quotations about the moon
The moon pull'd off her veil of light,
That hides her face by day from sight
(Mysterious veil, of brightness made,
That's both her lustre and her shade),
And in the lantern of the night,
With shining horns hung out her light.
SAMUEL BUTLER
Hudibras
The moon put forth a little diamond peak
No bigger than an unobserved star,
Or tiny point of fairy scymitar.
JOHN KEATS
Endymion
The Moon arose: she shone upon the lake,
Which lay one smooth expanse of silver light;
She shone upon the hills and rocks, and cast
Upon their hollows and their hidden glens
A blacker depth of shade.
ROBERT SOUTHEY
Madoc in Wales
The moon at its rising and setting appears much larger than when high up in the sky. This is, however, a mere erroneous judgment; for when we come to measure its diameter, so far from finding our conclusion borne out by fact, we actually find it to measure materially less.
G. P. MORRIS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Her antiquity in preceding and surviving succeeding tellurian generations: her nocturnal predominance: her satellitic dependence: her luminary reflection: her constancy under all her phases, rising and setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning: the forced invariability of her aspect: her indeterminate response to inaffirmative interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent waters: her power to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability of her visage: the terribility of her isolated dominant resplendent propinquity: her omens of tempest and of calm: the stimulation of her light, her motion and her presence: the admonition of her craters, her arid seas, her silence: her splendour, when visible: her attraction, when invisible.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
We are going to the moon that is not very far. Man has so much farther to go within himself.
ANAÏS NIN
The Diary of Anaïs Nin
Go out of the house to see the moon, and 'tis mere tinsel: it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary journey.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Nature
Although the semicircle of the Moon is placed above the circle of the Sun and would appear to be superior, nevertheless we know that the Sun is ruler and King. We see that the Moon in her shape and her proximity rivals the Sun with her grandeur, which is apparent to ordinary men, yet the face, or a semi-sphere of the Moon, always reflects the light of the Sun.
JOHN DEE
Monas Hieroglyphica
Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
ANTON CHEKHOV
attributed, The Quotable Book Lover
Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
MARK TWAIN
The Prince and the Pauper
At night, the moon, a pregnant woman, walks cautiously over the slippery heavens.
RICHARD ALDINGTON
"London"
When the storm is over and night falls and the moon is out in all its glory and all you're left with is the rhythm of the sea, of the waves, you know what God intended for the human race, you know what paradise is.
HAROLD PINTER
Party Time
If the Sun and Moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Auguries of Innocence
The moving Moon went up the sky,
And nowhere did abide;
Softly she was going up,
And a star or two beside.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
The moon of Rome, chaste as the icicle
That's curded by the frost from purest snow.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Coriolanus
We may even speak of a metaphysics of the moon, in the sense of a consistent system of "truths" relating to the mode of being peculiar to living creatures, to everything in the cosmos that shares in life, that is, in becoming, growth and waning, death and resurrection.
MIRCEA ELIADE
The Sacred and the Profane
We were obsessed with the moon and whether we could one day visit it. The day we finally walked on it was celebrated worldwide as perhaps man's greatest achievement. But it was while we were there, gathering rocks from the moon's desolate landscape, that we looked up and caught a glimpse of just how incredible our own planet was. Its singular astonishing beauty. We called her Mother Earth. Because she gave birth to us, and then we sucked her dry.
JON STEWART
Earth (The Book): A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race
Moon!
Moon!
I am prone before you.
Pity me,
And drench me in loneliness.
AMY LOWELL
"On a Certain Critic"
The moon had been observing the earth close-up longer than anyone. It must have witnessed all of the phenomena occurring--and all of the acts carried out--on this earth. But the moon remained silent; it told no stories. All it did was embrace the heavy past with cool, measured detachment. On the moon there was neither air nor wind. Its vacuum was perfect for preserving memories unscathed. No one could unlock the heart of the moon.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
1Q84
I know not that there is anything in nature more soothing to the mind than the contemplations of the moon, sailing, like some planetary bark, amidst a sea of bright azure.
W. G. SIMMS
attributed, Day's Collacon