It was a night so beautiful that your soul seemed hardly able to bear the prison of the body. – W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, 1919

Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, “Where have I gone wrong?” Then a voice says to me, “This is going to take more than one night.” – Charles M. Schulz

There is something in the nature of silence which affects me deeply. Why it is I know not; but I do know that I love to be alone at such an hour as this. I love to forget the outward world and hold communion with the beings of the mind. – Charles Lanman, “Musings,” 1840