The Universe Quotes

Without God, the universe is an empty space, and emptiness is the most terrible feeling you can have." – Ernesto. ~ Paul Alkazraji

Meridian


First daylight on the bittersweet-hung
sleeping porch at high summer; dew
all over the lawn, sowing diamond-
point-highlighted shadows;
the hired man's shadow revolving
along the walk, a flash of milkpails
passing; no threat in sight, no hint
anywhere in the universe, of that

apathy at the meridian, the noon
of absolute boredom; flies
crooning black lullabies in the kitchen,
milk-soured crocks, cream separator
still unwashed; what is there to life
but chores and more chores, dishwater,
fatigue, unwanted children; nothing
to stir the longueur of afternoon

except possibly thunderheads;
climbing, livid, turreted alabaster
lit up from within by splendor and terror
-- forded lightening's
split-second disaster. ~ Amy Clampitt

My understanding of God is an experience. God is. That's all I know. In the Biblical tradition, it would be expressed as, "Be still and know that I am God." God is the "I am" energy. Something huge is at play here - cosmic creativity, consciousness, God, whatever you want to call it. I do believe that it's a guided ride. We're on a guided tour of the universe. ~ Elizabeth Lesser

I think; therefore, I am the center of the universe. ~ Craig Bruce

It [Communism] is not new. It is, in fact, man's second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: "Ye shall be as gods." It is the great alternative faith of mankind. Like all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision. Other ages have had great visions. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and man's relationship to God. The Communist vision is the vision of Man without God.
It is the vision of man's mind displacing God as the creative intelligence of the world. It is the vision of man's liberated mind, by the sole force of its rational intelligence, redirecting man's destiny and reorganizing man's life and the world. It is the vision of man, once more the central figure of the Creation, not because God made man in his image, but because man's mind makes him the most intelligent of the animals. Copernicus and his successors displaced man as the central fact of the universe by proving that the earth was not the central star of the universe. Communism restores man to his sovereignty by the simple method of denying God. ~ Whittaker Chambers

It is foolish, generally speaking, for a philosopher to set fire to another philosopher in Smithfield Market because they do not agree in their theory of the universe. That was done very frequently in the last decadence of the Middle Ages, and it failed altogether in its object. But there is one thing that is infinitely more absurd and unpractical than burning a man for his philosophy. This is the habit of saying that his philosophy does not matter, and this is done universally in the twentieth century, in the decadence of the great revolutionary period. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I named this place Listening Point because only when one comes to listen, only when one is aware and still, can things be seen and heard. Everyone has a listening point somewhere. It does not have to be in the north or close to the wilderness, but someplace of quiet where the universe can be contemplated with awe. ~ Sigurd F. Olson

It now appears that the way the universe began can indeed be determined, using imaginary time. ~ Stephen Hawking

Just one smile Immensely increases the beauty Of the universe. ~ Sri Chinmoy

The universe is made up of an endless ocean of life itself. It is an endless ocean of itself. And for a time it binds itself together in particularized forms. Those forms have perception and they perceive themselves as being separate. ~ Frederick Lenz

They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth. -Plato, philosopher (427-347 BCE) ~ Plato

Our children may save us if they are taught to care properly for the planet; but if not, it may be back to the Ice Age or the caves from where we first emerged. Then we'll have to view the universe above from a cold, dark place. No more jet skis, nuclear weapons, plastic crap, broken pay phones, drugs, cars, waffle irons, or television. Come to think of it, that might not be a bad idea. ~ Jimmy Buffett

[...] proficiency in inferring the large-scale and small-scale structure of our immediate environment, or any features of parts of the universe distant from our ancestral stomping grounds, was of no relevance to our ancestors' reproductive fitness. Hence, there is no reason to imagine that our habitual intuitions and inferential responses are well designed for science or for metaphysics. ~ James Ladyman

Given everything we know about the universe it would seem utterly impossible for any sane person to believe that the ultimate truth about the universe and human existence is the story of Israeli, German or Russian nationalism – or indeed of nationalism in general. A story that ignores almost the whole of time, the whole of space, the Big Bang, quantum physics and the evolution of life is at most just a tiny part of the truth. Yet people somehow manage not to see beyond it.
Indeed, billions of people throughout history have believed that for their lives to have meaning, they don't even need to be absorbed into a nation or a great ideological movement. It is enough if they just 'leave something behind', thereby ensuring that their personal story continues beyond their death. The 'something' I leave behind is ideally my soul or my personal essence. If I am reborn in a new body after the death of my present body, then death is not the end. It is merely the space between two chapters, and the plot

"that began in one chapter will carry on into the next. Many people have at least a vague faith in such a theory, even if they do not base it on any specific theology. They don't need an elaborate dogma – they just need the reassuring feeling that their story continues beyond the horizon of death. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

A sunrise, a winter squall, birds flying in a perfect V. These were things that were. The truth, visceral and sublime, of the universe, was that it existed whether we witnessed it or not. Majesty and beauty, these were qualities we projected upon it. A storm was just weather. A sunrise was simply a celestial pattern. It's not that he didn't enjoy them. It's that he didn't require anything more from the universe than that it exist, that it behave consistently-- that gravity worked the way it always worked, that lift and drag were constants. ~ Noah Hawley

Not only does the universe have its own laws, all of them indifferent to the contradictory dreams and desires of humanity, and in the formulation of which we contribute not one iota, apart, that is, from the words by which we clumsily name them, but everything seems to indicate that it uses these laws for aims and objectives that transcend and always will transcend our understanding. ~ Jose Saramago

We're all as bad as each other. All hungry little cannibals at our own cannibal party. So fuck the milk of human kindness and welcome to the abattoir! ~ Philip Ridley

Each being in the universe yearns for the free energy necessary for survival and development. Each existence resists extinction. The consequent history of violence in the universe is as inevitable as the gravitational pull between the Earth and the Sun. ~ Brian Swimme

I realize that while people may indeed fail me and turn away, there is an underlying goodness to the Universe which brings to me new friends and new situations. These gifts heal and soothe me. I see the merciful hand of providence despite my pain. ~ Julia Cameron

Your imagination is a very powerful tool given to you by the Universe ~ Joe Vulgamore

The universe had an odd sense of fairness; it took away things one did not want to give up, and then gave things one did not ask for. ~ Laila Lalami

It is thought and feeling which guides the universe, not deeds. ~ Edgar Cayce

It's not going to be just humans colonizing space, it's going to be life moving out from the Earth, moving it into its kingdom. And the kingdom of life, of course, is going to be the universe. ~ Freeman Dyson

Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself. ~ Rumi

When we foolishly believe that our ways, our opinions, our plans somehow have jurisdiction over the sovereign will of the Creator of the universe, we will always end up in one place: the pigpen. ~ Kasey Van Norman

With all respect to your religion or world-view - thank God, thank the universe, thank evolutionary processes - the keyword is "thank" - just have some gratitude and be thankful. ~ Bryant McGill

For if a man by magical arts and sacrifices will bring down the moon, and darken the sun, and induce storms, or fine weather, I should not believe that there was anything divine, but human, in these things, provided the power of the divine were overpowered by human knowledge and subjected to it. ~ Hippocrates

It's love,' they say. You touch the right one and a whole half of the universe wakes up, a new half. ~ William Stafford

And this you can know- fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe. ~ John Steinbeck

There are valleys that lead to the bottom of the world, so it seems, but what world is that? The universe has no sides, no end, can't be mapped. Enough to make a man talk about God, make a man superstitious and worship an idol. The science never gets as far as the strangeness. The more sophisticated my equipment, the stranger the worlds it detects. I sometimes think I'm sailing through a vast thought. ~ Jeanette Winterson

The universe is pregnant with signs that recall the presence of the Creator. ~ Tariq Ramadan

Time is a relationship that we have with the rest of the universe; or more accurately, we are one of the clocks, measuring one kind of time. Animals and aliens may measure it differently. We may even be able to change our way of marking time one day, and open up new realms of experience, in which a day today will be a million years. ~ George Zebrowski

Love is the crown that glorifies; the curse That brands and burdens; it is life and death. It is the great law of the universe; And nothing can exist without its breath. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The man up there raged aloud in two languages, and with a sincerity in his fury that almost convinced me I had, in some way, sinned against the harmony of the universe ~ Joseph Conrad

We certainly don't yet know all the answers. But the universe is about to be pried open. ~ Lisa Randall

I prayed to what all things hold in common. I prayed to what makes life. I thought about the elements of the universe, the rocks, the stars, the air, other living things. I tried to get the perspective of what's behind all that. I prayed to the force that brings things into existence. I thought this force encompassed all it created. My God was transcendent, and my God was also immanent. God ran in my veins. God lived and died and lived again in every atom of the universe. ~ Margaret D. McGee

The highest prison walls in the universe are not made of bricks or stone, but of ignorance. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Each and every prayer is a tiny piece of a great cosmic puzzle, which when fitted together will allow for the completion of the grand picture of the Almighty Lord's plan for humanity and the universe. ~ Jason Mandryk

Some people have a view of self and of the universe that obliges them to struggle for happiness, to yearn for happiness-"some time in the future"-perhaps next year or the year after that. But not now. Not at this moment. Not here. Here and now is too terrifyingly close, too terrifyingly immediate. They suffer from happiness anxiety. ~ Nathaniel Branden

In a sense, all poetry is positional: to try to express one's position in regard to the universe embraced by consciousness, is an immemorial urge. The arms of consciousness reach out and grope, and the longer they are the better. Tentacles, not wings, are Apollo's natural members. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Why do more than 40 percent of Americans think that the Universe began after the domestication of the dog? ~ Richard Dawkins

Your mind is the most fertile and largest land in the universe. You can grow anything you desire. ~ Debasish Mridha

When you swim, be a part of the sea; when you walk, be a part of the road! Integrate with the universe! See it not as a distinct entity, but as your own continuation, as your own self! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

The visitor from outer space made a gift to Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels.
So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn't possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought.
The reader would have to think that, too, since the new Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was.
And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections! ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Perfect worlds do not exist. There are only the funny, strange, weeping, singing, truncated, and imperfect universes created by the gods of paintbrush and musical instruments, the gods who infuse their creations with their own blood, their own soul. When he looks at these worlds, the true Lord of Hosts, the creator of the universe, probably cannot help but smile mockingly ~ Vasily Grossman

I have read various articles on the fourth dimension, the relativity theory of Einstein, and other psychological speculation on the constitution of the universe; and after reading them I feel as Senator Brandegee felt after a celebrated dinner in Washington. "I feel," he said, "as if I had been wandering with Alice in Wonderland and had tea with the Mad Hatter." ~ Charles Lane Poor

Take the expansion rate of the universe, which is fine-tuned to one part in a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion. That is, if it were changed by one part in either direction--a little faster, a little slower--we could not have a universe that would be capable of supporting life. ~Stephen C. Meyer, PHD~ ~ Lee Strobel

If the general picture of an expanding universe and a Big Bang is correct, we must then confront still more difficult questions. What were conditions like at the time of the Big Bang? What happened before that? Was there a tiny universe, devoid of all matter, and then the matter suddenly created from nothing? How does that happen? In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. If we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must, of course ask next where God comes from. And if we decide this to be unanswerable, why not save a step and decide that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question? Or, if we say that God has always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed? ~ Carl Sagan

Don't give up! It's not over. The universe is balanced. Every set-back bears with it the seeds of a come-back. ~ Steve Maraboli

Love is the water of life. And a lover is a soul of fire! The universe turns differently when fire loves water. ~ Shams-i Tabrizi

When you keep a strong image of what you want in your mind, and possess the conviction that it is yours by right, you send out powerful vibrations to the farthest reaches of the universe. ~ Stephen Richards

Peace comes from the absence of fear, from a consciousness of trust, from a deep, underlying faith in the absolute goodness and mercy, the final integrity of the universe in which we live, and of every cause to which we give our thought, our time and our attention. ~ Ernest Holmes

The only way to imagine the sound of that sort of screaming is to think of it as the sound produced when the universe rips itself open to let Death come through ~ Gavriel Savit

Why assume so glibly that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it? It is certainly conceivable that He may have finished it and then turned it over to lesser gods to operate. ~ H.L. Mencken

Nothing is always. Nothing in the universe is always. ~ J.P. Monninger

Justice is the very last thing of all wherewith the universe concerns itself. It is equilibrium that absorbs its attention. ~ Maurice Maeterlinck

We all have an inner voice, our personal whisper from the universe. All we have to do is listen
feel and sense it with an open heart. Sometimes it whispers of intuition or precognition. Other times, it whispers an awareness, a remembrance from another plane. Dare to listen. Dare to hear with your heart. ~ C.J. Heck

Clearly, there is some invisible force that is moving every aspect of reality to its next best expression. And the universe is not only self-organizing, it is also self-correcting. The embryo becomes a baby; the baby is born; its lungs continue to breathe - not only were they created but then they continue to breathe. The heart is not only created but it continues to breathe. If there is injury and disease that becomes present within the body, the body is also equipped with an immune system to correct that. ~ Marianne Williamson

You live in the most sacred place
in the universe:
right here,
right now. ~ Ivan M. Granger

In the past, I walk between green lawns, surrounded by golden stone.
In the past, I am brilliant and I am happy and my every tomorrow is madness.
In the past, words shimmer around me on silver threads and I pluck them like summer peaches.
In the past, the universe is a glitterball I hold in the palm of my hand. I am the axis of the world.
In the past, I am soaring, and falling, and breaking, and lost. ~ Alexis Hall

Sunflowers and seashells and logarithmic spirals (said Kerewin); sweep of galaxies and the singing curve of the universe (said Kerewin); the oscilating wave thrumming in the nothingness of every atom's heart (said Kerewin); did you think I could build a square house? So the round shell house holds them all in its spiralling embrace. Noise and riot, peace and quiet, all is music in this sphere. ~ Keri Hulme

As far as I can determine, the universe is made of ninety-five percent contradiction. And I'm not certain about the last five percent. ~ A.E. Marling

If you can take something as ultimately frivolous [as a comic book] in the cosmic scale of things in the universe and what's important - people being born and dying and everything else that's gonna happen today - if one gay kid in Shawnee Mission, Kansas, reads an X-Men comic and feels for a second like maybe they're not entirely alone in the world - that's amazing. I'll take it. Whatever size victory that is, I will take. ~ Matt Fraction

Positive thoughts keep you in harmony with the universe. ~ Wayne Dyer

The universe is not a world of separate things and events but is a cosmos that is connected and coherent. The physical world and spiritual experience are both aspects of the same reality and man and the universe were one ~ Alexis Karpouzos

Manifesting your desires requires an understanding of the universe's abundance and inherently giving nature. If you ask from a position of fear or desperation, you are sending out your fear and desperation, and the universe, giving, reflecting, and non-judgmental as it is, will send those right back at you. ~ Stephen Richards

We don't know why we are here and the context of our role in the universe, and the thought of an infinite universe. It's something the human mind can't really grasp. It's statistically impossible that there's not life on other planets. ~ Joel Kinnaman

To me, chance isn't random. The universe is bound by unseen threads. We have only to untangle them a little to see the pattern unfold. ~ Kathleen Tessaro

Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself. ~ Harlan Ellison

The universe always gives you what you need to grow into the person you are destined to become. ~ Patricia Velasquez

... her skills more akin to the baking of macaroons than solving the complexities of the universe. ~ Guy Portman

We are born, we live, and we perish, perhaps to be born again in some other form ... Galaxies are but one living entity burning with the energy from all of us. Life and death are but siblings who turn the universe continually. Endlessly. ~ Tony DiTerlizzi

Someday, I'm going to discover all the secrets of the universe.'
That made me smile. 'What are you going to do with all those secrets, Dante?'
'I know what I'll do with them,' he said. 'Maybe change the world.
I believed him. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

I feel as much belief in her as I do in God- I find faith in human perseverance, even as the universe throws challenge after challenge our way. This might be one of the things I saw in Rhiannon, too- her desire to persevere. ~ David Levithan

Since many things we see were once an idea, let us create good ideas today because they will be the realities of tomorrow! When you create an idea, do not forget that you shape the future! Idea is your God side! With ideas, you can change the universe, but only with very great ideas! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Its not what the universe gives us that matters, but what we give the universe ~ Lauren Myracle

The game of mind and emotions is eternal
If YOU run the Game
you'll see how the Universe gives a lot
Slobodan Boban Manic ~ Slobodan Boban Manic

Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic un-interestingness as an intellectual position. Where was the ingenuity, the ambiguity, the humanity of saying that the universe just happened to happen and that when we're dead we're dead? ~ John Updike

The universe rings true whenever you fairly test it. ~ C.S. Lewis

I refuse to "look up." Optimism nauseates me. It is perverse. Since man's fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery. ~ John Kennedy Toole

The universe is not more beautiful than your pure thoughts-enlighten the world around you, the rest is complementary... ~ Vedang Sati

If we knew exactly the laws of nature and the situation of the universe at the initial moment, we could predict exactly the situation of the same universe at a succeeding moment. ~ Henri Poincare

There is a cosmic "entanglement" between every atom of our body and atoms that are light-years distant. Since all matter came from a single explosion, the big bang, in some sense the atoms of our body are linked with some atoms on the other side of the universe in some kind of cosmic quantum web. Entangled particles are somewhat like twins still joined by an umbilical cord (their wave function) which can be light-years across. What happens to one member automatically affects the other, and hence knowledge concerning one particle can instantly reveal knowledge about its pair. Entangled pairs act as if they were a single object, although they may be separated by a large distance. ~ Michio Kaku

The universe is not rich enough to buy the vote of an honest man. ~ Pope Gregory I

The God of the universe is not something we can just add to our lives and keep on as we did before. ~ Francis Chan

If I were a CEO of a company and ran it like God runs the universe, I'd be fired. ~ Sherwin Wine

Looking for the meaning of life, one man can discover the order of the universe. To discover the truth, to achieve. a higher spiritual state, that is the true meaning of ninja.. ~ Masaaki Hatsumi

Through space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; through thought I comprehend the world. ~ Blaise Pascal

I look out the backseat window of the car filled with all of my best friends and rest my eyes on the moon, and I wonder: how can it be that the moon is surrounded by all of the stars in the nighttime sky, and yet it still looks so isolated from the rest of the universe around it?
- lonely ≠ alone ~ Cyrus Parker

They can't help us. All the heroes in the universe couldn't help the Winters family. We're a clan of beings who can only help ourselves. ~ Ginger Scott

Live like the universe is your beloved home, love like everyone is your closest friend. ~ Debasish Mridha

It's the age-old concept of like attracts like, or the law of attraction. You get back what you put out, so you might as well think positively, focus on visualizing what you want instead of getting distracted by what you don't want, and send the universe your good intentions so that it can send them right back. ~ Sophia Amoruso

Shall I be able to understand the sense of what you have written?

No, King, what a poet writes is not meant to have any sense.

What then?

To have the tune itself.

What do you mean? Is there no philosophy in it?

No, none at all, thank goodness.

What does it say, then?

King, it says "I exist." Don't you know the meaning of the first cry of the new-born child? The child, when it is born, hears at once the cries of the earth and water and sky, which surround him,--and they all cry to him, "We exist," and his tiny little heart responds, and cries out in its turn, "I exist." My poetry is like the cry of that new-born child. It is a response to the cry of the Universe. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

You get that one chance; and damn it, you've got to take it! If there's one lesson I know I will take with me for eternity, its that there are those things that might happen only once, those chances that come walking down the street, strolling out of a café; if you don't let go and take them, they really could get away! We can get so washed out with a mindset of entitlement– the universe will do everything for us to ensure our happiness– that we forget why we came here! We came here to grab, to take, to give, to have! Not to wait! Nobody came here to wait! So, what makes anyone think that destiny will keep on knocking over and over again? It could, but what if it doesn't? You go and you take the chance that you get; even if it makes you look stupid, insane, or whorish! Because it just might not come back again. You could wait a lifetime to see if it will...but I don't think you should. ~ C. JoyBell C.

I hear them say "Why do I miss someone I haven't even met?"
How about not missing someone because it feels like they've been with you all along? ~ Nicola An

I didn't want to do it,' Kiala said. 'The universe just kind of conspired to force me to make a fool of myself. It does that quite a lot, actually. ~ Graham Parke

The laws of nature are constructed in such a way as to make the universe as interesting as possible. ~ Freeman Dyson

Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here. ~ Paul Davies

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. ~ David Hume

...the universe is energy. All of it. Everything is energy that can be altered simply by willing it to be altered. It's as if we are God's waking dream, each gifted with a small piece of his consciousness; the beauty of that arrangement is that we create the dream for him. If you can understand that, if you can wrap your mind around it, then you can conjure up anything you want from out of the ether. Provided there is material enough to do it. ~ C. Robert Cargill