Quotes about stars page 5
“Shoot for the moon, because even if you miss you miss, you'll land in the stars.”
Les Brown (1945) American politician
Variant: Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.
Cormac McCarthy (1933) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter
Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
“… and we shall find
A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.”
William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads
Source: Lyrical Ballads
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
Civilization
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Pablo Neruda book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
¿Quién escribe tu nombre con letras de humo entre las estrellas del sur?
Ah déjame recordarte cómo eras entonces, cuando aún no existías.
"Every Day You Play" (Juegas Todos los Días), XIV, p. 35.
Source: Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Canción Desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair) (1924)
Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator
Variant: We are star stuff harvesting sunlight.
Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast
Variant: Where we would be together and have our books and at night be warm in bed together with the windows open and the stars bright. That was where we could go.
Source: A Moveable Feast
Lawrence M. Krauss (1954) American physicist
"A Universe From Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss, AAI 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo#t=16m49s (16:50-17:23) <br class="br">Context: The amazing thing is that every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution - weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way they could get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.
“For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me want to dream.”
Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)
Variant: I don't know anything with certainty, but seeing the stars makes me dream.
Source: Van Gogh's Starry Night Notebook
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
Source: Nature and Selected Essays
“You are my sun,
my moon, and
all my stars.”
E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet
Variant: Yours is the light by which my spirit's born: - you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.
“Because I have dreams and in those dreams I see the stars”
Catherine Fisher book Incarceron
Source: Incarceron
“He judged the instant and let go; he flung himself loose into the stars.”
Annie Dillard (1945) American writer
Carl Sagan book The Demon-Haunted World
Source: The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995), Ch. 1 : The Most Precious Thing, p. 12
Source: The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“Empirically speaking, we are made of star stuff. Why aren’t we talking more about that?”
Maggie Nelson (1973) American writer
Source: The Argonauts
“He was like a shooting star you tried to catch with your hands. She would only get burned.”
Melissa de la Cruz (1971) American writer
Source: Lost in Time
Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer
Variant: I used to think as I looked at the Hollywood night, «There must be thousands of girls sitting alone like me, dreaming of becoming a movie star. But I'm not going to worry about them. I'm dreaming the hardest.
Carl Sagan book Pale Blue Dot
Source: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994), p. 398
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist
On Death and Dying (1969)
James Hillman (1926–2011) American psychologist
Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books
Source: Sneetches are Sneetches: Learn About Same and Different
Frank O'Hara (1926–1966) American poet, art critic and writer
A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island (l. 64-67) (1958).
“Didn't I say I'd always be your same stars? If you get to missing me, just look up.”
Anne Rivers Siddons (1936–2019) novelist from the United States
Source: Fault Lines
Karen Joy Fowler book We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Source: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
“Maybe that's what life is… a wink of the eye and winking stars.”
Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer
Letter to Alan Harrington (23 April 1949) published in Kerouac: Selected Letters: Volume 1 1940-1956 (1996)
Source: Selected Letters, 1940-1956
Carl Sagan book Cosmos
Source: Cosmos (1980), p. 193
Context: For as long as there been humans we have searched for our place in the cosmos. Where are we? Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a hum-drum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. This perspective is a courageous continuation of our penchant for constructing and testing mental models of the skies; the Sun as a red-hot stone, the stars as a celestial flame, the Galaxy as the backbone of night.
“Had I as many souls as there be stars, I'd give them all for Mephistopheles!”
Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) English dramatist, poet and translator
Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States
Wanderlust: A History of Walking (2001)
Source: Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics
Context: Walking has been one of the constellations in the starry sky of human culture, a constellation whose three stars are the body, the imagination, and the wide-open world, and though all three exist independently, it is the lines drawn between them—drawn by the act of walking for cultural purposes—that makes them a constellation. Constellations are not natural phenomena but cultural impositions; the lines drawn between stars are like paths worn by the imagination of those who have gone before. This constellation called walking has a history, the history trod out by all those poets and philosophers and insurrectionaries, by jaywalkers, streetwalkers, pilgrims, tourists, hikers, mountaineers, but whether it has a future depends on whether those connecting paths are traveled still.
“You bled on the Speaking stars… I bet there's a law somewhere about that.”
Cassandra Clare book City of Bones
Source: City of Bones
“The wastes of snow on the hill were ghostly in the moonlight. The stars were piercingly bright.”
Maud Hart Lovelace book Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown
Source: Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown
Max Ehrmann (1872–1945) American writer, poet, and attorney
Source: Desiderata: A Poem for a Way of Life
“He didn’t give me flowers or candy. He gave me the moon and the stars. Infinity
-Belly Conklin”
Jenny Han (1980) American writer
Source: We'll Always Have Summer
Christopher Tolkien (1924–2020) British book editor
Source: The Hobbit
Ishmael Beah book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Source: A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead
Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 1 (pp. 29-30)
“A blade of grass is the journeywork of the stars”
Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba
Variant: I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.
Source: Leaves of Grass