c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The teachings of Buddha are eternal, but even then Buddha did not proclaim them to be infallible. The religion of Buddha has the capacity to change according to times, a quality which no other religion can claim to have...Now what is the basis of Buddhism? If you study carefully, you will see that Buddhism is based on reason. There is an element of flexibility inherent in it, which is not found in any other religion.
— B.R. Ambedkar, The Buddha and His Dhamma: A Critical Edition
The present moment is the substance with which the future is made. Therefore, the best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment. What else can you do?
— Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Mindful Living: How to Bring Love, Compassion, and Inner Peace Into Your Daily Life
Love has no meaning without understanding
— Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Mindful Living: How to Bring Love, Compassion, and Inner Peace Into Your Daily Life
Buddha is our inherent nature—our buddha nature—and what that means is that if you’re going to grow up fully, the way that it happens is that you begin to connect with the intelligence that you already have. It’s not like some intelligence that’s going to be transplanted into you. If you’re going to be fully mature, you will no longer be imprisoned in the childhood feeling that you always need to protect yourself or shield yourself because things are too harsh. If you’re going to be a grown-up—which I would define as being completely at home in your world no matter how difficult the situation—it’s because you will allow something that’s already in you to be nurtured. You allow it to grow, you allow it to come out, instead of all the time shielding it and protecting it and keeping it buried. Someone once told me, “When you feel afraid, that’s ‘fearful buddha.’” That could be applied to whatever you feel. Maybe anger is your thing. You just go out of control and you see red, and the next thing you know you’re yelling or throwing something or hitting someone. At that time, begin to accept the fact that that’s “enraged buddha.” If you feel jealous, that’s “jealous buddha.” If you have indigestion, that’s “buddha with heartburn.” If you’re happy, “happy buddha”; if bored, “bored buddha.” In other words, anything that you can experience or think is worthy of compassion; anything you could think or feel is worthy of appreciation.
— Pema Chödrön, Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living
There are some among the so-called elite who are overbearing and arrogant. I want to foster leaders, not elitists.
— Daisaku Ikeda, Discussions on Youth
When happiness is liked by me and others equally, what is so special about me that I should strive after happiness only for myself?
— Śāntideva
To become enlightened is not just to slip into some disconnected euphoria, an oceanic feeling of mystic oneness apart from ordinary reality. It is not even to come up with a solution, a sort of formula to control reality. Rather, it is an experience of release from all compulsions and sufferings, combined with a precise awareness of any relevent subject of knowledge. Having attained enlightenment one knows everything that matters, and the precise nature of all that is.
— Robert A.F. Thurman
On the philosophical level, both Buddhism and modern science share a deep suspicion of any notion of absolutes, whether conceptualize as a transcendent being, as an eternal, unchanging principle such as soul, or as a fundamental substratum of reality. ... In the Buddhist investigation of reality, at least in principle, empirical evidence should triumph over scriptural authority, no matter how deeply venerated a scripture may be. ~ 14th Dalai Lama in his talk to the Society for Neuroscience in 2005 in Washington.
— Dalai Lama XIV
Praise and blame, gain and loss, pleasure and pain, fame and disripute, these are just the worldly winds of existence.
— T. Scott McLeod
We are participatory beings who inhabit a participatory reality, seeking relationships that enhance our sense of what it means to be alive. In terms of dharma practice, a true friend is more than just someone with whom we share common values and who accepts us for what we are. Such a friend is someone with whom we share common values and who accepts us for what we are. Such a friend is someone whom we can trust to refine our understanding of what it means to live, who can guide us when we’re lost and help us find the way along a path, who can assuage our anguish through the reassurance of his or her presence.
— Stephen Batchelor, Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening
When fear and suffering are disliked by me and others equally what is so special about me that I protect myself and not the other?
— Śāntideva
Buddha wrote a code which he said would be useful to guide men in darkness, but he never claimed to be the Light of the world. Buddhism was born with a disgust for the world, when a prince's son deserted his wife and child, turning from the pleasures of existence to the problems of existence. Burnt by the fires of the world, and already weary with it, Buddha turned to ethics.
— Fulton J. Sheen, Life of Christ
Whatever is impermanent is dukkha’ (Yad aniccaṃ taṃ dukkhaṃ).
— Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught: Revised and Expanded Edition with Texts from Suttas and Dhammapada
O Brahmana, it is just like a mountain river, flowing far and swift, taking everything along with it; there is no moment, no instant, no second when it stops flowing, but goes on flowing and continuing. So Brahmana, is human life, like a mountain river." As Buddha told Ratthpala : "The world is a continuous flux and is impermanent.
— Walpola Ruhula
Birth is okay and death is okay, if we know that they are only concepts in our mind. Reality transcends both birth and death.
— Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation
TreeIt is foolishto let a young redwoodgrow next to a house.Even in this one lifetime,you will have to choose.That great calm being,this clutter of soup pots and books--Already the first branch-tips brush at the window.Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
— Jane Hirshfield
Your body is like a dew-drop on the morning grass, your life is as brief as a flash of lightning. Momentary and vain, it is lost in a moment. (From 'Fukan zazengi')
— Dōgen
The prospect of future lives in remote heavens as a compensation for the inadequacy of our present lives is a bad tradeoff for losing out on the present.
— Francis Harold Cook, How to Raise an Ox: Zen Practice as Taught in Zen Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, Including Ten Newly Translated Essays
Two ideas are psychologically deep-rooted in man: self-protection and self-preservation. For self-protection man has created God, on whom he depends for his own protection, safety and security, just as a child depends on its parent. For self-preservation man has conceived the idea of an immortal Soul or Atman, which will live eternally. In his ignorance, weakness, fear, and desire, man needs these two things to console himself. Hence he clings to them deeply and fanatically.
— Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught: Revised and Expanded Edition with Texts from Suttas and Dhammapada
The Buddha is found in other people - even the ones we do not like very much.
— Francis Harold Cook, How to Raise an Ox: Zen Practice as Taught in Zen Master Dogen's Shobogenzo, Including Ten Newly Translated Essays
It is not a Buddhist approach to say that if everyone practiced Buddhism, the world would be a better place. Wars and oppression begin from this kind of thinking.
— Sulak Sivaraksa, Seeds of Peace: A Buddhist Vision for Renewing Society
The means and the results, the good and the bad, are within all of us who are aware and care.
— Suman Jyoty Bhante
It is better to know oneself than know to others. So not find fault others see first in yourself. When one experiences truth, the madness of finding fault with others disappears.
— Suman Jyoty Bhante
When all that’s left of us is the pure untainted consciousness without form, we’ll know what it means when the last human breath expires.
— Zeena Schreck
Before I had studied Chan for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and rivers as rivers. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and rivers are not rivers. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it's just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and rivers once again as rivers.
— Qingyuan Weixin
The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.
— Carl Sagan, Cosmos
I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend...I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don't last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend...
— Neil Gaiman, Brief Lives
We all shine on...like the moon and the stars and the sun...we all shine on...come on and on and on...
— John Lennon
All we ever see of stars are their old photographs.
— Alan Moore, Watchmen
I..." He struggled to answer. "When everything was quiet, I went up to the corridor and the curtain in the livingroom was open just a crack... I could see outside. I watched, only for a few seconds." He had not seen the outside world for twenty-two months.There was no anger or reproach.It was Papa who spoke.How did it look?"Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment. "There were stars," he said. "They burned by eyes.
— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?""Yes.""All like ours?""I don't know, but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound - a few blighted.""Which do we live on - a splendid one or a blighted one?""A blighted one.
— Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D'Urbervilles
What I really want to tell him is to pick up that baby of his and hold her tight, to set the moon on the edge of her crib and to hang her name up in the stars.
— Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper
A few years have gone and come around when we were sittin' at our favorite spot in town and you looked at me, got down on one knee. Take me back to the time when we walked down the aisle; the whole town came and our mammas cried. And you said "I do.", and I did, too. Take me home where we met so many years before; we'll rock our babies on the very front porch. After all this time, you and I. And I'll be eighty-seven you'll be eighty-nine, I'll still look at you like the stars that shine. In the sky. Oh, my my my.
— Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift
I know that I am mortal by nature, and ephemeral; but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies I no longer touch the earth with my feet: I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia
— Ptolemy, Ptolemy's Almagest
Before we invented civilization our ancestors lived mainly in the open out under the sky. Before we devised artificial lights and atmospheric pollution and modern forms of nocturnal entertainment we watched the stars. There were practical calendar reasons of course but there was more to it than that. Even today the most jaded city dweller can be unexpectedly moved upon encountering a clear night sky studded with thousands of twinkling stars. When it happens to me after all these years it still takes my breath away.
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
Caddy got the box and set it on the floor and opened it. It was full of stars. When I was still, they were still. When I moved, they glinted and sparkled. I hushed.
— William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Underground, the stars are legend.
— Catherine Fisher, Incarceron
There are stars in the night sky that look brighter than the others, and when you look at them through a telescope you realize you are looking at twins. The two stars rotate around each other, sometimes taking nearly a hundred years to do it. They create so much gravitational pull there's no room around for anything else. You might see a blue star, for example, and realize only later that it has a white dwarf as a companion - that first one shines so bright, by the time you notice the second one, it's too late.
— Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper
Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the earth.
— Ptolemy
One thousand brilliant stars punched holes in my consciousness, pricking me with longing. I could stare at the stars for hours, their infinite number and depth pulling me into a part of myself that I ignored during the day.
— Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver
Per aspera ad astra, Papa,' I whispered. Through hardship to the stars.
— Ruta Sepetys, Salt to the Sea
Stars, everywhere. So many stars that I could not for the life meunderstand how the sky could contain them all yet be so black.
— Peter Watts, Blindsight
Stars, I have seen them fall,But when they drop and dieNo star is lost at allFrom all the star-sown sky.The toil of all that beHelps not the primal fault;It rains into the seaAnd still the sea is salt.
— A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad
If love wants you; if you've been melted down to stars, you will love with lungs and gills; with feathers and scales; with warm blood and cold.
— Anne Michaels
The stars will go out before I forget you, Mark Blackthorn.
— Cassandra Clare
Pick a flower on Earth and you move the farthest star.
— Paul A.M. Dirac
Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment.'There were stars,' He said. 'They burned my eyes.’...from a Himmel street window, he wrote, the stars set fire to my eyes.
— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
We live in a universe devoted to the creation, and eradication, of awareness. Augustus Waters did not die after a lengthy battle with cancer. He died after a lengthy battle with human consciousness, a victim - as you will be - of the universe's need to make and unmake all that is possible.
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
Putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun.
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
The stars look like they're so close, you could reach out and touch them. But you can't. Sometimes things look a lot closer than they are.
— Kami Garcia, Beautiful Darkness
Every time you look up at the stars, it’s like opening a door. You could be anyone, anywhere. You could be yourself at any moment in your life. You open that door and you realize you’re the same person under the same stars. Camping out in the backyard with your best friend, eleven years old. Sixteen, driving alone, stopping at the edge of the city, looking up at the same stars. Walking a wooded path, kissing in the moonlight, look up and you’re eleven again. Chasing cats in a tiny town, you’re eleven again, you’re sixteen again. You’re in a rowboat. You’re staring out the back of a car. Out here where the world begins and ends, it’s like nothing ever stops happening.
— Bryan Lee O'Malley, Lost at Sea
The clouds were disappearing rapidly, leaving the stars to die. The night dried up.
— André Breton, The Magnetic Fields
Maybe one day the smears of paint Harley left throughout Godspeed will fade, and maybe the stars never will, but i'd rather have Harley's colors.
— Beth Revis, A Million Suns
Even the most beautiful of the starsare taken for grantednight after night.
— Veronika Jensen
Why would the stars want to look down on such as me?
— George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords: Steel and Snow
And I look at Harley, and the billions of stars are in his eyes, and he's drinking them up, pouring them into his soul.
— Beth Revis, Across the Universe
The Love that moves the sun and the other stars.
— Dante Alighieri, Paradiso
It was a lone tree burning on the desert. A heraldic tree that the passing storm had left afire. The solitary pilgrim drawn up before it had traveled far to be here and he knelt in the hot sand and held his numbed hands out while all about in that circle attended companies of lesser auxiliaries routed forth into the inordinate day, small owls that crouched silently and stood from foot to foot and tarantulas and solpugas and vinegarroons and the vicious mygale spiders and beaded lizards with mouths black as a chowdog's, deadly to man, and the little desert basilisks that jet blood from their eyes and the small sandvipers like seemly gods, silent and the same, in Jeda, in Babylon. A constellation of ignited eyes that edged the ring of light all bound in a precarious truce before this torch whose brightness had set back the stars in their sockets.
— Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
Those shining stars, he liked to point out, were one of the special treats for people like us who lived out in the wilderness. Rich city folks, he'd say, lived in fancy apartments, but their air was so polluted they couldn't even see the stars. We'd have to be out of our minds to want to trade places with any of them.
— Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle
Some people are born with tornadoes in their lives, but constellations in their eyes. Other people are born with stars at their feet, but their souls are lost at sea.
— Nikita Gill
Love is a selfless service to mankind like a showcase done by the twinkling stars in beautiful nightly sky.
— Santosh Kalwar
My mother always says when you fight destiny, destiny fights back. Some things, they're just written in the stars. You can try but you can never escape what's meant to be.
— Aisha Saeed, Written in the Stars
His grandmother had taught him that there was no such thing as coincidence. There are millions of people in this world, she had told him, and the spirits will see that most of them, you never have to meet. But there are one or two that you are tied to, and spirits will cross you back and forth, threading so many knots until they catch and you finally get it right.
— Jodi Picoult
How will the ships navigatewithout stars? And then he remembered that the stars weredead, long dead, and the light they shed was not to be trusted,was false, if not an outright lie, and in any case was inadequate,unequal to its task, which was to illuminate the evil that men did.
— Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis
I was wedded to all the stars of the sky.There was not a single star left, and I married every one of them with great spiritual pleasure. Then I married the moon.
— Ibn Arabi
Let me peer out at the worldthrough your lens. (Maybe I'll shudder,or gasp, or tilt my head in a question.)Let me see how your blueis my turquoise and my orangeis your gold. Suddenly binarystars, we have startlinggravity. Let's comparescintillation - let's sharestarlight.
— Naomi Shihab Nye, Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets under 25
When its dark enough you can see the stars.
— Charles A. Beard
This is one of the cruelties of the theatre of life
—  we all think of ourselves as stars and rarely recognize it when we are indeed mere supporting characters or even supernumeraries.
He lay on his back in his blankets and looked our where the quartermoon lay cocked over the heel of the mountains. In the false blue dawn the Pleiades seemed to be rising up into the darkness above the world and dragging all the stars away, the great diamond of Orion and Cepella and the signature of Cassiopeia all rising up through the phosphorous dark like a sea-net. He lay a long time listening to the others breathing in their sleep while he contemplated the wildness about him, the wildness within.
— Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
The spaces between stars are where the work of the universe is done.
— Ivan Doig, This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind
For what's the use of talking with a man who has a disease and thinks about the stars?
— Bertolt Brecht
Then he went out without touching anything and put his arm around Ingeborg, and like that, with their arms around each other, they returned to the village while the whole past of the universe fell on their heads.
— Roberto Bolaño, 2666
Isn't it strange that all life can pretty much end, but the universe goes on as it is? No one else exists, but the moon keeps shining and the stars keep falling.
— Isabella Olivia Ellis, Love After The Gone
its like you said? i lead my people-"forth!" zifnab carried on enthusiastically! " out of eygpt! out of bondage! across the desert! pillar of fire-"desert?" lenthan looked anxious again. "fire? i thought we were going to the stars!"sorry. wrong script" zifnab said
— Margaret Weis, Elven Star
When I opened my eyes I saw nothing but the pool of nocturnal sky, for I was lying on my back with out-stretched arms, face to face with that hatchery of stars. Only half awake, still unaware that those depths were sky, having no roof between those depths and me, no branches to screen them, no root to cling to, I was seized with vertigo and felt myself as if flung forth and plunging downward like a diver.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars
Life is so complete that even when we are knocked on our backs, we have the best view of the stars.
— Laura Teresa Marquez
and everything burned in blue, everything a star
— Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets
He had always thought there was an answer to all life's mysteries in the stars, yet whenever he stared at them the answer slipped out of his grasp... But he had to think now, and he stared at the smoke-dimmed stars in the hope that they would help him, but all they did was go on shining.
— Bernard Cornwell, Sharpe's Triumph
They rarely discovered a star red as a distant crime or a star-fish.
— André Breton, The Magnetic Fields
Stars are like animals in the wild. We may see the young but never the actual birth, which is a veiled and secret event.
— Heinz R. Pagels
AESTHETICS OF INTEGRITYFor every star in the skySomeone is holding his ground.
— Kenneth Koch, The Collected Poems
Algol is the name of the winking demon star, Medusa of the skies; fair but deadly to look on, even for one who is already dying.Ah, the bright stars of the night.Almost they obliterate the clear white pain. A thousand stars shining in the ether; but no dazzling newcomer. And so little time left, so little time...Yet still two-faced Medusa laughs from behind the clouds, demanding homage. Homage, Medusa, or a sword, a blade sharper than death itself.The wind stirs. Night clouds obscure the universe. A lower music now, a different kind of death.No stars tonight, my love.No Selene.
— Elizabeth Redfern, The Music of the Spheres
I wish Italy would stop being a crybaby. I wish he would kick his bad habit of wanting to eat pasta everywhere. I wish he would stop getting a stomachache every time he ate geleto. I wish he would learn to throw a grenade properly. I wish his older brother would stop trying to punch me. I wish-"*babble babble babble*"Germany . . . That's impossible . . .
— Hidekaz Himaruya, Hetalia: Axis Powers, Vol. 2
Rose had the sort of eyes that manage perfectly well with things close by, but entirely blur out things far away. Because of this even the brightest stars had only appeared as silvery smudges in the darkness. In all her life, Rose had never properly seen a star.Tonight there was a sky full.Rose looked up, and it was like walking into a dark room and someone switching on the universe.
— Hilary McKay, Indigo's Star
How is it possible for one to own the stars?""To whom do they belong?" the businessman retorted, peevishly."I don't know. To nobody.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
There are more stars than there are people. Billions, Alan had said, and millions of them might have planets just as good as ours. Ever since I can remember, I’ve felt too big. But now I felt small. Too small. Too small to count. Every star is massive, but there are so many of them. How could anyone care about one star when there were so many spare? And what if stars were small? What if all the stars were just pixels? And earth was less than a pixel? What does that make us? And what does that make me? Not even dust. I felt tiny. For the first time in my life I felt too small.
— Frank Cottrell Boyce, Cosmic
There are landscapes in which we feel above us not sky but space. Something larger, deeper than sky is sensed, is seen, although in such settings the sky itself is invariably immense. There is a place between the cerebrum and the stars where sky stops and space commences, and should we find ourselves on a particular prairie or mountaintop at a particular hour, our relationship with sky thins and loosens while our connection to space becomes solid as bone.
— Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All
My night shall be remembered for a starThat outshone all the suns of all men's days
— Rupert Brooke, Great Lover
Look at the stars,” said Tim. “Don’t you ever wonder what they’re for?” The Night was an open book of constellations.“They’re for the same as everything else, “said Sam. They’re just for themselves.” The stars silently agreed.
— Toby Forward, Fireborn
Every second, another streak of silver glows: parentheses, exclamation points, commas--a whole grammar made of light, for words to hard to speak.
— Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper
The stars here and the ones there are each special for their own reason. You grew up looking at these, while I looked at mine. Now we’ve both looked at each of them together.
— Nyrae Dawn, Four Summers
Timing is easy to predict through the movement of the stars as they give the propensity of pure potential.
— Ambika Devi
At night in this part of the West the stars, as I had seen them in Wyoming, were as big as Roman Candles and as lonely as the Prince who's lost his ancestral home and journeys across the spaces trying to find it again, and knows he never will.
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
I will lose the habit of stars in the heavens, as frozen water loses the habit of snowflakes. I will take my frozen body, and give it to the young goats that they might graze it.
— Nichita Stănescu
Surely it is a great thing to increase the numerous host of fixed stars previously visible to the unaided vision, adding countless more which have never before been seen, exposing these plainly to the eye in numbers ten times exceeding the old and familiar stars.
— Galileo Galilei, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo
wherever you go,wherever you live, still the stars up there will remain the same, as they were when we were together.
— Jaymin Panchasara
The flames of the luau bonfire burned brightly. Sparks flew into the sky and disappeared before they reached the stars above. Near the horizon, the moon was large and round and flawless as porcelain.
— Victoria Kahler, Capturing the Sunset
Twilight was laying claim to the cité, and the sky was a deepening shade of lavender, spangled with stars and fleecy clouds the colour of plums.
— Sharon Kay Penman, Devil's Brood
In the tide of these wild thoughts we checked our fancy, remembering that only on the rare grains called planets can life gain foothold, and that all this wealth of restless jewels was but a waste of fire.
— Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker
Outside, the sky was clear, stars gleaming in its ebony vastness like celestial fireflies. It was bitterly cold, and Hywel's every breath trailed after him in pale puffs of smoke. The glazed snow crackled underfoot as he started towards the great hall.
— Sharon Kay Penman, Time and Chance
She wants her cup of stars.
— Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
I am skin, but underneath livesfire and stars and wild!
— Melody  Lee, Moon Gypsy
I would rather dance alone under the stars than spend a lifetime hiding behind the moon.
— Melody  Lee, Moon Gypsy
When I look up at Heaven,I see the souls of those who diedBeaming down at me,Wanting to scream: “I'm still alive!”,Wishing to scribble across the sapphire sky -Letters to their loved ones,But a million dark oceans stand between us,Between those who passed and the living,Between those of us still stuck below,And those who have crossed over the threshold of time -Where what seems like eternity to us,Is really only a few minutes to them.So you see, there is no reason to weep over the shining ones -For even though the space that separates us is limitless,The wall of time that divides us is only paper-thin.And one day, we shall all reunite with them,When our souls are released like fishBack into the vast shimmering seaTo shine together likeGlittering diamonds.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
If only we studied the stars as much as we study our own reflections.
— Kamand Kojouri
Any idea what the pattern is?” Dex asked“I’m not sure.” Something felt familiar, a shadow of an idea, not formed enough to make sense. She poured through her memories, scrounging for the clue she was missing. The pieces clicked. “Elementine.”“What’s the pattern?”“I don’t know, but I know Elementine is right.
— Shannon Messenger
A few stars were approaching and in their brightness I glimpsed a fragment of your vanished soul – cheerful and frivolous, unforgettable.
— Christian Bobin
You focus on a single star,” I explained, as I searched for my spot. “Then you spin around, staring at that one star, until you can’t stand anymore.” I started spinning to demonstrate. “Then you lie down to watch the stars spinning above you while your star remains still.
— Rebecca Donovan, Reason to Breathe
It took the mountain top, it seems to me now, to give me the sensation of independence. It was as if I'd discovered something I'd never tasted before in my short life. Or rediscovered it - for I associated it with the taste of water that came out of the well, accompanied with the ring of that long metal sleeve against the sides of the living mountain, as from deep down it was wound up to view brimming and streaming long drops behind it like bright stars on a ribbon. It thrilled me to drink from the common dipper. The coldness, the far, unseen, unheard springs of what was in my mouth now, the iron smell, all said mountain mountain mountain as I swallowed. Every swallow was making me a part of being here, sealing me in place, with my bare feet planted on the mountain and sprinkled with my rapturous spills. What I felt I'd come here to do was something on my own.
— Eudora Welty, On Writing
You focus on a singer star,” I explained, as I searched for my spot. “Then you spin around, staring at that one star, until you can’t stand anymore.” I started spinning to demonstrate. “Then you lie down to watch the stars spinning above you while your star remains still.
— Rebecca Donovan, Reason to Breathe
It's kind of sad , the brighter they burn the sooner they die. They're beautiful while they last
— Lilliana Anderson, 47 Things
Stars on the sky, stars on the ground. It's hard to tell where the sky ends and the earth begins.
— Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places
The good things you do for others when nobody sees you make you a real star in the sky, a shining noble star beyond reach!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
My love, lie down beside me.Let us gaze at the stars above.Wonder with meAt how we came to be.Hold me now and for all eternity
— Lily G. Blunt, Let Your Heart Decide
You could rattle the stars,' she whispered. 'You could do anything, if only you dared.
— Sarah J. Maas
Pain and betrayal and then nothingness. That's the death and she's almost welcoming it.
— M.C. Frank, No Ordinary Star
I am made of poetry and other things that people don't really care about at all.
— Karishma Magvani
You and I, your mother, Ahlam, we are from up there,' my father continued. 'We come from the stunning stars. We were just born in the wrong place. We were meant to live on another planet. The people who come to the desert are those who know this, deep inside of them, we are from up there. From far, far away.
— Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora
I don't think I'm from this galaxy at all. I believe I came from the Andromeda galaxy, not so far, but far enough. Maybe that's why I'm an outcast.' He drew the spiral of Andromeda close to the Milky Way, almost touching. Then he pointed to Andromeda in the night sky above us.'Maybe that's where I'm from too,' my father said. We could still see the stars.
— Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora
There is no moon. The stars have risen and fallen and given way to a new spread, to the smeared heart of our Milky Way.
— Hannah Lillith Assadi, Sonora
Love can be found mainly amongst stars
— Will Advise
I rocketed a commanding finger to the heavens and it rained stardust upon our young heads.
— K.B. Ezzell, Elysium
I wrapped my fingers around the first light I saw and felt all at once so happy and so sad and so free. My hand was cold somehow as I lifted the tiny star out of the water and brought its trembling, burning form to my face. I kissed it gently and laughed like a child as my face seemed to become angelic for a few moments. The star laughed back at me in little sweet notes, and I released it back to the sea. I can still feel the star in my hands to this day. You can have your noctiluca scintillans, your petty protists in the sea. I prefer to sail among the stars.
— K.B. Ezzell, Elysium
They forget that love is not a science but an inherent state of mind; they forget that sex is practiced by animals without textbooks and that it is not such a secret that requires a complete science, courses and special training. And so impotent, with artificial stars on the ceilings of their rooms, they become the main teachers on the way to the stars.
— Dejan Stojanovic, Serbian Satire and Aphorisms
Everything is alive, everything is in motion, everything corresponds; the magnetic rays that emanate from me or from others flow directly through the infinite chain of creation whose transparent network is in continuous communication with the planets and the stars. A captive here on earth for the moment, I commune with the chorus of stars and they join in my sorrows and joys.
— Gérard de Nerval, Selected Writings
If you had stars inside your brain cells, you'd probably understand what I am talking about.
— Ernest Hemingway, The Complete Short Stories
I believe the stars align so souls can find one another. Whether they are meant to be souls in love or souls in life remains to be seen.
— Renee Ahdieh, Flame in the Mist
The stars could fall - the moon could crash from the heavens - and Mariko could not care.
— Renee Ahdieh, Flame in the Mist
...stars are dying all the time. Some explode. Some collapse and cave in on themselves. Those ones become black holes. Others get sucked up inside of them just for getting too close. Guilty by association. Prosecuted for proximity.
— Kris Kidd
The stars beckoned. And she had to go.
— Aleks Canard, The Price of Royalty
Good strategy, keep the conversation going until a guard notices the bodies outside the door. Maybe bursts in to save you. Not a bad idea.
— C.M.  Hayden, The Stars That Form Us
We walk up the beach under the stars. We feel stretched, expanded to take in their compass. They pour into us until we are filled with stars, up to the brim.This is what one thirsts for, I realize, after the smallness of the day, of work, of details, of intimacy—even of communication, one thirsts for the magnitude and universality of a night full of stars, pouring into one like a fresh tide.
— Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea
There seemed to be handfuls of stars tossed right above the rooftops in Haddan, keeping the town still alight at midnight.
— Alice Hoffman, The River King
Good strategy, keep the conversation going until a guard notices the bodies outside the door. Maybe burst in to save you. Not a bad idea.
— C.M.  Hayden, The Stars That Form Us
Star light, Star brightI wish upon the stars tonight…I whispered your name to a star last nightLoudly, and so boldI closed my eyes, and saw your faceI spoke those words untoldI wish I may, I wish I mightIt shouted from my soulHave this wish, I wish tonightThe wish that won’t let go
— N'Zuri Za Austin
When the stars imploded billions of years ago, iron and silver, gold and carbon came raining down. And the iron from that stardust is in us today-in our mitochondria. Mothers pass on the stars and their iron to their children. Who knows, Jean, you and I might be made of the dust from one and the same star, and maybe we recognized each other by its light. We were searching for each other. We are star seekers.
— Nina George, The Little Paris Bookshop
If this were an indie movie, we'd start talking about the constellations," Solomon said, looking up at the stars.
— John Corey Whaley, Highly Illogical Behavior
Above and behind them the Dipper turned on its great handle as if to pour night itself out onto the dreaming continent and each of its seven stars gleamed from between the fitful clouds.
— Paulette Jiles, News of the World
Your sky is full of stars and my arms too short to reach a piece to call my own
— Robert M. Drake
I think I would make a very good astronaut.To be a good astronaut you have to be intelligent and I’m intelligent. You also have to understand how machines work and I’m good at understanding how machines work. You also have to be someone who would like being on their own in a tiny spacecraft thousands and thousands of miles away from the surface of the earth and not panic or get claustrophobia or homesick or insane. And I really like little spaces, so long as there is no one else in them with me. Sometimes when I want to be on my own I get into the airing cupboard outside the bathroom and slide in beside the boiler and pull the door closed behind me and sit there and think for hours and it makes me feel very calm.So I would have to be an astronaut on my own, or have my own part of the space craft which no one else could come into.And also there are no yellow things or brown things in a space craft, so that would be okay too.And I would have to talk to other people from Mission Control, but we would do that through a radio linkup and a TV monitor, so they wouldn’t be like real people who are strangers, but it would be like playing a computer game.Also I wouldn’t be homesick at all because I’d be surrounded by things I like, which are machines and computers and outer space. And I would be able to look out of a little window in the spacecraft and know that there was no one near me for thousands and thousands of miles, which is what I sometimes pretend at night in the summer when I go and lie on the lawn and look up at the sky and I put my hands round the sides of my face so that I can’t see the fence and the chimney and the washing line and I can pretend I’m in space.And all I could see would be stars. And stars are the places where molecules that life is made of were constructed billions of years ago. For example, all the iron in your blood which keeps you from being anemic was made in a star.And I would like it if I could take Toby with me into space, and that might be allowed because they sometimes do take animals into space for experiments, so if I could think of a good experiment you could do with a rat that didn’t hurt the rat, I could make them let me take Toby.But if they didn’t let me I would still go because it would be a Dream Come True.
— Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
As time passes in Heaven, the stars do not change places, not till the day when Zig changes the complete backdrop. I tell my students this is a metaphor for life; we go along thinking nothing will be different, till the day everything suddenly changes at once.
— Neil Smith, Boo
, And you, ye stars,Who slowly begin to marshal,As of old, the fields of heaven,Your distant, melancholy lines!Have you, too, survived yourselves?Are you, too, what I fear to become?You, too, once lived;You, too, moved joyfullyAmong august companions,In an older world, peopled by Gods,In a mightier order,The radiant, rejoicing, intelligent Sons of Heaven.But now, ye kindleYour lonely, cold-shining lights,Unwilling lingerersIn the heavenly wilderness,For a younger, ignoble world;And renew, by necessity,Night after night your courses,In echoing, unneared silence,Above a race you know not—Uncaring and undelighted,Without friend and without home;Weary like us, though notWeary with our weariness.
— Matthew Arnold, Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems
Stars are tragic. Most of the stars are nothing but reminders of love gone horribly wrong, or men challenging the gods.
— Kaitlin Bevis, Persephone
Aim for the moon, but on your way don't forget to dance with the stars and shine as bright as the sun.
— Tilicia Haridat
For rigorous teachers seized my youth,And purged its faith, and trimmed its fire,Showed me the high, white star of Truth,There bade me gaze, and there aspire.Even now their whispers pierce the gloom'What dost thou in this living tomb?
— Matthew Arnold, The Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold
That is what all creatures great and small are made of. Leftover stardust. An atom exploded, and all the dust became the planets, the stars...and us. That's all anything amounts to.
— Jodi Lynn Anderson, May Bird Among the Stars
Our lives are a constellation of events, strung together, glittering; the shapes only being seen from a distance.
— Patricia Robin Woodruff
Is the ocean simply a great pool of tears? I should like to think that even the stars must cry.
— K.B. Ezzell, Elysium
September drank in the starry sky with a longing and a tugging and a sigh. All the way up, to that enormous crescent in the black.
— Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two
You - you alone will have the stars as no one else has them...
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
He slept under the sky, holding her hand, filling the gaps between her fingers and losing himself inside the soul in the course of counting the stars, she was hiding inside her eyes.
— Akshay Vasu
Night coaxed out the stars, my jailers.
— Roshani Chokshi, The Star-Touched Queen
The skies are painted with unnumber'd sparks,They are all fire and every one doth shine
— William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
That's why I like the blackest nights-the darkest, obsidian skies of winter. When the world is coldest and darkest, the stars shine brightest.
— Julie Eshbaugh, Obsidian and Stars
...the stars are fixed in rooftops like ink.
— Jack Kerouac, Dr. Sax
The truth is that he wanted to draw a little comfort from gazing at the stars. There were still one or two up there, at the zenith. As always, seeing them revived him; they were distant, they were omnipotent and at the same time they were docile to his calculations; just the contrary to humans, always too near, so weak and yet so quarrelsome.
— Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard
I tilted my head back, breathing deeply. It was a clear, moonless night, and after those long months underground, the sight of all that sky was dizzying. And so many stars—a glittering, tangled mass that seemed close enough to touch. I let their light fall over me like a balm, grateful for the air in my lungs, the night all around me.
— Leigh Bardugo, Ruin and Rising
The night had a nearly liquid quality, was like sliding into a warm swimming pool, a pool filled with buoyant darkenss instead of water.
— Joe Hill, The Fireman
The stars were extra bright tonight, and they shone and glimmered as if each one had something it wanted to say.
— Chris Kurtz, The Adventures of a South Pole Pig: A novel of snow and courage
You are no star, Gabby. You're the sky. The rest of us are just circling your orbit.
— Kelly Moran, Tracking You
Looking up at that starry sky gave him the creeps: it was too big, too black. It was all too possible to imagine it turning blood-red, all too possible to imagine a Face forming in lines of fire.
— Stephen King, It
People are like stars in the Milky Way. There are millions of them. There are big, small, dead, and dying stars out there. Hindi ikaw ang nag-iisang bituin d'yan sa langit, kaya hindi sa'yo umiikot ang mundo. Puweding makinang ka ngayon, pero asahan mong parating may darating na mas makinang pa sa'yo. Malaki ang posibilidad na mawala sa'yo ang atensiyon ng iba, pero tandaan mo ang isang bagay."Whatever happens, you're still a star. There will still be people looking at you, admiring your beauty, and wishing for great things to happen to them with your help. You can't let them down, so you have to continue shining for them. You have to show them directions. That's what stars are for.
— Luna King, Supernova
Have you ever imagined walking with me? A long walk on an empty road, on a cold night. Where there is no one around, except us. My hand touches yours, in the name of sweet accidents. The stars decide to shine and the galaxies decide to burst inside me, instead of the sky. And all of a sudden, my hands try to play with your fingers. Until my fingers fill the gaps between yours.
— Akshay Vasu
His eyes passed over the solid shapes of the instruments and computers that lined the bridge. They winked away innocently at him. He stared out at the stars, but none of them said a word.
— Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars.
— Henry Ford
All summers take me back to the sea. There in the long eelgrass, like birds' eggs waiting to be hatched, my brothers and sister and I sit, grasses higher than our heads, arms and legs like thicker versions of the grass waving in the wind, looking up at the blue sky. My mother is gathering food for dinner: clams and mussels and the sharply salty greens that grow by the shore. It is warm enough to lie here in the little silty puddles like bathwater left in the tub after the plug has been pulled. It is the beginning of July and we have two months to live out the long, nurturing days, watching the geese and the saltwater swans and the tides as they are today, slipping out, out, out as the moon pulls the other three seasons far away wherever it takes things. Out past the planets, far away from Uranus and the edge of our solar system, into the brilliantly lit dark where the things we don't know about yet reside. Out past my childhood, out past the ghosts, out past the breakwater of the stars. Like the silvery lace curtains of my bedroom being drawn from my window, letting in light, so the moon gently pulls back the layers of the year, leaving the best part open and free. So summer comes to me.
— Polly Horvath, My One Hundred Adventures
I leaned back and glimpsed the stars, the same stories again but written in the sky.
— Wesley Stace, Misfortune
When Compasia took pity on me, she reached down into the Underworld, touched the shoulder of Moritas, and asked her forgiveness. Then Compasia took my sister in her arms and placed her in the sky, where she, too, turned to stardust.Magiano looks at me, his eyes wide. It seems as if he already, somehow, understands.“My goddess made me a promise,” I whisper.Only now do I realize that I have never seen him cry before.In the stories, Compasia and her human lover would descend each night from the stars to walk the mortal world, before vanishing with the dawn. So, together, we stare at the sky, waiting.
— Marie Lu, The Midnight Star
I will howl with the wolves, soar above the eagles and roam wild with the Mustang. I will breathe life into the sunrise atop a mountain, bathe naked in the streams, dance in the sunset and love beneath the stars, travelling far and wide, seeking new experiences with those who dare to run with the wind, dare to touch the storm that is me...
— Virginia Alison
Tonight I feel like a shooting star, but I hope my shine will last much longer.
— Bernard Jan
When she was little, she'd liked to pretend that stars were really lights anchoring distant islands, as if she wasn't looking up but only out across a dark sea. She knew the truth now but still found stars comforting, especially in their sameness. A sky full of burning replicas.
— Lauren Oliver, Replica
Perhaps stars were supposed to be viewed from the ground.
— Becky Chambers
And strange-eyed constellations reignHis stars eternally.
— Thomas Hardy, Selected Poems
Felipe focused on the smattering of freckles across her bare left shoulder. For the next hour, he counted each of them out of the corner of his eye--an entire universe's worth. Lost in the constellations, he barely noticed the lurch of the small plane.
— Amanda Heger, Without Borders
We laughed about all the kids who believed in the Santa myth and got nothing for Christmas but a bunch of cheap plastic toys. "Years from now, when all the junk they got is broken and long forgotten," Dad said, "you'll still have your stars.
— Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle