepless moments so that the splendor wouldn't become mundane, so that the greatness wouldn't be diminished? — Adalbert Stifter

Ere you lie down to sleep in the night, sit still awhile, and nurse again to life your gentler self. Forget the restless, noisy spirit of the day, and encourage to speech the soft voices within you that timidly whisper of the peace of the quiet night; and occasionally look out at the quiet stars. The night will soothe you like a tender mother, folding you against her soft bosom, and hiding you from the harm of the world. — Max Ehrmann

In your arms was still delight,
Quiet as a street at night;
And thoughts of you, I do remember,
Were green leaves in a darkened chamber,
Were dark clouds in a moonless sky. — Rupert Brooke

All of it seems like noise and false light, and all I want for tonight is quiet, the black and gray of a summer night, and a girl in a pink dress, beside me forever. — Brad Barkley

There are stories within stories, whispered in the quiet of the night, shouted above the roar of the day, and played out between lovers and enemies, strangers and friends. But all are fragile things made of just twenty-six letters arranged and re-arranged to form tales and imaginings which will dazzle your senses, haunt your imagination and move you to the very depths of your soul. — Neil Gaiman