Moon

From Wikiquote
Jump to: navigation, search
I think we're going to the moon because it's in the nature of the human being to face challenges. ~ Neil Armstrong

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It has a diameter of 3,474 kilometres (2,159 miles) and a mean distance to the Earth of 384,403 kilometres (238,857 miles). The Moon is also a major player in causing tidal effects on Earth.

Contents

Sourced [edit]

  • The moon is a silver pin-head vast,
    That holds the heaven's tent-hangings fast.
  • I think we're going to the moon because it's in the nature of the human being to face challenges.
  • Doth the moon care for the barking of a dog?
    • Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part II, Section III. Mem. 7.
  • 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.
  • He made an instrument to know
    If the moon shine at full or no;
    That would, as soon as e'er she shone straight,
    Whether 'twere day or night demonstrate;
    Tell what her d'ameter to an inch is,
    And prove that she's not made of green cheese.
  • The devil's in the moon for mischief; they
    Who call'd her chaste, methinks, began too soon
    Their nomenclature; there is not a day,
    The longest, not the twenty-first of June,
    Sees half the business in a wicked way,
    On which three single hours of moonshine smile—
    And then she looks so modest all the while!
  • The silver light, which, hallowing tree and tower, Sheds beauty and deep softness o'er the whole, Breathes also to the heart, and o'er it throws A loving languor which is not repose.
  • Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain.
  • 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.
  • Moonlight is sculpture; sunlight is painting.
  • He who would see old Hoghton right
    Must view it by the pale moonlight.
    • William Hazlitt, English Proverbs and Provincial Phrases (1869), p. 196. Hoghton Tower is not far from Blackburn.
  • The moon put forth a little diamond peak
    No bigger than an unobserved star,
    Or tiny point of fairy cimetar.
  • See yonder fire! It is the moon
    Slow rising o'er the eastern hill.
    It glimmers on the forest tips,
    And through the dewy foliage drips
    In little rivulets of light,
    And makes the heart in love with night.
  • Unmuffle, ye faint stars; and thou fair Moon,
    That wont'st to love the traveller's benison,
    Stoop thy pale visage through an amber cloud,
    And disinherit Chaos.
  • * * now glow'd the firmament
    With living sapphires; Hesperus, that led
    The starry host rode brightest, till the Moon,
    Rising in clouded majesty, at length,
    Apparent queen, unveil'd her peerless light,
    And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.
  • When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
  • If thou would'st view fair Melrose aright,
    Go visit it by the pale moonlight;
    For the gay beams of lightsome day
    Gild, but to flout, the ruins gray.
    • Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Canto II, Stanza 1.
  • The moon of Rome, chaste as the icicle
    That's curded by the frost from purest snow.
  • Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
    Pale in her anger, washes all the air,
    That rheumatic diseases do abound:
    And through this distemperature we see
    The seasons alter.
  • It is the very error of the moon:
    She comes more nearer earth than she was wont,
    And makes men mad.
  • ...the moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places.
  • 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 (1805), Part II. The Close of the Century.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations [edit]

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 525-28.
  • Soon as the evening shades prevail,
    The moon takes up the wondrous tale,
    And nightly to the listening earth
    Repeats the story of her birth.
  • The moon is at her full, and riding high,
    Floods the calm fields with light.
    The airs that hover in the summer sky
    Are all asleep to-night.
  • Into the sunset's turquoise marge
    The moon dips, like a pearly barge;
    Enchantment sails through magic seas,
    To fairyland Hesperides,
    Over the hills and away.
  • The sun had sunk and the summer skies
    Were dotted with specks of light
    That melted soon in the deep moon-rise
    That flowed over Groton Height.
  • When the hollow drum has beat to bed
    And the little fifer hangs his head,
    When all is mute the Moorish flute,
    And nodding guards watch wearily,
    Oh, then let me,
    From prison free,
    March out by moonlight cheerily.
  • How like a queen comes forth the lonely Moon
    From the slow opening curtains of the clouds
    Walking in beauty to her midnight throne!
  • Now Cynthia, named fair regent of the night.
  • Jove, thou regent of the skies.
  • And hail their queen, fair regent of the night.
    • Erasmus Darwin, Botanic Garden, Part I, Canto II, line 90. (may be it is allusion to John Gay and Alexander Pope).
  • On the road, the lonely road,
    Under the cold, white moon;
    Under the rugged trees he strode,
    Whistled and shifted his heavy load—
    Whistled a foolish tune.
  • As the moon's fair image quaketh
    In the raging waves of ocean,
    Whilst she, in the vault of heaven,
    Moves with silent peaceful motion.
  • Mother of light! how fairly dost thou go
    Over those hoary crests, divinely led!
    Art thou that huntress of the silver bow
    Fabled of old? Or rather dost thou tread
    Those cloudy summits thence to gaze below,
    Like the wild chamois from her Alpine snow,
    Where hunters never climbed—secure from dread?
  • The moon, the moon, so silver and cold,
    Her fickle temper has oft been told,
    Now shady—now bright and sunny—
    But of all the lunar things that change,
    The one that shows most fickle and strange,
    And takes the most eccentric range,
    Is the moon—so called—of honey!
  • The stars were glittering in the heaven's dusk meadows,
    Far west, among those flowers of the shadows,
    The thin, clear crescent lustrous over her,
    Made Ruth raise question, looking through the bars
    Of heaven, with eyes half-oped, what God, what comer
    Unto the harvest of the eternal summer,
    Had flung his golden hook down on the field of stars.
  • Such a slender moon, going up and up,
    Waxing so fast from night to night,
    And swelling like an orange flower-bud, bright,
    Fated, methought, to round as to a golden cup,
    And hold to my two lips life's best of wine.
    • Jean Ingelow, Songs of the Night Watches, The First Watch, Part II.
  • The moon looks upon many night flowers; the night flowers see but one moon.
  • Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,
    Now the sun is laid to sleep,
    Seated in thy silver car,
    State in wonted manner keep.
    Hesperus entreats thy light,
    Goddess, excellently bright!
  • It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes
    And roofs of villages, on woodland crests
    And their aerial neighborhoods of nests
    Deserted, on the curtained window-panes
    Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes
    And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests.
  • The dews of summer night did fall;
    The moon (sweet regent of the sky)
    Silver'd the walls of Cumnor Hall,
    And many an oak that grew thereby.
    • William J. Mickle, Cumnor Hall (Authorship of Cumnor Hall claimed for Jean Adam. Conceded generally to Mickle.).
  • Let the air strike our tune,
    Whilst we show reverence to yond peeping moon.
  • The moon looks
    On many brooks,
    The brook can see no moon but this.
    • Thomas Moore, Irish Melodies, While Gazing on the Moon's Light.
  • He should, as he list, be able to prove the moon made of grene cheese.
    • Sir Thomas More, English Works, p. 256. Same phrase in Blackloch—Hatchet of Heresies. (1565). Rabelais, Book I, Chapter XI. Jack Jugler in Dodsley's Old Plays. Ed. by Hazlitt, Volume II.
  • Hail, pallid crescent, hail!
    Let me look on thee where thou sitt'st for aye
    Like memory—ghastly in the glare of day,
    But in the evening, light.
  • No rest—no dark.
    Hour after hour that passionless bright face
    Climbs up the desolate blue.
  • Au clair de la lune
    Mon ami Pierrot,
    Prête moi ta plume
    Pour écrire un mot;
    Ma chandelle est morte,
    Je n'ai plus de feu,
    Ouvre moi ta porte,
    Pour l'amour de Dieu.
    • Lend me thy pen
      To write a word
      In the moonlight,
      Pierrot, my friend!
      My candle's out,
      I've no more fire;—
      For love of God
      Open thy door!
    • French Folk Song.
  • Late, late yestreen I saw the new moone,
    Wi' the auld moon in hir arme.
    • Thomas Percy, Reliques. Sir Patrick Spens. See also Scott, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.
  • Day glimmer'd in the east, and the white Moon
    Hung like a vapor in the cloudless sky.
  • Again thou reignest in thy golden hall,
    Rejoicing in thy sway, fair queen of night!
    The ruddy reapers hail thee with delight:
    Theirs is the harvest, theirs the joyous call
    For tasks well ended ere the season's fall.
    • Roscoe, Sonnet, To the Harvest Moon.
  • The sun was gone now; the curled moon was like a little feather
    Fluttering far down the gulf.
  • That I could clamber to the frozen moon
    And draw the ladder after me.
  • Good even, good fair moon, good even to thee;
    I prithee, dear moon, now show to me
    The form and the features, the speech and degree,
    Of the man that true lover of mine shall be.
  • That orbed maiden, with white fire laden,
    Whom mortals call the moon.
  • The young moon has fed
    Her exhausted horn
    With the sunset's fire.
  • Art thou pale for weariness
    Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth,
    Wandering companionless
    Among the stars that have a different birth,—
    And ever changing, like a joyous eye
    That finds no object worth its constancy?
  • With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb'st the skies!
    How silently, and with how wan a face!
  • Transcendental moonshine.
    • Found in Life of John Sterling, p. 84 (People's Ed.). Applied to the teaching of Coleridge. Said to have been applied by Carlyle to Emerson.
  • I with borrow'd silver shine,
    What you see is none of mine.
    First I show you but a quarter,
    Like the bow that guards the Tartar:
    Then the half, and then the whole,
    Ever dancing round the pole.
  • As like the sacred queen of night,
    Who pours a lovely, gentle light
    Wide o'er the dark, by wanderers blest,
    Conducting them to peace and rest.
  • Meet me by moonlight alone,
    And then I will tell you a tale
    Must be told by the moonlight alone,
    In the grove at the end of the vale!
    You must promise to come, for I said
    I would show the night-flowers their queen.
    Nay, turn not away that sweet head,
    'T is the loveliest ever was seen.
  • And suddenly the moon withdraws
    Her sickle from the lightening skies,
    And to her sombre cavern flies,
    Wrapped in a veil of yellow gauze.
  • Going to the moon is not a matter of physics but of economics.

Unsourced [edit]

  • If the Sun and Moon should ever doubt, they'd immediately go out.

External links [edit]

Wikipedia
Wikipedia has an article about:
Wiktionary-logo-en.svg
Look up Moon in Wiktionary, the free dictionary
Retrieved from "http://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Moon&oldid=1517342"