“The night of the Middle Ages lasted for a thousand years. The first star that enriched the horizon of this universal gloom was Giordano Bruno. He was the herald of the dawn.”

Le Vent de l'Esprit, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Source: 1830s, Nature http://www.emersoncentral.com/nature.htm (1836), Ch. 1, Nature
Context: 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!
Context: 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.

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The Song of the Horses
Context: The dawn smiles, repelling gloom,
At the dawn with violence,
At every meet season,
At the meet season of his turnings,
At the four stages of his course,
I will extol him that judges violence,
Of the strong din, deep his wrath.
I am not a man, cowardly, gray,
A scum near the wattle.

Source: 1830s, Nature http://www.emersoncentral.com/nature.htm (1836), Ch. 1, Nature

Nyuck-Nyuck-Nyuck, 11, p. 286-287 (First Scribner hardcover edition November 2009)
Under the Dome (2009)

Source: Wolves of the Calla

A Morning Exercise.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Address to the Royal Society Club (1942), as quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1977) by Alan L. MacKay, p. 140
Essays In Biography (1933), Newton, the Man
Context: Newton was not the first of the age of reason. He was the last of the magicians, the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians, the last great mind that looked out on the visible and intellectual world with the same eyes as those who began to build our intellectual inheritance rather less than 10 000 years ago.