I’ve always done some of my best thinking deep in the still of the night. And on that note, I recently came across an arresting passage from Thoreau’s essay Night and Moonlight:
“As the shades begin to gather around us, our primeval instincts are aroused, and we steal forth from our lairs, like the inhabitants of the jungle, in search of those silent and brooding thoughts which are the natural prey of the intellect.”