~ 'Stellar' Quotes Throughout History ~
"Astronomy is older than physics. In fact, it got physics started by showing the beautiful simplicity of the motion of the stars and planets, the understanding of which was the beginning of physics. But the most remarkable discovery in all of astronomy is that the stars are made of atoms of the same kind as those on the earth."
-- Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics - 1961 "Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground" -- Theodore Roosevelt "We are stardust, we are golden, We are billion year old carbon, And we got to get ourselves back to the garden." -- Joni Mitchell, Woodstock - 1970 “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” -- Carl Sagan, Cosmos - 1980 "Life begins perpetually.... Life, forever dying to be born afresh, forever young and eager, will presently stand upon this earth as upon a footstool, and stretch out its realm amidst the stars." -- H. G. Wells (1866-1946) "I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night." -- Sarah Williams (1837-1868) "The stars hang bright above, silent, as if they watched the sleeping earth." -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) "We walk up the beach under the stars. And when we are tired of walking, we lie flat on the sand under a bowl of stars." -- Anne Morrow Lindbergh (b. 1901) "The treasures hidden in the heavens are so rich that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment." -- Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) "Stars, in your multitude, scarce to be counted, filling the darkness with order and light." -- Javert, Les Miserables (The Musical) "Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens.... My grandfather would say we're part of something incredibly wonderful - more marvelous than we imagine. My grandfather would say we ought to go out and look at it once in a while so we don't lose our place in it." -- Robert Fulghum "No one reguards what is before his feet; we all gaze at the stars." -- Quintus Ennius (239-169 B.C.) "Today gives us a chance to love, to work, to play, and to look up at the stars." -- Henry Van Dyke "Ye stars! Which are the poetry of heaven!" -- Lord Byron (1788-1824) "When it is dark enough you can see the stars." -- Charles A. Beard "If thou follow thy star, thou canst not fail of a glorious heaven." -- Dante Aligheri (1265-1321) "We lay there & looked up at the night sky & she told me about stars called blue squares & red swirls & I told her I'd never heard of them. Of course not, she said, the really important stuff they never tell you. You have to imagine it on your own." -- Brian Andreas, Blue Squares "Be humble for you are made of earth. Be noble for you are made of stars." -- Serbian proverb "The night has a thousand eyes, and the day but one; Yet the light of the bright world dies with the dying sun. The mind has a thousand eyes, and the heart but one; Yet the light of a whole life dies when love is done." -- Francis William Bourdillon, The Night Has a Thousand Eyes "The moon and the stars no longer come to the farm. The farmer has exchanged his birthright in them for the wattage of his all-night sun. His children will never know the blessed dark of night." -- Leslie Peltier in his autobiography, Starlight Nights "Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry "This dead of midnight is the noon of thought, And Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars." -- Mrs. Barbauld, A Summer's Evening Meditation "That does not keep me from having a terrible need of – shall I say the word – religion. Then I go out at night and paint the stars." --Vincent Van Gogh, In a letter to his brother "I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day." -- Vincent Van Gogh " . . . Looking at the stars always makes me dream, as simply as I dream over the black dots representing towns and villages on a map. Why, I ask myself, shouldn't the shining dots of the sky be as accessible as the black dots on the map of France?" -- Vincent Van Gogh "For my part I know nothing with any certainty but the sight of the stars makes me dream." -- Vincent Van Gogh "It seemed to be a necessary ritual that he should prepare himself for sleep by meditating under the solemnity of the night sky... a mysterious transaction between the infinity of the soul and the infinity of the universe." -- Victor Hugo "In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time." -- Somerset Maugham "Our fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of nature, and with none more completely than with night." -- Henry Beston, The Outermost House - 1933 "With lights and ever more lights, we drive the holiness and beauty of night back to the forests and the sea; the villages, the crossroads even, will have none of it." -- Henry Beston, The Outermost House - 1933 "...today's civilization is full of people who have never even seen night. Yet to live thus, to know only artificial night. is as absurd and evil as to know only artificial day." -- Henry Beston, The Outermost House - 1933 "Learn to reverence night and to put away the vulgar fear of it, for, with the banishment of night from the experience of man, there vanishes as well a religious emotion, a poetic mood, which gives depth to the adventure of humanity. By day, space is one with the earth and with man - it is his sun that is shining, his clouds that are floating past; at night, space is his no more. When the great earth, abandoning day, rolls up the deeps of the heavens and the universe, a new door opens for the human spirit, and there are few so clownish that some awareness of the mystery of being does not touch them as they gaze. For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in its stream of stars - pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across eternal seas of space and time. Fugitive though the instant be, the spirit of man is, during it, ennobled by a genuine moment of emotional dignity, and poetry makes its own both the human spirit and experience." -- Henry Beston, The Outermost House - 1933 "It is dark to-night, and over the plains of ocean the autumnal sky rolls up the winter stars." -- Henry Beston, The Outermost House - 1933 On flocks of birds flying up before him as he walks the beach: "Standing on the beach, I watch the lovely sight of the group instantly turned into a constellation of birds, into a fugitive pleiades whose living stars keep their chance positions." -- Henry Beston, The Outermost House - 1933 "The heavens themselves run continually round, the sun riseth and sets, the moon increaseth, stars and planets keep their constant motions, the air is tossed by the winds, the waters ebb and flow, to their conservation no doubt, to teach us that we should ever be in motion." -- Robert Burton "I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars, And the pismire is equally perfect,..." -- Walt Whitman "That night I lie out under the stars again. The Pleiades are there winking at me. I am no longer on my way from one place rto another. I have changed lives. My life now is as black and white as night and day; a life of fierce struggle under the sun, and peaceful reflection under the night sky. I feel as though I am floating on a raft far, far away from any world I ever knew." -- Ted Simon, Jupiter’s Travels "The sky is the daily bread of the eyes." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journal, 25 May 1843 entry "To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature "When it is dark enough, you can see the stars." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882) "The sky is the ultimate art gallery just above us." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882) "The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago ... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands." -- Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life, 1923 "Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of the heaven, blossumed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels." -- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline, 1847 "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars." -- Les Brown (author) "Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretch'd in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance Tossing their heads in sprightly dance." -- William Wordsworth, I wandered lonely as a cloud... "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork." -- Book of Psalms 19:1 (The Holy Bible [kjv]) "Is not God in the height of heaven? and behold the height of the stars, how high they are!" -- Book of Job 22:12 (The Holy Bible [kjv]) "The beauty of heaven, the glory of the stars, an ornament giving light in the highest places of the Lord." -- Sirach 43:9 (Apocrypha, The Holy Bible [kjv]) "So let us then try to climb the mountain, not by stepping on what is below us, but to pull us up at what is above us, for my part at the stars; amen." -- M.C. Escher "No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit." -- Helen Keller "We had the sky up there, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss whether they was made or just happened." -- Mark Twain "... Nature, whose sweet rains fall of just and unjust alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undetected. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling, and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track me to my hurt: she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole." -- Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), De Profundis "We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." -- Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900) "As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some, prodigies and portents; some rarely look up at all; their heads, like the brutes', are directed toward Earth. Some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable. The world runs to see the panorama, when there is a panorama in the sky which few go to see." -- Henry David Thoreau, Journal, 17 January 1852 Entry "Yes, I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can find his way by moonlight, and see the dawn before the rest of the world." -- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) "The stars are the jewels of the night and perchance surpass anything which day has to show." -- Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) "It is He Who maketh the stars (as beacons) for you, that ye may guide yourselves, with their help, through the dark spaces of land and sea: We detail Our signs for people who know." -- The Holy Qur'an 006:097 Al-An'am (Yusuf Ali Translation) "From the principle which is called the Tao, the sky, the earth, and creativity are one, the sky is clear, the earth is firm, and the spirit of the inner world is full." -- Tao Te Ching - Chapter 39 (Stan Rosenthal Translation) "Away in a manger, no crib for a bed, The little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head. The stars in the sky looked down where he lay, The little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay." -- Traditional Christmas Song, Away In a Manger "Oh little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by Yet in they dark streets shineth, the everlasting light The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight." -- Traditional Christmas Song, Oh Little Town of Bethlehem "Oh holy night! The stars are brightly shining It is the night of the dear Savior's birth!" -- Traditional Christmas Song, Oh Holy Night "O, star of wonder, star of might, Star with royal beauty bright, Westward leading, still proceeding, Guide us to the perfect light." -- Traditional Christmas Song, Three Kings of Orient (Chorus) "It has always irked me as improper that there are still so many people for whom the sky is no more than a mass of random points of light. I do not see why we should recognize a house, a tree, or a flower here below and not, for example, the red Arcturus up there in the heavens as it hangs from its constellation Bootes, like a basket hanging from a balloon." -- M.C. Escher "Vision, in my view, is the cause of the greatest benefit to us, inasmuch as none of the accounts now given concerning the Universe would ever have been given if men had not seen the stars or the sun or the heavens. But as it is, the vision of day and night and of months and circling years has created the art of number and has given us not only the notion of Time but also means of research into the nature of the Universe. From these we have procured Philosophy in all its range, than which no greater boon ever has come or will come, by divine bestowal, unto the race of mortals." -- Plato, Timaeus (47a-b), Jowett translation "Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another." -- Plato (427-347 B.C.) "Yesterday a child came out to wonder Caught a dragon fly inside a jar. Fearful that the sky was full of thunder, and tearful at the falling of a star." -- Joni Mitchell, The Circle "It's a Colorado Rocky Mountain High, I've seen it raining fire in the sky The shadows from the starlight are softer than a lullabye. Rocky Mountain High" -- John Denver, Rocky Mountain High "The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between the profusion of matter and of the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness." -- Andre Malraux "Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like the seafaring man on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny." -- Carl Schurz "Just like the falling rainbow Just like the stars in the sky Life should never feel small." -- Vearncombe, Black, Paradise "If there were beings who had always lived beneath the earth, in comfortable, well-lit dwellings, decorated with statues and pictures and furnished with all the luxuries enjoyed by persons thought to be supremely happy, and who though they had never come forth above the ground had learnt by report and by hearsay of the existence of certain deities and divine powers; and then if at some time the jaws of the earth were opened and they were able to escape from their hidden abode and to come forth into the regions which we inhabit; when they suddenly had sight of the earth and the seas and the sky, and came to know of the vast clouds and mighty winds, and beheld the sun, and realized not only its size and beauty but also its potency in causing the day by shedding light all over the sky, and, after night had darkened the earth, they then saw the whole sky spangled with stars, and the changing phases of the moon's light, now waxing and now waning, and the risings and settings of all these heavenly bodies and their courses fixed and changeless throughout all eternity, -- when they saw these things, surely they would think that the gods exist and that these mighty marvels are their handiwork." -- Cicero, On the nature of the gods, paraphrased from Aristotle's lost On philosophy. The translation is that of Rackham in the Loeb edition. "The contemplation of celestial things will make a man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he descends to human affairs." -- Cicero "Whoever it was who searched the heavens with a telescope and found no God would not have found the human mind if he had searched the brain with a microscope." -- George Santayana (1863 - 1952) "We shall find peace. We shall hear the angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds." -- Anton Chekhov (1860 - 1904), 1897 "Come quickly, I am tasting stars!" -- Dom Perignon (1638 - 1715), at the moment of his discovery of champagne "Perhaps they are not stars, but rather openings in Heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy." -- Inspired by an Eskimo Legend "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves if we are underlings." -- William Shakespeare "These earthly godfathers of Heaven's lights, that give a name to every fixed star, have no more profit of their shining nights than those that walk and know not what they are." -- William Shakespeare "He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it." -- Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), The Confucian Analects "He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it." -- Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), The Confucian Analects "The lights of stars that were extinguished ages ago still reaches us. So it is with great men who died centuries ago, but still reach us with the radiations of their personalities." -- Kahlil Gibran "I maintain that cosmic religiousness is the strongest and most noble driving force of scientific research." -- Albert Einstein "Two things inspire me to awe -- the starry heavens above and the moral universe within." -- Albert Einstein "When you look at the stars and the galaxy, you feel that you are not just from any particular piece of land, but from the solar system." -- Kalpana Chawla (PH.D.), NASA Astronaut "Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the earth." -- Ptolemy, c.150 AD "God is infinite, so His universe must be too. Thus is the excellence of God magnified and the greatness of His kingdom made manifest; He is glorified not in one, but in countless suns; not in a single earth, a single world, but in a thousand thousand, I say in an infinity of worlds." -- Giordana Bruno, On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, 1584 "A star shines on the hour of our meeting." -- Elvish Greeting, The Lord of the Rings All M.C. Escher quotes (c) 2002 Cordon Art - Baarn - Holland. All rights reserved. Used by permission. www.mcescher.com Brian Andreas quotes (c) 2003 Brian Andreas. All rights reserved. Use by permission. www.storypeople.com |