"Music of the spheres" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... know one Peter Bell, you know three Peter Bells; they are not one, but three; not three, but one. An awful mystery, which, after having caused torrents of blood, and having been hymned by groans enough to deafen the music of the spheres, is at length illustrated to the satisfaction of all parties in the theological world, by the nature of ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... pilgrims without tears, Who prayed a largess where there was no dearth, Forgive it to their human-happy ears: Forgive it them, brown music of the Earth, Unknowing, — though the wiser silence knew! Forgive it to the music of the spheres That while they walked together so, the Two ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... friend's loss, and afterwards in the theatre he expressed his sympathy in such kind and delicate lines, whilst tears of genuine feeling stood in his eyes, that his friend was obliged to admit, "This music of the spheres, which I had heard at least a dozen times before, exerted a greater power over me than all the dictates of reason ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... so devoid of spiritual perception that he could get no glimpse of a God in a "world full of sin and misery." This proves nothing as to the universe. It only shows how unhappily one great man has missed the music of the spheres, and failed to catch ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... other passages from literature which suggest the "music of the spheres," for example: Dryden's Song for Saint Cecilia's Day, The Moonlight Scene from The Merchant of ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... his mind. As the heavens were ordered in consonance with number, they must move in eternal order. "The spheres" revolved in harmonious order around the great centre of light and heat—the sun—"the throne of the elemental world." Hence the doctrine of "the music of the spheres." Pythagoras ad harmoniam canere mundum existimat. [Footnote: Cicero, De Nat. D., iii. ii. 27.] The tendency of his speculations, obscure as they are to us, was to raise the soul to a contemplation of order and beauty and law, in the material universe, and hence to the contemplation of a supreme ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... buying, selling, sweating, swearing, praying, loving, hating, struggling, failing, sinning, repenting—all working and living according to a vast harmony, which sometimes we can catch clearly and sometimes miss entirely. I think, that morning, for a time, I heard the true music of the spheres, the stars ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... not heard the music of the spheres, The song of star to star, but there are sounds More deep than human joy and human tears, That Nature uses in her common rounds; The fall of streams, the cry of winds that strain The oak, the roaring of the ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... state; and from the effects of a decrease of a country's corn to the effects of a decrease of its gold (the utility of which, but not of corn, depends on its value, and its value on its scarcity). Such, also, were the Pythagorean inferences that there is a music of the spheres, because the intervals between the planets have the same proportion as the divisions of the monochord; and, again, that the movements of the stars as being divine must be regular, because so are those even of orderly men. So, Aristotle and other ancients supposed perfection to obtain in ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... universe, all things, animate and inanimate, move in revolutionary harmony; and though complex in their machinery as the wheels of Ezekiel's vision, are yet so perfect and beautiful in their order, as to have suggested to the ancients the poetical idea of "the music of the spheres." And now for the truth of the foregoing propositions in geometrical physics, they shall, in at least one striking instance, be illustrated by a few passages from the life and adventures of a quondam acquaintance of mine, ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... the universe, he taught, is only a harmonical development of the first principle of all things to virtue and wisdom. He attached much value to music, as an art which has great influence on the affections; hence his doctrine of the music of the spheres. Assuming that number is the essence of the world, he deduced the idea that the world is regulated by numerical proportions, or by a system of laws which are regular and harmonious in their operations. Hence the necessity for an intelligent creator of the universe. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... never wane Until, the earth encompass'd, it sank in dazzling flame. In faith assured we waited as in patience thou didst wait, Knowing full well the answer must sooner come or late. And come it has, sufficingly, the discord disappears Until today again is heard the music of the spheres Proclaiming thee the well-beloved, peer of the proudest ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler
... we were about to visit, and from their shape we agreed that they were well called the Organ Mountains; for as we then saw them, the centre height especially wore the appearance of a huge organ. "A grand instrument that," said Tony, "such as I suppose an angel might choose to sound forth the music of the spheres." ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston
... with sunrise, when the sunrise floats From Night's bold towers, vast in the East, and gray Till tower and wall flash into fiery clouds, Moving along the verge, stately and slow, Ordered by the old music of the spheres? Perchance it trembles in October's oaks; Or, twining with the brilliant, berried vine, Would hide the tender, melancholy elm. Well might it rest within those solemn woods Where sunlight never falls—whose tops are green With airs from heaven,—its balmy mists and rains,— ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... his entirely enormous vanity and very small stock of faculty—out of Bedlam. He picked up a notion or two from Coleridge many years ago; and has ever since been rattling them in his head, like peas in an empty bladder, and calling on the world to "List the Music of the spheres." He escapes assassination, as I calculate, chiefly by being the cheerfulest best-natured little creature extant.—You cannot kill him he laughs so softly, even when he is like killing you. John Mill said, "I forgive him freely for interpreting the Universe, ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... After shutting his chest again and triple-locking it, he numbered the deniers, renumbered them, gazed long at them with looks of affection, and addressed them in words so soft and sweet, so affable and ingratiating, so gentle and courteous, it seemed rather the music of the spheres ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... the place, for both seemed suddenly endowed with uncommon beauty and interest. The dingy old houses might have been fairy palaces, for anything they saw to the contrary; the dusty walks, the trampled grass, were regular Elysian fields to them, and the music was the music of the spheres, though they found themselves "Right in the middle of the boom, jing, jing." For both had made a little discovery,—no, not a little one, the greatest and sweetest man and woman can make. In the sharp twinge of jealousy which the sight of Kitty's flirtation with Fletcher gave him, ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... debarred from occasional visits to Paradise, comes daily to bring three pints of milk from some ambrosial cow; occasionally, also, he makes an offering of mortal flowers. Mr. Emerson comes sometimes, and has been feasted on our nectar and ambrosia. Mr. Thoreau has twice listened to the music of the spheres, which, for our private convenience, we have packed into a musical-box. E. H———, who is much more at home among spirits than among fleshly bodies, came hither a few times merely to welcome us to the ethereal world; but latterly she has vanished ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... examples will not appear so strange if we consider what we have ordinary experience of, how much custom stupefies our senses. We need not go to what is reported of the people about the cataracts of the Nile; and what philosophers believe of the music of the spheres, that the bodies of those circles being solid and smooth, and coming to touch and rub upon one another, cannot fail of creating a marvellous harmony, the changes and cadences of which cause the revolutions and dances of the ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... appreciation of the mediocrity of Port Agnew than others in the little town possessed, a realization that she had more to give to life than life had to give to her. Perhaps it had been merely the restlessness that is the twin of a rare heritage—the music of the spheres—for with such had Nan been born. It is hard to harken for the reedy music of Pan and hear only the whine of a sawmill or the boom ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... Greenwich. "Sweep the skies Within this limited region now," he said. "You'll find your moving planet. I'm not more Than one degree in error." He left his proofs; But Airy, king of Greenwich, looked askance At unofficial genius in the young, And pigeon-holed that music of the spheres. Nine months he waited till Le Verrier, too, Pointed to that same region of the sky. Then Airy, opening his big sleepy lids, Bade Challis use his telescope,—too late, To make that honour all his country's own; For all Le Verrier's proofs were now with Galle Who, being German, had his ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... embraced our sun, and extended throughout space, we should perhaps hear in the ambient the fundamental chord, resolvable into the diatonic scale—as we look upon the beam of white which the prism decomposes into the solar spectrum, and in the ghostly watches of the night, we might recognize the 'music of the spheres' as the planets rushed around their airy orbits, with a noise like the 'noise of many waters,' no longer a poetic ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the loud playfulness and mirth. Of those who passed him, gay in youth and hope, He took at Jupiter a shilling's worth Of gazing, through the showman's telescope; Sounds as of far-off bells came on his ears, He fancied 'twas the music of the spheres. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... view, being doomed to wear my detested motley for all eternity, to stretch out my hand for ever to grasp realities and find I can do nought but beat the air with my bladder; to listen with strained ear perpetually expectant of the music of the spheres, and catch nothing but the mocking jingle of the bells on ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... because Weighed down with men's expectancy, the mind Can no more soar to those far heights, and find That freedom which its inspiration was. When once we listen to its noisy cheers Or hear the populace' approval, then We catch no more the music of the spheres, Or walk with gods, and angels, but with men. Till, impotent from our self-conscious fears, The plaudits of the ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... take effect. He had indeed ceased to look for any result from it, when all at once, as he stood amongst the laburnums and lilacs of a rather late spring, something seemed to burst in his brain, and that moment he was Endymion waiting for Diana in her interlunar grove, while the music of the spheres made the blossoms of a stately yet flowering forest, tremble ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald |
