Quotes from Chet Raymo

Knowledge is an island surrounded by a sea of mystery.

The dark night was the first book of poetry, and the constellations were the poems.

Beauty soaks reality as water fills a rag.

Science is not a collection of facts. Nor is science something that happens in the laboratory. Science happens in the head. It's a flight of imagination beyond the constraints of ordinary perception. Columbus chapter -The Virgin and the Mousetrap

Nancy According to astronomers, every atom in my body was forged in a star. I am made, they insist, of stardust. I am stardust braided into strands and streamers of information, proteins and DNA, double helixes of stardust. In every cell of my body there is a thread of stardust as long as my arm.

In one of his most popular essays, "The Colloid and the Crystal," the nature writer Joseph Wood Krutch wrote about these opposing forces in nature. "Order and obedience are the primary characteristics of that which is not alive," he wrote. "Life is rebellious and anarchical.

All of my life has been a relearning to pray- a letting go of incantational magic, petition, and the vain repetition "Me, Lord, Me," instead watching attentively for the light that burns at the center of every star, every cell, every living creature, every human heart. Learning to pray, then, as I understand it, is learning to listen with the mind and heart- making oneself attentive to each exquisite detail of the world.

The mediocrity principle establishes our worth as equal to that of the universe.

To be mediocre is not to be small. . . . We are physically small compared to the galaxies, but our minds encompass the universe

Fabre believed that the methods of science must be consistent with our motives for knowing.

Beryl . . . relieves stress. Diamond guards against envy. Azurite heightens dreams. Garnet improves self esteem. And good old white quartz is an energizer.

Stephen Jay Gould once wrote that the human mind delights in finding pattern — so much so that we often mistake coincidence . . . for profound meaning.

To know if only half; to love is the other half.

More things are learnt in the woods than from books; trees and rocks will teach you things not to be heard elsewhere. You will see for yourselves that honey may be gathered from stones and oil from the hardest rock. . . . St. Bernard of Clairvaux