“In these countless stars, in their clusters and colors and constellations, in the “shooting” showers of blazing dust and ice, we have always found beauty. And in this beauty, the overwhelming size of the universe has seemed less ominous, earth’s own beauty more incredible. If indeed the numbers and distances of the night sky are so large that they become nearly meaningless, then let us find the meaning under our feet.”
― Paul Bogard, The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light
“Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.”
― Isaac Asimov
“I have looked further into space than ever human being did before me. I have observed stars of which the light, it can be proved, must take two million years to reach the earth.[Having identified Uranus (1781), the first planet discovered since antiquity.]”
― William Herschel
“Few of us have seen the stars as folk saw them then – our cities and towns cast too much light into the night – but, from the village of Wall, the stars were laid out like worlds or like ideas, uncountable as the trees in a forest or the leaves on a tree.”
― Neil Gaiman, Stardust
“Winter is the time for stories, staying fast by the glow of fire. And outside, in the darkness, the stars are brighter than you can possibly imagine.”
― Isabel Greenberg, The Encyclopedia of Early Earth
