quotations about the moon
Moonlight is a great beautifier, and especially of all that has been touched by the finger of decay, from a palace to a woman. It softens what is harsh, renders fairer what is fair, and disposes the mind to a tender melancholy in harmony with all around.
LADY BLESSINGTON
The Idler in Italy
The moon put forth a little diamond peak
No bigger than an unobserved star,
Or tiny point of fairy scymitar.
JOHN KEATS
Endymion
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
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
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
Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
MARK TWAIN
The Prince and the Pauper
Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
ANTON CHEKHOV
attributed, The Quotable Book Lover
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
The moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places.
MARY SHELLEY
Frankenstein
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
The myriads of mankind depart--they die,
They leave no vestige that they once have been,
But thou remain'st forever in the sky,
Renewing thy existence--night's fair queen!
DUGALD MOORE
"To the Moon"
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
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
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
The moon, which was in her last quarter and was inclining all to one side, seemed fainting in the midst of space, so weak that she was unable to wane, forced to stay up yonder, seized and paralyzed by the severity of the weather. She shed a cold, mournful light over the world, that dying and wan light which she gives us every month, at the end of her period.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
"Love: Three Pages from a Sportsman's Book"
The moon, our own, earthly moon is bitterly lonely, because it is alone in the sky, always alone, and there is no one to turn to, no one to turn to it. All it can do is ache across the weightless airy ice, across thousands of versts, toward those who are equally lonely on earth, and listen to the endless howling of dogs.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
"A Story About the Most Important Thing", The Dragon
The moon will press her dimpled cheek
Against the bosom of the sky,
And, as we dreamed once, seem to speak
To silver clouds which drift them by.
HENRY ABBEY
"May Dreams"
There's no point in saving the world if it means losing the moon.
TOM ROBBINS
Still Life with Woodpecker
I loved thee, gentle moon! thou wert to me
Brother and sister and companion--all
My kin, while standing on the silent lea
I watch'd thy glory in the starry hall;
And thy white beams like shower of diamonds fall
Upon the azure desert; lovely light,
Sure thou wert fashion'd, when Sin's fatal pall
Was flung o'er earth, to welcome her flight
The lone and weary soul that journeys through the night.
DUGALD MOORE
"To the Moon"