We Are Stardust

"In a sense, human flesh is made of stardust… Every atom in the human body, excluding only the primordial hydrogen atoms, was fashioned in stars that formed, grew old and exploded most violently before the Sun and the Earth came into being. The explosions scattered the heavy elements as a fine dust through space. By the time it made the Sun, the primordial gas of the Milky Way was sufficiently enriched with heavier elements for rocky planets like the Earth to form. And from the rocks atoms escaped for eventual incorporation in living things: carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulphur for all living tissue; calcium for bones and teeth; sodium and potassium for the workings of nerves and brains; the iron colouring blood red… and so on. No other conclusion of modern research testifies more clearly to mankind’s intimate connections with the universe at large and with the cosmic forces at work among the stars."

- Nigel Calder, "The Key to the Universe," BBC, 1977

Come Quickly

Come quickly!
I am tasting stars!

~Dom Perignon (French benadictine monk, 1638-1715) at the moment of his discovering champagne.

Follow

Follow your own star!

~Dante Alighieri

Imagination

"Imagination is the star in man, the celestial or supercelestial body."

~Martin Ruland, Lexicon Alchemiae, 1612.

When

"When it is dark enough, you can see the stars."

~Charles Beard

No pessimist

No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.

~Helen Keller

I

I, the fiery life of divine wisdom, I ignite the beauty of the plains, I sparkle the waters, I burn in the sun, and the moon, and the stars.

~Hildegard of Bingen

We forget

We forget about the space between the stars, the pure and perfect space that's also the eye of God. To penetrate the mystery is to become the mystery; to penetrate infinity is to become infinity; to penetrate light is to become light.

~Dr Frederick Lenz

The first great silence

The first great silence in the life of Jesus holds all His years of growth. It meant study in the shadows of the synagogue, meditation on the upland pastures, prayer beneath the evening stars. The first great silence for every life should be, know thyself. God has given to every individual soul some gift that is unique, peculiar to itself; some delicate tint that it alone can add to the great picture; some tone that no other soul can sound forth.

~unknown

Ah, not to be cut off

Ah, not to be cut off,
not through the slightest partition
shut out from the law of the stars.
The inner - what is it?
if not intensified sky,
hurled through with birds and deep
with the winds of homecoming.

~Rainer Maria Rilke

Begin doing

Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand — and melting like a snowflake.

~Marie Beyon Ray