Firmament Quotes - Page 4

I have passed the mountain peak and my soul is soaring in the firmament of Complete and unbounded freedom; I am in comfort, I am in peace.

Khalil Gibran

Mountain Peaks, Remembrance, Funeral

Khalil Gibran (2007). “Kahlil Gibran: Masterpieces”

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Describing Starry Night: Firmament and planets both disappeared, but the mighty breath which gives life to all things and in which all is bound up remained.

Vincent Van Gogh

Life, Night, Giving

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I am a star in the firmament that observe the world, despises the world and consumed in its heat. I am the sea by night in a storm the sea shouting that accumulates new sins and to the ancient makes recompense. I am exiled from your world of pride polite, by pride defrauded, I am the king without crown. I am the passion without words without stones of the hearth, without weapons in the war, is my same force that make me sick

Hermann Hesse

Stars, Kings, War

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In the isolation of his clear, cold intellect, the sceptic abides in a glacial and spectral universe. No glow from the affections lights up the frost and shadow of the grave. He feels no prophecy in the thrill of the human heart-in the incompleteness of nature. He believes merely in things tangible, and sees only in the daytime. He will not confess the authenticity of that paler light of faith which was meant to shine when the sunshine of reason falls short, and the firmament of mystery is over our heads.

Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Faith, Fall, Believe

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Today the brightest light in the Scottish political firmament has gone out.

Jim Sillars

Light, Political, Gone

"Scottish politician Margo MacDonald dies aged 70" by Severin Carrell, www.theguardian.com. April 4, 2014.

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She died that night. Her last breath took her soul, I saw it in my dream. I saw her soul leave her body as she exhaled, and then she had no more needs, no more reason; she was released from her body, and being released, she continued her journey elsewhere, high in the firmament where soul material gathers and plays out all the dreams and joys of which we temporal beings can barely conceive, all the things that are beyond our comprehension, but even so, are not beyond our attainment if we choose to attain them, and believe that we truly can.

Garth Stein

Dream, Believe, Night

Garth Stein (2008). “The Art of Racing in the Rain”, Harper

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But the context of religion is a great background for doing science. In the words of Psalm 19, 'The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork'. Thus scientific research is a worshipful act, in that it reveals more of the wonders of God's creation.

Arthur Leonard Schawlow

Heaven, Atheism, God's Creation

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Belief sloshes around in the firmament like lumps of clay spiralling into a potter's wheel. That's how gods get created, for example. They clearly must be created by their own believers, because a brief resume of the lives of most gods suggests that their origins certainly couldn't be divine. They tend to do exactly the things people would do if only they could, especially when it comes to nymphs, golden showers, and the smiting of your enemies.

Terry Pratchett

Nymphs, People, Enemy

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If the Word of God is living and powerful, and if the Lord does all things whatsoever he wills; if he said, "Let there be light", and it happened; if he said, "let there be a firmament", and it happened; ...if finally the Word of God himself willingly became man and made flesh for himself out of the most pure and undefiled blood of the holy and ever Virgin, why should he not be capable of making bread his Body and wine and water his Blood?... God said, "This is my Body", and "This is my Blood."

John of Damascus

Powerful, Wine, Men

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And before my Soul took me to task I was hard of hearing; I heard only tumult and uproar. But now I am all ears listening to the silence and its choirs singing the hymns of time, intoning the praises of the firmament, revealing the secrets of the invisible.

Khalil Gibran

Inspiration, Hymns, Addiction

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Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy. Both your religion and policy must be based on it. Your honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night.

John Ruskin

Honesty, Night, Light

'Time and Tide' (1867) letter 8

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There were many stars in Motown's firmament - among them, Stevie, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Martha Reeves and Diana Ross - but I happen to have loved the Four Tops most of all.

Jon Landau

Stars, Four, Diana

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We find it hard to picture to ourselves the state of mind of a man of older days who firmly believed that the Earth was the centre of the Universe, and that all the heavenly bodies revolved around it. He could feel beneath his feet the writhings of the damned amid the flames; very likely he had seen with his own eyes and smelt with his own nostrils the sulphurous fumes of Hell escaping from some fissure in the rocks. Looking upwards, he beheld ... the incorruptible firmament, wherein the stars hung like so many lamps.

Anatole France

Stars, Eye, Science

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So all night long the storm roared on: The morning broke without a sun; In tiny spherule traced with lines Of Nature’s geometric signs, In starry flake, and pellicle, All day the hoary meteor fell; And, when the second morning shone, We looked upon a world unknown, On nothing we could call our own. Around the glistening wonder bent The blue walls of the firmament, No cloud above, no earth below,— A universe of sky and snow!

John Greenleaf Whittier

Morning, Wall, Night

John Greenleaf Whittier (2012). “Poems of Nature, Poems Subjective and Reminiscent and Religious Poems, Complete Volume II., the Works of Whittier”, p.87, tredition

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And new philosophy calls all in doubt, The element of fire is quite put out; The sun is lost, and the earth, and no man's wit Can well direct him where to look for it. And freely men confess that this world's spent, When in the planets, and the firmament They seek so many new; then see that this Is crumbled out again to his atomies. 'Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone; All just supply, and all relation: Prince, subject, Father, Son, are things forgot.

John Donne

Father, Philosophy, Son

John Donne, Henry Alford (1839). “The Works of John Donne, D.D. Dean of Saint Paul's, 1621-1631: With a Memoir of His Life”, p.491

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Just as the line of astronomical thinkers from Copernicus to Newton had destroyed the old astronomy, in which the earth was the center, and the Almighty sitting above the firmament the agent in moving the heavenly bodies about it with his own hands, so now a race of biological thinkers had destroyed the old idea of a Creator minutely contriving and fashioning all animals to suit the needs and purposes of man.

Andrew Dickson White

Moving, Animal, Men

Andrew Dickson White (2012). “A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom: From Creation to the Victory of Scientific and Literary Methods”, p.49, Transaction Publishers

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The Poet's License! 't is the right, Within the rule of duty, To look on all delightful things Throughout the world of beauty. To gaze with rapture at the stars That in the skies are glowing; To see the gems of perfect dye That in the woods are growing, And more than sage astronomer, And more than learned florist, To read the glorious homilies Of Firmament and Forest.

John Godfrey Saxe

Stars, Glowing, Sky

John Godfrey Saxe (1866). “The Masquerade: and other poems”, p.25

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New constellations of truth are daily discovered in the firmament of knowledge, and new stars are daily shining forth in each constellation.

Horace Mann

Stars, Truth, Shining

Horace Mann (1872). “Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Horace Mann ...”, p.59

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My Faith is larger than the Hills— So when the Hills decay— My Faith must take the Purple Wheel To show the Sun the way— 'Tis first He steps upon the Vane— And then — upon the Hill— And then abroad the World He go To do His Golden Will— And if His Yellow feet should miss— The Bird would not arise— The Flowers would slumber on their Stems— No Bells have Paradise— How dare I, therefore, stint a faith On which so vast depends— Lest Firmament should fail for me— The Rivet in the Bands

Emily Dickinson

Faith, Flower, Purple

Emily Dickinson, Cristanne Miller (2016). “Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them”, p.243, Harvard University Press

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As long as the firmament of the You is spread over me, the tempests of causality cower at my heels, and whirl of doom congeals.

Martin Buber

Long, Causality, Tempest

Martin Buber (2013). “I and Thou”, p.78, eBookIt.com

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The love of fame is too high and delicate a feeling in the mind to be mixed up with realities, it is a solitary abstraction. * * * A name "fast anchored in the deep abyss of time" is like a star twinkling in the firmament, cold, silent, distant, but eternal and sublime; and our transmitting one to posterity is as if we should contemplate our translation to the skies.

William Hazlitt

Stars, Reality, Sky

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But now I rejoice when, in my winter studio, I can spread out my summer studies and recall through them the beautiful season and places which gave them being. Here the painter feels how small things may suggest the greater - the drop of water, image the firmament.

Christopher Pearse Cranch

Beautiful, Summer, Winter

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Indian business women like Indra Nooyi, Chanda Kochhar, Naina Lal Kidwai, Shikha Sharma, Swati Piramal, Anu Agha, Swati Piramal, Sulajja Firodia Motwani and Zia Mody have put India on the global firmament.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

India, Business Woman, Indian

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This is the one and only firmament; therefore it is the absolute world. There is no other world. The circle is complete. I am living in Eternity. The ways of this world are the ways of Heaven.

Allen Ginsberg

Other Worlds, Circles, Heaven

Allen Ginsberg (2010). “Collected Poems 1947-1997”, p.41, Harper Collins

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Day was breaking at Plashwater Weir Mill Lock. Stars were yet visible, but there was dull light in the east that was not the light of night. The moon had gone down, and a mist crept along the banks of the river, seen through which the trees were the ghosts of trees, and the water was the ghost of water. This earth looked spectral, and so did the pale stars: while the cold eastern glare, expressionless as to heat or colour, with the eye of the firmament quenched, might have been likened to the stare of the dead.

Charles Dickens

Nature, Stars, Eye

Charles Dickens (1873). “A Cyclopedia of the Best Thoughts of Charles Dickens”, p.317

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