Expanse Quotes

• Surely there is grandeur in knowing that in the realm of thought, at least, you are without a chain; that you have the right to explore all heights and depth; that there are no walls nor fences, nor prohibited places, nor sacred corners in all the vast expanse of thought.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Wall, Knowing, Depth

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.117, Library of Alexandria

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• The  miracle of light pours over the green and brown expanse of saw grass and of  water, shining and slowly moving, the grass and water that is the meaning and  the central fact of the Everglades. It is a river of grass.

  Marjory Stoneman Douglas

  Moving, Light, Rivers

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• How can a speck of a universe be physically identical to the great expanse we view in the heavens above?

  Brian Greene

  Views, Heaven, Specks

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• It is the prayer of my innermost being to realize my supreme identity in the liberated play of consciousness, the Vast Expanse. Now is the moment, Here is the place of Liberation.

  Alex Grey

  Prayer, Play, Identity

  Alex Grey (2008). “Art Psalms”, p.126, North Atlantic Books

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• There is no such sense of solitude as that which we experience upon the silent and vast elevations of great mountains. Lifted high above the level of human sounds and habitations, among the wild expanses and colossal features of Nature, we are thrilled in our loneliness with a strange fear and elation – an ascent above the reach of life's expectations or companionship, and the tremblings of a wild and undefined misgivings.

  Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

  Loneliness, Expectations, Solitude

  Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (2015). “The Haunted Baronet”, p.52, 谷月社

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• Even at the United Nations, where legend has it that the building was designed so that there could be no corner offices, the expanse of glass in individual offices is said to be a dead giveaway as to rank. Five windows are excellent, one window not so great.

  Enid Nemy

  Glasses, Office, Legends

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• It's a vast, lonely, forbidding expanse of nothing rather like clouds and clouds of pumice stone. And it certainly does not appear to be a very inviting place to live or work.

  Frank Borman

  Lonely, Clouds, Doe

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• In a world where God does not exist, any reasonable person must see that the propensity toward selfishness should be the most venerated of all human traits. From this it stands to reason that any man, knowing the total expanse of his existence to be finite, who does not devote every moment of his life to acts of pure selfishness, must be seen as nothing more than a fool.

  Derek R. Audette

  Life, Men, Knowing

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• The earth's distances invite the eye. And as the eye reaches, so must the mind stretch to meet these new horizons. I challenge anyone to stand with autumn on a hilltop and fail to see a new expanse not only around him, but in him, too.

  Hal Borland

  Distance, Eye, Autumn

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• Faith and science, I have learned, are two sides of the same coin, separated by an expanse so small, but wide enough that one side can't see the other. They don't know they are connected.

  Mary E. Pearson

  Science, Two Sides, Coins

  Mary E. Pearson (2009). “The Adoration of Jenna Fox”, p.263, Macmillan

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• Then felt I like some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken.

  John Keats

  Sky, Space, Swim

  "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" l. 9 (1817)

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• Much have I traveled in the realms of gold, and many goodly states and kingdoms seen.

  John Keats

  Travel, America, Gold

  'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer' (1817)

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• As soon as somebody demonstrates the art of flying, settlers from our species of man will not be lacking on the Moon and Jupiter. Who would have believed that a huge ocean could be crossed more peacefully and safely than the the narrow expanse of the Adriatic, the Baltic Sea or the English Channel? Given ships or sails adapted to the breezes of heaven, there will be those who will not shrink from even that vast expanse.

  Johannes Kepler

  Art, Ocean, Future

  "Kepler's Conversation with Galileo's Sidereal Messenger". Book by Edward Rosen, p. 39, 1965.

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• I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitments, awaited those who had the courage to go forth into it's expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst it's perils.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Real, World, Fields

  Charlotte Bronte (2004). “Jane Eyre”, p.40, Variocity

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• God has allowed some magical reversal to occur, so that you see the scorpion pit as an object of desire, and all the beautiful expanse around it as dangerous and swarming with snakes.

  Rumi

  Beautiful, Spiritual, Snakes

  Rumi (2014). “'Another city'. a selectionf of poems from the Persian”, p.51, Lulu.com

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• Doesn't it seem to you," asked Madame Bovary, "that the mind moves more freely in the presence of that boundless expanse, that the sight of it elevates the soul and gives rise to thoughts of the infinite and the ideal?

  Gustave Flaubert

  Ocean, Moving, Sight

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• I have only one thing to say to the melancholy man: 'Look into the distance.' ... When you look at the stars or the ocean's expanse, your eye is completely relaxed; once your eye is relaxed, your mind is unfettered.

  Emile Chartier

  Stars, Distance, Ocean

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• We may, indeed, say that the hour of death is uncertain, but when we say this we think of that hour as situated in a vague and remote expanse of time; it does not occur to us that it can have any connexion with the day that has already dawned and can mean that death -- or its first assault and partial possession of us, after which it will never leave hold of us again -- may occur this very afternoon, so far from uncertain, this afternoon whose time-table, hour by hour, has been settled in advance.

  Marcel Proust

  Mean, Thinking, Doe

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• Live as though you don't exist; like you are two eyeballs floating in space with nothing behind them. No brain attached. Not even hair - Nothing.There is a place inside your own heart, inside your own being that knows the kind of seemingly foolish things I speak and it is totally thrilled to be reminded of this infinite expanse and infinite joy that it is. Find this place.

  Mooji

  Heart, Two, Space

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• Suddenly a pair of searchlights lanced out from the frigate. They swept across the dark expanse - bright knives slicing the night into pieces.

  Scott Westerfeld

  Dark, Night, Knives

  Scott Westerfeld (2011). “Scott Westerfeld: Leviathan Trilogy: Leviathan; Behemoth; Goliath”, p.140, Simon and Schuster

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• Confined on the ship, from which there is no escape, the madman is delivered to the river with its thousand arms, the sea with its thousand roads, to that great uncertainty external to everything. He is a prisoner in the midst of what is the freest, the openest of routes: bound fast at the infinite crossroads. He is the Passenger par excellence: that is, the prisoner of the passage. And the land he will come to is unknown—as is, once he disembarks, the land from which he comes. He has his truth and his homeland only in that fruitless expanse between two countries that cannot belong to him.

  Michel Foucault

  Country, Sea, Land

  Michel Foucault (2001). “Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason”, p.9, Psychology Press

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• Sometimes the space between knowing what to do and actually doing it is a very short walk. Other times it is an impossible expanse.

  David Levithan

  Knowing, Space, Impossible

  David Levithan (2009). “Boy Meets Boy”, p.114, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• When he awoke it was dawn. Or something like dawn. The light was watery, dim and incomparably sad. Vast, grey, gloomy hills rose up all around them and in between the hills there was a wide expanse of black bog. Stephen had never seen a landscape so calculated to reduce the onlooker to utter despair in an instant. "This is one of your kingdoms, I suppose, sir?" he said. "My kingdoms?" exclaimed the gentleman in surprize. "Oh, no! This is Scotland!

  Susanna Clarke

  Light, Scotland, Rose

  Susanna Clarke, Portia Rosenberg (2005). “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell”, p.604, A&C Black

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• In a dream I walked with God through the deep places of creation; past walls that receded and gates that opened through hall after hall of silence, darkness and refreshment--the dwelling place of souls acquainted with light and warmth--until, around me, was an infinity into which we all flowed together and lived anew, like the rings made by raindrops falling upon wide expanses of calm dark waters.

  Dag Hammarskjold

  Dream, Wall, Fall

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• Like wind-- In it, with it, of it. Of it just like a sail, so light and strong that, even when it is bent flat, it gathers all the power of the wind without hampering its course. Like light-- In light, lit through by light, transformed into light. Like the lens which disappears in the light it focuses. Like wind. Like light. Just this--on these expanses, on these heights.

  Dag Hammarskjold

  Strong, Light, Wind

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