21 Quotes Tagged: moonlight

I was just about to call for assistance when, some twenty feet away from me, the sea seemed to part with a gentle swish and gurgle, a gleaming back appeared, gave a deep, satisfied sigh, and sank below the surface again. I had hardly time to recognise it as a porpoise before I found I was right in the midst of them. They rose all around me, sighing luxuriously, their black backs shining as they humped in the moonlight... Heaving and sighing heavily, they played across the bay, and I swam with them, watching fascinated as they rose to the surface, crumpling the water, breathed deeply, and then dived beneath the surface again, leaving only an expanding hoop of foam to mark the spot. Presently, as if obeying a signal, they turned and headed out of the bay towards the distant coast of Albania, and I trod water and watched them go, swimming up the white chain of moonlight, backs agleam as they rose and plunged with heavy ecstasy in the water as warm as fresh milk. Behind them they left a trail of great bubbles that rocked and shone briefly like miniature moons before vanishing under the ripples.

We knew the Moon from our earliest days. It was there when our ancestors descended from the trees into the savannahs, when we learned to walk upright, when we first devised stone tools, when we domesticated fire, when we invented agriculture and built cities and set out to subdue the Earth.

In the moonlight the fine geishalike skin took on the luster of a seashell.

It will not hurt me when I am old,
A running tide where moonlight burned
Will not sting me like silver snakes;
The years will make me sad and cold,
It is the happy heart the breaks.

The hearts asks more than life can give,
When that is learned, then all is learned;
The waves break fold on jewelled fold,
But beauty itself is fugitive,
It will not hurt me when I am old.

As different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.

who knows if the moon's
a balloon,coming out of a keen city
in the sky — filled with pretty people?
( and if you and I should

get into it,if they
should take me and take you into their balloon,
why then
we'd go up higher with all the pretty people

than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen
city which nobody's ever visited,where

always
it's
Spring)and everyone's
in love and flowers pick themselves

The true joy of a moonlit night is something we no longer understand. Only the men of old, when there were no lights, could understand the true joy of a moonlit night.

…near them grow dreamlike fairy-tale flowers whose leaves stir in the moonlight.

Moonlight is sculpture; sunlight is painting.

Late night, and like a medal in the sky
The harvest moon was beaming down,
And, like a river, the solemnity
Of night arranged on the sleeping town.

- Confession

The peaceful splendour of the night healed again. The moon was now past the meridian and travelling down the west. It was at its full, and very bright, riding through the empty blue sky.

And then I feel as if I'm witnessing a miracle, as ever so slowly she raises her face towards the moon. I watch her drink in the sight, sensing the flood of memories she's unleashed and wanting nothing more than to let her know I'm here. But instead I stay where I am and stare up at the moon as well. And for the briefest instant, it almost feels like we're together again.

Tape the sound of the moon fading at dawn. Give it to your mother to listen to when she's in sorrow.

We feel cold, but we don't mind it, because we will not come to harm. And if we wrapped up against the cold, we wouldn't feel other things, like the bright tingle of the stars, or the music of the aurora, or best of all the silky feeling of moonlight on our skin. It's worth being cold for that.

In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself is — as the light called human life is — at its coming and its going.