Quotes about ski
page 3

Fridtjof Nansen photo

“It is better to go skiing and think of God, than to go to church and think of sport.”

Fridtjof Nansen (1861–1930) Norwegian polar explorer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Quoted in [The New Yorker, 86, 15 March 2010, 56]

“Which are more full of fate:
The stars; or those sad eyes?
Which are more still and great:
Those brows; or the dark skies?”

Lionel Johnson (1867–1902) English poet

By the Statue of King Charles at Charing Cross (1895)

Alexander Pope photo
Peter Greenaway photo
Nicholas Carr photo
George W. Bush photo
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo
George William Russell photo
William Drummond of Hawthornden photo

“Phœbus, arise!
And paint the sable skies
With azure, white, and red.”

William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649) British writer

"Phoebus Arise".
Poems (1616)

Thomas Gainsborough photo
Steve Kilbey photo
Gerard Bilders photo

“For me Ruisdael is the true man of poetry, the real poet. There is a world of sad, serious and beautiful thoughts in his paintings. They possess a soul and a voice that sounds deep, sad and dignified. They tell melancholic stories, speak of gloomy things and are witnesses of a sad spirit. I see him wander, turned in on himself, his heart opened to the beauties of nature, in accordance with his mood, on the banks of that dark gray stream that rustles and splashes along the reeds. And those skies!... In the skies one is completely free, untied, all of himself.... what a genius he is! He is my ideal and almost something perfect. When it storms and rains, and heavy, black clouds fly back and forth, the trees whiz and now and then a strange light breaks through the air, and falls down here and there on the landscape, and there is a heavy voice, a grand mood in nature; that is what he paints; that is what he [Ruysdael] is imaging.”

Gerard Bilders (1838–1865) painter from the Netherlands

(version in original Dutch / citaat van Bilders' brief, in het Nederlands:) Ruisdael is voor mij de ware man der poezië, de echte dichter. Daar is een wereld van droevige, ernstige schone gedachten in zijn schilderijen. Ze hebben een ziel en een stem, die diep, treurig, deftig klinkt. Zij doen weemoedige verhalen, spreken van sombere dingen, getuigen van een treurige geest. Ik zie hem dwalen, in zichzelf gekeerd, het hart geopend voor de schoonheden der natuur, in overeenstemming met zijn gemoed, aan de oevers van die donkere grauwe stroom die ritselt en plast langs het riet. En die luchten!.. .In de luchten is men geheel vrij, ongebonden, geheel zichzelf.. ..welke een genie is hij [Ruisdael]! Hij is mijn ideaal en bijna iets volmaakts.Als het stormt en regent, en zware, zwarte wolken heen en weer vliegen, de bomen suizen en nu en dan een wonderlijk licht door de lucht breekt en hier en daar op het landschap neervalt, en er een zware stem, een grootse stemming in de natuur is, dat schildert hij, dat geeft hij weer.
Source: 1860's, Vrolijk Versterven' (from Bilders' diary & letters), pp. 51+52, - quote from Bilders' diary, 24 March 1860, written in Amsterdam

Rudyard Kipling photo

“They change their skies above them,
But not their hearts that roam!”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

The Native-Born, Stanza 2 (1895).
The Seven Seas (1896)

Marvin Gaye photo

“Woo ah, mercy mercy me.
Ah things ain't what they used to be, no no.
Where did all the blue skies go?”

Marvin Gaye (1939–1984) American singer-songwriter and musician

Mercy Mercy Me.
Song lyrics, What's Going On (1971)

Washington Allston photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Which is the best,—
Beauty and glory, in a southern clime,
Mingled with thunder, tempest; or the calm
Of skies that scarcely change, which, at the least,
If much of shine they have not, have no storms?”

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

Erinna
The Golden Violet (1827)
Variant: Which is the best,—
Beauty and glory, in a southern clime,
Mingled with thunder, tempest; or the calm
Of skies that scarcely change, which, at the least,
If much of shine they have not, have no storms?

Alfred Denning, Baron Denning photo
Stephen Crane photo
Gene Youngblood photo
William Julius Mickle photo
Pope John Paul II photo

“It is unbecoming for a cardinal to ski badly.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

When asked whether it was becoming for a cardinal to ski (Cardinal Wojtyła was an avid skier).
Source: [Pakenham Longford (Earl of), Frank, 1982, Pope John Paul II: an authorized biography, W. Morrow]

Ludovico Ariosto photo

“As nought good endures beneath the skies,
So ill endures no more.”

Come cosa buona non si trova
Che duri sempre, così ancor né ria.
Canto XXXVII, stanza 7 (tr. W. S. Rose)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

Avner Strauss photo

“In Jerusalem, the skies are closer.”

Avner Strauss (1954) Israeli musician

In Jerusalem, the Skies are Lower.

Jaclyn Victor photo
Israel Zangwill photo

“Oh, for the simple life,
For tents and starry skies!”

Israel Zangwill (1864–1926) British writer

Aspiration.

William Blake photo

“In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?”

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

St. 2
1790s, The Tyger (1794)

Abraham Isaac Kook photo

“When the spirit shines, even foggy skies make pleasant light.”

Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935) first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandatory Palestine

Meged Yerachim.

Roger Ebert photo
Richard Francis Burton photo

“As palace mirror'd in the stream, as vapour mingled with the skies,
So weaves the brain of mortal man the tangled web of Truth and Lies.”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

Voltairine de Cleyre photo
Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Thomas Chatterton photo
Ann Taylor (poet) photo

“For God, who lives above the skies,
Would look with vengeance in his eyes
If I should ever dare despise
My mother.”

Ann Taylor (poet) (1782–1866) British female poet and literary critic

"My Mother" (1804)

George William Russell photo
E.E. Cummings photo
Silius Italicus photo

“Mantua, the home of the Muses, raised to the skies by immortal verse, and a match for the lyre of Homer.”
Mantua, Musarum domus atque ad sidera cantu evecta Aonio et Smyrnaeis aemula plectris.

Book VIII, lines 593–594
Punica

William Cowper photo

“When one that holds communion with the skies
Has fill'd his urn where these pure waters rise,
And once more mingles with us meaner things,
'T is e'en as if an angel shook his wings.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

Charity, line 435.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

George W. Bush photo

“On board was a crew of seven: Colonel Rick Husband; Lt. Colonel Michael Anderson; Commander Laurel Clark; Captain David Brown; Commander William McCool; Dr. Kalpana Chawla; and Ilan Ramon, a Colonel in the Israeli Air Force. These men and women assumed great risk in the service to all humanity.
In an age when space flight has come to seem almost routine, it is easy to overlook the dangers of travel by rocket, and the difficulties of navigating the fierce outer atmosphere of the Earth. These astronauts knew the dangers, and they faced them willingly, knowing they had a high and noble purpose in life. Because of their courage and daring and idealism, we will miss them all the more.
All Americans today are thinking, as well, of the families of these men and women who have been given this sudden shock and grief. You're not alone. Our entire nation grieves with you. And those you loved will always have the respect and gratitude of this country.
The cause in which they died will continue. Mankind is led into the darkness beyond our world by the inspiration of discovery and the longing to understand. Our journey into space will go on.
In the skies today we saw destruction and tragedy. Yet farther than we can see there is comfort and hope. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, "Lift your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry hosts one by one and calls them each by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.
The same Creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today. The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth; yet we can pray that all are safely home.
May God bless the grieving families, and may God continue to bless America.”

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

2000s, 2003, Remarks after Columbia space shuttle disaster (February 2003)

Fausto Cercignani photo

“They do not speak of boundless skies,
of passing loves like silver clouds.
They speak of cheerless towns, unwound:
on hazy moors of muffled music.”

Fausto Cercignani (1941) Italian scholar, essayist and poet

Adagio (2004)
Examples of self-translation (c. 2004)

Ernesto Che Guevara photo

“If my final hour finds me under other skies, my last thought will be of this people and especially of you.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Farewell letter to Fidel Castro (1965)

Arthur Rimbaud photo

“I have seen starry archipelagoes! and islands
Whose raving skies are opened to the voyager:
Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep, in exile,
A million golden birds, O future Vigor?”

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

J'ai vu des archipels sidéraux! et des îles
Dont les cieux délirants sont ouverts au vogueur:
Est-ce en ces nuits sans fond que tu dors et t'exiles,
Million d'oiseaux d'or, ô future Vigueur ?
St. 25
Le Bateau Ivre http://www.mag4.net/Rimbaud/poesies/Boat.html (The Drunken Boat) (1871)

Sarah Helen Whitman photo

“The summer skies are darkly blue,
The days are still and bright,
And Evening trails her robes of gold
Through the dim halls of Night.”

Sarah Helen Whitman (1803–1878) United States poet

Summer's Call. Compare: "I heard the trailing garments of the Night / Sweep through her marble halls", Longfellow.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

John Godfrey Saxe photo
Kerli photo
Max Beckmann photo
Miguel de Cervantes photo

“Now had Aurora displayed her mantle over the blushing skies, and dark night withdrawn her sable veil.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book III, Ch. 6.

Edward Steichen photo

“Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. [It is] a major force in explaining man to man.”

Edward Steichen (1879–1973) American photographer, artist and curator

Quoted in Time Magazine, "To Catch the Instant" http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,874339,00.html, 7 April 1961

Roger Ebert photo
Abby Sunderland photo

“After the week of stormy weather, she set sail under sunny skies, on a glassy sea with a big swell running.”

Abby Sunderland (1993) Camera Assistant, Inspirational Speaker and Sailor

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 63

Van Morrison photo

“Well it's a marvellous night for a moondance,
With the stars up above in your eyes.
A fantabulous night to make romance,
'Neath the cover of October skies.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Moondance
Song lyrics, Moondance (1970)

Bill Engvall photo

“[while snow-skiing with his family]
I hit two trees and fell down a ditch. And that was just walking from the lodge.”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

Cheap Drunk: An Autobiography (2002)

Scott Jurek photo
John Fante photo
Sara Teasdale photo

“I am the pool of gold
When sunset burns and dies,—
You are my deepening skies,
Give me your stars to hold.”

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet

"Peace"
Rivers to the Sea (1915)

Lindsey Vonn photo

“I wish I had as much athleticism as she has to hop from sport to sport and win everything. Unfortunately I'm only good at ski racing and she still beat me!”

Lindsey Vonn (1984) American alpine skier

About Ester Ledecká in 2018; * Winter Olympics: Ester Ledecka - the snowboarder who won gold on borrowed skis
BBC
2018-02-17
Katie
Falkingham
http://www.bbc.com/sport/winter-olympics/43095089

Jane Roberts photo
Tom Petty photo

“Into the great wide open,
Under them skies of blue.
Out in the great wide open,
A rebel without a clue.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Into the Great Wide Open, written with Jeff Lynne
Lyrics, Into The Great Wide Open (1991)

Fausto Cercignani photo

“Secret thoughts are only half free: they fly undisturbed in the skies of the inner freedom, but they can never leave them.”

Fausto Cercignani (1941) Italian scholar, essayist and poet

Examples of self-translation (c. 2004), Quotes - Zitate - Citations - Citazioni

Kate Bush photo

“Every sleepy light
Must say goodbye
To the day before it dies
In a sea of honey
A sky of honey
Keep us close to your heart
So if the skies turn dark
We may live on in
Comets and stars.”

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

Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sky of Honey (Disc 2)

Donald J. Trump photo
Henry David Thoreau photo

“I hear beyond the range of sound,
I see beyond the range of sight,
New earths and skies and seas around,
And in my day the sun doth pale his light.”

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

Inspiration, Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). An American Anthology, 1787–1900

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Rode by radiant shapes that seem
Creatures made of bloom and beam,
With their hair and plumes' gay dyes
Glorious as the morning skies.”

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

The London Literary Gazette, 1824

John Milton photo

“And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Source: Il Penseroso (1631), Line 39

Talib Kweli photo
William Somervile photo
Rutherford B. Hayes photo

“Nobody ever left the presidency with less regret, less disappointment, fewer heart burnings, or any general content with the result of his term (in his own heart, I mean) than I do. Full of difficulty and trouble at first, I now find myself on smooth waters and under bright skies.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Letter to Guy M. Bryan (1 January 1881)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Emily Dickinson photo
John Steinbeck photo

“Changi was set like a pearl on the eastern tip of Singapore Island, iridescent under the bowl of tropical skies.”

Prologue
King Rat (1962)
Context: Changi was set like a pearl on the eastern tip of Singapore Island, iridescent under the bowl of tropical skies. It stood on a slight rise and around it was a belt of green, and farther off the green gave way to the blue-green seas and the seas to infinity of horizon.
Closer, Changi lost its beauty and became what it was — an obscene forbidding prison. Cellblocks surrounded by sun-baked courtyards surrounded by towering walls.
Inside the walls, inside the cellblocks, story on story, were cells for two thousand prisoners at capacity. Now, in the cells and in the passageways and in every nook and cranny lived some eight thousand men....
These men too were criminals. Their crime was vast. They had lost a war. And they had lived.

Celia Thaxter photo

“The voices of winter's sorrow
Already we can hear.And we know that the frosts will find us,
And the smiling skies grow rude,
While we look in the face of Beauty,
And worship her every mood.”

Celia Thaxter (1835–1894) American writer

"Already" in Drift-Weed (1878), p. 103.
Context: O brief, bright smile of summer!
O days divine and dear
The voices of winter's sorrow
Already we can hear.And we know that the frosts will find us,
And the smiling skies grow rude,
While we look in the face of Beauty,
And worship her every mood.

Thomas Edison photo

“His Bible was the open face of nature, the broad skies, the green hills. He disbelieved the ancient myths and miracles taught by established creeds.”

Thomas Edison (1847–1931) American inventor and businessman

The Philosophy of Paine (1925)
Context: He has been called an atheist, but atheist he was not. Paine believed in a supreme intelligence, as representing the idea which other men often express by the name of deity.
His Bible was the open face of nature, the broad skies, the green hills. He disbelieved the ancient myths and miracles taught by established creeds. But the attacks on those creeds — or on persons devoted to them — have served to darken his memory, casting a shadow across the closing years of his life.
When Theodore Roosevelt termed Tom Paine a "dirty little atheist" he surely spoke from lack of understanding. It was a stricture, an inaccurate charge of the sort that has dimmed the greatness of this eminent American. But the true measure of his stature will yet be appreciated. The torch which he handed on will not be extinguished.

Calvin Coolidge photo

“It is one of the anomalies of the human story that these peoples, who could not be assimilated and unified under the skies of Europe, should on coming to America discover an amazing genius for cooperation, for fusion, and for harmonious effort. Yet they were the same people when they came here that they had been on the other side of the Atlantic. Quite apparently, they found something in our institutions, something in the American system of Government and society which they themselves helped to construct, that furnished to all of them a political and cultural common denominator.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Genius of America (1924)
Context: It was the fate of Europe to be always a battleground. Differences in race, in religion, in political genius and social ideals, seemed always, in the atmosphere of our mother continent, to be invitations to contest by battle. From the dawn of history, and we can only conjecture how much longer, the conflicts of races and civilizations, of traditions and usages, have gone on. It is one of the anomalies of the human story that these peoples, who could not be assimilated and unified under the skies of Europe, should on coming to America discover an amazing genius for cooperation, for fusion, and for harmonious effort. Yet they were the same people when they came here that they had been on the other side of the Atlantic. Quite apparently, they found something in our institutions, something in the American system of Government and society which they themselves helped to construct, that furnished to all of them a political and cultural common denominator.

“What comes now? The earth awaits
What fierce wonder from the skies?”

Lionel Johnson (1867–1902) English poet

"July"
Context: What comes now? The earth awaits
What fierce wonder from the skies?
Thunder, trampling through the night?
Morning, with illustrious eyes?
Morning, from the springs of light:
Thunder, round Heaven's opening gates..

Seneca the Younger photo

“Kindly remember that he whom you call your slave sprang from the same stock, is smiled upon by the same skies, and on equal terms with yourself breathes, lives and dies.”
Vis tu cogitare istum quem servum tuum vocas ex isdem seminibus ortum eodem frui caelo, aeque spirare, aeque vivere, aeque mori! tam tu illum videre ingenuum potes quam ille te servum.

Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist

Letter XLVII: On master and slave, line 10.
Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius)
Context: Kindly remember that he whom you call your slave sprang from the same stock, is smiled upon by the same skies, and on equal terms with yourself breathes, lives and dies. It is just as possible for you to see in him a free-born man as for him to see in you a slave.

Abraham Joshua Heschel photo

“There are neither skies nor oceans, neither birds nor trees — there are only signs of what can never be perceived.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

"The Holy Dimension", p. 329
Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays (1997)
Context: It seems as though we have arrived at a point in history, closest to the instincts and remotest from ideals, where the self stands like a wall between God and man. It is the period of a divine eclipse. We sail the seas, we count the stars, we split the atom, but never ask: Is there nothing but a dead universe and our reckless curiosity?
Primitive man's humble ear was alert to the inwardness of the world, while the modern man is presumptuous enough to claim that he has the sole monopoly over soul and spirit, that he is the only thing alive in the universe. … But there is a dawn of wonder and surprise in our souls, when the things that surround us suddenly slip off the triteness with which we have endowed them, and their strangeness opens like a gap between them and our mind, a gap that no words can fill. … What is the incense of self-esteem to him who tastes in all things the flavor of the utterly unknown, the fragrance of what is beyond our senses? There are neither skies nor oceans, neither birds nor trees — there are only signs of what can never be perceived. And all power and beauty are mere straws in the fire of a pure man's vision.

Richard Francis Burton photo

“The race of Be'ing from dawn of Life in an unbroken course was run;
What men are pleased to call their Souls was in the hog and dog begun: Life is a ladder infinite-stepped, that hides its rungs from human eyes;
Planted its foot in chaos-gloom, its head soars high above the skies: No break the chain of Being bears; all things began in unity;
And lie the links in regular line though haply none the sequence see.”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
Context: Words, words that gender things! The soul is a new-comer on the scene;
Sufficeth not the breath of Life to work the matter-born machine? The race of Be'ing from dawn of Life in an unbroken course was run;
What men are pleased to call their Souls was in the hog and dog begun: Life is a ladder infinite-stepped, that hides its rungs from human eyes;
Planted its foot in chaos-gloom, its head soars high above the skies: No break the chain of Being bears; all things began in unity;
And lie the links in regular line though haply none the sequence see.

Elinor Wylie photo
Mark W. Clark photo
David Mitchell photo

“Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an' tho' a cloud's shape nor hue nor size don't stay the same, it's still a cloud an' so is a soul.”

"Sloosha's Crossin' an Ev'rythin' After", p. 308
Cloud Atlas (2004)
Context: Souls cross ages like clouds cross skies, an' tho' a cloud's shape nor hue nor size don't stay the same, it's still a cloud an' so is a soul. Who can say where the cloud's blowed from or who the soul'll be 'morrow? Only Sonmi the east an' the compass an' the atlas, yay, only the atlas o' clouds.

Eleanor Farjeon photo

“The stallion of heaven,
The steed of the skies,
The horse of the singer
Who sings as he flies.”

Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965) English children's writer

Pegasus, St. 3 & 4, p. 181
The New Book of Days (1961)
Context: He could not be captured,
He could not be bought,
His running was rhythm,
His standing was thought;
With one eye on sorrow
And one eye on mirth,
He galloped in heaven
And gambolled on earth. And only the poet
With wings to his brain
Can mount him and ride him
Without any rein,
The stallion of heaven,
The steed of the skies,
The horse of the singer
Who sings as he flies.

Cole Porter photo

“Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above.
Don't fence me in.”

Cole Porter (1891–1964) American composer and songwriter

"Don't Fence Me In" (1934) written for a never-released film Adios, Argentina, later used in the film Hollywood Canteen (1944).
Context: Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above.
Don't fence me in. Let me ride through the wide open country that I love
Don't fence me in Let me be by myself in the evenin' breeze
And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees
Send me off forever but I ask you please
Don't fence me in

E.E. Cummings photo

“Art is a mystery.
A mystery is something immeasurable.
In so far as every child and woman and man may be immeasurable, art is the mystery of every man and woman and child. In so far as a human being is an artist, skies and mountains and oceans and thunderbolts and butterflies are immeasurable; and art is every mystery of nature.”

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

"Foreword to an Exhibit: I" (1944)
Context: Art is a mystery.
A mystery is something immeasurable.
In so far as every child and woman and man may be immeasurable, art is the mystery of every man and woman and child. In so far as a human being is an artist, skies and mountains and oceans and thunderbolts and butterflies are immeasurable; and art is every mystery of nature. Nothing measurable can be alive; nothing which is not alive can be art; nothing which cannot be art is true: and everything untrue doesn’t matter a very good God damn...

George Eliot photo

“Wouldst thou have asked aught else from any god
Whether with gleaming feet on earth he trod
Or thundered through the skies — aught else for share
Of mortal good, than in thy soul to bear
The growth of song, and feel the sweet unrest
Of the world's spring-tide in thy conscious breast?”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

The Legend of Jubal (1869)
Context: Wouldst thou have asked aught else from any god
Whether with gleaming feet on earth he trod
Or thundered through the skies — aught else for share
Of mortal good, than in thy soul to bear
The growth of song, and feel the sweet unrest
Of the world's spring-tide in thy conscious breast?
No, thou hadst grasped thy lot with all its pain,
Nor loosed it any painless lot to gain
Where music's voice was silent; for thy fate
Was human music's self incorporate:
Thy senses' keenness and thy passionate strife
Were flesh of her flesh and her womb of Life.

Virgil photo

“The gates of hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labor lies.”

Facilis descensus Averno<!--Averni?-->: Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis; Sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras, Hoc opus, hic labor est.

Facilis descensus Averno:
Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;
Sed revocare gradum superasque evadere ad auras,
Hoc opus, hic labor est.
Variant translation:
: It is easy to go down into Hell;
Night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide;
But to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper air—
There's the rub, the task.
Compare:
Long is the way
And hard, that out of Hell leads up to Light.
John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book II, line 432
Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book VI, Lines 126–129 (as translated by John Dryden)

Steven Moffat photo

“Everybody knows that everybody dies and nobody knows it like the Doctor. But I do think that all the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark if he ever, for one moment, accepts it.”

Steven Moffat (1961) Scottish television writer and producer

Lines written for River Song, in Forest of the Dead [4.9] (7 June 2008)
Context: When you run with the Doctor, it feels like it'll never end. But however hard you try you can't run forever. Everybody knows that everybody dies and nobody knows it like the Doctor. But I do think that all the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark if he ever, for one moment, accepts it.

Joaquin Miller photo

“Come my sovereign queen often;
My blue skies will then be bluest;
My white rose be whitest then:”

Joaquin Miller (1837–1913) American judge

"Juanita".
In Classic Shades, and Other Poems (1890)
Context: p>O, the sea of lights for streaming
When the thousand flags are furled—
When the gleaming bay lies dreaming
As it duplicates the world!You will come my dearest, truest!
Come my sovereign queen often;
My blue skies will then be bluest;
My white rose be whitest then:Then the song! Ah, then the sabre
Flashing up the walls of night!
Hate of wrong and love of neighbor
Rhymes of battle for the Right!</p

Julia Ward Howe photo

“On the boundless sea of conjecture we are still afloat, with such mental tools as we possess to guide us, with the skies, the stars, the seasons, seeking a harbor from which no voyager has ever returned.”

Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910) American abolitionist, social activist, and poet

Beyond the Veil
Context: Have we lost our God? Never for one moment. Unspeakable, He is; the beneficent parent, the terrible, incorruptible judge, the champion of the innocent, the accuser of the guilty, refuge, hope, redeemer, friend; neither palace walls nor prison cells can keep Him out. Every step of our way from the birth hour He has gone with us. Were we at the gallows' foot, and deservedly, He would leave a sweet drop in the cup of death. He would measure suffering to us, but would forbid despair. The victory of goodness must be complete. The lost sheep must be found — ay, and the lost soul must turn to the way in which the peace of God prevails. We learn the dreadful danger of those who wander from the right path, but we may also learn the redeeming power which recalls and reclaims them.
So fade our heavens and hells. Christ, if he knew their secrets, did not betray them. On the boundless sea of conjecture we are still afloat, with such mental tools as we possess to guide us, with the skies, the stars, the seasons, seeking a harbor from which no voyager has ever returned.<!--
So much, the later schemes of thought have taken from us. Shall we ask what they have given us in exchange for what we have lost?

Alfred Noyes photo

“Deep in every heart it lies
With its untranscended skies;
For what heaven should bend above
Hearts that own the heaven of love?”

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet

Epilogue
The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907), The Flower of Old Japan
Context: p>We have come by curious ways
To the Light that holds the days;
We have sought in haunts of fear
For that all-enfolding sphere:
And lo! it was not far, but near.We have found, O foolish-fond,
The shore that has no shore beyond.Deep in every heart it lies
With its untranscended skies;
For what heaven should bend above
Hearts that own the heaven of love?</p

Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo
Carl Sagan photo

“Yet from his work, we have found that scientific laws pervade all of nature, that the same rules apply on Earth as in the skies, that we can find a resonance, a harmony, between the way we think and the way the world works.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

55 min 0 sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), The Harmony of the Worlds [Episode 3]
Context: As a boy Kepler had been captured by a vision of cosmic splendour, a harmony of the worlds which he sought so tirelessly all his life. Harmony in this world eluded him. His three laws of planetary motion represent, we now know, a real harmony of the worlds, but to Kepler they were only incidental to his quest for a cosmic system based on the Perfect Solids, a system which, it turns out, existed only in his mind. Yet from his work, we have found that scientific laws pervade all of nature, that the same rules apply on Earth as in the skies, that we can find a resonance, a harmony, between the way we think and the way the world works.
When he found that his long cherished beliefs did not agree with the most precise observations, he accepted the uncomfortable facts, he preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions. That is the heart of science.

Vita Sackville-West photo

“The greater cats with golden eyes
Stare out between the bars.
Deserts are there, and the different skies,
And night with different stars.”

Vita Sackville-West (1892–1962) English writer and gardener

"The Greater Cats"
Kings Daughter (1929)
Context: The greater cats with golden eyes
Stare out between the bars.
Deserts are there, and the different skies,
And night with different stars.
They prowl the aromatic hill,
And mate as fiercely as they kill,
To roam, to live, to drink their fill;
But this beyond their wit know I:
Man loves a little, and for long shall die.

Gerard Manley Hopkins photo

“Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

" The Starlight Night http://www.bartleby.com/122/8.html" (1877), lines 1-3
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)
Context: Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!