„Sky—what a scowl of cloudTill, near and far,Ray on ray split the shroud:Splendid, a star!“

— Robert Browning

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„Over all the sky—the sky! far, far out of reach, studded with the eternal stars.“
— Walt Whitman
„I have satisfied myself that the [cosmic] rays are not generated by the formation of new matter in space, a process which would be like water running up a hill. Nor do they come to any appreciable amount from the stars. According to my investigations the sun emits a radiation of such penetrative power that it is virtually impossible to absorb it in lead or other substances…. This ray, which I call the primary solar ray, gives rise to a secondary radiation by impact against the cosmic dust scattered through space. It is the secondary radiation which now is commonly called the cosmic ray, and comes, of course, equally from all directions in space. [The article continues: The phenomena of radioactivity are not the result of forces within the radioactive substances but are caused by this ray emitted by the sun. If radium could be screened effectively against this ray it would cease to be radioactive, he said. ]“
— Nikola Tesla
„But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and vulgar things.“
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
„There is a place with four suns in the sky — red, white, blue, and yellow; two of them are so close together that they touch, and star-stuff flows between them. I know of a world with a million moons. I know of a sun the size of the Earth — and made of diamond. There are atomic nuclei a few miles across which rotate thirty times a second. There are tiny grains between the stars, with the size and atomic composition of bacteria. There are stars leaving the Milky Way, and immense gas clouds falling into it. There are turbulent plasmas writhing with X- and gamma-rays and mighty stellar explosions. There are, perhaps, places which are outside our universe. The universe is vast and awesome, and for the first time we are becoming a part of it.“
— Carl Sagan
„Deep in the shady sadness of a valeFar sunken from the healthy breath of morn,Far from the fiery noon, and eve’s one star,Sat gray-hair’d Saturn, quiet as a stone,Still as the silence round about his lair;Forest on forest hung about his headLike cloud on cloud.“
— John Keats