Quotes about stars (2420 quotes, page 16)

“The only politician to be a rising star in three decades.”

Sam Nunn (1938) American lawyer and politician

About Bill Clinton
Quoted in George J. Church, "Is Bill Clinton For Real?," http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,974739-3,00.html Time 27 January 1992

“I am reverential to great stars. I don't want sexual congress with them. The writer in me reveres the artist in them.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Playboy interview (May 1995)

“I would have done it all again. I would have destroyed them all. Yet I would have spared one. I would have spared her that showed me Him whose presence I had not fathomed or maybe never even known. Great God, how early it is! Until now I had almost forgotten His name.
“Come!” the voice booms, but commanding me now: Come, My son! I turn in surrender.
Surely I come quickly. Amen.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
Oh how bright and fair the morning star …”

William Styron book The Confessions of Nat Turner

Part IV : "It Is Done…"
The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967)

God

“We do not argue with the critic who urges that the stars are not hot enough for this process; we tell him to go and find a hotter place.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

The Internal Constitution of Stars, Cambridge. (1926). ISBN 0521337089

“There 's but the twinkling of a star
Between a man of peace and war.”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

Canto III, line 957
Source: Hudibras, Part II (1664)

War , Peace

“The night had passed completely. The morning star shone in the sky. I too had become a different person. The student of Talmud, the child I was, had been consumed by the flames. All that was left was a shape that resembled me. My soul had been invaded - and devoured - by a black flame.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Night (1960)

Soul , Personality , Night

“The sun and the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago…had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.”

H. Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) British physician, writer, and social reformer

Source: The Dance of Life http://www.gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300671.txt (1923), Ch. 7

Sun

“Night threw her shadow on the world. Sailors out at sea looked up at the circling Bear and the stars of Orion. Travellers and watchmen longed for sleep, and oblivion came at last to mothers mourning for their children's death. In the town, dogs ceased to bark and men to call to one another; silence reigned over the deepening dark. But gentle sleep did not visit Medea. In her yearning for Jason, fretful cares kept her awake. She feared the great strength of the bulls; she saw him face them in the field of Ares; she saw him meet an ignominious end. Her heart fluttered within her, restless…”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea, Lines 744–755

Death , Men , Children , World

“A star needs a star.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Star http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/star-23/
From the poems written in English

“Though the day of my Destiny's over,
And the star of my Fate hath declined,
Thy soft heart refused to discover
The faults which so many could find.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Stanzas to Augusta http://readytogoebooks.com/LB-Augusta2.html, st. 1 (1816).

Fate , Heart

“The "universe" is an hypothesis, like the atom, and must be allowed the freedom to have properties and to do things which would be contradictory and impossible for a finite material structure. What we observe are the stars and nebulae constituting "our neighbourhood." All that goes beyond that, in time or in space, or both, is pure extrapolation. The conclusions derived about the expanding universe depend on the assumed homogeneity and isotropy, i. e. on the hypothesis that the observed finite material density and expansion of our neighbourhood are not local phenomena, but properties of the "universe." It is not inconceivable that this hypothesis may at some future stage of the development of science have to be given up, or modified, or at least differently interpreted.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932), Above is Beginning Quote of the Last Chapter: Relativity and Modern Theories of the Universe -->

Freedom , Universe , Science , Time

“She was our queen, our rose, our star;
And then she danced—O Heaven, her dancing!”

Winthrop Mackworth Praed (1802–1839) British politician, poet

"The Belle of the Ball" in The Poetical Works of Winthrop Mackworth Praed (published 1860) p. 139.

Dance

“Too bad, Matson thought archly, that George Hoffman didn’t discover more planets in more star systems habitable by us, the frail needs of living, sentient, mentating biochemical upright bipeds which we humans are.”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

Source: Lies, Inc. (1984), Chapter 3 (p. 19)

“A child’s mind is open to learn, and it is a cruel and heartless thing to fill it with myth disguised as history, to impose upon it a bogus lifelong perspective, and close it up again, leaving it proof against common sense and all argument. Surely, if there is a hell, people who do this are the ones who will get their tickets punched.
A judgment by the God who devised the quantum system should be considerably different from the one the Reverend Koestler envisions. I gave you a sky full of stars, and you never raised your eyes. I gave you a brain, and you never used it.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 12 (p. 113)

God , People , History , Hell

“Another sign was seen in heaven. Look! A great fiery-colored dragon, with seven heads and ten horns and on its heads seven diadems; and its tail drags a third of the stars of heaven, and it hurled them down to the earth. And the dragon kept standing before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she did give birth, it might devour her child.”

John the Evangelist (10–98) author of the Gospel of John; traditionally identified with John the Apostle of Jesus, John of Patmos (author o…

Revelation 12:3-4 http://www.jw.org/en/publications/bible/nwt/books/revelation/12/, NWT
Revelation

Color , Birth

“There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.”

Václav Havel book The Power of the Powerless

Source: Living in Truth (1986), The Power of the Powerless

Truth , Understanding , Time

“Star Trek represented, and still does represent, the future we can have, a future that is beyond the petty squabbles we are dealing with here on Earth, now as much as ever, and are able to devote ourselves to the betterment of all human kind by doing what we do so well: explore. This kind of a future isn't impossible - and we need to all rethink our priorities to really bring that vision to life.”

Nichelle Nichols (1932) American actress, singer and voice artist

Uhura Fest: 'Star Trek' legend Nichelle Nichols talks Wizard World Philly and transcending race http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/geek/Uhura-Star-Trek-Nichelle-Nichols-Wizard-World-Philly.html (May 29, 2017)

Life , Future

“There is a Power, a Power that controls the moon, the stars and the sun. It is a Power that can burn all other powers. It is the Power that pervades each atom, all that is finite, all that is infinite, a Power that no one can see…It has no assistance. It is completely alone. Original.”

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (1900–1986) Sri Lankan Sufi leader

The Point Where God and Man Meet (2006)

Sun

“How many falling stars does it take to wake a nation?
And trample through your head and lay your
mind out on the pavement
Confusing and consuming all in all it complicates me.”

Dhani Harrison (1978) English musician

Another John Doe
Lyrics, You Are Here (2008)

“Translated: "to the stars through difficulties."”

John James Ingalls (1833–1900) American politician

State motto of Kansas, reported to have been devised by Ingalls.
Attributed

““I confess a fascination and love for clocks.”
“Why?” asked Sagitta.
“There is something so reassuring about a device which echoes the movements of stars and sun and planets.”
“To seek to understand the spheres is to dull their music,” said the girl softly.
“I don’t agree. The better one understands, the more one can appreciate,” replied William.”

Melinda M. Snodgrass (1951) American writer

Source: Queen's Gambit Declined (1989), Chapter 8 (p. 88)

Love , Music , Girl , Understanding

“I would love to talk to you about that, Josh, but there's something else I want to bring up, and that's this. (Holds up a screenplay entitled "Live For The Moment: The Jeff Hardy Story") I had a friend in a fancy Hollywood agency the other day, and he ran across this little gem. Somebody actually took the time to write a screenplay about the Jeff Hardy story. So I was paging through it, and lo and behold, it culminates, of course, with Jeff conquering his demons and beating me her tonight in a TLC match at SummerSlam. What a great feelgood story, Josh, all except, of course, for the ending, which is not reality-based. It's fake, it's phony, just like everybody who lives in this town. I'd go as far as to say that I'm the only real person in this building right now. I wish I could say it's a Los Angeles epidemic, but the fact is it's worldwide. You have people that falsely idolize what they see in movies and on television; you have housewives in Iowa that subscribe to U. S. Weekly, US Weekly, or whatever it's called, so they can model their hair after Kate Gosselin, instead of helping their own children with their homework; you have little kids all over the world, millions of them, who idolize the "hip, cool star", and it doesn't matter if that hip cool star is some dork vampire in Twilight, or if it's Jeff Hardy. It doesn't matter if that hip cool star has a reprehensible, reckless lifestyle. You know, it doesn't matter if the collective intelligence of this entire country continues to spiral downward, day in and day out. It doesn't matter as long as it's cool, right? You know why they don't make movies about a guy like me? It's cause I don't support your poisoned society. I don't support this den of iniquity known as Hollywood. No, instead, I'm dismissed as being preachy, except I'm not preachy—I never have been. I just tell the truth. You know, I'm not a screenwriter either, but tonight I think I'll take a stab at it. Tonight I'm gonna rewrite the ending of "The Jeff Hardy Story."”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

It's gonna be horrifying. It's gonna be very, very graphic. It might be hard to watch for a lot of people, but it will have a happy ending: new World Heavyweight Champion—CM Punk.
At SummerSlam
Friday Night SmackDown

Love , Children , People , Truth

“The darkest night that ever fell upon the earth never hid the light, never put out the stars. It only made the stars more keenly, kindly glancing, as if in protest against the darkness.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

As quoted in Golden Gleams of Thought from the Words of Leading Orators, Divines, Philosophers, Statesmen and Poets (1881) by S. Pollock Linn; also in Still Waters http://books.google.com/books?id=VjAqAAAAYAAJ (1913)

Light , Night

“Ah! it is well we can forget,
Or who could linger on
Beneath a sky whose stars are set,
On earth whose flowers are gone?
For who could welcome loved ones near,
Thinking of those once far more dear”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Love , Flowers , Thinking , Forgetting

“O heavenly Muse, that not with fading bays
Deckest thy brow by the Heliconian spring,
But sittest crowned with stars' immortal rays
In Heaven, where legions of bright angels sing;
Inspire life in my wit, my thoughts upraise,
My verse ennoble, and forgive the thing,
If fictions light I mix with truth divine,
And fill these lines with other praise than thine.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

O Musa, tu, che di caduchi allori
Non circondi la fronte in Elicona,
Ma su nel Cielo infra i beati cori
Hai di stelle immortali aurea corona;
Tu spira al petto mio celesti ardori,
Tu rischiara il mio canto, e tu perdona
S'intesso fregj al ver, s'adorno in parte
D'altri diletti, che de' tuoi le carte.
Canto I, stanza 2 (tr. Edward Fairfax)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

Life , Truth , Angels , Spring

“[The Abu Ghraib prison scandal is] the key reason, the sole reason, that I was forced to retire. I was essentially not offered another position in either a three-star or four-star command.”

Ricardo Sanchez (1953) United States Army Lieutenant General

As quoted in " November Off To Bloody Start In Iraq http://web.archive.org/web/20070430024348/http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/02/iraq/main2143888.shtml" (2 November 2006), by Alfonso Serrano, CBS News.

“[O'Brien joined the Dublin Gate Theatre) where Orson Welles had started. Very few people know that he started in Dublin, most people think it was the Mercury in New York. James Mason, Peggy Cummins, Edward Mulhare - they all used to work for the Gate Theatre. My father was extremely furious when he found out that I was wasting my time being an actor. He also got wind of the fact that the star of the production (Micheál Mac Liammóir) was one of the biggest queens alive. He also played the part of Jago in Orson Welles' OTHELLO. This really didn't help. He cut my money off.”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

Money , People , Thinking , Time

“I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of the evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil. Is this the life you grudge us, O knightly America? Is this the life you long to change into the dull red hideousness of Georgia? Are you so afraid lest peering from this high Pisgah, between Philistine and Amalekite, we sight the Promised Land?”

W.E.B. Du Bois book The Souls of Black Folk

Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. VI: Of the Training of Black Men

Life , Women , Men , Truth

“Thoughts at the open window of the payroll department [in a military barrack - World War I. ]: That everything is transitory is merely a simile. Everything we see is a proposal, a possibility, an expedient. The real truth, to begin with, remains invisible beneath the surface. The colors that captivate us are not lighting, but light. The graphic universe consists of light and shadow. The diffused clarity of slightly overcast weather is richer in phenomena than a sunny day. A thin stratum of cloud just before the stars break through. It is difficult to catch and represent this, because the moment is so fleeting. It has to penetrate into our soul. The formal has to fuse with the Weltanschauung”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

world view
Quote (July 1917), # 1081, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
1916 - 1920

War , Truth , World , Color

“He looked up from it at the stars again, and the view was warped and distorted by something in his eyes, which at first he thought was rain.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, The Player of Games (1988), Chapter 4 “The Passed Pawn” (p. 390).

“It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning
When the light drips through the shutters like the dew,
I arise, I face the sunrise,
And do the things my fathers learned to do.
Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops
Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die,
And I myself on a swiftly tilting planet
Stand before a glass and tie my tie.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

Senlin: A Biography (1918)

Light , Learning

“The fundamental imperative about idolatry was that worship was not to be paid to any created thing such as a messenger, a planet, a star, one of the four elements, or to anything produced from them.”

Maimónides book Mishneh Torah

Treatise 4: “Idolatry,” H. Russell, trans. (1983), p. 74
Mishneh Torah (c. 1180)

“Slowly the human beings have arise n-guided by a glimmering light — and have climbed spiritually from the earth and the clod, from the shrub and tree up the broad walls of the arched sky, to stars, and moon, and sun, and then beyond the sun, for the divinity seeldng and striving imagination stretches away to the invisible, all powerful, all-controlling, all-loving. One who permeates the universe, lives in it, and breathes His life through it, the eternal life to be taken into the human soul. The myth is the obscure image, in the child's soul, of God Himself.”

Francis Wayland Parker (1837–1902) Union Army officer

Source: Talks on Pedagogics, (1894), p. 10

Love , Life , God , Soul

“Goethe, as lately quoted by Matthew Arnold, said those who have science and art have religion; and added, let those who have not science and art have the popular faith; let them have this escape, because the others are closed to them. Without any hold upon the ideal, or any insight into the beauty and fitness of things, the people turn from the tedium and the grossness and prosiness of daily life, to look for the divine, the sacred, the saving, in the wonderful, the miraculous, and in that which baffles reason. The disciples of Jesus thought of the kingdom of heaven as some external condition of splendor and pomp and power which was to be ushered in by hosts of trumpeting angels, and the Son of man in great glory, riding upon the clouds, and not for one moment as the still small voice within them. To find the divine and the helpful in the mean and familiar, to find religion without the aid of any supernatural machinery, to see the spiritual, the eternal life in and through the life that now is--in short, to see the rude, prosy earth as a star in the heavens, like the rest, is indeed the lesson of all others the hardest to learn.”

John Burroughs (1837–1921) American naturalist and essayist

Source: The Light of Day (1900), Ch. IV: Natural Versus Supernatural

Life , People , Faith , Religion

“You are like a star in my night
I'm gonna make it alright
Yes I am”

Jack Vidgen (1997) Australian singer

Song Yes I Am, released August 3, 2011

Night

“Spread sail! For it is Hope today that like a wind new-risen
Doth waft us on a golden wing towards a new horizon,
That is the sun before our sight, the beacon for us burning,
That is the star in all our night of watching and of yearning.”

Arthur O'Shaughnessy (1844–1881) British poet

Music and Moonlight (1874), Barcarolle

Hope , Sun , Night

“You can really bring so much more to rock'n'roll. Rock'n'roll is the most accepting, is the most fertile ground for creating hybrid forms of music and hybrid forms of show, if you draw from many, many different wells. It's just unfortunate so many rock'n'roll stars only bother to learn how to play like Led Zeppelin and/or the Rolling Stones and that's what you get, disc after disc and show after show.”

David Lee Roth (1954) Rock vocalist; lead singer with Van Halen

Patrick McDonald (October 13, 1988) "David Lee Roth: Outrageous or normal?", The Advertiser.

Music , Learning , Drawing

“Many mellow Cydonian suckets
Sweet apples, anthosmial, divine,
From the ruby-rimmed beryline buckets
Star-gemmed, lily-shaped, hyaline;
Like the sweet golden goblet found growing
On the wild emerald cucumber-tree,
Rich, brilliant, like chrysophrase glowing
Was my beautiful Rosalie Lee.”

Thomas Holley Chivers (1809–1858) 19th century American poet

Rosalie Lee.

Beauty , Tree

“The flag of our stately battles, not struggles of wrath and greed,
Its stripes were a holy lesson, its spangles a deathless creed:
'T was red with the blood of freemen and white with the fear of the foe;
And the stars that fight in their courses 'gainst tyrants its symbols know.”

Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) American abolitionist, social activist, and poet

"The Flag" in The Atlantic Monthly (April 1863).

Fear , Fight

“We call out into the distance…
Less than a pearl in a sea of stars,
we are a lost island in the shadows.”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

Song lyrics, Amarantine (2005)

Sea

“Whenever an authority disappears, another one appears; and if a star sets, another one rises.”

Muhammad al-Mahdi (869–941) 12th and last Imam in Twelver Shia Islam

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.53 p. 185
General Quotes

Appearance

“When The Smiths began it was very important that I wouldn't be that horrible, stupid, sloppy Steven. He would have to be locked in a box and put on top of the wardrobe. l needed to feel differently and rather than adopt some glamorous pop star name, I eradicated Steven which seemed to make perfect sense. Suddenly I was a totally different person. Now when I meet pre-Smith people who call me Steven, I sit there and wonder who they're talking about. I always despised the name Steven, though being spelt with a 'v' rather than a 'ph' made life slightly more tolerable. But it was very important that Steven be drowned nonetheless.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

from an interview by Elissa Van Poznak in The Face (1984)
In interviews etc., About himself and his work

Life , People , Stupidity , Feeling

“Please tell me your second name.
Please play me your second game.
I've fallen so far
For the people you are.
I just need your star for a day.”

Nick Drake (1948–1974) British singer-songwriter

Fly
Song lyrics, Bryter Later (1970)

People , Game

“Walking through a star field covered in lights”

Ryan Adams (1974) American alt-country/rock singer-songwriter

Beautiful Sorta
29 (2005)

Light

“I could not have learned to listen to coyotes without having first learned to listen to my unwillingness to sell my hours, then to listen to the signals of my body, then to listen to the disease that has made my insides my home, and thus become a part of me. And I could not have learned to listen to coyotes without having talked to other people courageous enough to validate my perception of an animate world. I talked to the writer Christoper Manes, who said, 'For most cultures through history--including our own in preliterate times--the entire world used to speak. Anthropologists call this animism, the most pervasive worldview in human history. Animistic cultures listen to the natural world. For them, birds have something to say. So do worms, wolves, and waterfalls.' Later the philosopher Thomas Berry told me, 'The universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not objects to be exploited. Everything has its own voice. Thunder and lightning and stars and planets, flowers, birds, animals, trees--all these have voices, and they constitute a community of existence that is profoundly related.”

Derrick Jensen book A Language Older Than Words

Source: A Language Older Than Words (2000), p. 361

People , World , Disease , Home

“Too low they build who build beneath the stars.”

Edward Young Night-Thoughts

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 206.
Night-Thoughts (1742–1745), Night VIII

Inspirational

“Oh! sweet and sudden fire that springs
With but a look to light its wings;
How false to say thou needest time
The bright ascent of hope to climb;
A star thou art, that may not be
Reckoned by dull astronomy!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Hope , Art , Spring , Light

“The thing about dancers is they're a certain breed. You don't do it to become rich and famous, you don't do it to have a really long career or to be the star, you do it because you can't imagine your life not doing it.”

Cat Deeley (1976) English television presenter, actress, singer and model

"'So You Think You Can Dance' Shaking Things Up For Season Nine" at MTV News (24 May 2012) http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1685776/so-you-think-you-can-dance-season-nine.jhtml

Life , Imagination

“In that instant when I had seen the blazing star that was the Star Maker, I had glimpsed, in the very eye of that splendor, strange vistas of being; as though in the depths of the hypercosmical past and the hypercosmical future also, yet coexistent in eternity, lay cosmos beyond cosmos.”

Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker

Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter XIII: The Beginning and the End; 3. The Supreme Moment and After (p. 166)

Past , Future

“Drink: the immortal waters quench the spirit's longing.
Art thou not now, bright one, all sorrow past, in elation,
Made young with joy, grown brother-hearted with the vast,
Whither thy spirit wending flits the dim stars past
Unto the Light of Lights in burning adoration.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Art , Drink , Light , Water

“The moon belongs to everyone;
The best things in life are free.
The stars belong to everyone;
They gleam there for you and me.”

Buddy de Sylva (1895–1950) American musician

Song: The Best Things in Life are Free

Life

“The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

One Word is Too Often Profaned (1821), st. 2

Night

“The true human being … is the meaning of the universe. He is a dancing star. He is the exploding singularity pregnant with infinite possibilities.”

David Zindell book The Broken God

Source: The Broken God (1992), p. 236

Universe , Dance

“Most actors are basically neurotic people. Terribly, terribly unhappy. That's one of the reasons they become actors. Nobody well adjusted would ever want to expose himself or herself to a large group of strangers. Think of it. Insanity! Generally, by their very nature - that is if they're at all dedicated - actors do not make good parents. They are altogether egotistical and selfish. The better the actor - and I hate to say it, the bigger the star - why, the more that seems to be true. Honestly, I don't think I've ever known one - not one!”

Margaret Sullavan (1909–1960) actress

star who was successfully able to combine a career and family life
from Haywire (1977) by Brooke Hayward. Jonathan Cape Ltd., p. 218. ISBN 0224014269.

Life , Hate , People , Family

“Gashed with honourable scars,
Low in Glory's lap they lie;
Though they fell, they fell like stars,
Streaming splendour through the sky.”

James Montgomery (1771–1854) British editor, hymn writer, and poet

The Battle of Alexandria.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Lie

“I have presented the periodic table as a kind of travel guide to an imaginary country, of which the elements are the various regions. This kingdom has a geography: the elements lie in particular juxtaposition to one another, and they are used to produce goods, much as a prairie produces wheat and a lake produces fish. It also has a history. Indeed, it has three kinds of history: the elements were discovered much as the lands of the world were discovered; the kingdom was mapped, just as the world was mapped, and the relative positions of the elements came to take on a great significance; and the elements have their own cosmic history, which can be traced back to the stars.”

Peter Atkins (1940) British chemist

Preface
Periodic Kingdom (1995)

Lie , World , Travel , History

“I never wanted to be an actor. I never want to be an actor. I want to be a movie star. The whole idea of having to act is too gruesome. It's too ambitious for me.”

Vincent Gallo (1961) American film director, writer, model, actor and musician

AOL Interview

Idea

“This is the universe! And I'm placing stones one by one on that. Like I'm increasing the number of stars one by one… I'm making the universe. It's like I'm a God. I'm going to become a God! On this Go Board.”

Yumi Hotta Hikaru no Go

In the anime, Hikaru says this when he plays in a Go tournament for the first time.
Hikaru no Go

God , Universe

“A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.”

Jorge Luis Borges Dreamtigers

Un hombre se propone la tarea de dibujar el mundo. A lo largo de los años puebla un espacio con imágenes de provincias, de reinos, de montañas, de bahías, de naves, de islas, de peces, de habitaciones, de instrumentos, de astros, de caballos y de personas. Poco antes de morir, descubre que ese paciente laberinto de líneas traza la imagen de su cara.
Epilogue
Variant translation: A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Through the years he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that that patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his face.
Dreamtigers (1960)

People , World , Mountain , Fish

““I’m really interested in this stuff.” Julie rubbed a carton labeled ELEMENTARY PARTICLES.
“Physics?”
“Physics, biology, stars, everything.”
Howard said, “Good for you. These days most people prefer to impoverish their minds with mysticism.””

James K. Morrow book Only Begotten Daughter

Source: Only Begotten Daughter (1990), Chapter 5 (p. 87)

People

“I have frozen in the mountains in rain and in hail – and slept out under the stars – and cooked and burned on the desert so that riding through Kansas on the train when everyone is wilting about me seems nothing at all for heat – my nose has peeled and all my bones have been sore from riding – I drove with friends through Arizona – Utah – Colorado – New Mexico till the thought of a wheel under me makes me want to hold my head.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Source: 1920s, Letter to Ettie Stettheimer' (August 1929), pp. 226-227

Mountain , Training , Cooking

“I would be harder, tougher. I would put myself about more. I should have mixed with more people which would have led to more opportunities. As I said, I had this sort of ‘keep away from me’ look, barrier, whatever, and I guess people might have thought I was snooty, which I wasn’t, but that was my way of just coping with things. Many stars come to sticky ends, so I think maybe it’s just as well. At least I am still here, for which I’m grateful.”

Valerie Leon (1943) English actress

The Den Of Geek Interview: Valerie Leon http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/13448/the-den-of-geek-interview-valerie-leon (July 7, 2008)

People , Way , Thinking

“Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea:
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free,
So didst thou travel on life's common way,
In cheerful godliness.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

London, 1802, l. 9 (1807).

Life , Way , Travel , Soul

“Matter is actually distributed very unevenly… conglomerated into stars and galactic systems. The average density is the density that we should get if all… could be evaporated into atoms of hydrogen, or protons, and… distributed evenly over the whole of space. …three or four protons in every cubic foot. …a million million times less than that of the most perfect vacuum that we can produce… The universe thus consists mostly of emptiness… consider a universe without any matter at all, an empty universe, as a good approximation. But we may also take as our first approximation a universe containing… three or four protons per cubic foot. The local deviations from the average, caused by the conglomeration of matter into stars and stellar systems, are then disregarded in the grand scale model, and are only taken into account when we come to study details.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932)

Study , Universe , Time , Perfection

“We put a monkey up in space / and I know exactly how he felt / looking at a lattice work of stars / missing his brothers back home too much for a postcard”

Blake Schwarzenbach (1967) American singer

"Disgrace"
Perfecting Loneliness (2002)

Home

“I wanted to create an interesting scifi universe that didn’t violate the laws of physics, and that means that you’re limited to staying inside the solar system. I also wanted to get away from the ship-centric style of science fiction. Star Trek is ship-centric and it’s all about the Enterprise — there are many other examples. What if we decided to get away from the obsession with ships and instead thought about big machines and structures that might be used to create a civilization inside the solar system?”

Neal Stephenson (1959) American science fiction writer

About Seveneves, "Here's How Space Megastructures Will Look, According to Neal Stephenson" in Gizmodo, interviewed by Annalee Newitz, May 20, 2015 (pre-Zero)

Law , Universe , Science

“I thought you understood," he said. "The world is your teacher. It will be all around you. The ocean and the wind and the stars and the moon will all teach you many things.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Emir's Education In The Proper Use of Magical Powers (1979), p. 10

World , Teachers

“Back of my forehead I feel tonight
A whole sky full of stars. Under
a western moon.
Life is indeed lovely!”

Juan Ramón Jimenéz (1881–1958) Spanish poet

"Western Moon" in Canción (1935).

Love , Life , Feeling

“I'm the first to admit that there's something unnatural… something unseemly… about rock stars mounting the pulpit and preaching at presidents, and then disappearing to their villas in the South of France. Talk about a fish out of water. It was weird enough when Jesse Helms showed up at a U2 concert… but this is really weird, isn't it?”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

National Prayer Breakfast (2006)

Fish , Water

“The general disposition of the land is one of metals in the west, giving way, as you travel eastward, to a varied landscape of nonmetals, which terminates in largely inert elements at the eastern shoreline. To the south of the mainland, there is an offshore island, which we shall call the Southern Island. It consists entirely of metals of subtly modulated personality. North of the mainland, situated rather like Iceland off the northwestern edge of Europe, lies a single, isolated region-hydrogen. This simple but gifted element is an essential outpost of the kingdom, for despite its simplicity it is rich in chemical personality. It is also the most abundant element in the universe and the fuel of the stars.”

Peter Atkins (1940) British chemist

Source: Periodic Kingdom (1995), Chapter 1. The Terrain

Way , Travel , Universe , Personality

“The heath and changes of weather were quite blotted out from their eyes for the present. They were enclosed in a sort of luminous mist, which hid from them surroundings of any inharmonious colour, and gave to all things the character of light. When it rained they were charmed, because they could remain indoors together all day with such a show of reason; when it was fine they were charmed, because they could sit together on the hills. They were like those double stars which revolve round and round each other, and from a distance appear to be one.”

Thomas Hardy book The Return of the Native

Bk. IV, ch. 1
The Return of the Native (1878)

Light , Appearance , Change , Weather

“I am a man: little do I last
and the night is enormous.
But I look up:
the stars write.
Unknowing I understand:
I too am written,
and at this very moment
someone spells me out.”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

"Brotherhood: Homage to Claudius Ptolemy"

Understanding , Night

“There towers to the sky a monument of four million pairs of human fetters taken from the arms of slaves, and I read on its little headstone this, 'Sacred to the memory of Human Slavery'. For forty years of its infamous life the Democratic Party taught that it was divine; God's institution. They defended it, they stood around it, they followed it to its grave as a mourner. But here it lies, dead by the hand of Abraham Lincoln; dead by the power of the Republican Party, dead by the justice of Almighty God. Don't camp there, young man. That is no place in which to put your young life. Come out, and come over into this camp of liberty, of order, of law, of justice, of freedom, of all that is glorious under these night stars.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1870s, An Appeal to Young Men (1879)

Life , God , Justice , Law

“I wanted to be a movie star. But movie stars are not what they used to be. When I was a kid, I thought movie stars were women and men who were in these great films that we still look at now… And people my age don't even know who those people are. I can't even have a conversation with most people of my generation about that, because they'd be like, "Okay, she's a freak…" And the worst part is, in terms of what people see of me, I have become this girl who just loves to be photographed, doesn't know how to focus, doesn't know how to work on set, just loves the attention, knows how to go out at night, knows how to party. And you know what? I was 20 years old. I never went to college. And I lived maybe six months out of my life like that, doing something wrong, and then I stopped. God forbid I should have ever learned my lesson. But at this point it's so hard for people to even believe that there was a lesson to be learned at all, because they just think I'm wrong. All these people think I'm never going to be right, because it's more interesting to fabricate this other girl. Who wants to read a tabloid story about a girl who is doing well?”

Lindsay Lohan (1986) American actress and pop singer

Interview interview (2009)

Love , Life , Women , Men

“Guilford thought he knew what science was. It was nothing more than curiosity…tempered by humility, disciplined with patience.
Science meant looking—a special kind of looking. Looking especially hard at the things you didn’t understand. Looking at the stars, say, and not fearing them, not worshiping them, just asking questions, finding the question that would unlock the door to the next question and the question beyond that.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Darwinia

Prologue (pp. 10-11)
Darwinia (1998)

Fear , Understanding , Question , Science

“Imagine a book of unexplained mysteries written by a contemporary of Shakespeare. It might include the mystery of the falling stars that sweep through the sky foretelling disaster; the mystery of the Kraken, the giant sea devil with 50-foot tentacles; the mystery of monster bones, sometimes found in caves or on beaches. Such a book would be a curious mixture of truth and absurdity, fact and legend. We would all feel superior as we turned its pages and murmured: "Of course, they didn't know about comets and giant squids and dinosaurs." If this book should happen to find its way into the hands of our remote descendants, they may smile pityingly and say: "It's incredible to think that they knew nothing about epsilon fields or multiple psychic feedback or cross gravitational energies. They didn't even know about the ineluctability of time."”

Colin Wilson (1931–2013) author

But let us hope that such a descendant is in a charitable mood, and might add: "And yet they managed to ask a few of the right questions."
Source: Enigmas and Mysteries (1976), p. 142

Truth , Books , Smile , Hope

“Brightest and best of the sons of the morning,
Dawn on our darkness, and lend us thine aid.
Star of the east the horizon adorning,
Guide where our infant Redeemer is laid.”

Reginald Heber (1783–1826) English clergyman

"Epiphany", st. 1 (1811).
Hymns

“Yahtzee was born in Warwickshire, England, on the day of the great storm of 1983. Twenty years later, when England had become too small to accommodate the five hundred kilometre-wide tumour growing out of the back of his neck, he moved to Brisbane, Australia, where a chance encounter with an enraged surfer caused the tumour to become detached. It has now gone on to star in a number of Japanese fetish videos, while Yahtzee occupies a treehouse on the edge of the city, struggling to learn how to live with corks around his hat. The enraged surfer tries to keep in touch, but Yahtzee never answers his phone.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

About page http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/about.htm
Fully Ramblomatic

Learning , Chance

“As when around the clear bright moon, the stars
Shine in full splendor, and the winds are hush'd,
The groves, the mountain-tops, the headland-heights
Stand all apparent, not a vapor streaks
The boundless blue, but ether open'd wide
All glitters, and the shepherd's heart is cheer'd.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

The Iliad of Homer: translated into English blank verse (1791), Book VIII, line 643.

Mountain , Heart

“Oh, my best part was in The Rainmaker (1956). It was my 15th movie and my first co-starring role. I played Katharine Hepburn's younger brother, and I won the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor. My competition that year included Anthony Quinn in Lust for Life, Karl Malden and Eli Wallach in Baby Doll and Herbert Lom in War and Peace. But the big blow came when I failed to get nominated for an Oscar. I was at Louella Parsons home, doing an interview, when the news came. It was a crushing blow to me that I wasn't nominated. Louella tried to console me, saying, You're young, you'll get lots of opportunities.”

Earl Holliman (1928) American actor

Well, I'm still waiting.
"Earl Holliman: actor with desire for variety" (1973)

Life , War , Peace , Home

“Small things I handled and caressed and loved.
I let the stars assume the whole of night.But the big answers clamoured to be moved Into my life. Their great audacity
Shouted to be acknowledged and believed.”

Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) British poet

This is from the poem "Answers" by Elizabeth Jennings, which has wrongly been attributed to Sitwell at a few sites on the internet.
Misattributed

Love , Life

“Since they were little, wishing on the first star of the evening, they both understood this: the most exciting game in life is to invent yourself.”

Lisa Mason book Summer of Love

Source: Summer of Love (1994), Chapter 10 “Dedicated to the One I Love” (p. 236)

Life , Game

“No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50 thousand years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.
So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this state of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward — and so will space.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Rice University speech

History , Problem , Light , Learning

“At a certain point the two cigars fell at our feet in the snow and then we heard them whispering up there and moving about and then came a sigh louder than the others. When we looked up we could see nothing but the withered vine leaves and thousands of stars in the frosty sky. Nuto said "The blackguards" through his clenched teeth.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

Source: The moon and the bonfire (1950), Chapter XXIII, p. 133

“Cass gained a lot of strength from her public. Once she was a star, she wasn't afraid of anybody, and certainly not me.”

Michelle Phillips (1944) Singer, actress

On Cass Elliot, Regis Philbin's Lifestyles (1986)

“On my seventieth birthday, when I reflected that so many of my friends were dead or dying, it hit me that it was high time I got more work done. Ever since that time, I have done the active, smart thing by increasing my productivity. I'm not on the rocks or shoals yet, but the last few years have been a devastation of illnesses and deaths of many good friends. [Star Trek creator] Gene Roddenberry was a loss that deeply grieved me.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Playboy interview (1996)

Death , Birthday , Loss , Time

“But the indication of the strength of our system was moral as well as physical. 'You cannot stand the strain of a civil war and of party spirit combined', said the skeptics. 'You will end in anarchy at the election'. I knew those who apprehended revolution and provisional governments as November approached. In hushed expectation election day dawned. You remember the old story of an agreement of everybody in the world to shout all together at the same moment upon a certain day, and make a noise that would be heard to the stars. The hour came; and it was the most silent moment ever known. The sole sound was the thin, weak cry of one deaf old woman. Everybody else in the world was listening for the prodigious noise. So the Great Election passed in perfect peace. The sun of the ninth of November rose, not upon a convulsed nation tumbling into anarchy, but standing calm, strong, and erect upon its two feet of Union and Liberty, and somewhere upon the ground the tip-end of the tail of a copperhead snake sneaking into his hole.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

War , World , Peace , Strong

“The stars baked my bones; The oceans culled my blood, And the forests shaped my lungs. Who am I?”

A. A. Attanasio book Radix

A.A. Attanasio. Radix, the epic novel of ultimate discovery. New English Library, Hodder and Stoughton. 1981. p.223 ISBN 9780340618400

“"Stars in the sky / and dreams are few / the ones who come true"
(from Ridere di te, 1987)”

Vasco Rossi (1980) Italian singer-songwriter

Song lyrics

Dreams

“If it is necessary we will find a quick answer and it will not be the way the United States expects it. It will be an answer that devalues the 'Star Wars' program.”

Sergei Akhromeyev (1923–1991) Soviet marshal

1986 UPI (Moscow) press release on Soviet reaction to the Strategic Defense Initiative. Quoted in Ellensburg Daily Record, 27 Aug 1986, and elsewhere.

War , Way

“Kings are like stars — they rise and set, they have
The worship of the world, but no repose.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Hellas

Source: Hellas (1821), l. 195

World

“As long as he lived, he was the guiding-star of a whole brave nation, and when he died the little children cried in the street.”

John Lothrop Motley The Rise of the Dutch Republic

The Rise of the Dutch Republic (1856; New York: Harper, 1861) vol. 3, part 6, ch. 7, p. 627.
Of William the Silent. In a footnote Motley cites the original of his last phrase in an official report made by the Greffier Corneille Aertsens: "dont par toute la ville l'on est en si grand duil tellement que les petits enfans en pleurent par les rues."

Children

“Zuniga Hides the Evidence … Like the craven coward he is, Markos Zuniga, rising young star of the Democrats, has now removed the page at Daily Kos where he wrote “Screw them” about the four Americans torn apart and hung from a bridge in Fallujah.”

Charles Foster Johnson (1953) American musician

July 27, 2004 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=11884&only