Moon
Earth's only natural satellite
(Redirected from Luna)
A moon is a natural celestial satellite that orbits another primary body. 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.
Quotes
edit- The moon is a silver pin-head vast,
That holds the heaven's tent-hangings fast.- William R. Alger, "The Use of the Moon", Poetry of the Orient (1865), p. 178.
- We've been to six places on the moon, the Soviets went to three and they shared their samples with us. That's not a lot of area. Samples given out now for research are very tiny. So if an engineer needs a larger amount to conduct the kinds of experiments engineers do having access to a wide range of materials would be good.
- Judy Allton in Hari Sreenivasan, Sam Weber, Connie Kargbo, "NASA opens a new collection of moon rocks to researchers", PBS NewsHour, (Jul 20, 2019).
- Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.
- Apollo 11 Lunar plaque; as qtd. in Jones, Eric M., ed. (1995). "One Small Step". Apollo 11 Lunar Surface Journal. NASA.
- That's one small step for [a] man; one giant leap for mankind.
- Neil Armstrong, Commander Apollo 11, as he stepped off the LM 'Eagle' and onto the Moon.
- I think we're going to the moon because it's in the nature of the human being to face challenges.
- Neil Armstrong, Apollo mission press conference.
- Here among flowers a single jug of wine,
No close friends here, I pour alone
And lift a cup to bright moon, ask it to join me,
Then face my shadow and we become three.
The moon never has known how to drink,
All my shadow does is follow my body,
But with moon and shadow as companions a while,
This joy I find will surely last till spring.
I sing, the moon just lingers on,
I dance, and my shadow scatters wildly.
When still sober we share friendship and pleasure,
Then entirely drunk each goes his own way—
Let us join in travels beyond human feelings
And plan to meet far in the river of stars.- Li Bai, "Drinking Alone by Moonlight" (trans. Stephen Owen)
- The internal fires of the moon are practically burnt out, and, therefore, she does not shine save through reflection, having no inner fire to blend and merge with light external. p. 60. What causes the apparent deadness of the moon? . . . Here we touch upon a hidden mystery, of which the solution lies revealed for those who seek, in the fact that human beings and certain groups of devas are no longer found on the moon. Man has not ceased to exist upon the moon because it is dead, and cannot therefore support his life, but the moon is dead because man and these deva groups have been removed from off its surface and from its sphere of influence. Man and the devas act on every planet as intermediaries, or as transmitting agencies. Where they are not found, then certain great activities become impossible, and disintegration sets in. p. 93.
- Alice Bailey, A Treatise on Cosmic Fire (1925)
- The decay of a moon has as great an evil effect upon all that contacts it as a decaying body on earth has upon its surroundings. It is occultly "offensive" . . . The greatest effect of moon conditions is to be seen working out predominantly in the terror, and present distress in the animal kingdom. p. 795. Just as the moon is a deterrent or malefic force where the Earth is concerned, and productive of evil "influences", so all such disintegrating bodies are equally destructive. p. 837.
- Alice Bailey, A Treatise on Cosmic Fire (1925)
- The moon, as you know, is a shell, an ancient form through which the planetary Logos at one time sought expression. It is slowly disintegrating physically, but not astrally as yet, and is therefore still closely linked with the astral body of the planetary Logos, and therefore with the astral body of all people. Its influence is consequently more potent at the time of the full moon upon all who are unbalanced. p. 341.
- Alice Bailey, A Treatise on the Seven Rays: Volume 4: Esoteric Healing (1953)
- After you get what you want you don't want it, if I gave you the moon, you'd grow tired of it soon.
- If the Sun and Moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out.- William Blake, Auguries of Innocence (1803), line 109.
- Our Moon was the fourth Globe of the series, and was on the same plane of perception as our Earth. But Globe A of the lunar chain is not fully “dead” till the first Monads of the first class have passed from Globe G or Z, the last of the “lunar chain,” into the Nirvana which awaits them between the two chains; and similarly for all the other Globes as stated, each giving birth to the corresponding globe of the “earth-chain.”
- Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine vol. I, (1888) 171-173.
- The way Gaylord Perry swings a bat, he stands about as much chance of hitting a home run as ... oh ... as a man does of walking on the moon. Well, Perry and astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin made it together Sunday. The San Francisco right-hander tagged his first career homer and pitched the Giants to a 7–3 victory over Los Angeles, tightening up the National League's West Division while the astronauts took a moon stroll that tightened up the universe.
- Hal Bock (Associated Press), "Perry Hits, Pitches Giants to Win," The Athens Messenger (July 21, 1969), p. 7.
- 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.- Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part II (1664), Canto I, line 905.
- 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.- Samuel Butler, Hudibras, Part II (1664), Canto III, line 261.
- 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!- Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto I, Stanza 113.
- 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.
- Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto I.
- The moonlight flooded that great, silent land. The reaped fields lay yellow in it. The straw stacks and poplar windbreaks threw sharp black shadows. The roads were white rivers of dust. The sky was a deep, crystalline blue, and the stars were few and faint. Everything seemed to have succumbed, to have sunk to sleep, under the great, golden, tender, midsummer moon. The splendour of it seemed to transcend human life and human fate.
- Willa Cather, The Bohemian Girl (1912).
- The moving Moon went up the sky,
And nowhere did abide;
Softly she was going up,
And a star or two beside.- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798; 1817), Part IV.
- There is no dark side of the moon, really. As a matter of fact, it's all dark. The only thing that makes it look light is the sun.
- Gerry Driscoll, Pink Floyd, "Eclipse", The Dark Side of the Moon.
- 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.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836).
- The heroes, the wise men, like the new moon have their waxing and waning.
- Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by Nancy Sandars, 1960, Penguin Classics, Third edition, 1972
- Moonlight is sculpture; sunlight is painting.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The American Notebooks (1835 - 1853).
- 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.
- Also, there will be signs in the sun and moon and stars, and on the earth anguish of nations not knowing the way out because of the roaring of the sea and its agitation. People will become faint out of fear and expectation of the things coming upon the inhabited earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
- The moon put forth a little diamond peak
No bigger than an unobserved star,
Or tiny point of fairy cimetar.- John Keats, Endymion (1818), Book IV, line 499.
- I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish. We propose to accelerate the development of the appropriate lunar space craft. We propose to develop alternate liquid and solid fuel boosters, much larger than any now being developed, until certain which is superior. We propose additional funds for other engine development and for unmanned explorations – explorations which are particularly important for one purpose which this nation will never overlook: the survival of the man who first makes this daring flight. But in a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the Moon – if we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation. For all of us must work to put him there.
- John K. Kennedy, "Excerpt: 'Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs'". NASA. (May 25, 1961).
- Everyone's gone to the Moon.
- Jonathan King, title of song.
- 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.- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Christus, The Golden Legend (1872), Part VI, line 462.
- The moon, full-orbed, forsakes her watery cave,
And lifts her lovely head above the wave;
The snowy splendours of her modest ray
Stream o'er the glistening waves, and quivering play;
Around her, glittering on the heaven's arched brow,
Unnumbered stars, enclosed in azure, glow,
Thick as the dew-drops of the April dawn,
Or May-flowers crowding o'er the daisy lawn;
The canvas whitens in the silvery beam,
And with a mild pale-red the pendants gleam;
The masts' tall shadows tremble o'er the deep;
The peaceful winds a holy silence keep.- William Julius Mickle, The Lusiad (1776), Book I, line 417.
- 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.- John Milton, Comus (1637), line 331.
- * * 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.- John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book IV, line 604.
- A man who did not pause to view a full moon at opportunity had no soul.
- Richard Parks, Moon Viewing at Shijo Bridge (2006), reprinted in Rich Horton (ed.) Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2007, p. 281
- This evening, too
the sun had to tell the same story
before he went away,
leaving the forlorn moon
hankering after his light.- Suman Pokhrel, A Story of the Setting Sun and the Moon
- As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light,
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene;
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole,
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
And tip with silver every mountain's head;
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies.- Alexander Pope, The Iliad of Homer (1716), Book VIII, line 687.
- Let us now turn to the Moon. In the first place the action of the Earth in raising tides in the Moon explains at once how she now turns always the same face towards us, or rotates on her axis once a month. When she was perhaps much hotter and perhaps more plastic and certainly younger, the Earth must have raised very considerable tides in the solid boy as well as in her oceans, if ever she had oceans. On these the Earth would act as the Moon acts now on the Earht tides, but more considerably. The resultant action would be a force not through her centre, but a 'sideway' force opposing her spin round her axis; acting in fact as a brake until the spin was reduced so far that brake and wheel went round together, the Moon's period of rotation coinciding with the month. The tides on the Moon, tides in the slightly plastic body, are always now at the same parts of her surface, directly facing and directly opposite to the Earth.
In the second place there is a reaction of the Earth's tides on the Moon equal and opposite to the action of the Moon on the Earth's tides. ...- John Henry Poynting, The Earth: its shape, size, weight and spin. Cambridge University Press. 1913. p. 132.
- 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?
- "I thought you understood," he said. "The world is your teacher. It will be all around you. The ocean and the wind and the stars and the moon will all teach you many things."
- Jane Roberts, Emir's Education In The Proper Use of Magical Powers (1979) p. 10.
- But how many merry monthes be in the yeere?
There are thirteen, I say;
The midsummer moone is the merryest of all,
Next to the merry month of May.- Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar [1]
- The moon is our mother—it took part in the formation of our Earth and in populating it with human beings. The Lunar Monads, or pitris—the ancestors, as they are called by the Hindus, became incarnated in our human kind. The moon will disappear or disintegrate before the seventh great Round of our planet.
- Helena Roerich, Letters of Helena Roerich Volume II: 1935-1939, 8 October 1935
- And now, regarding the question of such interest to you—the planetary chains and the Moon. When a planetary chain is in its last (seventh) Round, its Globe [sphere] . . . A, before finally dying out, sends all its energy and 'principles' into a neutral center of latent force, a 'laya center' and thereby informs a new nucleus of undifferentiated substance or matter, i.e., calls it into activity or gives it life. . . . Imagine the six fellow-globes of the moon—aeons before the first globe of our seven was evolved—just in the same position in relation to each other as the fellow-globes of our chain in regard to our Earth now. And now it will be easy to imagine further Globe A of the lunar chain informing Globe A of the terrestrial chain, and—dying; Globe B of the former sending after that its energy into Globe B of the . . . [earthly] chain;. . . then the Moon (our Satellite) pouring forth into the lowest globe of our planetary ring—Globe D, our Earth—all its life, energy and powers; . . . [the moon] is the satellite undeniably [of our Earth], but this does not invalidate the theory that she had given to the Earth all but her corpse . . .; and, [the Moon] having transferred them to a new center, becoming virtually a dead planet, in which rotation has almost ceased since the birth of our globe.
- Helena Roerich, Letters of Helena Roerich Volume II: 1935-1939, 16 November 1935
- Why should Venus and Mercury have no satellites, and by what, when they exist, were they formed? The Astronomers 'do not know.' Because, we say, science has only one key — the key of matter — to open the mysteries of nature withal, while occult philosophy has seven keys and explains that which science fails to see. Mercury and Venus have no satellites, but they had 'parents' just as the Earth had. Both are far older than the Earth, and, before the latter reaches her seventh Round, her mother Moon will have dissolved into thin air, as the 'Moons' of the other planets have, or have not, as the case may be, since there are planets which have several moons—a mystery again which no Oedipus of astronomy has solved... Thus, ". . . Our Moon was the fourth Globe [sphere in the Lunar Chain] of the series, and was on the same plane of perception as our Earth. . . .
- Helena Roerich, Letters of Helena Roerich Volume II: 1935-1939, 16 November 1935
- In reality the Moon is only the satellite of the Earth in one respect, viz., that physically the Moon revolves round the Earth. . . . Startling as the statement may seem it is not without confirmation from scientific knowledge. It is evidenced by the tides, by the cyclic changes in many forms of disease which coincide with the lunar phases; it can be traced in the growth of plants, and is very marked in the phenomena of human gestation and conception. The importance of the Moon and its influence on the Earth were recognized in every ancient religion, notably the Jewish, and have been remarked by many observers of psychic and physical phenomena. But, so far as Science knows, the Earth's action on the Moon is confined to the physical attraction, which causes her to circle in her orbit. And should an objector insist that this fact alone is sufficient evidence that the Moon is truly the Earth's satellite or other planes of action, one may reply by asking whether a mother, who walks round and round by her child's cradle keeping watch over the infant, is subordinate of her child or dependent upon it; though in one sense she is its satellite, yet she is certainly older and more fully developed than the child she watches.
- Helena Roerich, Letters of Helena Roerich Volume II: 1935-1939, 16 November 1935
- Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace. These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice. These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding. They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown. In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man. In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood. Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts. For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.
- Richard Nixon's unused Moon Disaster Speech written by William Safire; as qtd. in Archive.org, "In Event of Moon Disaster"
- The moon can't help it. It's only an object. The moon doesn't mean to set things sloshing—in every ocean's basin, in every female's uterus, in every poet's jar of ink, in every madman's drool.
- Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
- 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.- William Shakespeare, Coriolanus (c. 1607-08), Act V, scene 3, line 65.
- How slow
This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame or a dowager
Long withering out a young man's revenue.- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595-96), Act I, scene 1, line 3.
- 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.- William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (c. 1595-96), Act II, scene 1, line 103.
- It is the very error of the moon:
She comes more nearer earth than she was wont,
And makes men mad.- William Shakespeare, Othello (c. 1603), Act V, scene 2, line 109.
- The wat'ry star.
- William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale (c. 1610-11), Act I, scene 2.
- When there is the moon, the night automatically becomes beautiful; there might be no need for extra light. Light must be saved for those moments when the night is dark, and the moon doesn't appear in the sky.
- Sanu Sharma, Pharak
- ...the moon gazed on my midnight labours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued nature to her hiding-places.
- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, chapter 4.
- 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.
- The moon, obviously, has its advantages [over Mars when considering future human spaceflight missions]. It is several orders of magnitude closer to Earth, which makes it a superb training ground for missions to Mars. Decades from now, when the first astronauts headed to Mars finish firing their rocket engines, their ship will be on an inevitable course that will require months, if not years, to return to Earth, and they had better be prepared for every contingency. The moon is only a few days from our home planet. As every test pilot knows, you should always use a buildup approach when developing new aircraft. In the same vein, our future astronauts will be well served to use the ISS and moon as test beds for the first Mars missions.
- Terry Virts, from his book, View From Above: An Astronaut Photographs The World (2017), pages 292 and 293. National Geographic. ISBN 9781426218644.
- My dream would be to fly to the moon and build permanent structures, using the raw materials available there. For instance, regolith, or moon dust, could be used to make a form of concrete. Using 3-D printers, we could build all kinds of things with that moon concrete -- houses, streets and observatories, for example.
- Johann-Dietrich Wörner, Director General of the European Space Agency, as quoted in "New ESA Head Wörner: 'We Could Build All Kinds of Things with Moon Concrete'" Spiegel Online International, Hamburg, Germany. June 19, 2015.
- And she goes and roams the world at night, and makes sport with men and causes them to emit seed. And wherever men are found sleeping alone in a house, they [these spirits] descend upon them and get hold of them and adhere to them and take desire from them and bear from them. And they also afflict them with disease, and the men do not know it. And all this is because of the diminishing of the moon.
- Zohar 1:19b
- And when Lilith comes and sees that child, she knows what happened, and she ties herself to him and brings him up like all those other sons of Naamah. And she is with him many times, but does not kill him. This is the man who becomes blemished on every New Moon, for she never gives him up. For month after month, when the moon becomes renewed in the world Lilith comes forth and visits all those whom she brings up, and makes sport with them, and therefore that person is blemished at that time.
- Zohar 3:76b-77a
- And on every New Moon that spirit of evil appearance becomes stirred up by Lilith, and at time that man suffers harm from the spirit, and falls to the ground and cannot get up, or even dies.
- Zohar 2:267b
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.- Joseph Addison, Spectator No. 465, Ode.
- 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.- William Cullen Bryant, The Tides.
- 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.- Madison Cawein, At Sunset, Stanza 1.
- 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.- M'Donald Clarke, The Graveyard.
- 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.- George Colman the Younger, Mountaineers, Act I, scene 2.
- How like a queen comes forth the lonely Moon
From the slow opening curtains of the clouds
Walking in beauty to her midnight throne!- George Croly, Diana.
- Now Cynthia, named fair regent of the night.
- John Gay, Trivia, Book III.
- Jove, thou regent of the skies.
- Alexander Pope, The Odyssey, Book II, line 42.
- 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.- W. W. Harney, The Stab.
- 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.- Heinrich Heine, Book of Songs, New Spring, Prologue, No. 23.
- 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?- Thomas Hood, Ode to the Moon.
- 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!- Thomas Hood, Miss Kilmansegg, Her Honeymoon.
- 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.
- H. P. Blavatsky is our sole originator of a theory... She says her teachers told her, and leaves us to work out the details; but her theory will bear investigation if taken as part of the whole evolutionary scheme reported by her... While she plainly asserts that the former body of the entity now called Man's Earth is the very moon in our sky, the existence of a mystery is as plainly declared. The first mystery which she claimed to reveal - and, indeed, she first of every one states it - is that in a remote period, when there was no earth, the moon existed as an inhabited globe, died, and at once threw out into space all her energies, leaving nothing but the physical vehicle. Those energies revolved and condensed the matter in space near by and produced our earth; the moon, its parent, proceeding towards disintegration, but compelled to revolve around her child, this earth. This gives us a use and history for the moon.
But then the same messenger says that the "superstition" prevailing so long and widely as to the moon's bad influence, as in insanity, in necromancy, and the like, is due to the fact that the moon, being a corpse intimately associated with earth, throws upon the latter, so very near to her, a stream of noxious emanations which, when availed of by wicked and knowing persons, may be used for man's injury.
- The moon looks upon many night flowers; the night flowers see but one moon.
- Sir William Jones.
- 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!- Ben Jonson, Hymn, To Cynthia.
- 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.- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Harvest Moon.
- 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.- Thomas Middleton, The Witch (1616), Act V, scene 2.
- 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.
- No rest—no dark.
Hour after hour that passionless bright face
Climbs up the desolate blue.- Dinah Craik, Moon-Struck.
- 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.
- Lend me thy pen
- 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.- Samuel Rogers, Italy, The Lake of Geneva.
- 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.- D. G. Rossetti, The Blessed Damozel, Stanza 10.
- That I could clamber to the frozen moon
And draw the ladder after me.- Quoted by Arthur Schopenhauer in Parerga and Paralipomena.
- 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.- Walter Scott, Heart of Mid-Lothian, Chapter XVII.
- That orbed maiden, with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon.- Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Cloud, IV.
- The young moon has fed
Her exhausted horn
With the sunset's fire.- Percy Bysshe Shelley, Hellas, Semi-Chorus II.
- 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?- Percy Bysshe Shelley, To the Moon.
- With how sad steps, O moon, thou climb'st the skies!
How silently, and with how wan a face!- Sir Philip Sidney, Astrophel and Stella. Sonnet XXXI.
- 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.- Jonathan Swift, On the Moon.
- 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.- James Thomson, Ode to Seraphina.
- The crimson Moon, uprising from the sea,
With large delight, foretells the harvest near.- Edward Thurlow, 1st Baron Thurlow, Select Poems, The Harvest Moon.
- 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.- J. Augustus Wade, Meet Me by Moonlight.
- And suddenly the moon withdraws
Her sickle from the lightening skies,
And to her sombre cavern flies,
Wrapped in a veil of yellow gauze.- Oscar Wilde, La Faite de la Lune.
- Going to the moon is not a matter of physics but of economics.
- John R. Platt (1958) Technocracy digest No 170-182.
- It seems the United States can put a man on the moon but it can't solve the ski wax problem.
- Susie Chaffee, Suzy Chaffe Says '68 Olympians Unlucke, The Milwaukee Sentinel, January 14, 1970.