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,c.150 AD
For I dipped into the Future, far as the human eye could see; saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1842
How quickly do we grow accustomed to wonders. I am reminded of the Isaac Asimov story "Nightfall," about the planet where the stars were visible only once in a thousand years. So awesome was the sight that it drove men mad. We who can see the stars every night glance up casually at the cosmos and then quickly down again, searching for a Dairy Queen.
- Roger Ebert, from a movie review in the "Chicago Sun Times"
“Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another”
-Plato 428 BC-348 BC
