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Quote by Preston Alcorn-Swain

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Preston Alcorn-Swain

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“Did you know that shooting stars are made when stars die?' Mina asked. 'Really? I thought they were stars going on a trip.' 'No, they shine so beautifully because they get pulled in by Earth's gravity and burn up when they reach the atmosphere.' 'You're kidding me.' 'So, while we're watching them thinking how beautiful they are, they're literally burning up and dying.' 'Like matches that look most beautiful the moment before they burn out.' 'Did you know that it was the comets that brought the elements to Earth that created life? Comets are made of ice, and a gigantic one struck the Earth when it was just forming, and that made the oceans.' 'So, does that mean that part of us is in the Giacobini comet? ...How would we ever know?' 'I learned all this from the library books you borrowed, Tomoko. You're like a comet that brings books. But tell me, what are you going to wish for? When you see the shooting stars.”

LifeEarthStarsElementsGravityWishesCometsShooting Stars
Book:Mina's Matchbox
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“When he wrote Meditations, Marcus Aurelius was the most powerful man in the world. He had, quite literally, a whole empire at his disposal. Cities, armies, palaces. All were his. He spent over a decade, from the year 161 to 180, as Roman emperor during the 'Golden Age'. And yet he resisted seeking any contentment in his status and power, in favour of simplicity, consultation and a cosmic perspective. He believed watching the stars was important and talks about Pythagoras - the early Greek philosopher and founder of Pythagoreanism - as his influence here. The Pythagoreans saw gazing up at the sky not just as a pleasant thing to do, but an insight into a divine order. Because stars are all separate, but all together in an order. For the Stoics, looking at them was looking at unveiled glimpses of divinity - and also fragments of Nature. It is not just the sky or the stars, then, that are important, but what we think when we look at them. Our connection to the shifting world around and above us. 'The universe is change', wrote Marcus Aurelius. 'Our life is what our thoughts make it.' Even a man in charge of an empire could look at the stars and feel happily small in the grand universal order of things. The sky doesn't start above us. There is no starting point for sky. We live in the sky.”

UniverseStarsStoicismNight SkyMarcus AureliusCosmic PerspectiveThe Stoics
Book:The Comfort Book
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“These travelers would not have considered navigating by the lights below. They looked up at the lights overhead, at the stars arrayed across the black velvet dome of the sky. Those were the reliable guides. Cities, after all, might rise and fall, the the constellations overhead would persist, pointing the way for those who could read the sky.”

StarsConstellations
Book:A Season On The Wind: Inside the World of Spring Migration
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