Vastness Quotes

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  For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

  Carl Sagan

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  Carl Sagan (1997). “Contact”, p.430, Simon and Schuster

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• Not till we are completely lost, or turned round, do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Appreciate, Lost, Strangeness

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.124, Xist Publishing

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• Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Kids, Science

  Psychology Today Interview, www.psychologytoday.com. January 1, 1996.

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• The entire world we apprehend through our senses is no more than a tiny fragment in the vastness of Nature.

  Max Planck

  Nature, Science, World

  Max Planck (1959). “The new science: 3 complete works: Where is science going? The universe in the light of modern physics; The philosophy of physics”

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• The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.

  Carl Sagan

  Science, Prejudice, May

  "Wonder and Skepticism". The Skeptical Inquirer 19 (1), www.csicop.org. January/February 1995.

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• The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Sky, One Day

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". Documentary (1990 Update). Episode 7: "The Backbone of Night", 1990.

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• There is something bigger than fact: the underlying spirit, all it stands for, the mood, the vastness, the wildness.

  Emily Carr

  Facts, Spirit, Mood

  Emily Carr (2009). “Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr”, p.24, D & M Publishers

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• This is the time. This is the place. This is the vastness. Right here is paradise. Always. Always.

  Byron Katie

  Spiritual, Paradise, Spirituality

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• Ships and sails proper for the heavenly air should be fashioned. Then there will also be people, who do not shrink from the dreary vastness of space.

  Johannes Kepler

  Future, Air, Space

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• Men go forth to marvel at the height of mountains, and the huge waves of the sea, the broad flow of the rivers, the vastness of the ocean, the orbits of the stars, and yet they neglect to marvel at themselves. Variant: Men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty billows of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, and pass themselves by.

  Saint Augustine

  Nature, Stars, Ocean

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• When I went to the moon I was a pragmatic test pilot. But when I saw the planet Earth floating in the vastness of space the presence of divinity became almost palpable and I knew that life in the universe was not just an accident.

  Edgar Mitchell

  Moon, Space, Floating

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• What a life in science really teaches you is the vastness of our ignorance.

  David Eagleman

  Ignorance, Teach

  "David Eagleman: 'We won't die - our consciousness will live forever on the internet'". Interview with Sean O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. April 3, 2010.

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• What distinguishes our species is thought. The cerebral cortex is in a way a liberation. We need no longer be trapped in the genetically inherited behavior patterns of lizards and baboons: territoriality and aggression and dominance hierarchies. We are each of us largely responsible for what gets put in to our brains. For what as adults we wind up caring for and knowing about. No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain we can change ourselves. Think of the possibilities.

  Carl Sagan

  Caring, Thinking, Wind

  "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage". TV Series (Episode 11: The Persistence of Memory), 1990.

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• In the vastness of the Cosmos there must be other civilizations far older and more advanced than ours.

  Carl Sagan

  Civilization, Cosmos

  "Cosmos/ Encyclopaedia Galactica". Documentary, 1980.

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• Life is a vast, unknowable movement of wholeness with no one separate from it and nothing outside of it.

  Toni Packer

  Life, Movement, Zen Buddhism

  Toni Packer (2007). “The Light of Discovery”, p.14, Shambhala Publications

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• If you want to know who you are, look into the true mirror. The flower will reflect your beauty. The sky will reflect your vastness. The ocean will reflect your depth. The child will reflect your innocence. But if you look into the mirror that is unconscious humanity, you are looking into the wrong mirror. Your reflection will be distorted by their projections.

  Leonard Jacobson

  Children, Ocean, Flower

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• Our posturings, our imagined self-importance , the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe are challenged by this point of pale light.

  Carl Sagan

  Light, Self, Cosmos

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.29, Ballantine Books

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• Do not look at stars as bright spots only. Try to take in the vastness of the universe.

  Maria Mitchell

  Stars, Space, Trying

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• Letting the last breath come.
  Letting the last breath go.
  Dissolving, dissolving into vast space,
  the light body released from its heavier form.
  A sense of connectedness with all that is,
  all sense of separation dissolved
  in the vastness of being.
  Each breath melting into space
  as though it were the last.

  Stephen Levine

  Rest In Peace, Light, Space

  Stephen Levine (2010). “Healing into Life and Death”, p.281, Anchor

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• But, when the work was finished, the Craftsman kept wishing that there were someone to ponder the plan of so great a work, to love its beauty, and to wonder at its vastness.

  Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

  Wish, Wonder, Craftsman

  Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1951). “Oration on the Dignity of Man”

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• Who among us has never looked up into the heavens on a starlit night, lost in wonder at the vastness of space and the beauty of the stars?

  Jeb Bush

  Stars, Night, Space

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• The world puts off its mask of vastness to its lover. It becomes small as one song, as one kiss of the eternal.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Song, Kissing, World

  Rabindranath Tagore, Mohit Kumar Ray (2007). “Poems”, p.397, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

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• I admire our ancestors, whoever they were. I think the first self-conscious person must have shaken in his boots. Because as he becomes self-conscious, he's no longer part of nature. He sees himself against nature. He looks at the vastness of the universe and it looks hostile.

  John Shelby Spong

  Thinking, Self, Looks

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• The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

  Carl Sagan

  Humility, Thinking, Compassion

  Carl Sagan (1994). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, Random House Incorporated

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• Decisive moment: the one when you will be really alone. And it is perhaps this that makes her hesitate: not the void, but the vastness of the solitude. It's as well if you are frightened of solitude. It's a sign that you have come to the moment of your birth.

  Helene Cixous

  Solitude, Void, Birth

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