The Answer to the Great Question Of†Life, the Universe and Everything†Is†Forty-two.

-Adams, Douglas Noe«  l
  The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, ch.27.

I am a free man, I do not need to copy Petrarch or Boccaccio. My own genius is enough. Let others worry themselves about style and so cease to be themselves. Without a master, without a model, without a guide, without artifice,Igotowork and earnmy living, my well- being, and my fame.What do Ineedmore? Witha goose quill and a few sheets of paper I mock the universe.

-Aretino, Pietro
Quoted in  J H Plumb (ed)  The Horizon Book of the Renaissance (1961, new edn by Penguin,1982).

   esta¤   dema¤  s decirte que a esta altura no creo en predicadores ni en generales ni en las nalgas de miss universo ni en el arrepentimiento de los verdugos ni en el catecismo del confort ni en el flaco perdo¤  n de dios. It's not useless to tell you that, at this stage, I don't believe in preachers or generals or in Miss Universe's buttocks or in the executioner's repentance or in the catechism of comfort or in God's slim forgiving.

-Benedetti, Mario
  Poemas de otros,'Credo' ('Creed').

Mancannot livewithout seeking todescribeand explain the universe.

-Berlin, Sir Isaiah
  In the Sunday Times.

Our sun is one of100 billion stars in our galaxy.Our galaxy is one of billions of galaxies populating the universe.It would be the height of presumption to think that we are the only living things in that enormous immensity.

-Braun,Wernher von
  In the NewYork Times, 29  Apr.

   How true it is, that there isnothing dead inthis Universe; that what we call dead is only changed, its forces working in inverse order! 'The leaf that lies rotting in moist winds,'says one,'has still force; else how could it rot?'

-Carlyle,Thomas
  History of the French Revolution, vol.2, bk.3, ch.1.

The main thing a musician would like to do is to give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows and senses in the universe.

-Coltrane,John
  Quoted in sleeve-note to the re-issue of Coltrane's Sound (originally published1961).

A man said to the universe: 'Sir, I exist!' 'However,'replied the universe, 'The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.'

-Crane, Stephen
  A Man Said to the Universe.

We doctors know a hopeless case ifölisten: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go

-cummings, e e pen name of  Edward Estlin Cummings
1x1, no.14.

I believe that there are15,747,724,136,275,002,577,605, 653,961,181,555,468,044,717,914,527,116,709,366,231, 425,076,185,631,031,296 protonsintheuniverse, and the same number of electrons.

-Eddington, SirArthur Stanley
   Tarner Lecture.

My kingdom is as wide as the universe and my wants have no limits. I go forward always, freeing spirits and weighing words, without fear, without compassion, without love, without God. I am called science.

-Flaubert, Gustave
  The Temptation of St  Antony.

L'univers†je l'en estime plus depuis que je sais qu'il ressemble a'   une montre; il est surprenant que l'ordre de la nature, tout admirable qu'il est, ne roule que sur des choses si simples. I have come to esteem the universe more now that I know it resembles a watch; it is surprising that the order of nature, as admirable as it is, only runs on such simple things.

-Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de
  Entretiens sur la pluralite¤   des mondes.

Ulysses†is a dogged attempt to cover the universe with mud, an inverted Victorianism, an attempt to make crossness and dirt succeed where sweetness and light failed, a simplification of the human character in the interests of Hell.

-Forster, E(dward) M(organ)
  Of  James  Joyce's1922 novel.  Aspects of the Novel, ch.6.

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.

-Forster, E(dward) M(organ)
Two Cheers for Democracy,'Art for  Art's Sake'.

A golfcourse isthe epitome of all that ispurely transitory in the universe, a space not to dwell in, but to get over as quicklyas possible.

-Giraudoux, (Hippolyte) Jean
  Quoted in Colin  Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.

-Haldane,J(ohn) B(urdon) S(anderson)
  Possible Worlds and Other Essays,'Possible Worlds'.

There was a natural instinct to abjure man as the blot on an otherwise kindly universe.

-Hardy,Thomas
  The Mayor of Casterbridge, ch.1.

What we gain by science is, after all, sadness, as the Preacher saith.Themore weknowofthelaws and nature of the Universe the more ghastly a business we perceive it all to beöand the non-necessity of it.

-Hardy,Thomas
  Letter to Edward Clodd, 27 Feb.

What isitthat breathes fire intothe equations and makes a universe for them to describe† Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

-Hawking, StephenWilliam
  A Brief History of  Time, ch.11.

Universitas in modo citharae sit disposita, in qua diversa genera in modo chordarum sit consonantia. The universe is arranged like a cithera, in which different kinds of things sound together harmoniously, just as they do in a chord.

-Honorius of Autun
c.1120  Liber Duodecem Questionum, ch.2.