Maria Mitchell (1818–1889) American astronomer
Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters and Journals (illustrated) by Maria Mitchell, 1896 http://pinetreeweb.com/bp-admiral.htm.
The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
Context: I will never have any religion that I cannot defend -- that is, that I do not believe I can defend. I may be mistaken, because no man is absolutely certain that he knows. We all understand that. Every one is liable to be mistaken. The horizon of each individual is very narrow, and in his poor sky the stars are few and very small.
Maria Mitchell (1818–1889) American astronomer
Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters and Journals (illustrated) by Maria Mitchell, 1896 http://pinetreeweb.com/bp-admiral.htm.
Bhagat Singh book Why I am an Atheist
Why I am an atheist? (1930)
Context: Any man who stands for progress has to criticize, disbelieve and challenge every item of the old faith. Item by item he has to reason out every nook and corner of the prevailing faith. If after considerable reasoning one is led to believe in any theory or philosophy, his faith is welcomed. His reasoning can be mistaken, wrong, misled and sometimes fallacious. But he is liable to correction because reason is the guiding star of his life. But mere faith and blind faith is dangerous: it dulls the brain, and makes a man reactionary.
“"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
Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright
No. 120 (18 July 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)
G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) influential spiritual teacher, Armenian philosopher, composer and writer
In Search of the Miraculous (1949)
Context: Man has no individual I. But there are, instead, hundreds and thousands of separate small "I"s, very often entirely unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible. Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking, "I". And each time his I is different. Just now it was a thought, now it is a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly. Man is a plurality. Man's name is legion.
Swathi Thirunal Rama Varma (1813–1846) Maharajah of Travencore
V. K. Subramanian (2013), in "101 Mystics of India", p, 181
About Swathi Thirunal
N. K. Jemisin book The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
Source: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (2010), Chapter 9 (p. 103)
Victor Hugo book Les Misérables
Variant: I met in the street a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was threadbare - there were holes at his elbows; the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.
Source: Les Misérables