Quotes about moon
page 7

Halldór Laxness photo

“Gold is precious because it resembles the sun. Silver has the light of the moon.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

the blind man at the Ölfus River
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part I: Iceland's Bell

Robert Burns photo

“The white moon is setting behind the white wave,
And Time is setting with me, O!”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

Misquotation by W. B. Yeats of Burns's "Open the Door to me, Oh" http://www.robertburns.org/works/397.shtml (1793) in Ideas of good and evil (1907), p. 241; the original reads: "The wan Moon is setting beyond the white wave,/ And Time is setting with me, oh!"
Misattributed

Tarkan photo

“If only I knew the way to take the sun and moon and make tomorrow wait.”

Tarkan (1972) Turkish singer

If Only You Knew
Come Closer (2006)

Arthur Guiterman photo

“The three-toed tree-toad
Sings his sweet ode
To the moon;
The funny bunny
And his honey
Trip in tune.”

Arthur Guiterman (1871–1943) United States writer

Nocturne http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poem/3078.html

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Pauline Kael photo
Smokey Robinson photo
Iltutmish photo

“Treasure maps; Czarist bonds; a case of stuffed dodos; Scarlett O'Hara's birth certificate; two flattened and deformed silver bullet heads in an old matchbox; Baedeker's guide to Atlantis (seventeenth edition, 1902); the autograph score of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, with Das Ende written neatly at the foot of the last page; three boxes of moon rocks; a dumpy, heavy statuette of a bird covered in dull black paint, which reminded him of something but he couldn't remember what; a Norwich Union life policy in the name of Vlad Dracul; a cigar box full of oddly shaped teeth, with CAUTION: DO NOT DROP painted on the lid in hysterical capitals; five or six doll's-house-sized books with titles like Lilliput On $2 A Day; a small slab of green crystal that glowed when he opened the envelope; a thick bundle of love letters bound in blue ribbon, all signed Margaret Roberts; a left-luggage token from North Central railway terminus, Ruritania; Bartholomew's Road Atlas of Oz (one page, with a yellow line smack down the middle); a brown paper bag of solid gold jelly babies; several contracts for the sale and purchase of souls; a fat brown envelope inscribed To Be Opened On My Death: E. A. Presley, unopened; Oxford and Cambridge Board O-level papers in Elvish language and literature, 1969-85; a very old drum in a worm-eaten sea-chest marked F. Drake, Plymouth, in with a load of minute-books and annual accounts of the Winchester Round Table; half a dozen incredibly ugly portraits of major Hollywood film stars; Unicorn-Calling, For Pleasure & Profit by J. R. Hartley; a huge collection of betting slips, on races to be held in the year 2019; all water, as far as Paul was concerned, off a duck's {back]”

Tom Holt (1961) British writer

The Portable Door (2003)

William Blake photo

“He who doubts from what he sees
Will ne'er believe, do what you please.
If the sun and moon should doubt
They'd immediately go out.”

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

Source: 1800s, Auguries of Innocence (1803), Line 107

Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Frank Borman photo
Tom Robbins photo
Chuck Berry photo
Han-shan photo
John F. Kennedy photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
Leo Ryan photo

“Mr. Speaker, the activities of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church continue to cause distress for many of us. As you know, the House Subcommittee on International Organizations, chaired by my distinguished colleague, Donald Fraser, is investigating allegations of close ties between the Reverend Moon and some of his organizations and the South Korean government, including the KCIA. As a member of the subcommittee, I am, of course, disturbed over such allegations. My greatest concern, however, is for those young people who have been converted by these religious cults and for their parents, who have suffered the loss of their children. One of these parents, Mrs. Ida Watson Camburn of Sunnyvale, Calif., brought to my attention the testimony of John G. Clark, Jr., M. D., assistant professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, before a Vermont Senate committee, which was investigating religious cults. Dr. Clark's remarks, based on 2 ½ years of research, deal with the effects of some religious cults on the mental and physical health and welfare of their converts. I highly recommend his conclusions to my colleagues.”

Leo Ryan (1925–1978) American teacher and politician

Statement read into the United States Congressional Record (3 November 2007), "The Effects of Religious Cults on the Health and Welfare of Their Converts", United States Congressional Record, Vol. 123 Part 29, No. 181 Proceedings and Debates of 95th Congress (First Session).

Archibald Hill photo

“In the last few years there has been a harvest of books and lectures about the "Mysterious Universe." The inconceivable magnitudes with which astronomy deals produce a sense of awe which lends itself to a poetic and philosophical treatment. "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy hands, the moon and the starts, whuch thou hast ordained: what is man that thou art mindful of him? The literary skill with which this branch of science has been exploited compels one's admiration, but alos, a little, one's sense of the ridiculous. For other facts than those of astronomy, oother disciplines than of mathematics, can produce the same lively feelings of awe and reverence: the extraordinary finenness of their adjustments to the world outside: the amazing faculties of the human mind, of which we know neither whence it comes not whither it goes. In some fortunate people this reverence is produced by the natural bauty of a landscape, by the majesty of an ancient building, by the heroism of a rescue party, by poetry, or by music. God is doubtless a Mathematician, but he is also a Physiologist, an Engineer, a Mother, an Architect, a Coal Miner, a Poet, and a Gardener. Each of us views things in his own peculiar war, each clothes the Creator in a manner which fits into his own scheme. My God, for instance, among his other professions, is an Inventor: I picture him inventing water, carbon dioxide, and haemoglobin, crabs, frogs, and cuttle fish, whales and filterpassing organisms ( in the ratio of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1 in size), and rejoicing greatly over these weird and ingenious things, just as I rejoice greatly over some simple bit of apparatus. But I would nor urge that God is only an Inventor: for inventors are apt, as those who know them realize, to be very dull dogs. Indeed, I should be inclined rather to imagine God to be like a University, with all its teachers and professors together: not omittin the students, for he obviously possesses, judging from his inventions, that noblest human characteristic, a sense of humour.”

Archibald Hill (1886–1977) English physiologist and biophysicist

The Ethical Dilemma of Science and Other Writings https://books.google.com.mx/books?id=zaE1AAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false (1960, Cap 1. Scepticism and Faith, p. 41)

Walter Scott photo

“The stag at eve had drunk his fill,
Where danced the moon on Monan's rill,
And deep his midnight lair had made
In lone Glenartney's hazel shade.”

Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet

Canto I, stanza 1.
The Lady of the Lake http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3011 (1810)

Aristarchus of Samos photo
Philip Plait photo
Freeman Dyson photo
George W. Bush photo

“We will build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the moon, and to prepare for new journeys to worlds beyond our own.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Speech on new space exploration initiatives http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040114-3.html (January 14, 2004)
2000s, 2004

Joseph Goebbels photo

“I put down the oars and float endlessly as if to the eternal shore. Blue light of the moon shines on my sail. My boat is gliding to a secure haven. Only silent waves break against it. Deepest silence surrounds me and my soul builds a golden bridge to a star.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Ich lege die Ruder ein und fahre endlos, wie einem ewigen Gestade zu. Mondlicht spielt blau auf meinem Segel. Mein Nachen gleitet in einen sicheren Hafen. Nur leise schlagen die Wellen an meinen Kahn. Die tiefste Stille ist um mich, und meine Seele spannt eine goldene Brücke zu einem Stern.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Robert Penn Warren photo
Lewis Mumford photo

“If so, her motion must be influenced by it; perhaps she is retained in her orbit thereby. However, though the power of gravity is not sensibly weakened in the little change of distance, at which we can place ourselves from the centre of the earth, yet it is very possible that, so high as the moon, this power may differ much in strength from what it is here. To make an estimate what might be the degree of this diminution, he considered with himself that, if the moon be retained in her orbit by the force of gravity, no doubt the primary planets are carried round the sun by the like power. And, by comparing the periods of the several planets with their distances from the sun, he found that if any power like gravity held them in their courses, its strength must decrease in the duplicate proportion of the increase of distance. This he concluded by supposing them to move in perfect circles concentrical to the sun, from which the orbits of the greatest part of them do not much differ. Supposing therefore the power of gravity, when extended to the moon, to decrease in the same manner, he computed whether that force would be sufficient to keep the moon in her orbit. In this computation, being absent from books, he took the common estimate, in use among geographers and our seamen before Norwood had measured the earth, that 60 English miles were contained in one degree of latitude on the surface of the earth. But as this is a very faulty supposition, each degree containing about 691/2 of our miles, his computation did not answer expectation; whence he concluded, that some other cause must at least join with the action of the power of gravity on the moon. On this account he laid aside, for that time, any farther thoughts upon this matter.”

Henry Pemberton (1694–1771) British doctor

Republished in: Stephen Peter Rigaud (1838) Historical Essay on the First Publication of Sir Newton's Principia http://books.google.com/books?id=uvMGAAAAcAAJ&pg=RA1-PA49. p. 50-51
Preface to View of Newton's Philosophy, (1728)

Peter Thiel photo

“Most of our political leaders are not engineers or scientists and do not listen to engineers or scientists. Today a letter from Einstein would get lost in the White House mail room, and the Manhattan Project would not even get started; it certainly could never be completed in three years. I am not aware of a single political leader in the U. S., either Democrat or Republican, who would cut health-care spending in order to free up money for biotechnology research — or, more generally, who would make serious cuts to the welfare state in order to free up serious money for major engineering projects. … Men reached the moon in July 1969, and Woodstock began three weeks later. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that this was when the hippies took over the country, and when the true cultural war over Progress was lost. Today's aged hippies no longer understand that there is a difference between the election of a black president and the creation of cheap solar energy; in their minds, the movement towards greater civil rights parallels general progress everywhere. Because of these ideological conflations and commitments, the 1960s Progressive Left cannot ask whether things actually might be getting worse.”

Peter Thiel (1967) American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager

In an editorial http://www.nationalreview.com/article/278758/end-future-peter-thiel published by National Review (2011)

C. J. Cherryh photo
Joan Miró photo

“The spectacle of the sky overwhelms me. I'm overwhelmed when I see, in an immense sky, the crescent of the moon, or the sun. There, in my pictures, tiny forms in huge empty spaces. Empty spaces, empty horizons, empty plains - everything which is bare has always greatly impressed me.”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

from: English Wikipedia, Joan Miró, 1958, as quoted in Twentieth-Century Artists on Art, ed. Dore Ashton, 1986
1940 - 1960

Georgia O'Keeffe photo

“Today I walked into the sunset — to mail some letters —... But some way or other I didn't seem to like the redness much so after I mailed the letters I walked home — and kept walking - The Eastern sky was all grey blue — bunches of clouds — different kinds of clouds — sticking around everywhere and the whole thing — lit up — first in one place — then in another with flashes of lightning — sometimes just sheet lightning — and some times sheet lightning with a sharp bright zigzag flashing across it -. I walked out past the last house — past the last locust tree — and sat on the fence for a long time — looking — just looking at — the lightning — you see there was nothing but sky and flat prairie land — land that seems more like the ocean than anything else I know — There was a wonderful moon. Well I just sat there and had a great time by myself — Not even many night noises — just the wind —... I wondered what you were doing - It is absurd the way I love this country — Then when I came back — it was funny — roads just shoot across blocks anywhere — all the houses looked alike — and I almost got lost — I had to laugh at myself — I couldn't tell which house was home - I am loving the plains more than ever it seems — and the SKY — Anita you have never seen SKY — it is wonderful”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Canyon, Texas (September 11, 1916), pp. 183-184
1915 - 1920, Letters to Anita Pollitzer' (1916)

Dorothy Wordsworth photo
Robert Southey photo
Aristarchus of Samos photo
Algernon Charles Swinburne photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Bruno Schulz photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“The moon is darkened in the sky
As if grief 's shade were passing by;”

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

The London Literary Gazette, 1823

Roger Ebert photo
Joseph Addison photo
Aristarchus of Samos photo

“Proposition 8. When the sun is totally eclipsed, the sun and the moon are then comprehended by one and the same cone which has its vertex at our eye.”

Aristarchus of Samos ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician

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

Alan Shepard photo

“I think about the personal accomplishment, but there's more of a sense of the grand achievement by all the people who could put this man on the moon.”

Alan Shepard (1923–1998) American astronaut

The Denver Post staff (September 29, 1992) "Shepard still shoots for moon", The Denver Post, p. 1D.

Bill Nye photo

“Spacecraft sent to Mars, Saturn, Mercury, the moon, comets, and asteroids have been making incredible discoveries, with more to come from recent launches to Jupiter, the moon, and Mars. The country needs more of these robotic space exploration missions, not less.”

Bill Nye (1955) American science educator, comedian, television host, actor, writer, scientist and former mechanical engineer

[NewsBank, Tom Beal, Space research here faces a horizon of closures, cuts, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson, Arizona, February 15, 2012]

Rebecca Solnit photo
Harry Truman photo

“Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don't know whether you fellows ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon, the stars and all the planets had fallen on me. I've got the most terribly responsible job a man ever had.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Comment to reporters on having become president the day before, after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, (13 April 1945) as quoted in Conflict and Crisis : The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, 1945-1948 by Robert J. Donovan, p. 17; also quoted in "Thoughts Of A President, 1945" at Eyewitness to History http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/tru.htm, and TIME magazine (12 April1968) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,838136-9,00.html

Tristan Corbière photo
Ken MacLeod photo
Hjalmar Schacht photo
Karl Pilkington photo

“Neil Armstrong, that spaceman, he went to the moon but he ain't been back. It can't have been that good.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

3 Minute Wonder, Episode 2
On Travel

Gary Johnson photo
Roger Waters photo
Charles Krauthammer photo

“Look up from your BlackBerry one night. That is the moon. On it are exactly 12 sets of human footprints -- untouched, unchanged, abandoned. For the first time in history, the moon is not just a mystery and a muse, but a nightly rebuke. A vigorous young president once summoned us to this new frontier, calling the voyage "the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked."”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

And so we did it. We came. We saw. Then we retreated. How could we?
Column, July 17, 2009, "The Moon We Left Behind" http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/krauthammer071709.php3#.U34lesJOWUk at washingtonpost.com, July 17, 2009.
2000s, 2009

Steve Purcell photo

“A zebra can't drive a moon-buggy. Or any other sort of car for that matter.”

Steve Purcell (1959) American cartoonist, animator, film director and game designer

Sam, in Bad Day on the Moon
Sam and Max comics

Lorenz Hart photo
Neil Armstrong photo

“Space has not changed but technology has, in many cases, improved dramatically. A good example is digital technology where today's cell phones are far more powerful than the computers on the Apollo Command Module and Lunar Module that we used to navigate to the moon and operate all the spacecraft control systems.”

Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) American astronaut; first person to walk on the moon

On the differences between the present and the time of the space race which existed during the Cold War years, in an interview at The New Space Race (August 2007)

Diogenes Laërtius photo

“He alludes to the appearance of a face in the orb of the moon.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Epicurus, 25.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 10: Epicurus

Johannes Kepler photo
Neal Stephenson photo
Alan Bean photo
Mike Scott photo
Isabel II do Reino Unido photo

“On behalf of the British people I salute the skill and courage which have brought man to the moon. May this endeavour increase the knowledge and well-being of mankind.”

Isabel II do Reino Unido (1926–2022) queen of the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and head of the Commonwealth of Nations

Message left on the moon by the crew of Apollo 11; NASA documentation http://history.nasa.gov/ap11-35ann/goodwill/Apollo_11_material.pdf#page=34 (13 July 1969)

Roberto Clemente photo

“blockquote>Quien Soy? (Who Am I?)I am a small point in the eye of the full moon.
I only need one ray of the sun to warm my face.
I need only one breeze from the Alisios to refresh my soul.
What else can I ask if I know that my sons love really love me?.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

Written on Father's Day at Three Rivers Stadium, 1971 or 1972, reproduced in "A Rematch With the Machine" https://books.google.com/books?id=03XsO25A3I8C&pg=PA302 from Roberto Clemente: The Great One (1998) by Bruce Markusen, p. 302
Other, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1971</big>

Alfred de Zayas photo

“As Ban Ki-moon has repeatedly said, ‘the world is over-armed and peace is under-funded’. A major shift in priorities is vital for both States and peoples.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Disarm and develop – UN expert urges win-win proposition for States and peoples
2014

Ono no Komachi photo

“He does not come.
Tonight in the dark of the moon
I wake wanting him.
My breasts heave and blaze.
My heart chars.”

Ono no Komachi (825–900) Japanese poet

Source: Kenneth Rexroth's translations, Women Poets of Japan (1982), p. 15

Jacob Bronowski photo
Dafydd ap Gwilym photo

“O sea-bird, beautiful upon the tides,
White as the moon is when the night abides,
Or snow untouched, whose dustless splendour glows
Bright as a sunbeam and whose white wing throws
A glove of challenge on the salt sea-flood.”

Dafydd ap Gwilym (1320–1380) Welsh poet

Yr wylan deg ar lanw dioer
Unlliw ag eiry neu wenlloer,
Dilwch yw dy degwch di,
Darn fel haul, dyrnfol, heli.
"Yr Wylan" (To the Sea-gull), line 1; translation from Robert Gurney (ed. and trans.) Bardic Heritage (London: Chatto & Windus, 1969) p. 130.

Karl Kraus photo

“Sentimental irony is a dog that bays at the moon while pissing on graves.”

Karl Kraus (1874–1936) Czech playwright and publicist

Half-Truths and One-And-A-Half Truths (1976)

Nikolai Gogol photo
Frederick William Robertson photo
Sylvia Plath photo
Johnny Mercer photo
Mata Amritanandamayi photo
Du Fu photo
Giovanni Schiaparelli photo

“Mercury on its axis turns like the Moon:
One side has lasting day, the other night;
One side in everlasting fire doth swoon;
While th'other hides forever from the light.”

Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835–1910) Italian astronomer and science historian

Originally in Latin; translated by Agnes Mary Clerke (1842–1907)
Quoted in Sky and Telescope, March 2011, p. 33

Elon Musk photo
Charles Lyell photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo

“If we study Japanese art, you see a man who is undoubtedly wise, philosophic and intelligent who spends his time how? In studying the distance between the earth and the moon? No. In studying the policy of Bismarck? No. He studies a single blade of grass..”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in Vincent's letter to brother Theo, from Arles, Sept. 1888; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 542), p. 39
1880s, 1888

Jane Roberts photo

“There was a god or goddess of wind, rain, lightning, thunder, clouds, stars, sun, and of course, the moon goddess, and they all more or less worked under SkyMaker.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Emir's Education In The Proper Use of Magical Powers (1979), p. 50

Roger Ebert photo
Hal David photo
Statius photo

“Whence first arose among unhappy mortals throughout the world that sickly craving for the future? Sent by heaven, wouldst thou call it? Or is it we ourselves, a race insatiable, never content to abide on knowledge gained, that search out the day of our birth and the scene of our life's ending, what the kindly Father of the gods is thinking, or iron-hearted Clotho? Hence comes it that entrails occupy us, and the airy speech of birds, and the moon's numbered seeds, and Thessalia's horrid rites. But that earlier golden age of our forefathers, and the races born of rock or oak were not thus minded; their only passion was to gain the mastery of the woods and the soil by might of hand; it was forbidden to man to know what to-morrow's day would bring. We, a depraved and pitiable crowd, probe deep the counsels of the gods.”
Unde iste per orbem primus venturi miseris animantibus aeger crevit amor? divumne feras hoc munus, an ipsi, gens avida et parto non umquam stare quieti, eruimus quae prima dies, ubi terminus aevi, quid bonus ille deum genitor, quid ferrea Clotho cogitet? hinc fibrae et volucrum per nubila sermo astrorumque vices numerataque semita lunae Thessalicumque nefas. at non prior aureus ille sanguis avum scopulisque satae vel robore gentes mentibus his usae; silvas amor unus humumque edomuisse manu; quid crastina volveret aetas scire nefas homini. nos, pravum et flebile vulgus, scrutati penitus superos.

Source: Thebaid, Book III, Line 551 (tr. J. H. Mozley)

William Wordsworth photo
Han-shan photo
Edgar Rice Burroughs photo
Jacob Bronowski photo
Cristoforo Colombo photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Edward Young photo
Mike Oldfield photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Nico photo

“Jim Morrison tells me that people are looking at the streets while I am looking at the moon. I do not feel connected enough [with the issues] to throw stones at a policeman. I want to throw stones at the whole world.”

Nico (1938–1988) German musician, model and actress, one of Warhol's superstars

In 1968, as quoted in Life and Lies of an Icon (1995) by Richard Witts.

Toby Keith photo