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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• It's hard to kill a creature once it lets you see its consciousness.

  Carl Sagan

  Consciousness, Creatures, Hard

  Carl Sagan (1997). “Contact”, p.147, Simon and Schuster

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• Humans are very good at dreaming, although you'd never know it from your television.

  Carl Sagan

  Dream, Television, Very Good

  "Contact". Book by Carl Sagan. Chapter 20, p. 359, 1985.

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• The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

  Stanley Kubrick

  Light, Darkness, Meaning Of Life

  Interview with Eric Nordern, Playboy, September 1968.

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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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• The auditory perception is not sufficient for our knowledge of the world; it does not have vastness.

  Robert Delaunay

  Perception, Doe, World

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• It may be -- I hope it is -- redemption to guess and perhaps perceive that the universe, the hell which we see for all its beauty, vastness, majesty, is only part of a whole which is quite unimaginable.

  William Golding

  Majesty, Redemption, May

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• When many astronauts go to space, they see the insignificant size of the earth and vastness of space, and they become very religious, because they have seen the Signs of Allah.

  Cat Stevens

  Religious, Space, Size

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• It would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men, for if two sexes are quite inadequate, considering the vastness and variety of the world, how should we manage with one only? Ought not education to bring out and fortify the differences rather than the similarities?

  Virginia Woolf

  Sex, Men, Two

  Virginia Woolf, Morag Shiach (1998). “A Room of One's Own: And, Three Guineas”, p.114

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