Quotes about sky
page 13

“A second sun blazed white and swelled visibly as he watched. What on Earth would have been—so many times had been—a climbing mushroom cloud was here in open space a perfect geometrical sphere, growing unbelievably. It swelled still larger, dropping from limelight white to to silvery violet, became blotched with purple, red and flame. And still it grew, until it blanked out the earth beyond it.
At the time it had been transformed into a radioactive cosmic cloud Circum-Terra had been passing over, or opposite, the North Atlantic; the swollen incandescent cloud was visible to most of the habitable portions of the globe, a burning symbol in the sky.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Between Planets

Source: Between Planets (1951), Chapter 6, “The Sign in the Sky” (p. 75)

Time, Sun, Perfection

“One morn I awakened, a new sun was shining,
The sky was a kingdom, all covered in blood.
The moon and the stars, where the troops that lay conquered,
Like food left to wither, poor spirital food.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, Tender Prey (1988), New Morning

Food, Star, Sun

“Mingle my dust with the burning brand,
Scatter it free to the sky
Fling it wide on the ocean’s sand,
From peaks where the vultures fly.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to Tevis Clyde Smith (August 28, 1925)
Letters

Flying

“…the sky's the limit for all Americans if we have the right kind of leadership.”

Rudy Giuliani (1944–2001) American businessperson and politician, former mayor of New York City

Republican Univision Debate, December 9, 2007 http://migramatters.blogspot.com/2007/12/republican-univision-debate-transcript.html

“Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

On the first moon-landing, as quoted in The New York Times (21 July 1969)

God, Home, Star, Passion

“A celestial light appeared to Barrett Meeks in the sky over Central Park, four days after Barrett had been mauled, once again, by love. It was by no means his first romantic dropkick, but it was the first to have been conveyed by way of a five-line text, the fifth line of which was a crushingly corporate wish for good luck in the future, followed by three lowercase xxx’s.”

Michael Cunningham (1952) American novelist and screenwriter

The Snow Queen (2014)

Love, Way, Light, Appearance

“Trees don't grow to the sky.”

Louis Rukeyser (1933–2006) American journalist

On the inevitablility of down markets as well as up markets
July 26, 2002, Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street

Tree

“The countryside meant grain and herds, and a river meant fish. And if the sky meant anything, it meant a cruel God who took no notice of their pains and chastised them if they sinned.”

Tanith Lee book The Castle of Dark

Source: The Castle of Dark (1978), Chapter 12 “Lir: The Walled Town” (p. 102)

God, Pain, Fish

“The plane droned on through the black sky, above the clouds masking the Atlantic. It suddenly occurred to Michael that he ought to look at the moon. He hadn’t seen it all the time he was in Paris, nor the stars.
He slid up the blind of his window and peered out. There was no moon visible. When he consulted his diary he discovered that it had set, a tiny sliver, at exactly the time the plane had taken off from London.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

March “RAVELED SLEEVE”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Star, Time

“In every human being, there are dormant memories which suddenly rise to the surface of the conscious mind. Niobe, for instance, developed out of one of my most remote childhood recollections. A cholera epidemic had broken out in the Smolensk area, and there were many casualties. One day, on the top of a hill, I saw a giant of a peasant with arms raised toward the sky crying out his grief at having lost his children. From this image, which emerged from my subconscious mind many years later, came the statue of Niobe.”

Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967) French sculptor

As quoted in: 'The Work of Zadkine', (excerpt), Ionel Jianou, 1964; for the Zadkine Research Center https://www.zadkine.com/writing 1960 - 1968

Children, Memory, Childhood, Cry

“By all means I will be married if you wish it. But on these conditions: everything must be as it has been hitherto—that is, she must live in Moscow while I live in the country, and I will come and see her. … I promise to be an excellent husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, will not appear every day in my sky.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (March 23, 1895)
Letters

Appearance, Country

“I feel the earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumbling down — tumbling down
I feel my heart start to trembling
Whenever you're around.”

Carole King (1942) Nasa

I Feel the Earth Move · performance on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoHuxpa4h48 Song lyrics, Tapestry (1971)

Feeling, Heart

“This is just an ordinary day
Wipe the insecurities away
I can see that the darkness will erode
Looking out the corner of my eye
I can see that the sunshine will explode
Far across the desert in the sky
Beautiful girl
Won't you be my inspiration?
Beautiful girl
Don't you throw your love around
What in the world, what in the world
Could ever come between us?”

Dolores O'Riordan (1971–2018) Irish singer

"Ordinary Day"
Are You Listening? (2007)

Love, World, Beauty, Girl

“Above the building, the sky recalled passages from Les Miserables, threadbare and gray.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Jitterbug Perfume (1984)

“Unless we are willing to escape into sentimentality or fantasy, often the best we can do with catastrophes, even our own, is to find out exactly what happened and restore some of the missing parts — hopefully, even the arch to the sky.”

Norman Maclean book Young Men and Fire

Young Men and Fire (1992)

Parting

“Goose, goose, goose,
You bend your neck towards the sky and sing.
Your white feathers float on the emerald water,
Your red feet push the clear waves.”

Luo Binwang

"Ode to the Goose" http://www.chinese-poems.com/lbw1.html (《咏鹅》) Variant translation: Geese, geese, geese, Curl necks and sing. White feathers floating on the green, They swim with red webbed feet. "On Geese", as translated by YeShell in How To Write Classical Chinese Poems (Lulu Press, 2015)

Water, Singing

“Presently we discovered two or three villages, and the people all came down to the shore, calling out to us, and giving thanks to God.… An old man came on board my boat; the others, both men and women cried with loud voices: "Come and see the men who have come from the sky. Bring them victuals and drink."”

Cristoforo Colombo (1451–1506) Explorer, navigator, and colonizer

13 October 1492
Journal of the First Voyage

Women, Men, God, People

“A light is gone from yonder sky,
A star has left its sphere;
The beautiful--and do they die
In yon bright world as here?
Will that star leave a lonely place,
A darkness on the night?—
No; few will miss its lovely face,
And none think heaven less bright!”

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

The Lost Star from The Literary Souvenir, 1828
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Love, World, Beauty, Star

“The old man made himself look hard at the Raven and saw that it was not a great bird from the sky but the work of men like himself. This first encounter turned out to be peaceful. The men of the La Pérouse expedition were under strict orders to treat with respect any people they might discover, an exceptional policy for its time and after.”

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

4 min 40 sec
Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Who Speaks for Earth? [Episode 13]

Men, People, Peace, Bird

“And the high mandate of his sire.
Led by the Lord who rules the sky,
The Gods and heavenly saints drew nigh,
And honoured him with worthy meed,
Rejoicing in each glorious deed.
His task achieved, his foe removed,
He triumphed, by the Gods approved.
By grace of Heaven he raised to life
The chieftains slain in mortal strife;
Then in the magic chariot through
The clouds to Nandigráma flew.
Met by his faithful brothers there,
He loosed his votive coil of hair:
Thence fair Ayodhyá's town he gained,
And o'er his father's kingdom reigned.
Disease or famine ne'er oppressed
His happy people, richly blest.”

Vālmīki Legendary Indian poet, author of the Ramayana

Source: King of Siam Rama I "The-Ramayana", p. 28.

Life, God, Happiness, People

“I paint from the top down. From the sky, then the mountains, then the hills, then the houses, then the cattle, and then the people.”

Grandma Moses (1860–1961) American artist

As quoted in Tampa Bay Magazine‎ (January/February 2008), p. 205

People, Mountain, Painting, Housing

“I must down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.”

John Masefield (1878–1967) English poet and writer

The first line is often misquoted as "I must go down to the seas again." and this is the wording used in the song setting by John Ireland. I disagree with this last point. The poet himself was recorded reading this and he definitely says "seas". The first line should read, 'I must down ...' not, 'I must go down ...' The original version of 1902 reads 'I must down to the seas again'. In later versions, the author inserted the word 'go'.

Source: https://poemanalysis.com/sea-fever-john-masefield-poem-analysis/
Salt-Water Ballads (1902), "Sea-Fever"

Star, Sea

“There's a hole in the sky with a big eyeball
Calling me: "Come up and be a kite,
On a diamond flight!"”

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

Song lyrics, The Kick Inside (1978)

“He knows he is my sun, but when he chooses to withhold his light, he would have my sky to be all darkness; he cannot bear that I should have a moon to mitigate the deprivation.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XXVI : The Guests; Helen Graham

Light, Sun

“Despite the awfulness of what was happening, the backdrop was a scene of beauty: a clear sky, a bright moon, clearly visible stars, flat undisturbed water, and an immense liner blazing with pinholes of light.”

Steve Turner (1949) British writer

Source: The Band That Played On (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 142

Beauty, Star, Light, Water

“Just take a trifling handful, O philosopher!
Of magic matter: give it a slight toss over
The ambient ether—and I don’t see why
You should n’t make a sky.”

Mortimer Collins (1827–1876) British writer

Sky-Making. (To Professor Tyndall), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding,
Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West,
That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding,
Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

Bk. II, No. 2, A Passer-By http://www.bartleby.com/101/835.html, st. 1 (1879). Shorter Poems (1879-1893)

Sea

“Of all the creatures that creep, swim, or fly,
Peopling the earth, the waters, and the sky,
From Rome to Iceland, Paris to Japan,
I really think the greatest fool is man.”

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711) French poet and critic

De tous les animaux qui s'élèvent dans l'air,
Qui marchent sur la terre, ou nagent dans la mer,
De Paris au Pérou, du Japon jusqu'à Rome,
Le plus sot animal, à mon avis, c'est l'homme.
Satire 8, l. 1
Satires (1716)

People, Fools, Thinking, Water

“It was one of those nights when the sky came down and wrapped itself around the world. The rain clawed at the windows of the bar like an angry cat and tried to sneak in every time some drunk lurched in the door. The place reeked of stale beer and soggy men with enough cheap perfume thrown in to make you sick.
Two drunks with a nickel between them were arguing over what to play on the juke box until a tomato in a dress that was too tight a year ago pushed the key that started off something noisy and hot. One of the drunks wanted to dance and she gave him a shove. So he danced with the other drunk.
She saw me sitting there with my stool tipped back against the cigarette machine and change of a fin on the bar, decided I could afford a wet evening for two and walked over with her hips waving hello.”

Mickey Spillane book The Big Kill

The Big Kill (1951)

Men, World, Cats, Beer

“You'll eat hamburgers year after year and live in dusty, vermin-infested apartments and hotels, but every morning you'll see the mighty sun, the eternal blue of the sky, and the streets will be full of sleek women you never will possess, and the hot semitropical nights will reek of romance you'll never have, but you'll still be in paradise, boys, in the land of sunshine.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Women, Boy, Sun, Night

“.. for the dead fish was striped like a cat and the sky was striped like the fish and the conch was whorled like an ear and the beach was ribbed like a dog's mouth and the movables in the surf splintered and crashed like the walls of Jericho.”

John Cheever book The Wapshot Chronicle

The Wapshot Chronicle (1957)

Dogs, Cats, Fish, Dead

“Nature is richer than I represent it... Nature is so beautiful that when I am not tortured by poverty I am tortured by her splendor. How fortunate we are to be able to see and admire the glories of the sky and earth; if only I could be content just to admire them. But there is always the torment of struggling to reproduce them, the impossibility of creating anything within the narrow limits of painting.”

Eugène Boudin (1824–1898) French painter

Quote from Boudin's Journal, March 1854; as cited in Eugène Boudin, G. Jean-Aubrey & Robert Schmit, Greenwich, New York graphic society, 1968, p. 24
1850s - 1870s

Beauty, Nature, Painting

“We have no other choice, we have no power to stop the [U. S. ] planes, if we could, if I could … we would stop them and bring them down, … If we had a chelak, we would throw it and stop the American aircraft. We have no radar to stop them in the sky, we have no planes, … I wish I could intercept the planes that are going to bomb Afghan villages, but that’s not in my hands.”

Hamid Karzai (1957) President of Afghanistan

Afghan president wishes he could down U.S. planes, www.cnn.com, November 26, 2008 http://in.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idINISL40856620081126, Message to Taliban

“It is the trajectory of a thrown stone. It follows the hump of a humped-back whale from nose to tail. It's bounded like a smooth, sheep-cropped, grassy hill. It is a graph-line through a grey, blue, and then a grey again, sky.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Flying Out of This World

“I was borne on an eagle's wing,
Till with the noon-sun perishing;
Then I stood in a world alone,
From which all other life was gone,
Whence warmth, and breath, and light were fled,
A world o'er which a curse was said:
The trees stood leafless all, and bare,
The sky spread, but no sun was there:
Night came, no stars were on her way,
Morn came without a look of day,—
As night and day shared one pale shroud,
Without a colour or a cloud.
And there were rivers, but they stood
Without a murmur on the flood,
Waveless and dark, their task was o'er,—
The sea lay silent on the shore,
Without a sign upon its breast
Save of interminable rest:
And there were palaces and halls,
But silence reign'd amid their walls,
Though crowds yet fill'd them; for no sound
Rose from the thousands gather'd round;
All wore the same white, bloodless hue,
All the same eyes of glassy blue,
Meaningless, cold, corpse-like as those
No gentle hand was near to close.
And all seem'd, as they look'd on me,
In wonder that I yet could be
A moving shape of warmth and breath
Alone amid a world of death.”

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

Canto III
The Troubadour (1825)

Life, Death, World, Way

“I watch the sea and the sky; sometimes I wade in the surf and build roads in the sand. At night I study the stars.”
“You have no friends?”
“No.”
“And what of the future?”
“The future stops at ‘now’.”
“As to that, I am not so sure,” said Shimrod. “It is at best a half-truth.”
“What of that? Half a truth is better than none: do you not agree?”
“Not altogether,” said Shimrod. “I am a practical man, I try to control the shape of the ‘nows’ which lie in the offing, instead of submitting to them as they occur.”
Melancthe gave an uninterested shrug. “You are free to do as you like.” Leaning back in the divan, she looked out across the sea.
Shimrod finally spoke. “Well then: are you ‘good’ or ‘bad’?”
“I don’t know.”
Shimrod became vexed. “Talking with you is like visiting an empty house.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Melancthe considered a moment before responding. “Perhaps,” she said, “you are visiting the wrong house. Or perhaps you are the wrong visitor.”
Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Madouc (1989), Chapter 5, section 4 (p. 783)

Truth, Lie, Star, Study

“Let the blue sky overhead,
The green earth on which ye tread,
All that must eternal be
Witness the solemnity.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

St. 66
(1819)

“He saw a tree in a backyard, its branches tortured among electric wires and clotheslines, its leaves dry and shriveled before they were fully out. Low in the sky, dark clouds heralded the storm.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P. 383.

Tree

“The English mind was like the London drawing room, a comfortable and easy spot, filled with bits and fragments of incoherent furnitures, which were never meant to go together, and could be arranged in any relation without making a whole, except by the square room. Philosophy might dispute about innate ideas till the stars died out in the sky, but about innate tastes no one, except perhaps a collie-dog, has the right to doubt; least of all the Englishman, for his tastes are his being; he drifts after them as unconsciously as a honey-bee drifts after his flowers.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Dogs, Star, Flowers, Idea

“When we journalists fail to get across the reality of events to our readers, we have not only failed in our job; we have also become a party to the bloody events that we are supposed to be reporting. If we cannot tell the truth about the shooting down of a civilian airliner - because this will harm 'our' side in a war or because it will cast one of our 'hate' countries in the role of victim or because it might upset the owner of our newspaper - then we contribute to the very prejudices that provoke wars in the first place. If we cannot blow the whistle on a navy that shoots civilians out of the sky, then we make future killings of the same kind as 'understandable' as Mrs Thatcher found this one. Delete the Americans' panic and incompetence - all of which would be revealed in the months to come - and pretend an innocent pilot is a suicidal maniac, and it's only a matter of time before we blow another airliner out of the sky. Journalism can be lethal.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

Source: The Great War for Civilization (2005), Chapter 8: Drinking the Poisoned Chalice (page 333)

Hate, War, Truth, Understanding

“From now on, I do not permit my sravaka disciples to eat meat. … One who eats meat kills the seed of great compassion. … I, from now on, tell my disciples to refrain from eating any kind of meat. O Kasyapa! When one eats meat, this gives out the smell of meat while one is walking, standing, sitting or reclining. People smell this and become fearful. This is as when one comes near a lion. One sees and smells the lion, and fear arises. O good man! When one eats garlic, the dirty smell is unbearable. … It is the same with one who eats meat. It is a similar situation with all people who, on smelling the meat, become afraid and entertain the thought of death. All living things in the water, on land and in the sky desert such a person and run away. They say that this person is their enemy.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

Source: Mahayana, Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra (or Nirvana Sutra), Chapter Seven: On the Four Aspects

Death, People, Fear, Water

“The broad cloud-driving moon in the clear sky
Lifts o’er the firs her shining shield,
And in her tranquil light
Sleep falls on forest and field.
See! sleep hath fallen: the trees are asleep:
The night is come. The land is wrapt in sleep.”

Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) British writer

The Storm is Over, The Land Hushes to Rest, l. 38-43.
Poetry

Sleep, Tree, Light, Night

“What, then, was war? No mere discord of flags
But an infection of the common sky
That sagged ominously upon the earth.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Recalling War," lines 11–13, from Collected Poems 1938 (1938).
Poems

War

“Each look'd upon his comrade's face,
Pale as funereal stone;
Yet none could touch the other's hand,
For none could feel his own.
Like statues fixed, that gallant band
Stood on the dread deck to die;
The sleet was their shroud, the wind their dirge,
And their churchyard the sea and sky.”

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

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Feeling, Sea

“You that in far-off countries of the sky can dwell secure, look back upon me here; for I am weary of this frail world's decay.”

Murasaki Shikibu book The Tale of Genji

Source: Tale of Genji, The Tale of Genji, trans. Arthur Waley, Ch. 40: The Law

World, Country

“Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto the fields and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802, l. 1 (1802).

Lie, Beauty, Soul

“Praise
the invisible sun burning beyond
the white cold sky, giving us
light and the chimney's shadow.”

Denise Levertov (1923–1997) Poet

Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus (1981); Online excerpt http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16007

Light, Sun

“It's suicidal, high smokin' so much la', I saw a dead bird flyin through a broken sky”

Nas (1973) American rapper, record producer and entrepreneur

You're Da Man
On Albums, Stillmatic (2001)

Bird, Suicide, Dead

“It was like being quite alone on the roof of the world. I felt that if I were to go to the edge and look over … I would see below all that I had ever known; all the crowded cities and seas covered with ships, and the clamor of harbors and traffic of rivers, and farmlands being worked, and herds of cattle driven in dust across interminable plains. All the clamor and clatter, confusion of voices, tumults, and conflicts, must still be going on, down there—over the edge, and below—but here there was only the sky, and a stillness made audible by the brittle grass. Emptiness was so perfect all around me that I felt a part of it, empty myself.”

Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist

Letter to the Clarence Day (June 10, 1926)
Describing her stop on a remote Russian plateau while with the Red Cross after WWI.

World, Grass, Parting, Perfection

“The mountain moon shines on a cloudless sky.
Deep in the night the wind rises among the pines.
I wish to weave my thoughts into a song for my jade lute,
But the pine wind never ceases blowing.”

Zhu Yizun

"Written at Mauve Garden: Pine Wind Terrace" (tr. Y. N. Chang and Lewis C. Walmsley), in Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry, eds. Wu-chi Liu and Irving Yucheng Lo (1975), p. 477; also in The Luminous Landscape: Chinese Art and Poetry, ed. Richard Lewis (1981), p. 57.

Mountain, Night

“I think what happened: the mammoths were up there chopping on their tropical flowers. It was a beautiful day, and it began to snow super cold snow. They had never seen snow before. One of the mammoths looked at his buddy and said, "Herman, this is peculiar weather we're having here. What is this white stuff falling out of the sky?" "I don't know, but let's get out of here." They started running around trying to find a place to hide and the snow got deeper and deeper and deeper and they got stuck in the snow standing up, and they couldn't even fall down. How many of you have ever been in a snow drift so deep you couldn't even fall over? Ever been in one of those? I think that's what happened to the mammoths. People say, "Well the mammoths have long hair. They're designed for cold weather." No, mammoths are not designed for cold weather. A lot of animals in the jungle have long hair. It is hot there. If the temperature is seventy degrees, long hair is just simply a decoration. There's a lot of things about the mammoth that shows that they were not designed for cold weather. There's a whole section just in this book about mammoths showing that they were not designed for cold weather. You can read all about that. For the mammoths, some of them ended frozen standing up. It was in super cold ice, perhaps 300 degrees below zero!”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Hovind theory

People, Books, Beauty, Flowers

“The breaking waves dashed high
On a stern and rock-bound coast,
And the woods against a stormy sky
Their giant branches tossed.”

Felicia Hemans (1793–1835) English poet

Stanza 1. The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers http://www.poetry-archive.com/h/landing_of_the_pilgrim_fathers.html (1826)

“From the day of my coming hither
Full seventy years have passed.
Now, setting out on my final path
My two legs trample the sky.”

Tsugen Jakurei (1322–1391)

Japanese Death Poems. Compiled by Yoel Hoffmann. ISBN 978-0-8048-3179-6; Cited : Sushila Blackman. Graceful Exits: How Great Beings Die. 2005. p. 66

“He looks at the city where no one had known him.
He looks at the sky where no one looks down.
He looks at his life and what it has shown him.
He looks for his shadow it cannot be found.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Sniper
Song lyrics, Sniper and Other Love Songs (1972)

Life

“I'd like to combine melancholy and sunshine... There's a sadness in Provence which no one has expressed; Poussin would have shown it in terms of some tomb, underneath the poplars of the Alyscamps... I'd like to put reason in the grass and tears in the sky, like Poussin... You really need to see and feel your subject very clearly, and then If I express myself with distinction and power, there's my Poussin, there's my classicism..”

Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French painter

Source: Quotes of Paul Cezanne, after 1900, Cézanne, - a Memoir with Conversations, (1897 - 1906), p. 211 in: 'What he told me – III. The Studio'

Sadness, Feeling, Tear, Grass

“The man in the street does not know a star in the sky.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance

Star

“I was lying in a burned out basement
With the full moon in my eyes.
I was hoping for replacement
When the sun burst through the sky.
There was a band playing in my head
And I felt like getting high.
I was thinking about what a
Friend had said
I was hoping it was a lie.”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

After the Gold Rush
Song lyrics, After the Gold Rush (1970)

Lie, Hope, Lying, Thinking

“Perhaps he's just a vehicle
To bear us to the hills of Truth
That's Truth spelled with a great big T
And peddled in the mystic's booth
There are oh so many miracles
That the western sky exposes
Why go looking for lilacs
When you're lying in a bed of roses?”

Joan Baez (1941) American singer

Caruso
Gulf Winds (1976)

Truth, Lying

“a sky of clouds completely 'out of the blue'… I'm looking, reflecting, and when it suddenly happens: hey, the clouds, and what clouds!”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

in interview with nl:Ischa Meyer, c. 1988
quote c. 1988 - from ('RM'), 157; p. 41
Karel Appel, a gesture of colour' (1992/2009)

“Back and forth the fantastic tableaux would spin, past his cruel plebe hazing, the self-discovery at the West Texas Military Academy, the patriarchal Judge MacArthur, all beard and cigar smoke, presiding over dynastic feats at Washington's 1201 N Street; the chimes of the drawing-room clock there telling off the quarters; the ceremonial changing of the guard at Leavenworth; his father's tales of Sherman's dauntless Boys in Blue; his mother's imperious commands to fight and fight and never lower his blade short of victory; the clean crack of Krag rifles and the warm prickling of desert sand as he played with his brother outside the fort stockade; the rumbling of the sunset gun and Pinky's face tilting downward, her lambent smile gilding the child's upturned features while he clutched at her cascading skirts; the yellow notes of the bugles as he stirred in his cradle; the chant of sergeants hawking cadence on the parade ground outside; and, snapping proudly in the overarching sky above him, the flag, and the flag, and the flag.”

William Manchester (1922–2004) (April 1, 1922 – June 1, 2004) American author, journalist and historian

Source: American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964 (1978), p. 709

Smile, Boy, Change, Past

“Our aim may be as high as the endless sky, but we should have a resolve in our minds to walk ahead, hand-in-hand for victory will be ours.”

Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1924–2018) 10th Prime Minister of India

Vajpayee addresses the nation on Independence Day in 2002. Quoted from Vajpayee No More: Here Are His Five Most Powerful Quotes https://swarajyamag.com/insta/vajpayee-no-more-here-are-his-five-most-powerful-quotes Swaraja, Aug 16 2018

Victory

“And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die,
Lift not your hands to It for help — for It
As impotently moves as you or I.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Help

“We have seven colours — violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red (Roy G. Biv). Our atmosphere has a number of particles and when light falls on them, it gets scattered. With blue colour having less wavelength and more scattering qualities, it scatters and makes the sky blue. While red colour has opposite qualities than blue so traffic lights are of this colour.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

His observations on the "strange events in our solar system" and as to why the sky looked blue and red colour was used in traffic lights to signal to vehicles to stop.
When Prof Jayant Narlikar saw the sun rise in the west

Light

“There is silver blue, sky blue and thunder blue. Every color holds within it a soul, which makes me happy or repels me, and which acts as a stimulus. To a person who has no art in him, colors are colors, tones tones.... and that is all. All their consequences for the human spirit, which range between heaven to hell, just go unnoticed.”

Emil Nolde (1867–1956) German artist

Nolde's written note in 1942; as quoted in Nolde: Forbidden Pictures [exhibition catalog], Marlsborough Fine Art Ltd., London, 1970, p. 9
1921 - 1956

Happiness, Art, Color, Soul

“And then, all of a sudden, it was as though through those dark eyes an electrical circuit had been struck. She sat fascinated. Snake-and-bird fascinated. Afterwards she could not recall the details of what he had said. She remembered only that she had been absorbed, rapt, lost, for over ten minutes by the clock. She had perceived images conjured up from the dead past: a hand trailed in clear river water, deliciously cool, while the sun smiled and a shoal of tiny fishes darted between her fingers; the crisp flesh of a ripe apple straight from the tree, so juicy it ran down her chin; grass between her bare toes, the turf like springs so that she seemed not to bear the whole of her weight on her soles but to be floating, dreamlike, in slow motion, instantly transported to the moon; the western sky painted with vast heart-tearing slapdash streaks of red below the bright steel-blue of clouds, and stars coming snap-snap into view against the eastern dark; wind gentle in her hair and on her cheeks, bearing flower perfumes, dusting her with petals; snow cold to the palm as it was shaped into a ball; laughter echoing from a dark lane where only lovers walked, not thieves and muggers; butter like an ingot of soft gold; ocean spray sharp and clean as the edge of an axe; with the same sense of safe, provided rightly used; round pebbles polychrome beside a pool; rain to which a thirsty mouth could open, distilling the taste of a continent of air... And under, and through, and in, and around all this, a conviction: “Something can be done to get that back!”
She was crying. Small tears like ants had itched their paths down her cheeks. She said, when she realized he had fallen silent, “But I never knew that! None of it! I was born and raised right here in New York!””

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

”But don’t you think you should have known it?” Austin Train inquired gently.
September “MINE ENEMIES ARE DELIVERED INTO MY HAND”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

Smile, Star, Spring, Flowers

“In the beginning there are those who don't quite fit in
But are somehow okay. And then some morning
There are places that suddenly seem wonderful:
Weather and water seem wonderful,
And the peaceful night sky that arrives
In time to protect us, like a sword
Cutting the blue cloak of a prince.”

John Ashbery (1927–2017) poet from the United States

"A Snowball in Hell"
Source: April Galleons (1987)

Peace, Water, Time, Weather

“I wanna glide down over Mulholland.
I wanna write her name in the sky.
Gonna free fall out into nothing.
Gonna leave this world for a while.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Free Fallin
Lyrics, Full Moon Fever (1989)

World

“As if the man had fixed his face,
In many a solitary place,
Against the wind and open sky!”

William Wordsworth Peter Bell

Part I, stanza 16.
Peter Bell (1798)

“Time after time she opened her door to catch the first glimmer of day; and she rejoiced when early Dawn lit up the sky and people in the town began to stir.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea, Lines 822–824

People, Time

“I call 'parallelism' any kind of repetition. When I feel most strongly the charm of things in nature, there is always an impression of unity. If my way leads into a pine wood where the trees reach high into heaven, I see the trunks that stand to the right and to the left of me as countless columns. One and the same vertical line, repeated many times, surrounds me. Now, if these trunks should be clearly outlined on an unbroken dark background, if they should stand out against the deep blue of the sky, the reason for this impression of unity is parallelism.”

Ferdinand Hodler (1853–1918) Swiss artist

from: Die Kunst Ferdinand Hodlers, 1923

Way, Feeling, Nature, Tree

“She closed her eyes. And while her intellect wouldn’t let her realize her deepest fear, that all this might soon be gone forever, nevertheless she stood there for a time and worshipped the only way a person like her could worship—in silence and solitude, under the temple of the sky.”

David Brin book Earth

Part VI (p. 307)
Earth (1990)

Fear, Way, Solitude, Silence

“My tavern was the Big Bear.
My stars in the sky rustled softly.”

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

Mon auberge était à la Grande-Ourse.
Mes étoiles au ciel avaient un doux frou-frou.
Ma Bohéme. Fantaisie (My Bohemian Life (Fantasy)), st. 2

Star

“Eve Moira had been a child of London, fascinated by the natural world, but drawn to the city. So, Kath Two looked to the bright lights of the big city.
Here, that meant gazing up into the sky.”

Neal Stephenson book Seveneves

"Five Thousand Years Later"
Seveneves (2015), Part Three

World, Nature, Light

“Mountains, solitude and the moon
until the journey's end?
The river holds the lost road of the sky;
the shape of eternity?”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

Song lyrics, Amarantine (2005)

Mountain, Solitude

“She watched the indigo sky, and the stars coming out tranquil as ever, as if this were any ordinary evening. Only humans knew what an evil time this was.”

Joan Slonczewski book A Door into Ocean

Part 5, Chapter 8 (p. 247)
A Door into Ocean (1986)

Star, Evil, Time

“Sky’s so big and dazzling and buzzing and crackling and moaning with all that black silence, I feel like my skull is open to space, all that way-beyond soaking directly into my brain. Stars and stars and stars…some of em planets, some of em satellites. All of em out there, alone, untouchable.”

Malcolm Azania book The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad

Source: The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (2004), Chapter 39 “Telescope to Avalon” (p. 226)

Way, Feeling, Star, Silence

“Do not expect again the phoenix hour,
The triple-towered sky, the dove's complaining,
Sudden the rain of gold and heart's first ease
Traced under trees by the eldritch light of sundown.”

Cecil Day Lewis (1904–1972) English poet

From Feathers to Iron (1935)

Tree, Light, Heart

“August is laughing across the sky
laughing, while paddle, canoe and I
Drift, drift
Where hills uplift
either side of the current.. swift”

Pauline Johnson (1861–1913) Canadian poet and performer

from The Song my Paddle sings

“Sweet empty sky of June without a stain,
Faint, gray-blue dewy mists on far-off hills
Warm, yellow sunlight flooding mead and plain,
That each dark copse and hollow overfills:”

Emma Lazarus (1849–1887) American poet

Beginning lines from Epochs I. Youth.

“It was like living half your life in a tiny, stuffy, warm gray box, and being moderately happy in there because you knew no better…and then discovering a little hole in one corner of the box, a tiny opening which you could get a finger into, and tease and pull at, so that eventually you created a tear, which led to a greater tear, which led to the box falling apart around you…so that you stepped out of the tiny box’s confines into startlingly cool, clear fresh air and found yourself on top of a mountain, surrounded by deep valleys, sighing forests, soaring peaks, glittering lakes, sparkling snowfields and a stunning, breathtakingly blue sky. And that, of course, wasn’t even the start of the real story, that was more like the breath that is drawn in before the first syllable of the first word of the first paragraph of the first chapter of the first book of the first volume of the story.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Excession (1996), Chapter 4 “Dependency Principle” section III (p. 120).

Life, Happiness, Books, Mountain

“Not for all the fire in hell
Not for all the blue in the sky
Not for an empire of my own
Not even for peace of mind”

Charles Bernstein (1950) American writer

"All the Whiskey in Heaven" http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080303/bernstein, The Nation, 3 March 2008

Peace, Hell

“Some people fall in love and touch the sky. Some people fall in love and find quicksand.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Lyrics, Light Grenades (2006)

Love, People

“Should there really be suns in the whole infinite space, they can be at approximately the same distance from one another, or distributed over galaxies, hence would be in infinite quantities, and consequently the whole sky should be as bright as the sun. Clearly, each line which can conceivably be drawn from our eye will necessarily end on one of the stars and each point on the sky would send us starlight, that is, sunlight.”

Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers (1758–1840) German physician and astronomer

Sind wirklich im ganzen unendlichen Raum Sonnen vorhanden, sie mögen nun in ungefähr gleichen Abständen von einander, oder in Milchstrassen-Systeme vertheilt sein, so wird ihre Menge unendlich, und da müsste der ganze Himmel ebenso hell sein, wie die Sonne. Denn jede Linie, die ich mir von unserm Auge gezogen denken kann, wird nothwendig auf irgend einen Fixstern treffen, und also müßte uns jeder Punkt am Himmel Fixsternlicht, also Sonnenlicht zusenden.
Olbers' paradox, expressed in [Ueber die Durchsichtigkeit des Weltraums, Astronomisches Jahrbuch für das Jahr 1826, J. Bode. Berlin, Späthen 1823, 110-121]

Star, Sun

“Oh how beautiful to fall to give you flight,
To die to give you life, to rest under your sky;
And in your enchanted land forever sleep.”

José Rizal (1861–1896) Filipino writer, ophthalmologist, polyglot and nationalist

"Mi Ultimo Adios", st. 5

Life, Beauty, Sleep

“I remained there [in The Netherlands, 1914-18] for the duration of the war, continuing my work of abstraction in a series of church. facades, trees, houses, etc. But I felt that I still worked as an Impressionist and was continuing to express particular feelings, not pure reality. Although I was thoroughly conscious that we can never be absolutely 'objective', I felt that one can become less and less subjective, until the subjective no longer predominates in one's work. More and more I excluded from my painting all curved lines, until finally my compositions consisted only of vertical and horizontal lines which formed crosses, each separate and detached from the other. Observing sea, sky and stars, I sought to indicate their plastic function through a multiplicity crossing verticals and horizontals.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Source: Quote of Mondrian about 1914-1918; in 'Mondrian, Essays' ('Plastic art and pure plastic art', 1937 and his other essays, (1941-1943) by Piet Mondrian; Wittenborn-Schultz Inc., New York, 1945, p. 10; as cited in De Stijl 1917-1931 - The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art, by H.L.C. Jaffé http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/jaff001stij01_01/jaff001stij01_01.pdf; J.M. Meulenhoff, Amsterdam 1956, p. 43

War, Feeling, Star, Reality

“In every premenstrual woman struggling to govern her temper, sky-cult wars again with earth-cult.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 12

War

“Speak to any small man of a high, majestic Reformation, of a high majestic Luther; and forthwith he sets about “accounting” for it; how the “circumstances of the time” called for such a character, and found him, we suppose, standing girt and road-ready, to do its errand; how the “circumstances of the time” created, fashioned, floated him quietly along into the result; how, in short, this small man, had he been there, could have per formed the like himself! For it is the “force of circumstances” that does everything; the force of one man can do nothing. Now all this is grounded on little more than a metaphor. We figure Society as a “Machine,” and that mind is opposed to mind, as body is to body; whereby two, or at most ten, little minds must be stronger than one great mind. Notable absurdity! For the plain truth, very plain, we think is, that minds are opposed to minds in quite a different way; and one man that has a higher Wisdom, a hitherto unknown spiritual Truth in him, is stronger, not than ten men that have it not, or than ten thousand, but than all men that have it not; and stands among them with a quite ethereal, angelic power, as with a sword out of Heaven's own armory, sky-tempered, which no buckler, and no tower of brass, will finally withstand.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1820s, Signs of the Times (1829)

Wisdom, Men, Truth, Angels

“Nowadays, when an artist discovers 'the sky,' it's like a bride who has never done any housework raving about her first vacuum cleaner. It's just not news." (Yet she confessed that the experience prompted her to deviate from a more controlled linear style and work freely with lively, confrontational colors directly influenced by the Southwest)”

Elaine de Kooning (1918–1989) American painter

as quoted on Portrait of the Art world - A Century of art News, Photographs http://www.npg.si.edu/cexh/artnews/edekooning.htm], referring to the photo of w:Rudolph Burckhardt's Gelatin silver print, 1960 (printed 2002), Published December 1960; Estate of Rudolph Burckhardt; courtesy Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York City Quote, after Elaine de Kooning was returned to New York from her teaching at the University of New Mexico [her studio was full of energetic paintings of bullfights in Juárez, Mexico, and of the expansive western landscape when Burckhardt portrayed her there.] 1972 - 1989

Color

“I am going to tell you something you must not tell to any human being. We have split the atom. The report of the great experiment has just come in. A bomb was let off in some wild spot in New Mexico. It was only a thirteen-pound bomb, but it made a crater half a mile across. People ten miles away lay with their feet towards the bomb; when it went off they rolled over and tried to look at the sky. But even with the darkest glasses it was impossible. It was the middle of the night, but it was as if seven suns had lit the earth; two hundred miles away the light could be seen. The bomb sent up smoke into the stratosphere…It is the Second Coming. The secret has been wrested from nature…Fire was the first discovery; this is the second.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Conversation with his doctor, Lord Moran (23 July 1945), quoted in Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965 (London: Sphere, 1968), p. 305
The Second World War (1939–1945)

People, Secret, Nature, Light

“Over all the sky—the sky! far, far out of reach, studded with the eternal stars.”

Walt Whitman book Drum-Taps

Drum-Taps. Bivouac on a Mountain-side
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Star

“The sky is a-going to fall, I must go and tell the King.”

Joseph Jacobs book English Fairy Tales

said by Henny-Penny, similar to the words said by Chicken Little
English Fairy Tales (1890), Preface to English Fairy Tales, Henny-Penny

“The children of fighter pilots tell different stories than other kids do. None of our fathers can write a will or sell a life insurance policy or fill out a prescription or administer a flu shot or explain what a poet meant. We tell of fathers who land on aircraft carriers at pitch-black night with the wind howling out of the China Sea. Our fathers wiped out aircraft batteries in the Philippines and set Japanese soldiers on fire when they made the mistake of trying to overwhelm our troops on the ground. Your Dads ran the barber shops and worked at the post office and delivered the packages on time and sold the cars, while our Dads were blowing up fuel depots near Seoul, were providing extraordinarily courageous close air support to the beleaguered Marines at the Chosin Reservoir, and who once turned the Naktong River red with blood of a retreating North Korean battalion. We tell of men who made widows of the wives of our nations' enemies and who made orphans out of all their children. You don't like war or violence? Or napalm? Or rockets? Or cannons or death rained down from the sky? Then let's talk about your fathers, not ours. When we talk about the aviators who raised us and the Marines who loved us, we can look you in the eye and say "you would not like to have been American's enemies when our fathers passed overhead". We were raised by the men who made the United States of America the safest country on earth in the bloodiest century in all recorded history. Our fathers made sacred those strange, singing names of battlefields across the Pacific: Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, the Chosin Reservoir, Khe Sanh and a thousand more. We grew up attending the funerals of Marines slain in these battles. Your fathers made communities like Beaufort decent and prosperous and functional; our fathers made the world safe for democracy.”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

Eulogy for a Fighter Pilot (1998)

Love, Life, Death, Men

“Awakening hope has named the name
Of love, or blown its spark to flame.
Restlessness, but as the winds range
From leaf to leaf, from flower to flower;
Changefulness, but as rainbows change,
From colour'd sky to sunlit hour.
Ay, well indeed may minstrel sing,—
What have the heart and year like spring?”

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

Canto II
The Troubadour (1825)

Love, Hope, Spring, Flowers

“On a blue island in a sky-wide water
The wild orange trees continued to bloom and to bear,
Long after the planter’s death.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Change

Death, Tree, Water

“You have marked your loyal entrance through water and sky,
I cannot quite reach you, but by me you lie.”

Masiela Lusha (1985) Albanian actress, writer, author

"Drinking the Moon" http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/drinking-the-moon/ Drinking the Moon (2006)

Lie, Water

“To me, the circle and the square where the sky and the earth, as symbolized by the ancient Oriental religions; they formed a kind of rudimentary alphabet by means of which everything could be expressed with the most limited means. They evoked prehistoric runes and the early I-Ching, or Book of Changes.”

Michel Seuphor (1901–1999) designer, draughtsman, painter

Source: Abstract Painting (1964), p. 98

Books, Religion, Change

“Who knows why some satellites come by and by while others disappear into the sky.”

Ben Folds (1966) American musician

"Michael Praytor", The Sound of the Life of the Mind (2012).
Song lyrics, With Ben Folds Five

“11. We shall sing the great masses shaken with work, pleasure, or rebellion: we shall sing the multicolored and polyphonic tidal waves of revolution in the modern metropolis; shall sing the vibrating nocturnal fervor of factories and shipyards burning under violent electrical moons; bloated railroad stations that devour smoking serpents; factories hanging from the sky by the twisting threads of spiraling smoke; bridges like gigantic gymnasts who span rivers, flashing at the sun with the gleam of a knife; adventurous steamships that scent the horizon, locomotives with their swollen chest, pawing the tracks like massive steel horses bridled with pipes, and the oscillating flight of airplanes, whose propeller flaps at the wind like a flag and seems to applaud like a delirious crowd.”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

Original Italian text:
Noi canteremo le grandi folle agitate dal lavoro, dal piacere o dalla sommossa: canteremo le maree multicolori e polifoniche delle rivoluzioni nelle capitali moderne; canteremo il vibrante fervore notturno degli arsenali e dei cantieri incendiati da violente lune elettriche; le stazioni ingorde, divoratrici di serpi che fumano; le officine appese alle nuvole pei contorti fili dei loro fumi; i ponti simili a ginnasti giganti che scavalcano i fiumi, balenanti al sole con un luccichio di coltelli; i piroscafi avventurosi che fiutano l'orizzonte, le locomotive dall'ampio petto, che scalpitano sulle rotaie, come enormi cavalli d'acciaio imbrigliati di tubi, e il volo scivolante degli aereoplani, la cui elica garrisce al vento come una bandiera e sembra applaudire come una folla entusiasta.
Source: 1900's, The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism' 1909, p. 52 : Last bullet-item in THE MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM

Pleasure, Singing, Sun, Horse

“Well, I don't call you an atheist then. I think if you believe in the awe and the wonder and the mystery, then that is what God is. That is what God is, not the bearded guy in the sky.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

2013-10-13
Super Soul Sunday
TV
OWN
http://www.oprah.com/own-super-soul-sunday/Soul-to-Soul-with-Diana-Nyad-Im-an-Atheist-Whos-In-Awe-Video, quoted in * 2013-10-15
Why Oprah's Anti-Atheist Bias Hurts So Much
David Niose
Our Humanity, Naturally
Psychology Today
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/our-humanity-naturally/201310/why-oprahs-anti-atheist-bias-hurts-so-much
in response to endurance swimmer Diana Nyad saying she can "weep with the beauty of this universe and be moved by all of humanity".

God, Guy, Thinking

“And the sky was all violet
I want it again, but violent, more violent
I'm the one with no soul
One above and one below”

Courtney Love Violet

"Violet"
Song lyrics, Live Through This (1994)

Soul

Quotes about sky page 13

Quotes about sky
page 13