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Nocturnal Quotes

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Nocturnal Quotes

“I sat up in the strange bed fearing it had been a dream, afraid I would never see her again. Not because I wanted anything from her, only her presence. The disappearance of the presence of beauty is the most despairing of events on this time-wheel of ours that rolls onward towards death.”

LoveDeathNightPassionFearWomenBeautyBedDespairFemalePassingWomanFeminineAfraidRomanBeauty In NatureRoman PayneNocturnalPaynePassing Of TimeBeauty In Literature
Book:The Basement Trains: A 21st Century Poem
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“The seasonal urge is strong in poets. Milton wrote chiefly in winter. Keats looked for spring to wake him up (as it did in the miraculous months of April and May, 1819). Burns chose autumn. Longfellow liked the month of September. Shelley flourished in the hot months. Some poets, like Wordsworth, have gone outdoors to work. Others, like Auden, keep to the curtained room. Schiller needed the smell of rotten apples about him to make a poem. Tennyson and Walter de la Mare had to smoke. Auden drinks lots of tea, Spender coffee; Hart Crane drank alcohol. Pope, Byron, and William Morris were creative late at night. And so it goes.”

WritingMayPoetryNightFallSpringSeasonsWinterAlcoholCoffeeTeaApplesWritersAutumnPoetsSeptemberPopeInsomniaAprilMiltonSeasonByronAppleNocturnalMorrisShelleyWordsworthAudenTennysonBurnsKeatsSchillerLongfellowHart CraneDe La MareSpender
Book:When Found, Make a Verse of
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“There is a plant called the ghost pipe, because it is ghostly white, almost blue. Were you to cut open this flower and study it, you'd find no chlorophyll inside. It can grow in the dark, under the cover of fallen leaves and undergrowth in forests, under soil. It doesn't need to photosynthesize, because it is a parasite. It uses fungal networks to suck energy from photosynthesizing trees. Its roots look like clusters of tiny fingers that grope toward and connect with huge white webs of fungus that in turn connect with the thick roots of trees.”

WhitePlantVampireRelatableHybridNocturnalParasiticPerennial
Book:Woman, Eating
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“The jungle which is presided over by Kudu, the sun, is a very different jungle from that of Goro, the moon. The diurnal jungle has its own aspect--its own lights and shades, its own birds, its own blooms, its own beasts ... The lights and shades of the nocturnal jungle are as different as one might imagine the lights and shades of another world to differ from those of our world.”

WorldDifferentLightMightSunImagineMoonBirdAspectBeastOur WorldShadeJungleAnother WorldNocturnal
Author:Edgar Rice Burroughs
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“We love to chew the cud of a foregone vision; to collect the scattered rays of a brighter phantasm, or act over again, with firmer nerves, the sadder nocturnal tragedies.”

VisionTragedyNervesRaysBrighterNocturnal
Book:Essays of Elia. Rosamund Gray. Recollections of Chirst's hospital. Essays on the tragedies of Shakspeare [etc.] Letters under assumed signatures published in the Reflector. Curious fragments. Mr. H
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“Masturbation is not physically necessary. There is already a way by which the male system relieves excessive spermatic fluid quite regularly through the nocturnal emission or wet dream. Monthly menstrual flow expels the female's egg and cleanses the womb. For both sexes, physical or emotional tensions can be released by vigorous activity. Thus, in a biological sense, masturbation for either gender is not necessary. In a gospel sense, it is a sin: Masturbation, a rather common indiscretion, is not approved of the Lord...regardless of what may have been said by others whose 'norms' are lower.”

WayMayHas BeensSaidDreamSexSinCommonLordEmotionalActivityFemaleFlowMalesGenderTensionEggsWetNormWombFluidVigorousEmissionsApprovedMasturbationNocturnalWet Dreams
Author:Spencer W. Kimball
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“Two of the great leaders of the past - Booker T. Washington and Frederick Douglass - had White fathers - who deserted them. Now Margo Jefferson, who is hard on me and the fellas, wrote in the Times that she has nocturnal, erotic fantasies about John Wayne. What's up with these feminists? Do you see these double standards these feminists have? They dream about John Wayne, but they're hard on us [Black men].”

MenTwoHardDreamPastFatherBlackWhiteLeaderFantasyStandardsFeministEroticGreat LeaderWayneDouble StandardDesertedFellasNocturnal
Author:Ishmael Reed
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“If there's a lot of fear that's going on, if there's a lot of anxiety, it's manifesting itself in your nocturnal world so that analyzing it can help open up basically thoughts about what you need to do during the day. So a lot of people who subscribe to the psychoanalysis, the Jungian thought will really focus a lot on dreams, the meaning, and how it can be used to help you during the day.”

PeopleIfsWorldNeedsHelpingDreamUsedFocusAnxietyManifestPsychoanalysisAnalyzingNocturnal
Author:Shelby Harris
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“There should be a word for that brief period just after waking when the mind is full of warm pink nothing. You lie there entirely empty of thought, except for a growing suspicion that heading towards you, like a sockful of damp sand in a nocturnal alleyway, are all the recollections you'd really rather do without, and which amount to the fact that the only mitigating factor in your horrible future is the certainty that it will be quite short.”

ShouldMindFactsLyingGrowingAmountPeriodsEmptyWarmHorribleFactorsCertaintySandWakingSuspicionHeadingsRecollectionDampNocturnalAlleyways
Author:Terry Pratchett
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“I've always known that the quality of love was the mind, even though the body sometimes refuses this knowledge. The body lives for itself. It lives only to feed and wait for the night. It's essentially nocturnal. But what of the mind which is born of the sun, William, and must spend thousands of hours of a lifetime awake and aware? Can you balance off the body, that pitiful, selfish thing of night against a whole lifetime of sun and intellect? I don't know.”

KnowsMindHas BeensI CanSometimesWholeBodyRememberNightWaitingBornHoursQualityKnownSunBalanceLifetimeRefuseIntellectSelfishAwakeAfternoonPitifulNocturnal
Author:Ray Bradbury
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“When I opened my eyes I saw nothing but the pool of nocturnal sky, for I was lying on my back with out-stretched arms, face to face with that hatchery of stars. Only half awake, still unaware that those depths were sky, having no roof between those depths and me, no branches to screen them, no root to cling to, I was seized with vertigo and felt myself as if flung forth and plunging downward like a diver.”

IfsStillsEyeFacesLyingStarsFeltHalfSawsSkyArmsRootsDepthScreensAwakeBranchesPoolRoofFace To FaceNocturnalVertigo
Author:Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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“Before we invented civilization our ancestors lived mainly in the open out under the sky. Before we devised artificial lights and atmospheric pollution and modern forms of nocturnal entertainment we watched the stars. There were practical calendar reasons of course but there was more to it than that. Even today the most jaded city dweller can be unexpectedly moved upon encountering a clear night sky studded with thousands of twinkling stars. When it happens to me after all these years it still takes my breath away.”

YearsStillsReasonLightHappensTodayFormNightCoursesStarsCitiesClearSkyModernCivilizationBreathsMovedEntertainmentAstronomyPracticalsAncestorArtificialPollutionCalendarsNight SkyJadedDwellersTwinklingNocturnalArtificial LightTwinkling Stars
Author:Carl Sagan
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“I tend to follow a very nocturnal sort of existence mainly because I don't much care for sunlight. Bright colors of any kind depress me, in fact. And my moods are more or less inversely related to the clarity of the sky, on any given day.... my private motto has always been that behind every silver lining there is a cloud.”

KindFactsCareGivenBehindsExistenceSkyColorDepressionCloudsMoodClarityRelatedSilverSunlightDepressingMottoNocturnalBright Colors
Author:Glenn Gould
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