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

The stars are the jewels of the night and perchance surpass anything which day has to show.

— Henry David Thoreau

The stars hang bright above, silent, as if they watched the sleeping earth.

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Ye stars! Which are the poetry of heaven!

— Lord Byron

It is the stars, the stars above us govern our conditions.

— William Shakespeare, 'King Lear.'

Stars, in your multitude, scarce to be counted, filling the darkness with order and light.

— Javert, in the musical Les Miserables.

That does not keep me from having a terrible need of—shall I say the word—religion. Then I go out at night and paint the stars.

— Vincent Van Gogh, In a letter to his brother.

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'Nature.'

Teach me your mood,
O patient stars.
Who climb each night,
the ancient sky.
leaving on space no shade, no scars,
no trace of age, no fear to die.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'The Poet.'

It is He who maketh the stars (as beacons) for you, that ye may guide yourselves, with their help, through the dark spaces of land and sea: We detail Our signs for people who know.

— The Holy Qur'an 006:097 Al-An'am, Yusuf Ali Translation.

The Milky Way is nothing else but a mass of innumerable stars planted together in clusters.

— Galileo Galilei

Silently, one by one,
in the infinite meadows of the heaven,
blossumed the lovely stars,
the forget-me-nots of the angels.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline, 1847.