When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured
with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass
 
 

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds.
That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

Albert Einstein
 
 

There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

William Shakespeare
Hamlet
 
 

We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars.

Oscar Wilde
 

Although science may solve the problem of how the universe began, it cannot answer the question:  Why does it bother to exist?  I don't know the answer to that.

Stephen Hawking
Black Holes and Baby Universes
 

Astronomy is really cool!
Steve Mandel
Galaxy Images