The Sky Quotes

“The glitter in the sky looks as if I could scoop it all up in my hands and let the stars swirl and touch one another but they are so distant so very far apart that they cannot feel the warmth of each other even though they are made of burning.”

“A certain recluse, I know not who, once said that no bonds attached him to this life, and the only thing he would regret leaving was the sky.”

“We sang the song as children of the mystery that we hoped to one day comprehend and now, at last, we know the answer. We, too, are twinkling stars like diamonds in the sky. We have the ability to recognize our own brilliance. We possess the same potential to light the darkest night skies.”

“The Yankees were the dominant team of the 20th century. They won more World Series than I care to count, though I'm sure your Yankee fan friend can tell you that it's more than stars in the sky. Yet, it wasn't until the 1920s when the Yankees began their run of World Series victories.”

“You cannot just expect a promotion to come from the sky.”

“NOW this is the Law of the Jungle — as old and as true as the sky;And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back —For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.Wash daily from nose-tip to tail-tip; drink deeply, but never too deep;And remember the night is for hunting, and forget not the day is for sleep.The Jackal may follow the Tiger, but, Cub, when thy whiskers are grown,Remember the Wolf is a Hunter — go forth and get food of thine own.Keep peace withe Lords of the Jungle — the Tiger, the Panther, and Bear.And trouble not Hathi the Silent, and mock not the Boar in his lair.When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle, and neither will go from the trail,Lie down till the leaders have spoken — it may be fair words shall prevail.When ye fight with a Wolf of the Pack, ye must fight him alone and afar,Lest others take part in the quarrel, and the Pack be diminished by war.The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, and where he has made him his home,Not even the Head Wolf may enter, not even the Council may come.The Lair of the Wolf is his refuge, but where he has digged it too plain,The Council shall send him a message, and so he shall change it again.If ye kill before midnight, be silent, and wake not the woods with your bay,Lest ye frighten the deer from the crop, and your brothers go empty away.Ye may kill for yourselves, and your mates, and your cubs as they need, and ye can;But kill not for pleasure of killing, and seven times never kill Man!If ye plunder his Kill from a weaker, devour not all in thy pride;Pack-Right is the right of the meanest; so leave him the head and the hide.The Kill of the Pack is the meat of the Pack. Ye must eat where it lies;And no one may carry away of that meat to his lair, or he dies.The Kill of the Wolf is the meat of the Wolf. He may do what he will;But, till he has given permission, the Pack may not eat of that Kill.Cub-Right is the right of the Yearling. From all of his Pack he may claimFull-gorge when the killer has eaten; and none may refuse him the same.Lair-Right is the right of the Mother. From all of her year she may claimOne haunch of each kill for her litter, and none may deny her the same.Cave-Right is the right of the Father — to hunt by himself for his own:He is freed of all calls to the Pack; he is judged by the Council alone.Because of his age and his cunning, because of his gripe and his paw,In all that the Law leaveth open, the word of your Head Wolf is Law.Now these are the Laws of the Jungle, and many and mighty are they;But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch and the hump is — Obey!”

“I cannot hope to make you understand how the world is truly made,' he told her. 'Metaphor, then: the world is a weave, like threads woven into cloth.' His hand came out of his sleeve with a strip of his red ribbon.'If you sa”

“Boney freckled knees pressed into bits of bark and stone, refusing to feel any more pain.Her faded t-shirt hugged her protruding ribs as she held on, hunched in silence.A lone tear followed the lumpy tracks down her cheek, jumped from her quivering jaw onto a thirsty browned leaf with a thunderous plop.Then the screen door squeaked open and she took flight.Crispy twigs snapped beneath her bare feet as she ran deeper and deeper into the woods behind the house. She heard him rumbling and calling her name, his voice fueling her tired muscles to go faster, to survive.He knew her path by now. He was ready for the hunt.The clanging unbuckled belt boomed in her ears as he gained on her.The woods were thin this time of year, not much to hide behind. If she couldn’t outrun him, up she would go.Young trees teased her in this direction, so she moved east towards the evergreens.Hunger and hurt left her no choice, she had to stop running soon.She grabbed the first tree with a branch low enough to reach, and up she went.The pine trees were taller here, older, but the branches were too far apart for her to reach. She chose the wrong tree.His footsteps pounded close by.She stood as tall as her little legs could, her bloodied fingers reaching, stretching, to no avail. A cry of defeat slipped from her lips, a knowing laugh barked from his.She would pay for this dearly. She didn’t know whether the price was more than she could bear. Her eyes closed, her next breath came out as Please, and an inky hand reached down from the lush needles above, wound its many fingers around hers, and pulled her up.Another hand, then another, grabbing her arms, her legs, firmly but gently, pulling her up, up, up. The rush of green pine needles and black limbs blurred together, then a flash of cobalt blue fluttered by, heading down.She looked beyond her dangling bare feet to see a flock of peculiar birds settle on the branches below her, their glossy feathers flickered at once and changed to the same greens and grays of the tree they perched upon, camouflaging her ascension.Her father’s footsteps below came to a stomping end, and she knew he was listening for her. Tracking her, trapping her, like he did the other beasts of the forest.He called her name once, twice. The third time’s tone not quite as friendly.The familiar slide–click sound of him readying his gun made her flinch before he had his chance to shoot at the sky. A warning. He wasn’t done with her.His feet crunched in circles around the tree, eventually heading back home.Finally, she exhaled and looked up. Dozens of golden-eyed creatures surrounded her from above. Covered in indigo pelts, with long limbs tipped with mint-colored claws, they seemed to move as one, like a heartbeat. As if they shared a pulse, a train of thought, a common sense.“Thank you,” she whispered, and the beasts moved in a wave to carefully place her on a thick branch.”

“Instead of the birds of the sky and beast of the field, the gods were more than men because Man needed them to be, for what could the world be if Man were the best of all creatures?”

“ISIS did not come down from the sky. They found the opportunity to grow, and the world allowed them to grow.”

“The Sunlight on the GardenThe sunlight on the gardenHardens and grows cold,We cannot cage the minuteWithin its nets of gold,When all is toldWe cannot beg for pardon.Our freedom as free lancesAdvances towards its end;The earth compels, upon itSonnets and birds descend;And soon, my friend,We shall have no time for dances.The sky was good for flyingDefying the church bellsAnd every evil ironSiren and what it tells:The earth compels,We are dying, Egypt, dyingAnd not expecting pardon,Hardened in heart anew,But glad to have sat underThunder and rain with you,And grateful tooFor sunlight on the garden.”

“Suddenly, I became conscious of the fact that the driver was in the act of pulling up the horses in the courtyard of a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light, and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the sky.”

“Men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.”

“Criminals beheaded in Palermo, heretics burned alive in Toledo, assassins drawn and quartered in Paris—Europeans flocked to every form of painful death imaginable, free entertainment that drew huge crowds. London, the historian Fernand Braudel tells us, held public executions eight times a year at Tyburn, just north of Hyde Park. (The diplomat Samuel Pepys paid a shilling for a good view of a Tyburn hanging in 1664; watching the victim beg for mercy, he wrote, was a crowd of "at least 12 or 14,000 people.") In most if not all European nations, the bodies were impaled on city walls and strung along highways as warnings. "The corpses dangling from trees whose distant silhouettes stand out against the sky, in so many old paintings, are merely a realistic detail," Braudel observed. "They were part of the landscape." Between 1530 and 1630, according to Cambridge historian V.A.C. Gatrell, England executed seventy-five thousand people. At that time, its population was about three million, perhaps a tenth that of the Mexica empire. Arithmetic suggests that if England had been the size of the Triple Alliance, it would have executed, on average, 7,500 people per year, roughly twice the number Cortes estimated for the empire. France and Spain were still more bloodthirsty than England, according to Braudel.”

“I sought my liberty and the liberty of all, my happiness and the happiness of all. I wanted a roof for every family, bread for every mouth, education for every heart, light for every intellect. I am convinced that human history has not yet begun, that we find ourselves in the last period of the prehistoric. I see with the eyes of my soul how the sky is diffused with the rays of the new millennium.”

“Birds were created to record everything. They were not designed just to be beautiful jewels in the sky, but to serve as the eyes of heaven.”

“You would hardly think, at first, that horrid monsters lie up there waiting to be discovered by any moderately penetrating mind--monsters to which those of the oceans bear no sort of comparison."What monsters may they be?"Impersonal monsters, namely, Immensities. Until a person has thought out the stars and their inter-spaces, he has hardly learnt that there are things much more terrible than monsters of shape, namely, monsters of magnitude without known shape. Such monsters are the voids and waste places of the sky... In these our sight plunges quite beyond any twinkler we have yet visited. Those deep wells for the human mind to let itself down into, leave alone the human body! and think of the side caverns and secondary abysses to right and left as you pass on!...There is a size at which dignity begins," he exclaimed; "further on there is a size at which grandeur begins; further on there is a size at which solemnity begins; further on, a size at which awfulness begins; further on, a size at which ghastliness begins. That size faintly approaches the size of the stellar universe. So am I not right in saying that those minds who exert their imaginative powers to bury themselves in the depths of that universe merely strain their faculties to gain a new horror?”

“He imagines the water running in thick curving lines, like the drawings of the tree’s roots, cutting through stone and spilling over the earth. And then he reverses the flow of water, letting his imagination take over, and he sees the water racing north, uphill, towards the Catskills, weaving around towns, beneath bridges, rushing over stones and cutting through the trees, until it lands at the feet of Alice Pearson, who stands on the shore, looking out at the place where the water meets the sky.”

“The sky always seems to be out there, away from us. I like to bring it down in close contact with us, so you feel you are in it. We feel we are at the bottom of this ocean of air; we are actually on a planet.”

“I bleed Dodger blue and when I die, I'm going to the big Dodger in the sky.”