Quotes about moon
page 9

Muhammad Ali Jinnah photo
Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“4655. The Moon is made of green Cheese.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“My light shall be the moon
And my path, the ocean.
My guide, the morning star
As I sail home to you.”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

"Exile"
Song lyrics, Watermark (1988)

Madison Cawein photo

“Into the sunset’s turquoise marge
The moon dips, like a pearly barge;
Enchantment sails through magic seas,
To fairyland Hesperides,
Over the hills and away.”

Madison Cawein (1865–1914) poet from Louisville, Kentucky

At Sunset, stanza 1.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

Anthony Burgess photo

“England become a feeble-lighted Moon of America…”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, One Hand Clapping (1961)

James Macpherson photo

“I beheld their chief, tall as a glittering rock. His spear is a blasted pine. His shield the rising moon! He sat on the shore, like a cloud of mist on the silent hill!”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

Book I
The Poems of Ossian, Fingal, an ancient Epic Poem

“Magic doesn't happen often — not once in a blue moon … I expect there isn't another magic ship like this one in the whole world.”

Hilda Lewis (1896–1974) British writer

Source: The Ship that Flew (1939), Ch. 2 : And Continues

Czeslaw Milosz photo

“A man should not love the moon.
An ax should not lose weight in his hand.
His garden should smell of rotting apples
And grow a fair amount of nettles.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"Should, Should Not" (1961), trans. Czesŀaw Miŀosz
King Popeil and Other Poems (1962)

John F. Kennedy photo
Alan Shepard photo

“There's no question that all the generations got excited about the first flights, with Kennedy's inspiration to go to the moon, leaving the planet for the first time, and fortunately coming back.”

Alan Shepard (1923–1998) American astronaut

Richard Louv (August 2, 1995) "The thrill of space? Let's ask Alan Shepard", The San Diego Union-Tribune, p. A-2.

Neil Diamond photo
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti photo

“Say, its only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea
But it wouldn't be make-believe
If you believed in me.”

Yip Harburg (1896–1981) American song lyricist

"It's Only a Paper Moon" (1933) (co-written with Billy Rose) - Nat King Cole version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DotEKKX0ww

A.W. Bickerton photo
Sylvia Plath photo
Madison Cawein photo

“A rope; a prayer; and an oak-tree near,
And a score of hands to swing him clear.
A grim, black thing for the setting sun
And the moon and the stars to gaze upon.”

Madison Cawein (1865–1914) poet from Louisville, Kentucky

The Man Hunt.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

John F. Kennedy photo
Edmond Rostand photo
Brigham Young photo

“It has been observed here this morning that we are called fanatics. Bless me! That is nothing. Who has not been called a fanatic who has discovered anything new in philosophy or science? We have all read of Galileo the astronomer who, contrary to the system of astronomy that had been received for ages before his day, taught that the sun, and not the earth, was the centre of our planetary system? For this the learned astronomer was called "fanatic," and subjected to persecution and imprisonment of the most rigorous character. So it has been with others who have discovered and explained new truths in science and philosophy which have been in opposition to long-established theories; and the opposition they have encountered has endured until the truth of their discoveries has been demonstrated by time. The term "fanatic" is not applied to professors of religion only…I will tell you who the real fanatics are: they are they who adopt false principles and ideas as facts, and try to establish a superstructure upon a false foundation. They are the fanatics; and however ardent and zealous they may be, they may reason or argue on false premises till doomsday, and the result will be false. If our religion is of this character we want to know it; we would like to find a philosopher who can prove it to us. We are called ignorant; so we are: but what of it? Are not all ignorant? I rather think so. Who can tell us of the inhabitants of this little planet that shines of an evening, called the moon? When we view its face we may see what is termed "the man in the moon," and what some philosophers declare are the shadows of mountains. But these sayings are very vague, and amount to nothing; and when you inquire about the inhabitants of that sphere you find that the most learned are as ignorant in regard to them as the most ignorant of their fellows. So it is with regard to the inhabitants of the sun. Do you think it is inhabited? I rather think it is. Do you think there is any life there? No question of it; it was not made in vain. It was made to give light to those who dwell upon it, and to other planets; and so will this earth when it is celestialized. Every planet in its first rude, organic state receives not the glory of God upon it, but is opaque; but when celestialized, every planet that God brings into existence is a body of light, but not till then. Christ is the light of this planet. God gives light to our eyes.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses, 13:271 (July 24, 1870)
1870s

Anna Akhmatova photo
Han-shan photo
Kenneth Grahame photo
Silius Italicus photo

“When Hannibal's eyes were sated with the picture of all that valour, he saw next a marvellous sight—the sea suddenly flung upon the land with the mass of the rising deep, and no encircling shores, and the fields inundated by the invading waters. For, where Nereus rolls forth from his blue caverns and churns up the waters of Neptune from the bottom, the sea rushes forward in flood, and Ocean, opening his hidden springs, rushes on with furious waves. Then the water, as if stirred to the depths by the fierce trident, strives to cover the land with the swollen sea. But soon the water turns and glides back with ebbing tide; and then the ships, robbed of the sea, are stranded, and the sailors, lying on their benches, await the waters' return. It is the Moon that stirs this realm of wandering Cymothoe and troubles the deep; the Moon, driving her chariot through the sky, draws the sea this way and that, and Tethys follows with ebb and flow.”
Postquam oculos varia implevit virtutis imago, mira dehinc cernit: surgentis mole profundi injectum terris subitum mare nullaque circa litora et infuso stagnantis aequore campos. nam qua caeruleis Nereus evoluitur antris atque imo freta contorquet Neptunia fundo, proruptum exundat pelagus, caecosque relaxans Oceanus fontis torrentibus ingruit undis. tum uada, ceu saevo penitus permota tridenti, luctantur terris tumefactum imponere pontum. mox remeat gurges tractoque relabitur aestu, ac ratis erepto campis deserta profundo, et fusi transtris expectant aequora nautae. Cymothoes ea regna vagae pelagique labores Luna mouet, Luna, immissis per caerula bigis, fertque refertque fretum, sequiturque reciproca Tethys.

Postquam oculos varia implevit virtutis imago,
mira dehinc cernit: surgentis mole profundi
injectum terris subitum mare nullaque circa
litora et infuso stagnantis aequore campos.
nam qua caeruleis Nereus evoluitur antris
atque imo freta contorquet Neptunia fundo,
proruptum exundat pelagus, caecosque relaxans
Oceanus fontis torrentibus ingruit undis.
tum uada, ceu saevo penitus permota tridenti,
luctantur terris tumefactum imponere pontum.
mox remeat gurges tractoque relabitur aestu,
ac ratis erepto campis deserta profundo,
et fusi transtris expectant aequora nautae.
Cymothoes ea regna vagae pelagique labores
Luna mouet, Luna, immissis per caerula bigis,
fertque refertque fretum, sequiturque reciproca Tethys.
Book III, lines 45–60
Punica

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo
H.L. Mencken photo
George Grosz photo
Samuel R. Delany photo

“I came no nearer sleep than I came to the moon.”

Source: The Jewels of Aptor (1962), Chapter III (p. 29)

Cole Porter photo
James Macpherson photo
George Boole photo

“The last subject to which I am desirous to direct your attention as to a means of self-improvement, is that of philanthropic exertion for the good of others. I allude here more particularly to the efforts which you may be able to make for the benefit of those whose social position is inferior to your own. It is my deliberate conviction, founded on long and anxious consideration of the subject, that not only might great positive good be effected by an association of earnest young men, working together under judicious arrangements for this common end, but that its reflected advantages would overpay the toil of effort, and more than indemnify the cost of personal sacrifice. And how wide a field is now open before you! It would be unjust to pass over unnoticed the shining examples of virtues, that are found among tho poor and indigent There are dwellings so consecrated by patience, by self-denial, by filial piety, that it is not in the power of any physical deprivation to render them otherwise than happy. But sometimes in close contiguity with these, what a deep contrast of guilt and woe! On the darker features of the prospect we would not dwell, and that they are less prominent here than in larger cities we would with gratitude acknowledge; but we cannot shut our eyes to their existence. We cannot put out of sight that improvidence that never looks beyond the present hour; that insensibility that deadens the heart to the claims of duty and affection; or that recklessness which in the pursuit of some short-lived gratification, sets all regard for consequences aside. Evils such as these, although they may present themselves in any class of society, and under every variety of circumstances, are undoubtedly fostered by that ignorance to which the condition of poverty is most exposed; and of which it has been truly said, that it is the night of the spirit,—and a night without moon and without stars. It is to associated efforts for its removal, and for the raising of the physical condition of its subjects, that philanthropy must henceforth direct her regards. And is not such an object great 1 Are not such efforts personally elevating and ennobling? Would that some part of the youthful energy of this present assembly might thus expend itself in labours of benevolence! Would that we could all feel the deep weight and truth of the Divine sentiment that " No man liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

George Boole, "Right Use of Leisure," cited in: James Hogg Titan Hogg's weekly instructor, (1847) p. 250; Also cited in: R. H. Hutton, " Professor Boole http://books.google.com/books?id=pfMEAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA153," (1866), p. 153
1840s

Jeremy Brett photo

“Holmes is the hardest part I have ever played - harder than Hamlet or Macbeth. Holmes has become the dark side of the moon for me. He is moody and solitary and underneath I am really sociable and gregarious. It has all got too dangerous.”

Jeremy Brett (1933–1995) English actor

Terry Manners, The Man Who Became Sherlock Holmes - The Tortured Mind of Jeremy Brett, p. 212. Virgin Publishing Ltd., London, 2001, ISBN 0 7535 0536 3

Dante Gabriel Rossetti photo
John Galsworthy photo
Bruce Springsteen photo
Fred Weatherly photo
Han-shan photo
Robert Silverberg photo
Fukuda Chiyo-ni photo

“I saw the moon as well
and now, world,
'truly yours' …”

Fukuda Chiyo-ni (1703–1775) Japanese writer

Japanese Death Poems. Compiled by Yoel Hoffmann. ISBN 978-0-8048-3179-6

Philip Pullman photo
Rāmabhadrācārya photo
Kenneth Gärdestad photo

“I want to have my own moon, I can go to
Where I can forget that you left me
I can sit on my moon and do what I want
Where I stay until everything is alright.”

Kenneth Gärdestad (1948–2018) Swedish song lyricist, architect and lecturer

Jag vill ha en egen måne, jag kan åka till
Där jag kan glömma att du lämnat mig
Jag kan sitta på min måne och göra vad jag vill
Där stannar jag tills allting ordnat sig.
"Jag vill ha en egen måne", lyrics written by Kenneth
Song lyrics, With Ted Gärdestad, Undringar (1972)

Jane Welsh Carlyle photo
Thomas Moore photo

“The moon looks
On many brooks,
"The brook can see no moon but this."”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

While gazing on the Moon's Light.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

George Gordon Byron photo

“So, we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.”

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

St. 1.
So, We'll Go No More A-Roving (1817)

Vikram Sarabhai photo
Johannes Kepler photo

“There is a force in the earth which causes the moon to move.”
In Terra inest virtus, quae Lunam del.

Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer

Essay dedicated to the Archduke Ferdinand, as quoted in Kepler (1993) by Max Caspar, Sect. II, Ch. 9, p. 110

T.S. Eliot photo
Michel De Montaigne photo

“The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Book I, Ch. 26
Attributed
Variant: The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.

Mark Tobey photo

“The Cubists used the figure, but they broke it up... But there was escape, too, even in those days, for there was Whistler living in the grey mists with a faded orange moon. The nocturne transformed itself into dreamy rooms with Chopin's music creating a mood that softened the hard core of self.”

Mark Tobey (1890–1976) American abstract expressionist painter

quote from conversation with Seitz
1950's
Source: 'Reminiscence and Reverie', Mark Tobey, Magazine of Art, 44, October 1951, pp. 228, 231

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Cesare Pavese photo
Hunter S. Thompson photo
Jorge Majfud photo
Nick Cave photo
Wallace Stevens photo
Willa Cather photo
Li Bai photo

“A cup of wine, under the flowering trees;
I drink alone, for no friend is near.
Raising my cup I beckon the bright moon,
For he, with my shadow, will make three men.
The moon, alas, is no drinker of wine;
Listless, my shadow creeps about at my side.
Yet with the moon as friend and the shadow as slave
I must make merry before the Spring is spent.
To the songs I sing the moon flickers her beams;
In the dance I weave my shadow tangles and breaks.
While we were sober, three shared the fun;
Now we are drunk, each goes his way.
May we long share our odd, inanimate feast,
And meet at last on the Cloudy River of the sky.”

Li Bai (701–762) Chinese poet of the Tang dynasty poetry period

"Drinking Alone by Moonlight" (月下獨酌), one of Li Bai's best-known poems, as translated by Arthur Waley in More Translations From the Chinese (1919)
Variant translation:
From a pot of wine among the flowers
I drank alone. There was no one with me—
Till, raising my cup, I asked the bright moon
To bring me my shadow and make us three.
Alas, the moon was unable to drink
And my shadow tagged me vacantly;
But still for a while I had these friends
To cheer me through the end of spring...
I sang. The moon encouraged me.
I danced. My shadow tumbled after.
As long as I knew, we were boon companions.
And then I was drunk, and we lost one another.
...Shall goodwill ever be secure?
I watch the long road of the River of Stars.
"Drinking Alone with the Moon" (trans. Witter Bynner and Kiang Kang-hu)

“To be a poet is to be lulled by the wind,
To follow the moon in dreams, and drift with the clouds.”

Xuân Diệu (1916–1985) Vietnamese poet

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, p. 86, and in Understanding Vietnam by Neil L. Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), <small>ISBN 978-0520916586</small>, p. 161

Abbie Hoffman photo
Giovanni Boccaccio photo

“Shortly afterwards the moon rose with a very clear sky, and [he] kept watch.”

E poco appresso levatasi la luna, e 'l tempo essendo chiarissimo, [egli] vegghiava.
Fifth Day, Third Story (tr. J. M. Rigg)
The Decameron (c. 1350)

Al-Biruni photo
Cat Stevens photo
Taylor Swift photo
Paul Klee photo
Mahmud of Ghazni photo
Alfred Noyes photo
Bob Dylan photo

“When I first heard Elvis's voice I just knew that I wasn't going to work for anybody and nobody was going to be my boss. He is the deity supreme of rock and roll religion as it exists in today's form. Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail. I think for a long time that freedom to me was Elvis singing 'Blue Moon of Kentucky.”

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

I thank God for Elvis.
US magazine (24 August 1987); on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Elvis Presley's death, as reported in Bob Dylan: Performing Artist 1986–1990 and Beyond, Mind out of Time (2009)

Ayaan Hirsi Ali photo
Giorgio de Chirico photo

“Painting is the magic art, the fire set alight on the windows of the rich dwelling, as on those of the humble hovel, from the last rays of the setting sun, it is the long mark, the humid mark, the fluent and still mark that the dying wave etches on the hot sand, it is the darting of the immortal lizard on the rock burnt by the midday heat, it is the rainbow of conciliation, on sad May afternoons, after the storm has passed, down there, making a dark backdrop to the almond trees in flower, to the gardens with their washed colours, to the ploughmen's huts, smiling and tranquil, it is the livid cloud chased by the vehement blowing of Aeolus enraged, it is the nebulous disk of the fleeting moon behind the ripped-open funereal curtain of a disturbed sky in the deep of night, it is the blood of the bull stabbed in the arena, of the warrior fallen in the heat of battle, of Adonis' immaculate thigh wounded by the obstinate boar's curved tusk, it is the sail swollen with the winds of distant seas, it is the centuries-old tree browned in the autumn..”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

Quote from the first lines in De Cirico's essay 'Painting', 1938; from http://www.fondazionedechirico.org/wp-content/uploads/211_Painting_1938_Metaphysical_Art.pdf 'Painting', 1938 - G. de Chirico, presentation to the catalogue of his solo exhibition Mostra personale del pittore Giorgio de Chirico, Galleria Rotta, Genoa, May 1938], p. 211
1920s and later

Miley Cyrus photo

“You love me for who I am
Like the stars hold the moon
Right there where they belong
And I know I'm not alone”

Miley Cyrus (1992) American actor and singer-songwriter

When I Look At You, her character's solo piece from The Last Song motion picture
Song lyrics

“The moon has set,
And the Pleiades.
Midnight.
The hour has gone by.
I sleep alone.”

Stanley Lombardo (1943) Philosopher, Classicist

Frag. 72
Translations, Sappho's Poems and Fragments (2002)

Andrea Pirlo photo
Nostradamus photo
Jay-Z photo
Neal Stephenson photo
Cyrano de Bergerac photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner photo

“There was such a wonderful setting of the moon this morning, the yellow moon against little pink clouds, and the mountains a pure deep blue [viewed from his Swiss farmhouse], quite glorious, I would so have liked to paint. But it was cold, even my window was frozen, although I had kept the fire in all night.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

In a letter from Frauenkirch, Jan. 1919; as quoted in Expressionism, de:Wolf-Dieter Dube; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 48
Some time later Kirchner would made a colored wood-cut: 'Moonlit Winter Night' https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Kirchner_-_Wintermondnacht.jpg
1916 - 1919

Muhammad of Ghor photo
Fernand Léger photo
Assata Shakur photo
Samuel Butler (poet) photo

“And weave fine cobwebs, fit for skull
That's empty when the moon is full;
Such as take lodgings in a head
That's to be let unfurnished.”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

Canto I, line 159
Source: Hudibras, Part I (1663–1664)

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley photo
Neil Gaiman photo
Ray Bradbury photo
Sun Myung Moon photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
James Bradley photo
Neil Armstrong photo

“We were involved in doing what many thought to be impossible, putting humans on Earth’s moon.”

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

40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing (2009)

“Oh, if only I were perfectly moon blinked [hypnotized]. If only I were…”

Kathryn Lasky (1944) American children's writer

Grimble; Chapter Nineteen: "To Believe", p. 143
The Capture (2003)

Anna Akhmatova photo
Elton John photo
Nick Cave photo

“The moon was turned toward me,
Like a platter made of gold,
My death, it almost bored me,
So often was it told.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, Tender Prey (1988), Mercy