And yet more bright
Shines out the Julian star,
As moon outglows each lesser light.
Space Quotes
Science fiction and poetry share this page: Alastair Reynolds leads, then Milton, Shakespeare, Carl Sagan and Dejan Stojanovic. The best-sourced entries are small. Wilde’s Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) has everyone in the gutter and some looking at the stars. Emerson’s Nature (1836) wonders how men would adore if the stars appeared one night in a thousand years. Stephen Crane’s poem from 1899 has a man announcing to the universe that he exists, and the universe replying that this has not created in it a sense of obligation.
“If we are alone in the Universe, it sure seems like an awful waste of space” is credited to Sagan and flagged misattributed, though the notes record a 1972 Boston University symposium where he said something close to it. Voltaire’s clockmaker line and a Marcus Aurelius line about harmony with the universe are disputed.
I addressed no one. I addressed the universe. I addressed a void.
I am not an arsenal of epithets or metaphors. I am the star, and the star shines. I am affirmation.
No star is ever lost we once have seen,
We always may be what we might have been.
What are ye orbs?
The words of God? the Scriptures of the skies?
The quenchless stars, so eloquently bright,
Untroubled sentries of the shadow'y night.