Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent† Mirth is like a flash of lightning that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment: cheerfulness keeps up a kind of day-light in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

-Addison,Joseph
  In The Spectator, no.381,17 May.

Above all things our royalty is to be reverenced, and if you begin to poke about it you cannot reverence it† Its mystery isits life.We must not let indaylight uponmagic.

-Bagehot,Walter
  The English Constitution, ch.6,'The Monarchy (continued)'.

   I am a daylight atheist.

-Beethoven, Ludwig van
Quoted in Daniel Farson Sacred Monsters,'Rousting in Dublin' (1988).

And not by eastern windows only, When daylight comes, comes in the light, In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly, But westward, look, the land is bright.

-Clough, Arthur Hugh
  'Say Not the Struggle Naught  Availeth'.

I caught this morning morning's minion, kingdom of Daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins
  'The Windhover'.

Between the dark and the daylight, When the night is beginning to lower, Comes a pause in the day's occupations, That is known as the Children's Hour.

-Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
  'The Children's Hour', stanza1.

I've made it a rule never to drink by daylight and never to refuse a drink after dark.

-Mencken, H(enry) L(ouis)
  In the NewYork Post,18 Sep.

Earth's axle creeks; the year jolts on; the trees begin to slip their brittle leaves, their flakes of rust; and darkness takes the edge off daylight, not because it wants toönever that. Because it must.

-Motion, Andrew
  'Mythology',  written for the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales. Published in Public Property (2002).

The people die so, that now it seems theyare fain to carry the dead to be buried by daylight, the nights not sufficing to do it in. And my Lord Mayor commands people to be within at 9 at night, all (as they say) that the sick may have liberty to go abroad for ayre.

-Pepys, Samuel
  Diary entry,12 Aug.

Swiftly walk o'er the western wave, Spirit of Night! Out of the misty eastern cave, Where, all the long and lone daylight, Thou wovest dreams of joyand fear, Which make thee terrible and dear, Swift be thy flight!

-Shelley, Percy Bysshe
'To Night' (published1824).