A star gazing, rocket riding, moon walking quote collection

Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.

— Walt Whitman, first line of poem Give Me the Splendid Sun.

People give ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revoloves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon… . This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but Sacred Scripture thess us that Josue commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth.

— Martin Luther, Works vol 22, c. 1533.

In the center of all rests the sun. For who would place this lamp of a very beautiful temple in another or better place that this wherefrom it can illuminate everything at the same time? As a matter of fact, not unhappily do some call it the lantern; others, the mind and still others, the pilot of the world. Trismegistus calls it a “visible God"; Sophocles' Electra, “that which gazes upon all things.” And so the sun, as if resting on a kingly throne, governs the family of stars which wheel around.

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

The Sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent upon it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the Universe to do.

— Galileo Galilei

The sun alone appears, by virtue of his dignity and power, suited for this motive duty (of moving the planets) and worthy to become the home of God himself.

— Johannes Kepler, The Harmonies of the World, 1619.

The winter solstice has always been special to me as a barren darkness that gives birth to a verdant future beyond imagination, a time of pain and withdrawal that produces something joyfully inconceivable, like a monarch butterfly masterfully extracting itself from the confines of its cocoon, bursting forth into unexpected glory.”

— Gary Zukav

The sun comes into being each day from little pieces of fire that are collected.

— Xenophanes, in G. S. Kirk & J. E. Raven The Pre-Socratic Philosophers (1963). c. 400 BCE

The face of the sun is not without expression, but it tells us precious little of what is in its heart.

— Armin J. Deutsch, Scientific American magazine, November 1948.