Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as much as possible; let us chase our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appeared in that narrow compass.

-Hume, David
  A  Treatise of Human Nature, bk.1, pt.2, section 6.

There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.

-Huxley, Aldous Leonard
  Time Must Have a Stop.

O God! Put backThy universe and give me yesterday.

-Jones, HenryArthur
  The Silver King (with Henry Herman), act 2, sc.4.

His soul swooned slowlyas he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descentoftheir lastend, uponall theliving and the dead.

-Joyce,James Augustine Aloysius
  Dubliners,'The Dead'.

The cold reaches of the universe must not become the new area of an even colder war.

-Kennedy,John F(itzgerald)
  Address to the United Nations, 25 Sep.

Effective research scarcely begins before a scientific community thinks it has acquired firm answers to questions like the following: What are the fundamental entities of which the universe is composed? How do these interact with each other and with the senses? What questions may legitimately be asked about such entities and what techniques employed in seeking solutions?

-Kuhn,Thomas S(amuel)
  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Une ample Come¤  die a'   cent actes divers, Et dont la sce'  ne est l'Univers. A grand comedy in one hundred different acts, On the stage of the universe.

-La Fontaine,Jean de
  Fables, pt.5, no.1,'Le bu"   cheron et Mercure'.

The love of our neighbour is the only door out of the dungeon of self, where we mope and mow, striking sparks, and rubbing phosphorescence out of the walls, and blowing our own breath in our own nostrils, instead of issuing to the fair sunlight of God, the sweet winds of the universe.

-MacDonald, George
  Unspoken Sermons.

‚Robaron los conquistadores una pa¤  gina al Universo! Aquellos eran los pueblos que llamaban a laV|¤a La¤  ctea'el camino de las almas'; para quienes el Universo estaba lleno del Grande Esp|¤ritu, en cuyo seno se encerraba toda luz. The conquistadores stole a page from the Universe! Those were the good people who called the Milky Way 'the souls'path'; for them the Universe was full of the Great Spirit, within which all light was contained.

-Mart|¤  ,Jose¤
  Obra literaria,'El hombre antiguo de  Ame¤  rica y sus artes primitivas' ('Ancient Man in  America and his Primitive  Arts').

If the universe had a beginning, its beginning, by the very condition of the cases, was supernatural; the laws of Nature cannot account for their own origin.

-Mill,John Stuart
  Auguste Comte and Positivism.

The artist does not tinker with the universe; he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life.

-Miller, Henry Valentine
  The Cosmological Eye,'An Open Letter to Surrealists Everywhere'.

He took the golden compasses, prepared In God's eternal store, to circumscribe This universe, and all created things: One foot he centred, and the other turned Round through the vast profundity obscure, And said,'Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds This be thy just circumference,O world.'

-Milton,John
  Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.7, l.225^31.

The scientific attitude implies†the postulate of objectivityöthat is to say, the fundamental postulate that there is no plan; that there is no intention in the universe.

-Monod,Jacques
  Le Hasard et la Nece¤  ssite¤  .

When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through space with other stars all singing and shining togetheras one, the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty.

-Muir,John
Travels in  Alaska, ch.1,'The Puget Sound and British Columbia' (published1915).

Nothing is accidental in the universeöthis is one of my Laws of Physicsöexceptthe entire universeitself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity.

-Myles na Gopaleen
  Do WhatYou Will,'The Summing-Up: Meredith Dawe'.

Notforalltheuniversecontainswould I, inthestrugglefor what I conceive to be my country's cause, consent to the effusion of a single drop of human blood, except myown.

-O'Connell, Daniel known as  the Liberator
  Speech,18 Feb.

Nec species sua cuique manet, rerumque novatrix ex aliis alias reddit natura figuras. nec perit in toto quidquam, mihi credite, mundo, sed variat faciemque novat, nascique vocatur incipere esse aliud, quam quod fuit ante, morique, desinere illud idem. cum sint huc forsitan illa, haec translata illuc, summa tamen omnia constant. No species remains constant: that great renovator of matter Nature, endlessly fashions new forms from old: there's nothing in the whole universe that perishes, believe me; rather it renews and varies its substance. What we describe as birth isno morethan incipient change froma prior state, while dying is merely to quit it. Though the parts may be transported hither and thither, the sum of all matter is constant.

-Ovid full name Publius OvidiusNaso   4317
Metamorphoses, bk.15, l.252^8 (translated by Peter Green).

Science provides a vision of reality seen from the perspective of reason, a perspective that sees the vast order of the universe, living and non-living matter, as a material system governed by rules that can be known by the human mind.It is a powerful vision, formal and austere but strangely silent about many of the questions that deeplyconcernus. Scienceshowsuswhat existsbut not what to do about it.

-Pagels, Heinz R(udolf)
  The Dreams of Reason. US writer, Professor of Humanities  at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia.  Her  works  include  Sexual  Personae  (1990)  and Vamps andTramps (1994).

It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human invention; it is only theapplication of themthat is human. Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable asthose by whichthe universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles, he can only discover them.

-Paine,Thomas
  TheAge of Reason, pt.1.

When every fact, every present or past phenomenon of [the] universe, every phase of present or past lifetherein, has been examined, classified, and coordinatedwith the rest, thenthemissionof sciencewill be completed.What isthisbut saying thatthetaskof science canneverend till man ceases to be, till history is no longer made, and development itself ceases?

-Pearson, Karl
  The Grammar of Science, pt.1, ch.5.