Quote of the Day (William Shakespeare, on Moonlight and ‘The Sounds of Music’)

“How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank.
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patens of bright gold.
There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still choiring to the young-eyed cherubins.
Such harmony is in immortal souls,
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.” — Lorenzo from English playwright-poet William Shakespeare (1564-1616), The Merchant of Venice, Act V, Scene 1 (1596-98)

Quote of the Day (Jean Craighead George, on the ‘Night Secrets’ of Plants in Midsummer)

“Plants, too, have their night secrets. Moonflowers, water lilies, and many of the cacti of the desert bloom in darkness, to be pollinated by moths and night flies. One plant specially equipped for the darkness is the yellow evening primrose [pictured], found among many country roads throughout the land. It opens just at dusk, so swiftly that it can be seen—and heard! Many an evening in my childhood, as the sun sank, I would sit down in a clump of these flowers to watch. Presently I would hear a noise like popping soap bubbles, and as I looked closer, I could see the swelling buds burst open.”— Children's author Jean Craighead George (1919-2012), “A Midsummer Night,” Audubon Magazine, July/August 1961

Quote of the Day (Elie Wiesel, on the Proper Response to Human Suffering)

“Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.”— Holocaust survivor, human-rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel (1928-2016), Night, translated by Marion Wiesel (1955)

Quote of the Day (Paul Laurence Dunbar, on the ‘Majesty of God’)

“The earth, a mantle falls away,

And, winged, we leave the sod;
Where shines in its eternal sway
The majesty of God.”—Paul Laurence Dunbar, “Night,” in Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1913)