Quotes about stars
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Mike Tyson photo

“I have to dream and reach for the stars, and if I miss a star then I grab a handful of clouds.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1077/is_n11_v50/ai_17362107
Miscellaneous

Dante Alighieri photo

“Thence we came forth to rebehold the stars.”

Canto XXXIV, line 139 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Jacques Brel photo

“If we only have love
Then we'll only be men
And we'll drink from the Grail
To be born once again;
Then with nothing at all
But the little we are
We'll have conquered all time
All space, the sun, and the stars!”

Jacques Brel (1929–1978) Belgian singer-songwriter

If Only We Have Love (1957)
Context: If we only have love
We will never bow down
We'll be tall as the pines
Neither heroes nor clowns.
If we only have love
Then we'll only be men
And we'll drink from the Grail
To be born once again;
Then with nothing at all
But the little we are
We'll have conquered all time
All space, the sun, and the stars!

H.P. Lovecraft photo

“These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape — for did not this star-fashioned image prove it? — but that shape was not made of matter.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)
Context: There had been aeons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before men came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them.
These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape — for did not this star-fashioned image prove it? — but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die...

Dante Alighieri photo

“But now was turning my desire and will,
Even as a wheel that equally is moved,
The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.”

Canto XXXIII, closing lines, as translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Paradiso
Context: As the geometrician, who endeavours
To square the circle, and discovers not,
By taking thought, the principle he wants,Even such was I at that new apparition;
I wished to see how the image to the circle
Conformed itself, and how it there finds place;But my own wings were not enough for this,
Had it not been that then my mind there smote
A flash of lightning, wherein came its wish. Here vigour failed the lofty fantasy:
But now was turning my desire and will,
Even as a wheel that equally is moved, The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.

“Slowly the joy of flower and bird
Did like a tide withdraw;
And in the heaven a silent star
Smiled on me, infinitely far.”

Francis William Bourdillon (1852–1921) British poet

" The Chantry Of The Cherubim http://www.bartleby.com/236/219.html" in The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse (1917) by D. H. S. Nicholson.
Context: p>I walk as one unclothed of flesh,
I wash my spirit clean;
I see old miracles afresh,
And wonders yet unseen.
I will not leave Thee till Thou give
Some word whereby my soul may live!I listened — but no voice I heard;
I looked — no likeness saw;
Slowly the joy of flower and bird
Did like a tide withdraw;
And in the heaven a silent star
Smiled on me, infinitely far.</p

Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo

“Come, my friends.
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.”

Source: Ulysses (1842), l. 54-62
Context: The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices.
Come, my friends.
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.

Francis of Assisi photo
Stephen Hawking photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you have still chaos in you.”

Variant: One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
Source: Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Haruki Murakami photo

“Not just beautiful, though--the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they're watching me.”

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter 15
Context: Now I know exactly how dangerous the forest can be. And I hope I never forget it. Just like Crow said, the world's filled with things I don't know about. All the plants and trees there, for instance. I'd never imagined that trees could be so weird and unearthly. I mean, the only plants I've ever really seen or touched till now are the city kind -neatly trimmed and cared-for bushes and trees. But the ones here -the ones living here -are totally different. They have a physical power, their breath grazing any humans who might chance by, their gaze zeroing in on the intruder like they've spotted their prey. Like they have some dark, prehistoric, magical powers. Like deep-sea creatures rule the ocean depths, in the forest trees reign supreme. If it wanted to, the forest could reject me-or swallow me up whole. A healthy amount of fear and respect might be a good idea.

Terry Pratchett photo

“If you trust in yourself… and believe in your dreams… and follow your star… you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

Variant: Now... if you trust in yourself... and believe in your dreams... and follow your star... you'll still get beaten by people who spenttime working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy. Goodbye.
Source: The Wee Free Men

William Shakespeare photo
Kate DiCamillo photo
William Shakespeare photo
Saul Bellow photo

“You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. In the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.”

Max Ehrmann (1872–1945) American writer, poet, and attorney

Variant: Be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.

Leonard Bernstein photo
Neil deGrasse Tyson photo

“Not only do we live among the stars, the stars live within us.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

Source: Death by Black Hole - And Other Cosmic Quandaries

Rabindranath Tagore photo
Ana Castillo photo
Douglas Adams photo
Winston Groom photo
Wassily Kandinsky photo
Theodore Roosevelt photo

“Be practical as well as generous in your ideals. Keep your eyes on the stars, but remember to keep your feet on the ground.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, Address at the Prize Day Exercises at Groton School (1904)
Context: You need a great many qualities to make a successful man on a nine or an eleven; and just so you need a great many different qualities to make a good citizen. In the first place, of course it is al most tautological to say that to make a good citizen the prime need is to be decent, clean in thought, clean in mind, clean in action; to have an ideal and not to keep that ideal purely for the study to have an ideal which you will in good faith strive to live up to when you are out in life. If you have an ideal only good while you sit at home, an ideal that nobody can live up to in outside life, then I advise you strongly to take that ideal, examine it closely, and then cast it away. It is not a good one. The ideal that it is impossible for a man to strive after in practical life is not the type of ideal that you wish to hold up and follow. Be practical as well as generous in your ideals. Keep your eyes on the stars, but remember to keep your feet on the ground. Be truthful; a lie implies fear, vanity or malevolence; and be frank; furtiveness and insincerity are faults incompatible with true manliness. Be honest, and remember that honesty counts for nothing unless back of it lie courage and efficiency. If in this country we ever have to face a state of things in which on one side stand the men of high ideals who are honest, good, well-meaning, pleasant people, utterly unable to put those ideals into shape in the rough field of practical life, while on the other side are grouped the strong, powerful, efficient men with no ideals: then the end of the Republic will be near. The salvation of the Republic depends the salvation of our whole social system depends upon the production year by year of a sufficient number of citizens who possess high ideals combined with the practical power to realize them in actual life.

Gustave Flaubert photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“As long as you still experience the stars as something "above you", you lack the eye of knowledge.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
Jerry Spinelli photo
Leonardo Da Vinci photo

“Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), X Studies and Sketches for Pictures and Decorations

E.E. Cummings photo

“I would rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Collected Poems (1938) New Poems 22
Variant: I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

John Masefield photo
Charles A. Beard photo

“When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.”

Charles A. Beard (1874–1948) American historian

Misattributed
Variant: When its dark enough you can see the stars.

Jimmy Carter photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Cecelia Ahern photo

“Shoot for the moon, even if you fail, you'll land among the stars”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: P.S. I Love You

H.P. Lovecraft photo
Vladimir Nabokov photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Jack Kerouac photo
Rainer Maria Rilke photo
Arthur Rimbaud photo

“I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; Garlands from window to window; Golden chains from star to star… And I dance.”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

Source: Complete Works

Erica Jong photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
Robert Frost photo
Steve Martin photo

“I need to know that wherever I end up, in the stars or in the gutter, you’re along for the ride.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

Bayard Taylor photo

“I love thee, I love but thee,
With a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old”

Bayard Taylor (1825–1878) United States poet, novelist and travel writer

"Bedouin Song" (1853), in The Poetical Works of Bayard Taylor (1907), p. 69.
Source: The Poems of Bayard Taylor
Context: I love thee, I love but thee,
With a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,
And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!
Context: From the Desert I come to thee
On a stallion shod with fire;
And the winds are left behind
In the speed of my desire.
Under thy window I stand,
And the midnight hears my cry:
I love thee, I love but thee,
With a love that shall not die
Till the sun grows cold,
And the stars are old,
And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold!

Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Variant translation: In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the highest and most mendacious minute of "world history" — yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.
One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened.
On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)
Context: Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of "world history," but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die. One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature. There were eternities during which it did not exist. And when it is all over with the human intellect, nothing will have happened.

E.E. Cummings photo

“Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Variant: Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backwards.

W.B. Yeats photo
Alice Hoffman photo
Walter Benjamin photo

“I came into the world under the sign of Saturn -- the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Source: Aesthetics and Politics

Guy Gavriel Kay photo
Pablo Neruda photo

“With which stars do they go on speaking, the rivers that never reach the sea?”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: The Book of Questions

William Shakespeare photo
Frida Kahlo photo
Victor Hugo photo

“What makes night within us may leave stars.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Variant: Whatever causes night in our souls may leave stars.
Source: Ninety-Three

Vladimir Nabokov photo
Christopher Paolini photo
John Lennon photo

“We all shine on… like the moon and the stars and the sun… we all shine on… come on and on and on…”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Variant: Yeah we all shine on, like the moon, and the stars, and the sun.
Source: Song Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)

Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“The wreckage of stars - I built a world from this wreckage.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Source: Dithyrambs of Dionysus

Federico García Lorca photo
William Shakespeare photo
Paulo Coelho photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Rainer Maria Rilke photo
Jeremy Bentham photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Orhan Pamuk photo
Pablo Neruda photo

“and everything burned in blue, everything a star”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: 100 Love Sonnets

David Bowie photo
John Keats photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Richelle Mead photo
T. Harv Eker photo

“If you shoot for the stars, you'll at least hit the moon”

T. Harv Eker (1954) American writer

Source: Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth

William Shakespeare photo
Mark Twain photo

“Stars and shadows ain't good to see by.”

Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Michio Kaku photo
Rainer Maria Rilke photo

“A billion stars go spinning through the night,
glittering above your head,
But in you is the presence that will be
when all the stars are dead.”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Source: The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke

Friedrich Nietzsche photo

“From which stars have we fallen to meet each other here?”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
W.B. Yeats photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Matt Haig photo
Robert Browning photo

“The good stars met in your horoscope,
Made you of spirit and fire and dew.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era
Robinson Jeffers photo
Annie Dillard photo
C.G. Jung photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Stephen Hawking photo