The Meaning of Night Quotes

“For Death is the meaning of night;
The eternal shadow
Into which all lives must fall,
All hopes expire.”
― Cox, Michael, The Meaning of Night

“After killing the red-haired man, I took myself off to Quinn’s for an oyster supper.”
― Michael Cox, The Meaning of Night

“I had retained little of what is generally called religion, except for a visceral conviction that our lives are controlled by some universal mechanism that is greater than ourselves. Perhaps that was what others called God. Perhaps not.”
― Michael Cox, The Meaning of Night

“The boundaries of this world are forever shifting – from day to night, joy to sorrow, love to hate, and from life itself to death; and who can say at what moment we may suddenly cross over the border, from one state of existence to another, like heat applied to some flammable substance? I have been given my own ever-changing margins, across which I move, continually and hungrily, like a migrating animal. Now civilized, now untamed; now responsive to decency and human concern, now viciously attuned to the darkest of desires.”
― Michael Cox, The Meaning of Night

“The summer passed quietly. I busied myself as best I could, reading a good deal.”
― Michael Cox, The Meaning of Night

“It is trite to speak of a broken heart. Hearts are not broken; they continue to beat, the blood still courses, even in the bitter after-days of betrayal. but something is broken when pain beyond words is suffered; some connection that formerly existed with light and hope and bright mornings is severed, and can never be restored.”
― Michael Cox, The Meaning of Night

“But greater than all these delights would be the possession of this wondrous library for my own use and pleasure. What more could my bibliophile's soul ask for? Here were marvels without end, treasures beyond knowing. You have seen the worst of me in these confessions. Here, then, let me throw into the opposite side of the balance, what I truly believe is the best of me: my devotion to the mental life, to those divine faculties of intellect and imagination which, when exercised to the utmost, can make gods of us all.”
― Michael Cox, The Meaning of Night

“But who ever heeds the voice of reason when love whispers, softly persuasive, in the other ear?”
― Michael Cox, The Meaning of Night

“I long for sleep, and for soft English rain. But they do not come.”
― Michael Cox, The Meaning of Night

“Trust, but be careful in whom.”
― Michael Cox, The Meaning of Night

“Truly divine faculties of intellect and imagination can make gods of us all”
― Michael Cox, The Meaning of Night

“I think much of her - I mean my mother - and of how alike we were, and how we were both destroyed by believing it was in our own hands to punish those who had done wrong to us.”
― Michael Cox, The Meaning of Night

“liar needs a good memory.”
― Michael Cox, The Meaning of Night

“several of the clerks would look up from their work from time to time, and direct apprehensive glances over towards the seated figure, as if, sitting there tapping his foot impatiently as he waited for Jukes to return, he was about to weigh the feather of truth in the scales of justice against their sinful hearts.”
― Michael Cox, The Meaning of Night

“The law, you know, can be a dreary business. A little harmless diversion is certainly required, from time to time. As a corrective.”
― Michael Cox, The Meaning of Night