20 Quotes About The Stars
The evening star,
Love’s harbinger…
Paradise Lost, II. XI
Love’s harbinger…
Paradise Lost, II. XI
You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars. Thomas Traherne
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
…My own wings were not enough for this task,
Yet I felt my will and desire being
Turned, like a wheel, all at one speed,
By the Love which moves the sun and other stars.
Dante, Paradiso
Yet I felt my will and desire being
Turned, like a wheel, all at one speed,
By the Love which moves the sun and other stars.
Dante, Paradiso
Two men look out through the same bars:
One sees the mud, and one the stars.
Frederick Langbridge
One sees the mud, and one the stars.
Frederick Langbridge
The stars are dead: the animals will not look:
We are left alone with our day,
and the time is short and
History… may say ‘Alas.’ but cannot help or pardon.
W.H. Auden, ‘Spain, 1937’
We are left alone with our day,
and the time is short and
History… may say ‘Alas.’ but cannot help or pardon.
W.H. Auden, ‘Spain, 1937’
Not till the fire is dying in the grate,
Look we for any kinship with the stars.
George Meredith
Look we for any kinship with the stars.
George Meredith
…As when, upon a trancèd summer-night
Those green-robed senators of mighty night,
Tall oaks, branch-charmèd by the earnest stars,
Dream, and so dream all night without a stir…
John Keats, ‘Hyperion,’ Book I.
Those green-robed senators of mighty night,
Tall oaks, branch-charmèd by the earnest stars,
Dream, and so dream all night without a stir…
John Keats, ‘Hyperion,’ Book I.
Love is only one fine star away. Stevie Nicks, ‘After the Glitter Fades’
Per aspera ad astra.
(Through tribulation, the rough road, to the stars.)
Seneca the Younger
(Through tribulation, the rough road, to the stars.)
Seneca the Younger
…The night sky is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole—
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Sylvia Plath, ‘Insomniac’
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole—
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Sylvia Plath, ‘Insomniac’
…Caddy got the box and set it on the floor and opened it. It was full of stars. When I was still, they were still. When I moved, they glinted and sparkled. I hushed. William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art John Keats
Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love. William Shakespeare
…And I was happy in those first days as really I’d never been before, roaming like a sleepwalker, stunned and drunk with beauty. …Commons clock tower: ivied brick, white spire, spellbound in the distance. The shock of first seeing a birch tree at night, rising up in the dark as cool and slim as a ghost. And the nights, bigger than imagining: black and gusty and enormous, disordered and wild with stars.” Donna Tartt, The Secret History
There are dead stars that still shine because their light is trapped in time. Where do I stand in this light, which does not strictly exist? Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis
She dwelt among the untrodden ways…
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
William Wordsworth
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.
William Wordsworth
Is it asking too much; to be given time; to know these songs and to sing them? Is it asking too much of my vacant smile, and my laugh and lies that bring them? But as the stars are going out, and the stage is full of nothing — and my friends have all but gone; for my life, my God, I’m singing. …We’ll take our hearts outside, leave our lives behind, and watch the stars go out. Dubstar, ‘Stars’
…My God; it’s full of stars. Arthur C. Clarke, 2001
…Goe, and catche a falling starre,
Get with child a mandrake roote,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil’s foot;
Teach me to hear mermaides singing,
Or to keep off envies stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.
…If thou be’est born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights
Till age snow white hairs on thee;
Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee…
John Donne, ‘Song: Goe and catche a falling starre’ (ca. 1597)
Get with child a mandrake roote,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil’s foot;
Teach me to hear mermaides singing,
Or to keep off envies stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.
…If thou be’est born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights
Till age snow white hairs on thee;
Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me
All strange wonders that befell thee…
John Donne, ‘Song: Goe and catche a falling starre’ (ca. 1597)
(No Googling was committed in writing this article; all quotes were either taken from memory, then double-checked, or were taken from the Penguin Dictionary of Quotations (1960, edited by J..M. Cohen), which I found lying in an abandoned bookcase in a halfway house, and which itself, though, is like a prehistoric version of the internet, the Dictionary is, with quotes arranged by subject in a very tiny index with the difference that it takes ten hours to find anything…) 
