John Pipkin Quotes

The quiet brings to mind the multitude of men and women living out their days in solitude - each convinced that their fears and wants are unique to themselves - and she longs to press herself into their fold and be counted among those whose lives are meshed with the turning of the world.

Nothing in heaven or earth is content to be alone, and so there must always be something more. The universe is governed by a principle no more complicated than this: that a solitary body will forever attract another to itself.

As the eclipse progresses, a confusion of chattering birds sweeps low in search of dusk and their shadows skip over the water's surface and it makes perfect sense that these small creatures should be so moved by events beyond their reckoning.

Each new scientific fact gives rise to new uncertainties, and every pattern of starlight holds both a record and a prophecy.

Sometimes he counts himself to sleep by imagining the miles between stars like the succession of footsteps cleaving him from his home, as if mastering the distance in thought might blunt the separation. But if a man cannot return to the place of his birth, then what is there to stay his restless feet? What center will hold him from wandering endlessly? It should not be so difficult, he thinks, to know one's place in the order of things.

Wisdom tolerates blustered opinions, the better to dismiss them later with discovery.

So we will cover every possibility. We will take turns at the telescope. I will keep watch in the day, and at night you will take my place, and together we will see to it that no part of the sky goes unobserved.

The basis of English law is as simple as this: If you would know the future's shape, look to the past.

Her calculations have always held the utmost accuracy, but mathematics alone will not be enough to guide her; she must learn to trust in chance and, if need be, in accident.

He tracks the rise and fall of the glittering darkness thronged with specks and tendrils of luminous secrets. Falling stars crackle in the cold air and prickle his skin. They flash in the corner of his vision where the eye's discernment of light and shadow is most acute.

The heavens are too immense, too beautiful and varied, to fit into the mind of any one deity; the murmured creeds of fathers and sons are no match for the astronomer's gasp.

It is only the sudden and unpredictable appearance of comets that spoils the immutable celestial sphere.

Sketches of mad skies spilling stars caught in spiraling gyres, diagrams for constructing sextants tall as a man and armillary spheres to mimic the motion of the cosmos. He decides that he must have all of it, that he will cram the little observatory with maps and charts, clocks and compasses, and instruments for bringing the sky nearer.

It is one of the great blessings of youth, this guiltlessness, the source of gentle sleep and peaceful days.