Comets Quotes - Page 3

• It's ridiculous that our solar system, not to mention the universe outside of that, is extraordinarily well organized, to the point where we can predict 70 years away when a comet is coming.

  Benjamin Carson

  Years, Ridiculous, Solar System

  Source: www.esquire.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Greatness, Men, Mind

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.130

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I agree that we should go back to the moon and on to Mars. We should treat all objects in the solar system, including comets and asteroids, as exploration targets.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Moon, Target, Mars

  Source: www.foxnews.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I’ve been looking for a long, long time,
  for this thing called love,
  I’ve ridden comets across the sky,
  and I’ve looked below and above.
  Then one day I looked inside myself,
  and this is what I found,
  A golden sun residing there,
  beaming forth God’s light and sound.

  Rumi

  Light, Sky, Long

  15 Copy quote

• Then I will tell you something. I do not believe in it. Forty years among men has consistently taught me that they are not amenable to commonsense. Show them the red tail of a comet, fill them with black terror, and they will all come running out of their houses and break their legs. But tell them one sensible proposition, and support it with seven reasons, and they will simply laugh in your face.

  Bertolt Brecht

  Running, Believe, Men

  "Plays: The Caucasian chalk circle. The threepenny opera. The trial of Lucullus. The life of Galileo".

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are surrounded by a lot of failed ecosystems; the moon being one, Mars, Venus. There’s evidence of water on Mars and rivers and it didn’t take. Also, we have planets to guard us like Jupiter and Saturn that take the hits of the comets. It is miraculous that we exist on this planet, that it took.

  Robin Williams

  Moon, Ecosystems, Rivers

  10 Copy quote

• ... the only other place comparable to these marvelous nether regions, must surely be naked space itself, out far beyond atmosphere, between the stars, where sunlight has no grip upon the dust and rubbish of planetary air, where the blackness of space, the shining planets, comets, suns, and stars must really be closely akin to the world of life as it appears to the eyes of an awed human being, in the open ocean, one half mile down.

  William Beebe

  Stars, Ocean, Eye

  16 Copy quote

• [On the Dating Handbook] 'With a telescope, some munchies, and a warm blanket, watch for Halley's comet.' Yeah. I like that. There's no time limit. Just sit there and grow old together.

  David Cross

  Funny, Humor, Together

  "David Cross: The Pride Is Back". TV Special, September 18, 1999.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The chunks of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 were so large, and were moving so fast, that each hit Jupiter with at least the equivalent energy of the dinosaur-killing collision between Earth and an asteroid 65 million years ago. Whatever damage Jupiter sustained, one thing is for sure: it's got no dinosaurs left.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Moving, Years, Energy

  4 Copy quote

• In the year 1456 ... a Comet was seen passing Retrograde between the Earth and the sun... Hence I dare venture to foretell, that it will return again in the year 1758.

  Edmond Halley

  Years, Return, Sun

  Edmond Halley (1706). “Miscellanea Curiosa: Being a Collection of Some of the Principal Phaenomena in Nature, Accounted for by the Greatest Philosophers of this Age : Together with Several Discourses Read Before the Royal Society, for the Advancement of Physical and Mathematical Knowledge”, p.342

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• However dangerous might be the shock of a comet, it might be so slight, that it would only do damage at the part of the Earth where it actually struck; perhaps even we might cry quits if while one kingdom were devastated, the rest of the Earth were to enjoy the rarities which a body which came from so far might bring it. Perhaps we should be very surprised to find that the debris of these masses that we despised were formed of gold and diamonds; but who would be the most astonished, we, or the comet-dwellers, who would be cast on our Earth? What strange being each would find the other!

  Pierre Louis Maupertuis

  Gold, Body, Earth

  4 Copy quote

• The same Being that fashioned the insect, whose existence is only discerned by a microscope, and gave that invisible speck a system of ducts and other organs to perform its vital functions, created the enormous mass of the planet thirteen hundred times larger than our earth, and launched it in its course round the sun, and the comet, wheeling with a velocity that would carry it round our globe in less than two minutes of time, and yet revolving through so prodigious a space that it takes near six centuries to encircle the sun!

  Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux

  God, Two, Space

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 274), 1895.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Amorphous forms [of ice], for example, are found naturally on comets, on asteroids, and the crystalline forms are found on Earth or at least could be made on Earth with enough pressure. Nothing else does this.

  Ira Flatow

  Ice, Example, Doe

  Source: www.npr.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What is there in places empty of matter? and Whence is it that the sun and planets gravitate toward one another without dense matter between them? Whence is it that Nature doth nothing in vain? and Whence arises all that order and beauty which we see in the world? To what end are comets? and Whence is it that planets move all one and the same way in orbs concentrick, while comets move all manner of ways in orbs very excentrick? and What hinders the fixed stars from falling upon one another?

  Isaac Newton

  Stars, Moving, Fall

  29 Copy quote

• I had always wanted to name a daughter Hailey, after Halley's comet from Once in a Lifetime.

  Nancy Grace

  Daughter, Names, Once In A Lifetime

  Source: www.cosmopolitan.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Now it must be asked if we can comprehend why comets signify the death of magnates and coming wars, for writers of philosophy say so. The reason is not apparent, since vapor no more rises in a land where a pauper lives than where a rich man resides, whether he be king or someone else. Furthermore, it is evident that a comet has a natural cause not dependent on anything else; so it seems that it has no relation to someone's death or to war. For if it be said that it does relate to war or someone's death, either it does so as a cause or effect or sign.
  De Cometis

  Albertus Magnus

  Kings, Philosophy, War

  37 Copy quote

• Donald Trump's ego is like a comet the size of Jupiter just traveling through the solar system, and we all have to be affected by its gravitational pull.

  David Brooks

  Ego, Jupiter, Size

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When you look at Earth from that one picture, the one from space, it's really a rather attractive thing. I have nothing against the planet per se. I root for the big comet or asteroid as a way of cleansing the planet. The comet or asteroid 65 million years ago is probably what gave us our opening to replace the reptiles. The greatest entertainment I have in my life is chronicling internally, not necessarily for the public, the slow dissolution of order.

  George Carlin

  Attractive Things, Order, Years

  4 Copy quote

• I hoped that Grace would be a little bit of the best of all of us: Scarlett's spirit, and my mother's strength, Marion's determination, and Michael's sly humor. I wasn't sure what I could give, not just yet. But I would know when I told her about the comet, years from now, I would know. And I would lean close to her ear, saying the words no one else could hear, explaining it all. The language of solace and comets, and the girls we all become, in the end.

  Sarah Dessen

  Girl, Mother, Determination

  Sarah Dessen (2003). “How to Deal”, Puffin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I rode all day. I cried all night. The moon didn’t glow. The sun didn’t rise. A comet blazed Between my eyes. West and South, Wind and rain. Every way is Just the same. Pray give me a box To hide inside. Pray give me a spade To dig my own grave.

  Gail Carson Levine

  Rain, Eye, Moon

  4 Copy quote

• Consider now the Milky Way. Here also we see an innumerable dust, only the grains of this dust are no longer atoms but stars; these grains also move with great velocities, they act at a distance one upon another, but this action is so slight at great distances that their trajectories are rectilineal; nevertheless, from time to time, two of them may come near enough together to be deviated from their course, like a comet that passed too close to Jupiter. In a word, in the eyes of a giant, to whom our Suns were what our atoms are to us, the Milky Way would only look like a bubble of gas.

  Henri Poincare

  Stars, Distance, Moving

  Henri Poincare (2012). “The Value of Science: Essential Writings of Henri Poincare”, p.905, Modern Library

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Like a blazing comet, I've traversed infinite nights, interstellar spaces of the imagination, voluptuousness and fear. I've been a man, a woman, an old person, a little girl, I've been the crowds on the grand boulevards of the capital cities of the West, I've been the serene Buddha of the East, whose calm and wisdom we envy. I've known honor and dishonor, enthusiasm and exhaustion. ...I've been the sun and the moon, and everything because life is not enough.

  Antonio Tabucchi

  Girl, Moon, Night

  14 Copy quote

• But when we face the great questions about gravitation Does it require time? Is it polar to the 'outside of the universe' or to anything? Has it any reference to electricity? or does it stand on the very foundation of matter-mass or inertia? then we feel the need of tests, whether they be comets or nebulae or laboratory experiments or bold questions as to the truth of received opinions.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Science, Doe, Needs

  7 Copy quote

• [Only by] the good influence of our conduct may we bring salvation in human affairs; or like a fatal comet we may bring destruction in our train.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  May, Influence, Affair

  Attributed to Desiderius Erasmus by Senator J. William Fulbright, "In Need of a Consensus," Penrose Memorial Lecture, delivered to the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 20, 1961.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• With the collision of the Shoemaker comet into Jupiter, the era of uniformitarian orthodoxy must come to an end. Minds that have been closed for nearly half a millennium can now be opened to see what really has happened to our planet in the past -- and that past is not as distant as we might suppose.

  Vine Deloria Jr.

  Past, Mind, Jupiter

  11 Copy quote