A star-gazing, rocket-riding, moon-walking quote collection

Astronomy compels the soul to look upward, and leads us from this world to another.

— Plato, 'The Republic,' 342 BC

Be glad of life, because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars.

— Henry Van Dyke

The contemplation of celestial things will make a man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he descends to human affairs.

— Cicero

s m a i s m r m i l m e p o e t a l e u m i b u n e n u g t t a u i r a s

— Galileo Galilei, anagram sent to several correspondents. Kepler assumed that Galileo's latest discovery had to do with Mars, and solved the puzzle as 'Salue umbistineum geminatum Martia proles' (Hail, twin companionship, children of Mars). However the anagram was in regard to Saturn (and what we now see as rings), 'Altissimum planetam tergeminum observavi,' (I have observed the most distant planet to have a triple form), 1610.

I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

— Sarah Williams

The moon and the stars no longer come to the farm. The farmer has exchanged his birthright in them for the wattage of his all-night sun. His children will never know the blessed dark of night.

— Leslie Peltier in his autobiography, 'Starlight Nights: The Adventures of a Star-Gazer,' 1965.

This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,
And Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.

— Mrs. Barbauld, 'A Summer's Evening Meditation.'

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe—the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

— Immanuel Kant, 'Critique of Pure Reason,' 1781.'

The real friends of the space voyager are the stars.

— James Lovell

When you look at the stars and the galaxy, you feel you are not just from any particular piece of land, but from the solar system.

— Laurel Clark

Those who study the stars have God for a teacher.

— Tycho Brahe

No one regards what is before his feet; we all gaze at the stars.

— Quintus Ennius

The contemplation of celestial things will make a man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he descends to human affairs.

 — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Astronomy is one of the sublimest fields of human investigation. The mind that grasps its facts and principles receives something of the enlargement and grandeur belonging to the science itself. It is a quickener of devotion.

— Horace Mann

Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the earth.

— Ptolemy, c.150 AD

In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.

— Somerset Maugham

Astronomers, like burglars and jazz musicians, operate best at night.

— Miles Kington, 'Welcome to Kington.'

Our fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of nature, and with none more completely than with night.

— Henry Beston, 'The Outermost House,' 1933.

he strongest affection and utmost zeal should, I think, promote the studies concerned with the most beautiful objects. This is the discipline that deals with the universe's divine revolutions, the stars' motions, sizes, distances, risings and settings . . . for what is more beautiful than heaven?

— Nicolaus Copernicus, 'On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres,' 1543

The purpose of life is the investigation of the Sun, the Moon, and the heavens.

— Anaxagoras, 459 BC

Astronomy is the science of the harmony of infinite expanse.

— John Russell

O how loud
It calls devotion! genuine growth of night!
Devotion! daughter of Astronomy!
An undevout Astronomer is mad.

— Edward Young, 'Night Thoughts.'

The treasures hidden in the heavens are so rich that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.

— Johannes Kepler

I knew that even if I were second-rate or third-rate, it was astronomy that mattered.

— Edwin Hubble