Quotes About Firmament

“Thoughts are free and subject to no rule. On them rests the freedom of man, and they tower above the light of nature ... create a new heaven, a new firmament, a new source of energy from which new arts flow.”

— Paracelsus

“Ah; but my courage fails me, and my heart is sick within me! -Lord, take pity on the Christian who doubts, on the skeptic who would fain believe, on the galley-slave of life who puts to sea alone, in the darkness of night, beneath a firmament illumined no longer by the consoling beacon-fires of the ancient hope.”

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

“Like a tide-race, the waves of human mediocrity are rising to the heavens and will engulf this refuge, for I am opening the flood-gates myself, against my will. Ah! but my courage fails me and my heart is sick within me!
Lord, take pity on the Christian who doubts, on the unbeliever who would fain believe, on the galley-slave of life who puts out to sea alone, in the night, beneath a firmament no longer lit by the consoling beacon-fires of the ancient hope!
(A Rebours, final words)”

— Joris-Karl Huysmans

“In the firmament of science Mayer and Joule constitute a double star, the light of each being in a certain sense complementary to that of the other.”

— John Tyndall

“I'm glad it was Dylan who laughed first. Once he did I felt myself unravel. I giggled and he giggled. We were the experiment. And then there came a time when we weren't laughing. When we locked eyes and breathed each other's breath. Ohmystars! The firmament shakes and then everything settles. In the end everything settles.”

— Simmone Howell

“The claim in Psalms that "the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament proclaims His works" (Psalms 19:2) is not a mere metaphor. The study of nature, even with all its intellectual rigor, is filled with spiritual wonder.”

— Gerald Schroeder

“So all night long the storm roared on:
The morning broke without a sun;
In tiny spherule traced with lines
Of Nature's geometric signs,
In starry flake, and pellicle,
All day the hoary meteor fell;
And, when the second morning shone,
We looked upon a world unknown,
On nothing we could call our own.
Around the glistening wonder bent
The blue walls of the firmament,
No cloud above, no earth below,
A universe of sky and snow!”

— John Greenleaf Whittier

“The most formidable chains are forged from beliefs. Ah, beliefs! Beliefs tear out the eyes and leave us blind and groping in the dark. If I believe in one proposition, I have become locked behind the door of that belief, and all other doors to learning and freedom, although standing open and waiting for me to enter, are now closed to me. If I believe in one God, one religion, yes, if I believe in God at all, if I have closed my mind to magic, to spirit, to salvation, to the unknown dimension that exist in the firmament, I have plunged my mind into slavery. Test all beliefs. Distrust all beliefs.”

— Gerry Spence

“When I confront a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is Thou and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light.”

— Martin Buber

“The Cloud Maze.
An Excursion in Dimension A Climb Though the Firmament; There Is No Beginning There Is No End
Enter Where You Please
Leave When You Wish
Have No Fear of Falling”

— Erin Morgenstern

“Here is just a short glimpse into the elaborate construction of this ANE author: 1 Enoch 18:1-5 And I saw the storerooms of all the winds and saw how with them he has embroidered all creation as well as the foundations of the earth. I saw the cornerstone of the earth; I saw the four winds which bear the earth as well as the firmament of heaven. I saw how the winds ride the heights of heaven and stand between heaven and earth: These are the very pillars of heaven. I saw the winds which turn the heaven and cause the star to set-the sun as well as all the stars. I saw the souls carried by the clouds. I saw the path of the angels in the ultimate end of the earth, and the firmament of the heaven above.[82]”

— Brian Godawa

“The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man's insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.”

— Herman Melville

“It flamed like a star that leaping from the firmament sears the dark air with intolerable light.”

— J.R.R. Tolkien

“The splendors of the firmament of time
May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not;
Like stars to their appointed height they climb
And death is a low mist which cannot blot
The brightness it may veil.”

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

“Belief sloshes around in the firmament like lumps of clay spiralling into a potter's wheel. That's how gods get created, for example. They clearly must be created by their own believers, because a brief resume of the lives of most gods suggests that their origins certainly couldn't be divine. They tend to do exactly the things people would do if only they could, especially when it comes to nymphs, golden showers, and the smiting of your enemies.”

— Terry Pratchett

“By undue profundity, we perplex and enfeeble thought; and it is possible to make even Venus herself vanish from the firmament by a scrutiny too sustained, too concentrated, or too direct.
The Murders in the Rue Morgue”

— Edgar Allan Poe

“Indian business women like Indra Nooyi, Chanda Kochhar, Naina Lal Kidwai, Shikha Sharma, Swati Piramal, Anu Agha, Swati Piramal, Sulajja Firodia Motwani and Zia Mody have put India on the global firmament.”

— Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

“I've forgotten more about bad putting than all the lousy putters in the firmament combined. My mind has been twisted into an incurable, disturbing venue of bad speed and inadequate line. I just want to go out and not feel like I'm putting a Rubik's Cube with a flimsy piece of rope.”

— Gary McCord

“The stars of eternal truth and right have always shone in the firmament of human understanding. The process of bringing them down to earth, remolding them into practical forms, imbuing them with vitality, and then making use of them, has been a long one.”

— Bertha Von Suttner

“Many people don't know that New Jersey is a fertile breeding ground for writers, some of them quite renowned. And I would wager that most would be truly startled to learn that the star in the Jersey firmament is - drum roll here - Newark.”

— Sharon Kay Penman

“I conclude, therefore, that this star is not some kind of comet or a fiery meteor ... but that it is a star shining in the firmament itself one that has never previously been seen before our time, in any age since the beginning of the world.”

— Tycho Brahe

“And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.”

— Anonymous.

“Light from the darkness. ge.1.5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. ge.1.6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. ge.1.7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the”

— Anonymous.

“THE MOON was but a chin of gold
A night or two ago,
And now she turns her perfect face
Upon the world below.
Her forehead is of amplest blond;
Her cheek like beryl stone;
Her eye unto the summer dew
The likest I have known.
Her lips of amber never part;
But what must be the smile
Upon her friend she could bestow
Were such her silver will!
And what a privilege to be
But the remotest star!
For certainly her way might pass
Beside your twinkling door.
Her bonnet is the firmament,
The universe her shoe,
The stars the trinkets at her belt,
Her dimities of blue.”

— Emily Dickinson

“They had become a fixed star in the shifting firmament of the high school's relationships, the acknowledged Romeo and Juliet. And she knew with sudden hatefulness that there was one couple like them in every white suburban high school in America.”

— Stephen King

“I'm happy with my place in the firmament here. I like to produce movies and that's where I want to be.”

— Joel Silver

“But what shall we say, when an individual discovers a revelation addressed to himself alone, on the same vast sheet of record. In such a case, it could only be the symptom of a highly disordered mental state, when a man, rendered morbidly self-contemplative by long, intense, and secret pain, had extended his egotism over the whole expanse of nature, until the firmament itself should appear no more than a fitting page for his soul's history and fate.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

“Success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblances to merit ... They confound the brilliance of the firmament with the star-shaped footprints of a duck in the mud.”

— Victor Hugo

“Large, heavy, ragged black clouds hung like crape hammocks beneath the starry cope of the night. You would have said that they were the cobwebs of the firmament.”

— Victor Hugo

“I think of winter, which is nothing but a rift in the firmament through which the winds break loose, the shreds of cloud over the hilltops in the new blue of the morning
and dew-drops, those false pearls, and frost, that beauty powder, and mankind in disarray and events out of joint, and so many spots on the sun and so many craters in the moon and so much wretchedness everywhere
when I think of all this I can't help feeling that God is not rich. He has the appearance of riches, certainly, but I can feel his embarrassment. He gives us a revolution the way a bankrupt merchant gives a ball. We must not judge any god by appearances. I see a shoddy universe beyond that splendour of the sky. Creation itself is bankrupt, and that's why I'm a malcontent.”

— Victor Hugo

“We have reached the open sea, with some charts; and the firmament.”

— Dorothy Dunnett

“Restaurants and chefs have become followed by such a broad swath of the public, in a way that used to be reserved for sports stars, movie stars, and theater actors. Restaurants are in the firmament of today's common culture.”

— Danny Meyer

“There was a commotion in the firmament, and the smallest of all the stars in the Milky Way screamed out: Now, Peter!”

— J.M. Barrie

“Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaquaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown but time will tell and suffers like the divine Miranda with those who for reasons unknown but time will tell are plunged into torment plunged into fire whose fire flames if that continues and who can doubt it will fire the firmament that is to say blast hell to heaven so blue still and calm so calm with a calm which even though intermittent is better than nothing but not so fast and considering what is more that as a result of the labors left unfinished”

— Samuel Beckett

“Nighttown, because the Pit's inverted, and the bottom of its bowl touches the sky, the sky that Nighttown never sees, sweating under its own firmament of acrylic resin, up where the Lo Teks crouch in the dark like gargoyles,”

— William Gibson

“The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes forth like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and like a strong man runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them; and there is nothing hid from its heat. (Ps 19:1-6)”

— J. Budziszewski

“If I were asked to name, in one word, the pole star round which the mathematical firmament revolves, the central idea which pervades the whole corpus of mathematical doctrine, I should point to Continuity as contained in our notions of space, and say, it is this, it is this!”

— James Joseph Sylvester

“Today the brightest light in the Scottish political firmament has gone out.”

— Jim Sillars

“Just as the line of astronomical thinkers from Copernicus to Newton had destroyed the old astronomy, in which the earth was the center, and the Almighty sitting above the firmament the agent in moving the heavenly bodies about it with his own hands, so now a race of biological thinkers had destroyed the old idea of a Creator minutely contriving and fashioning all animals to suit the needs and purposes of man.”

— Andrew Dickson White

“But the context of religion is a great background for doing science. In the words of Psalm 19, 'The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork'. Thus scientific research is a worshipful act, in that it reveals more of the wonders of God's creation.”

— Arthur Leonard Schawlow

“If the Word of God is living and powerful, and if the Lord does all things whatsoever he wills; if he said, "Let there be light", and it happened; if he said, "let there be a firmament", and it happened; ... if finally the Word of God himself willingly became man and made flesh for himself out of the most pure and undefiled blood of the holy and ever Virgin, why should he not be capable of making bread his Body and wine and water his Blood? ... God said, "This is my Body", and "This is my Blood."”

— John Of Damascus

“Triumphant hours are the Lark's
Who circles skywards from his home each day:
World's early riser, with bubbling golden song,
Towards the firmament, guardian of April's gate.”

— Dafydd Ap Gwilym

“New constellations of truth are daily discovered in the firmament of knowledge, and new stars are daily shining forth in each constellation.”

— Horace Mann

“But the day is spent;
And stars are kindling in the firmament,
To us how silent
though like ours, perchance,
Busy and full of life and circumstance.”

— Samuel Rogers

“This is the one and only firmament; therefore it is the absolute world. There is no other world. The circle is complete. I am living in Eternity. The ways of this world are the ways of Heaven.”

— Allen Ginsberg

“My Faith is larger than the Hills- So when the Hills decay- My Faith must take the Purple Wheel To show the Sun the way- 'Tis first He steps upon the Vane- And then - upon the Hill- And then abroad the World He go To do His Golden Will- And if His Yellow feet should miss- The Bird would not arise- The Flowers would slumber on their Stems- No Bells have Paradise- How dare I, therefore, stint a faith On which so vast depends- Lest Firmament should fail for me- The Rivet in the Bands”

— Emily Dickinson

“The spacious firmament on high,
And all the blue ethereal sky,
And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great Original proclaim.”

— Joseph Addison

“With a clear sky, a bright sun, and a gentle breeze, you will have friends in plenty; but let fortune frown, and the firmament be overcast, and then your friends will prove like the strings of the lute, of which you will tighten ten before you find one that will bear the stretch and keep the pitch.”

— Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

“Spake full well, in language quaint and olden, One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine, When he called the flowers, so blue and golden, Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“If we cherish the virtues and the principles of our fathers, Heaven will assist us to carry on the work of human liberty and human happiness. Auspicious omens cheer us. Great examples are before us. Our own firmament now shines brightly upon our path.”

— Daniel Webster