quotations about morning
I have always disliked the morning, it is too responsible a time, with the daylight demanding that it be 'faced' and (usually when I wake for I wake late) with the sun already up and in charge of the world, with little hope of anyone usurping or challenging its authority. A shot of light in the face of a poor waking human being and another slave limps wounded into the light-occupied territory.
JANET FRAME
Daughter Buffalo
Rise early, that by habit it may become familiar, agreeable, healthy, and profitable. It may, for a while, be irksome to do this, but that will wear off; and the practice will produce a rich harvest forever thereafter; whether in public or private walks of life.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to George Washington Parke Custis, January 7, 1798
When Dawn strides out to wake a dewy farm
Across green fields and yellow hills of hay
The little twittering birds laugh in his way
And poise triumphant on his shining arm.
He bears a sword of flame but not to harm
The wakened life that feels his quickening sway
And barnyard voices shrilling "It is day!"
Take by his grace a new and alien charm.
But in the city, like a wounded thing
That limps to cover from the angry chase,
He steals down streets where sickly arc-lights sing,
And wanly mock his young and shameful face;
And tiny gongs with cruel fervor ring
In many a high and dreary sleeping place.
JOYCE KILMER
"Alarm Clocks"
The sun just touched the morning;
The morning, happy thing,
Supposed that he had come to dwell,
And life would be all spring.
EMILY DICKINSON
"The sun just touched the morning"
Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn,
Draw forth the cheerful day from night;
O Father, touch the east, and light
The light that shone when Hope was born.
ALFRED TENNYSON
In Memoriam A.H.H.
One may be alive in the morning,
Then dead at night,
Changing worlds in an instant,
We are like the spring frost,
Like the morning dew
Suddenly gone.
GUISHAN LINGYOU
attributed, Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing
The meek-eyed Morn appears, mother of Dews.
JAMES THOMSON
"Summer", The Seasons
There are few of us that are not rather ashamed of our sins and follies as we look out on the blessed morning sunlight, which comes to us like a bright-winged angel beckoning us to quit the old path of vanity that stretches its dreary length behind us.
GEORGE ELIOT
Mr. Gilfil's Love Story
Each morning is a fresh beginning. We are, as it were, just beginning life. We have it entirely in our own hands. And when the morning with its fresh beginning comes, all yesterdays should be yesterdays, with which we have nothing to do. Sufficient is it to know that the way we lived our yesterday has determined for us our today.
RALPH WALDO TRINE
In Tune With the Infinite
In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
In Our Time
The morn is up again, the dewy morn,
With breath all incense, and with cheek all bloom,
Laughing the clouds away with playful scorn,
And living as if earth contained no tomb,
And glowing into day.
LORD BYRON
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Dawn of a brighter, whiter day
Than ever blessed us with its ray--
A dawn beneath whose purer light all guilt and wrong shall fade away.
ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN
"Spring at the Capital"
Hope is a renewable option: If you run out of it at the end of the day, you get to start over in the morning.
BARBARA KINGSOLVER
attributed, Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing
This was not judgement day -- only morning. Morning: excellent and fair.
WILLIAM STYRON
Sophie's Choice
Dawn, thy opportunity is full! We, alas, know not the meaning of thy gorgeous page. Dazed we watch thy letters pale; cold embers, left upon the sky; Life's opportunity flickering into naught.
ELISE PUMPELLY CABOT
"Arizona"
The dusk drew earlier in,
The morning foreign shone--
A courteous, yet harrowing grace,
As guest who would be gone.
EMILY DICKINSON
"As imperceptibly as grief"
Will there really be a morning?
Is there such a thing as day?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?
EMILY DICKINSON
"Out of the Morning"
It is not bird, it has no nest;
Nor band, in brass and scarlet dressed,
Nor tambourine, nor man;
It is not hymn from pulpit read--
The morning stars the treble led
On time's first afternoon!
EMILY DICKINSON
"Melodies Unheard"
I want to live my life in such a way that when I get out of bed in the morning, the devil says, "aw shit, he's up!"
STEVE MARABOLI
Unapologetically You
Of all the things we fashioned for them that they might be comforted, dawn is the one that works. When darkness sifts from the air like fine soft soot and light spreads slowly out of the east then all but the most wretched of humankind rally.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Infinities