Quotes about moon
page 4

“One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,
Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

Sun

“So how come it looks so beautiful?
How come the moon falls from the sky?”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

Source: The Eraser

Beauty

“I'll be looking at the moon,
but I'll be seeing you.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

“Now it's like a fog has lifted. I sense Leetu just as clearly as I can see the moon.'
Your eyes are closed, and the moon as a haze around it.”

Donita K. Paul (1950) American writer

Source: DragonSpell

Sense

“Where did you live before you came here?" I asked.
"The moon," he said smoothly. "We left because the place had no atmosphere.”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Source: The Impossible Knife of Memory

“I understood the word 'swoon'. It felt that way, like 'sweep' and 'moon' and 'woo', all those words smashed together in one word that stood for that feeling, right then.”

Jude Watson book What I Saw and How I Lied

Source: What I Saw and How I Lied

Way, Feeling

“I can't give you the moon,” the tinker said. “She doesn't belong to me. She belongs only to herself.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

“The vampire leaned forward, tapping a scimitar claw. "Is that a lion with horns and a pitchfork?"
"Yep."
"Is he carrying a moon on his pitchfork?"
"No, it's a pie.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

“The road was frozen. The village lay quiet under the cold sky. Komako hitched up the skirt of her kimono and tucked it into her obi. The moon shone like a blade frozen in blue ice.”

Yasunari Kawabata book Snow Country

Source: Snow Country

“Outlaws, like lovers, poets, and tubercular composers who cough blood onto piano keys, do their finest work in the slippery rays of the moon.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker

Lovers

“This is what it is to love an artist: The moon is always rising above your house. The houses of your neighbors look dull and lacking in moonlight. But he is always going away from you. Inside his head there is always something more beautiful.”

Sarah Ruhl Eurydice

Source: Eurydice

Love, Beauty, Housing

“Overhead, the two moons worked together to bathe the world in a strange light.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

World, Light

“A black cat among roses,
phlox, lilac-misted under a quarter moon,
the sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock. The garden is very still.
It is dazed with moonlight,
contented with perfume…”

Amy Lowell (1874–1925) US writer

Cats, Night

“And when the fog's over and the stars and the moon come out at night it'll be a beautiful sight.”

Jack Kerouac book Big Sur

Source: Big Sur

Beauty, Star, Night

“A southern moon is a sodden moon, and sultry. When it swamps the fields and the rustling sandy roads and the sticky honeysuckle hedges in its sweet stagnation, your fight to hold on to reality is like a protestation against a first waft of ether.”

Zelda Fitzgerald book Save Me the Waltz

Source: Save Me the Waltz

Reality, Fight

“Many girls have been romanced under the moon, and I don’t mean to say moonlight is overrated, but few I think have known the magic of a sunrise kiss.”

Jerry Spinelli book Love, Stargirl

Source: Love, Stargirl

Girl, Kiss, Thinking

“Something in me vibrates to a dusky, dreamy smell of dying moons and shadows.”

Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948) Novelist, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I wanted to create a voyage to the moon just for her, but what I
should have given her was a real journey on earth.”

Mathias Malzieu book La Mécanique du cœur

Source: La Mécanique du cœur

“A monkey glances up and sees a banana, and that's as far as he looks. A visionary looks up and sees the moon.”

Eoin Colfer book Airman

Source: Airman

“I was pretending that I did not speak their language; on the moon we spoke a soft, liquid tongue, and sang in the starlight, looking down on the dead dried world.”

Shirley Jackson book We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Source: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

World, Dead

“A kiss on the beach when there is a full moon is the closest thing to heaven.”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer

Kiss

“The primitive in each of us climbs closer to the surface during the night, for the moon sings to it, and the cold void between the stars speaks its language. To that savage self, evil can look lovely in too little light.”

Dean Koontz book False Memory

Source: False Memory

Love, Star, Light, Evil

“The golden rays of the moon paid him absolute tribute. He was a buffet of muscles and corded strength.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Playing with Fire

“I have spent weeks in the desert, forgetting to look at the moon, he says, as a married man may spend days never looking into the face of his wife. These are not sins of omission but signs of pre-occuopation.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

Forgetting

“The big reason why folks leave a small town,' Rant used to say, 'is so they can moon over the idea of going back. And the reason they stay put is so they can moon about getting out.'

Rant meant that no one is happy, anywhere.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant

Source: Rant

Happiness, Idea

“But, true, I’ve wept too much! Dawns break hearts./ Every moon is brutal, every sun bitter.”

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

Variant: But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are heartbreaking. Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter.

Sun, Heart

“On a night without moon or stars you can't see a thing, but you can imagine anything.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Survivor

Source: Survivor

Imagination, Star, Night

“the mind is its own beautiful prisoner.
Mind looked long at the sticky moon
opening in dusk her new wings

then decently hanged himself, one afternoon.

The last thing he saw was you
naked amid unnaked things…”

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

Beauty

“Sundown yellow moon I replay the past
I know every scene by heart they all went by so fast”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), If You See Her, Say Hello
Variant: I know every scene by heart they all went by so fast

Past, Heart

“(a womanist)

3. Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless.”

Alice Walker book In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose

Source: In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose

Love, Food, Music, Dance

“She didn't quite know what the relationship was between lunatics and the moon, but it must be a strong one, if they used a word like that to describe the insane.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

Strong

“It took teams of LEP warlocks to slow down time for a few hours; the magic required to open a door to the tunnel was stupendous. It would be easier to shoot down the moon.
Opal tapped this into her notepad.
Reminder. Shoot down the moon? Viable?”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Time Paradox

Time

“He had known several men who blew their heads off, and he had pondered it much. It seemed to him it was probably because they could not take enough happiness just from the sky and the moon to carry them over the low feelings that came to all men.”

Larry McMurtry Lonesome Dove

Source: Lonesome Dove

Men, Happiness, Feeling

“There's a name for people with an interest in the moon," Alex said. "They're called lunatics.”

Anthony Horowitz book Crocodile Tears

Source: Crocodile Tears

People

“They said you can't go to the moon. They said you can't put cheese inside a pizza crust, but NASA did it. They had to, because the cheese kept floating off in space.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

“When I first discovered the moon, he said, I gave it a different name. But everyone kept calling it the moon. The real name never caught on.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Source: Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas

“… a full moon shimmered over central Louisiana. This was no rinky-dink moon. This was a moon you had to curtsy to. A big, heavy, mysterious, beautiful, bossy moon. The kind you want to serve things to on a silver platter.”

Rebecca Wells book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Source: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Beauty

“The moon in all her immaculate purity hung in the sky, laughing at this world of dust. She congratulated me for my carefully considered maneuvers and invited me to share in her eternal solitude.”

Shan Sa book Empress

Source: Empress

World, Solitude

“There was a sliver of moon and a splash of stars, and the light outlined her face and glistened on the tears that ran like mercury down her cheeks.”

Jonathan Maberry book Rot & Ruin

Source: Rot & Ruin

Star, Tear, Light

“There is a moon shaped rictus in the streetlamp's globe where a stone has gone and from this aperture there drifts down through the constant helix of aspiring insects a faint and steady rain of the same forms burnt and lifeless.”

Cormac McCarthy book Suttree

Source: Suttree

“The full moon rises. The fog clings to the lowest branches of the spruce trees. The man steps out of the darkest corner of the forest and finds himself transformed into…

A monkey?

I think not.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Thinking, Tree

“The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

July 14, 1852
Journals (1838-1859)

Youth, Age

“In the great green room, there was a telephone
And a red balloon
And a picture of a cat jumping over the moon…”

Margaret Wise Brown Goodnight Moon

Source: Goodnight Moon

Cats

“The music could even penetrate his remote world, more distant than the moon itself; it could even perform miracles.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

World, Music, Distant

“No moon, sun, diamond, hands —
fingertip, dot, ray, gauze, sea.
pine green, pink glass, eye,
mine, eraser, mud, mother, I am coming.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Source: The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait

Sun, Sea

“Everything goes away, Jack Sawyer, like the moon. Everything comes back, like the moon.”

Stephen King book The Talisman

Source: The Talisman

“I wish to cry. Yet, I laugh, and my lipstick leaves a red stain like a bloody crescent moon on the top of the beer can.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Beer, Cry

“Science flies men to the moon, religion flies men into buildings.”

Victor J. Stenger (1935–2014) American philosopher

In The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason (2009), 59. As attributed on a web page using the quote as a title at web site of Richard Dawkins Foundation.
Variant: Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.

Men, Religion, Science

“But God is only a white cold eye, a quarter-moon poised above the smoke, blinking, blinking, as the city is gradually pounded to dust.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

God

“You were never one to moon over handsome boys, or talk about balls and parties, or dream about your future husband.”

“That was because of Merripen,” Win admitted. “He was all I ever wanted.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Seduce Me at Sunrise

Dreams, Boy, Future

“Maple. Maypole
Catch and carry.
Ash and Ember.
Elderberry.
Woolen. Woman.
Moon at night.
Willow. Window.
Candlelight.
Fallow farrow.
Ash and oak.
Bide and borrow.
Chimney smoke.
Barrel. Barley.
Stone and stave.
Wind and water.
Misbehave.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Water, Night

“Like some winter animal the moon licks the salt of your hand,
Yet still your hair foams violet as a lilac tree
From which a small wood-owl calls.”

Johannes Bobrowski (1917–1965) German author

Tree, Winter, Animals

“Home is watching the moon rise over the open, sleeping land and having someone you can call to the window, so you can look together. Home is where you dance with others, and dancing is life.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Life, Home, Sleep, Dance

“She came over and looked at the picture. Then she took my hand.
You know what that feels like?
Like what the astronauts will feel when they step onto the moon for the very first time.”

Gary D. Schmidt book Okay for Now

Source: Okay for Now

Feeling, Time

“I responded to the gravity of an invisible moon at my core, and I undertook journeys I had not expected to take.”

Mohsin Hamid book The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Source: The Reluctant Fundamentalist

“If the Sun and Moon should ever doubt, they'd immediately go out.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Sun

“A sense of wrongness, of fraught unease, as if long nails scraped the surface of the moon, raising the hackles of the soul.”

China Miéville book Perdido Street Station

Source: Perdido Street Station

Soul, Sense

“… with white dawns and glaring moons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.”

Natalie Babbitt book Tuck Everlasting

Source: Tuck Everlasting

Color

“Dance when the moon sings, and don't cry about troubles that haven't yet come.”

Patricia Briggs book Moon Called

Source: Moon Called

Singing, Dance, Cry

“then, as though it had been waiting on a near by roof for their arrival, the moon came slanting suddenly through the vines and turned the girl's face the color of white roses.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

Color, Girl, Waiting

“The moon is so beautiful. It's a big silver dollar, flipped by God. And it landed scarred side up, see? So He made the world.”

Grant Morrison (1960) writer

Source: Batman: Arkham Asylum - A Serious House on Serious Earth

God, World, Beauty

“Even someday when we disappear…… and new Sailor Senshis are born… Sailor Moon, you will always be Invincible. The most beautiful shining star.”

Naoko Takeuchi (1967) Japanese manga artist

Source: Sailor Moon Stars, #3

Beauty, Star

“The love I felt for her on that train ride had a capital and provinces, parishes and a Vatican, an orange planet and many sullen moons -- it was systemic and it was complete.”

Gary Shteyngart Super Sad True Love Story

Source: Super Sad True Love Story

Love, Training

“I don't know if there are men on the moon, but if there are they must be using the earth as their lunatic asylum”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Men

“Look at that moon. Potato weather for sure.”

Thornton Wilder Our Town

Source: Our Town

Weather

“The moon is whole all the time, but we can’t always see it. What we see is an almost moon or not-quite moon. The rest is hiding just out of view, but there’s only one moon, so we follow it in the sky. We plan our lives based on its rhythms and tides.”

Alice Sebold book The Almost Moon

Source: The Almost Moon

Time

“Floating to shore… riding a low moon… on a slow cloud.”

Nikki Giovanni (1943) American writer and academic

“If I were the moon, I know where I would fall down.”

D.H. Lawrence book The Rainbow

Source: The Rainbow

“Tape the sound of the moon fading at dawn. Give it to your mother to listen to when she's in sorrow.”

Yoko Ono (1933) Japanese artist, author, and peace activist

“Sokka: "My first girlfriend turned into the moon."
Zuko: "That's tough buddy.”

Michael Dante DiMartino (1974) American animator

“Here in this moment we are beautiful, nocturnal creatures and our thoughts and words are jewels guarded by the moon.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist

Beauty

“I'm just saying it's not time for that either. We need to focus and having Maya moon over Rafe is making everyone uncomfortable."
Rafe grinned. "Doesn't bother me.”

Kelley Armstrong (1968) Canadian writer

Source: The Calling

Time

“With the moon walk, the religious myth that sustained these notions could no longer be held. With our view of earthrise, we could see that the earth and the heavens were no longer divided but that the earth is in the heavens. (105)”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Source: Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

“the moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy”

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

“And he beholds the moon; like a rounded fragment of ice filled with motionless light.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) French writer (1821–1880)

Source: The Temptation of St. Antony

Light

“The moon rose, an opalescent goddess tipping light from her harsh maternal scimitar.”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Light, Maternity

“At fifteen you had the radiance of early morning, at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon, and when you are my age you will give out, as I do, the genial golden warmth of 4 p. m.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book This Side of Paradise

Source: This Side of Paradise

Age

“This is the great day. This is the greatest event in all the history of the human race, up to this time. That is — today is New Year's Day of the Year One. If we don't change the calendar, historians will do so. The human race — this is our change, our puberty rite, bar mitzvah, confirmation, from the change of our infancy into adulthood for the human race. And we're going to go on out, not only to the Moon, to the stars; we're going to spread. I don't know that the United States is going to do it; I hope so. I have — I'm an American myself; I want it to be done by us. But in any case, the human race is going to do it, it's utterly inevitable: we're going to spread through the entire universe.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

In a live interview with Walter Cronkite of CBS News, on the day of the first moonwalk (20 July 1969)
Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue With His Century, Volume I (1907–1949): Learning Curve (2010)

Hope, History, Star, Universe

“Pleasant to bring back the divisions of a parish;
Also pleasant to us the time of paradise.
Pleasant, the moon, a luminary in the heavens;
Also pleasant where there is a good rememberer.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The Pleasant Things of Taliesin

Time

“Meyer, Stephenie. (2006). New Moon. Park Avenue, New York: Little, Brown and Company, 563..”

Stephenie Meyer (1973) American author

References
Variant: Meyer, Stephenie. (2005). Twilight. Park Avenue, New York: Little, Brown and Company, 498..

“Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.”

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

St. 3.
So, We'll Go No More A-Roving (1817)

Love, Light, Night

“Seeing the water birds on the lake increase in number day by day, I thought to myself how nice it would be if it snowed before we got back to the Palace—the garden would look so beautiful; and then, two days later, while I was away on a short visit, lo and behold, it did snow. As I watched the rather drab scene at home, I felt both depressed and confused. For some years now I had existed from day to day in listless fashion, taking note of the flowers, the birds in song, the way the skies change from season to season, the moon, the frost and snow, doing little more than registering the passage of time. How would it all turn out? The thought of my continuing loneliness was unbearable, and yet I had managed to exchange sympathetic letters with those of like mind—some contacted via fairly tenuous connections—who would discuss my trifling tales and other matters with me; but I was merely amusing myself with fictions, finding solace for my idleness in foolish words. Aware of my own insignificance, I had at least managed for the time being to avoid anything that might have been considered shameful or unbecoming; yet here I was, tasting the bitterness of life to the very full.”

Murasaki Shikibu book The Diary of Lady Murasaki

trans. Richard Bowring (Penguin Books, 1996)
The Diary of Lady Murasaki

Life, Beauty, Way, Home

“The Latmian hunter rests in the summer shade, fit lover for a goddess, and soon the Moon comes with veiled horns.”
Latmius aestiva residet venator in umbra dignus amore deae, velatis cornibus et iam Luna venit.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book VIII, Lines 28–30

Lovers, Summer

“Proposition 18. The earth is to the moon in a ratio greater than that which 1259712 has to 79507, but less than that which 216000 has to 6859.”

Aristarchus of Samos ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician

p, 125
On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and the Moon (c. 250 BC)
Variant: Proposition 17. The diameter of the earth is to the diameter of the moon in a ratio greater than that which 108 has to 43, but less than that which 60 has to 19.

“That memorable day died in purple and gold, and just as the last traces of the sunset faded in the west and the star-lilies filled the sky, the full moon looked down over the rim of the valley, and the great rocks, catching the silvery glow, came forth out of the dusky shadows like very spirits.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

" A Rival of the Yosemite: The Cañon of the South Fork of King's River, California http://books.google.com/books?id=fWoiAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA77" The Century Magazine, volume XLIII, number 1 (November 1891) pages 77-97 (at page 86) <br class="br">1890s

Star

“I was like a lost moon — my planet destroyed in some cataclysmic, disaster-movie scenario of desolation — that continued, nevertheless, to circle in a tight little orbit around the empty space left behind, ignoring the laws of gravity.”

Stephenie Meyer (1973) American author

Bella Swan, p. 201
Twilight series, New Moon (2006)

Law

“In this world, everything has a pulse or a vibration. This sound is unique to each living or non-living thing and in itself creates a music that no-one can hear. I believe that this has a very powerful resonance with, and a deep effect on, our lives. What would happen if we took this further and applied it to bigger things, more powerful things; like an entire solar system or galaxy say, what would that sound like?
Musica Universalis is the ancient theory that every celestial body, the sun, the moon and the stars, has an inner music. This is a harmonic and mathematical concept derived from the movements of the planets in the solar system. The music created is inaudible to the human ear.
Music of the Spheres is my interpretation of this theory. Every planet and every star; the whole universe has music within it that no-one can hear. This is what it would sound like if it was set free. This is Music of the Spheres.”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

from the introduction to Music of the Spheres

World, Music, Star, Mathematics

“Love is just a little bit of death in the heart,
For how often can one love in certainty that love will be returned?
Giving so much love, and receiving so little of it;
Because people are fickle, or indifferent? Who knows?
During moments together as in hours apart,
I'm mindful that the moon fades, flowers wither, souls pass away…
They wander lost in the somber darkness of sorrow,
Those fools who follow the footprints of love.
Because life is an endless desert,
And love is an entangling web.
Love is just a little bit of death in the heart.”

Xuân Diệu (1916–1985) Vietnamese poet

"Love" [Yêu], as quoted in "Shattered Identities and Contested Images: Reflections of Poetry and History in 20th-Century Vietnam" by Neil Jamieson, in Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1992, pp. 86–87, and in Understanding Vietnam by Neil Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), p. 162
Variant translation by Huỳnh Sanh Thông:
To love is to die a little in the heart,
for when you love can you be sure you're loved?
You give so much, so little you get back—
the other lets you down or looks away.
Together or apart, it's still the same.
The moon turns pale, blooms fade, the soul's bereaved...
They'll lose their way amidst dark sorrowland,
those passionate fools who go in search of love.
And life will be a desert bare of joy,
and love will tie the knot that binds to grief.
To love is to die a little in the heart.

Love, Life, Death, People

“We are now in a position to prove the following propositions : —
1. The distance of the sun from the earth is greater than eighteen times, but less than twenty times, the distance of the moon (from the earth); this follows from the hypothesis about the halved moon.
2. The diameter of the sun has the same ratio (as aforesaid) to the diameter of the moon.
3. The diameter of the sun has to the diameter of the earth a ratio greater than that which 19 has to 3, but less than that which 43 has to 6; this follows from the ratio thus discovered between the distances, the hypothesis about the shadow, and the hypothesis that the moon subtends one fifteenth part of a sign of the zodiac.”

Aristarchus of Samos ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician

p, 125
On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and the Moon (c. 250 BC)

Time, Sun, Parting

“For wine, they drank the ocean – for bread, they ate their own despairs; counsel from the moon was theirs – for the foolish contention - Murder is not a pretty thing – yet seas do raucous everything to make it pretty – for the foolish or the brave, a way seas have.”

Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) American artist

poem on his painting: Fishermen’s Last Supper [of the Mason family, c. 1940-1941]; as quoted in Marsden Hartley, by Gail R. Scott, Abbeville Publishers, Cross River Press, 1988, New York p. 113
1931 - 1943

Way, Wine, Sea, Despair

“You and me on the bobbing knee.
Didn't we cry at that old mythology he'd read!
I will come home again, but not until
The sun and the moon meet on yon hill.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, The Kick Inside (1978)

Home, Reading, Sun, Cry

“"Eclipse" on The Dark Side of the Moon" (Pink Floyd, 1973)”

Roger Waters (1943) English songwriter, bassist, and lyricist of Pink Floyd

Variant: "Breathe" on The Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd, 1973)

“A pencil is a simple and predictable piece of technology. There's only one way of it working (it will function when it is sharp), and an obvious failure model(too short, too blunt, no lead). With a car, especially the kind of limp-along rust bucket most of us got for our first ride, it's more complex. There's coaxing involved, especially on cold mornings. There's that noise that never amounts to anything but never goes away, random stalls you begin to put down to the cast of the moon. None of it means it's broken, just that it requires friendly attention, that it has needs. Gradually you acquire a ritualized relationship to it, a bond forged by its unpredictability, by the fact it has to be dealt with. Which is how you come to know people, after all: not by things they have in common with everyone else, but through learning your way around their eccentricities, their hard edges and unpredictable softnesses, the things that make them different from everybody else.”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Source: The Lonely Dead (2004), Ch. 11

People, Cars, Way, Failure

“Do you want to see what human eyes have never seen? Look at the moon. Do you want to hear what ears have never heard? Listen to the bird's cry. Do you want to touch what hands have never touched? Touch the earth. Verily I say that God is about to create the world.”

Jorge Luis Borges book The Theologians

The Theologians, translated by James E. Irby (1964)

God, World, Bird, Cry

“And at our feet unbroken lay
The glass that had whirled us thither away:
And in the grass, among the flowers
We sat and wished all sorts of things:
O, we were wealthier than kings!
We ruled the world for several hours!

And then, it seemed, we knew not why,
All the daisies began to die.
We wished them alive again; but soon
The trees all fled up towards the moon
Like peacocks through the sunlit air:
And the butterflies flapped into silver fish;
And each wish spoiled another wish;
Till we threw the glass down in despair;
For, getting whatever you want to get,
Is like drinking tea from a fishing net.”

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet

Part III : The Mystic Ruby
The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907), The Flower of Old Japan

World, Flowers, Drink, Fish

“Lo! the moon ascending!
Up from the East, the silvery round moon;
Beautiful over the house-tops, ghastly, phantom moon;
Immense and silent moon.”

Walt Whitman book Drum-Taps

Drum-Taps. Dirge for Two Veterans
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Beauty, Housing

“From prescription, in the case of hypaethral edifices, open to the sky, in honor of Jupiter Lightning, the Heaven, the Sun, or the Moon: for these are gods whose semblances and manifestations we behold before our very eyes in the sky when it is cloudless and bright.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter II, Sec. 5

God, Sun

“I sit alone in the secluded bamboo grove
and play the zither and whistle along.
In the deep forest no one knows,
the bright moon comes to shine on me.”

Wang Wei (699–759) a Tang dynasty Chinese poet, musician, painter, and statesman

"Bamboo Grove" (竹里馆), as translated by Arthur Sze in The Silk Dragon: Translations from the Chinese (2013), p. 19
Variant translation:
Lying alone in this dark bamboo grove,
Playing on a flute, continually whistling,
In this dark wood where no one comes,
The bright moon comes to shine on me.
"In a Bamboo Grove" in The White Pony, ed. Robert Payne, p. 151

“If we have respect for our fathers and we have respect for our children, we will have a better life. I watched on TV when America sent men to the moon, and there were a lot of people whose names weren't given who helped make it possible. You don't have the names of those who run the computers and other things. But they worked together and this is what you have to have … Chinese, American, Jewish, black and white, people working side by side.

This is what you have to do to make this a better life. When you can give opportunity to everybody, we won't have to wait to die to get to heaven. We are going to have heaven on earth.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

Conclusion of Tris Speaker Award acceptance speech, as quoted in "800 Turn Out for Baseball Dinner" by Joe Heiling, in The Houston Post (January 30, 1971, p. 1-B)
Other, <big><big>1970s</big></big>

Life, Men, Children, People

“How wonderful is Cold Mountain
Climbers are all afraid
The moon shines on clear water twinkle twinkle
Wind rustles the tall grass
Plum trees flower in the snow
Bare twisted trees have clouds for foliage
A touch of rain brings it all alive
Unless you see clearly do not approach”

Han-shan Chinese monk and poet

Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry

Mountain, Flowers, Tree, Grass

Quotes about moon page 4

Quotes about moon
page 4