If you recognise that reference, lucky you.  If not, look up Granny Weatherwax.

I am in London with my wife, heading for Italy in a day or so, glorying in the courteous way EU countries allow a range of concessions for seniors, though it looks as though the blind sheep who have taken control of Britain may well change that soon.

Still, while the going is good, entry to museums and galleries is free, and the Brits come pouring in, as do the many, many foreigners who are to be found here.  Once the Tories make their cuts, charges will come in, the crowds will stop coming and the tourist dollars, euros and pounds will stop flowing.

And that is why we are disporting ourselves in fun places and why I am not blogging here.  My travel blog is at http://mcmanly.livejournal.com/ where you can read of our adventures and occasional trials.

Britain, by the way, is suffering its worst drought since 1929, its second-worst in the last century.  On the Hebridean island off Ulva, just off Mull, the primary school's well has driest up, and on Mull, the distillery may soon have to stop production.

There won't be a whisky drought like the one that inspired Compton Mackenzie's 'Whisky Galore', but a break in production will have awful knock-on effects in a small island economy.

Thought for the day: if Britain had pursued an honest policy of transporting thieves and rogues, Australia would be knee-deep in barons, earls, dukes and their progeny, and Britain would be a republic.

Well, I've been conspicuous by my absence again, and I'm even about to flee the country for seven weeks.  So before I go a few more curtiosities, and because I am off to Britain, a theme occurred to me, a theme inspired by tales brought back by those slightly older than me of what they encountered in post-war Britain.

The Poms might snigger about convicts, but we could always laugh at their baths, which according to legend, were used to store the coal in.  For all that, they must have cared about them, if Jane Austen is to be relied on.

Oh!  who can ever be tired of Bath?
  — Jane Austen (1775 - 1817), Northanger Abbey, chapter 10.

Watching television, you'd think we lived at bay, in total jeopardy, surrounded on all sides by human-seeking germs, shielded against infection and death only by a chemical technology that enables us to keep killing them off.
  — Lewis Thomas, 'Germs' in The Lives of a Cell, Penguin, 1973.

Gather ye soap-suds while ye may
The smuts are still a-flying:
And this same hair so bright today
Tomorrow may need dyeing.

The glorious Lamp of Oil, the wick,
The higher he's a-getting
The sooner will the smuts fly quick
And on your hair be setting.

That hair is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer
But being spoilt, the worse, and worst
Hairs will succeed the former.

 Then be not mean, good soap go buy;
And with it be not chary:
For having lost its bloom, you'll sigh,
'My hair for ever tarry.'
  — Archibald Stoddart-Walker

On a framework of three sticks, meeting at the top, they stretch pieces of woollen cloth, taking care to get the joins as perfect as they can, and inside this little tent they put a dish with red-hot stones in it.  Then they take some hemp seed, creep into the tent, and throw the seed onto the hot stones.  At once it begins to smoke, giving off a vapour unsurpassed by any vapour-bath one could find in Greece.  The Scythians enjoy it so much that they howl with pleasure.  This is their substitute for an ordinary bath in water, which they never use.
  — Herodotus (c. 480 BC - 425 BC), The Histories, Book 4, Penguin Classics, p. 295.

Within a few years isotopes will turn up in many more expected or unexpected places — perhaps the slogan 'Gamma Washes Whiter', will become quite familiar to us when our ultra-sonic washing machines are equipped with some gamma source to sterilize shirts and socks and napkins.
  — Egon Larsen, Atomic Energy, Pan Books, 1958, p. 136-7.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Personally, if anybody makes any comments about convicts to me in England, I shall simply say what my grandmother used to say.

"England must be a terrible place: it's where the convicts came from."

I'm off in my own little world again, working on a book that I may or may not do, but I'm having fun scoping it.

Today, I have been trying to track down the earliest use of "billy", in the sense of what we brew tea in.  I found three independent uses of the word in September to November 1858, and in one of those from NSW, the writer feels that he needs to explain the meaning, while the other two are in Victoria and go unexplained.  I think that may indicate where the word was first used.

You can see all three articles by going to the Trove URL I gave in my last piece, and looking for pieces tagged "billy", but you won't find this one, which I think is a little sad:

"CAUTION.-The public are hereby cautioned not to employ a Chinese Boy, named BILLY BILLIN, aged eleven year, who has absconded from St. Leonard's Family Hotel. North Shore. RICHARD HAWKINS."

SMH 9/3/1858.

One side of me says "I hope Hawkins is roasting in Hell for that," but sadly, he was a creature of his times, and we shouldn't really blame him.

I did some digging, but I can find no later trace of Billy, so probably he changed his name, and hopefully, found a less horrid way of life.

Here's the URL again: http://trove.nla.gov.au/

My father was a very old-fashioned type, a bit of a stick-in-the-mud, a dour Calvinist in thought but not in action, but mostly, he was a very private man.  He died, 44 years ago, thinking he took his secret to the grave.

It seems that a couple of years before he married my mother, he was engaged to somebody else, and while the record was there in the newspapers, who would ever bother to poke around in the SMH for 1941?

The problem is that we have a fairly unusual spelling of our surname, and the National Library of Australia has been putting "historic" newspapers (that means 1803 to 1954 in their terms) online.

I'm a bit of a power user of the service, and I was idly searching on our surname when the engagement notice bobbed up.  It's not a highly interesting item: probably they just didn't hit it off, or she found a Yank or something.  The interesting thing to me is that even though he probably never even told my mother, I now know.

I just idly typed in my surname, which has an odd spelling, and flushed an amazing number of hits out of the papers: the funeral of a grandfather, the death of a great-aunt at two months who was, I think, unknown to anybody, the weddings of uncles and births of cousins--and that engagement.

I have also managed to trace the outline of my great-grandfather's insolvency, though there's more to learn there, and I won't be chasing it in a hurry, because family history isn't high on my list of things to do, but the option is there.

The interesting thing is that the National Library has the newspapers scanned by machine, but then allows registered users to correct the text. The top four contributors have corrected more than a million lines between them, while I'm just approaching the 2000 mark, but most of mine relate to the periods and topics I research for books.

Occasionally I need to really chase something down, and in those cases I add comments that will help other researchers that come after me.  In other words, it's one of those collaborative things that historians will look back on as the real heart of the internet.

Interestingly, it appears that everything I do is available if you know how to look for it.  Unlike my father, I have no illusion that I have that many secrets.  I just have to put the best spin on them that I can.

The link?  http://trove.nla.gov.au/  I recommend a day spent playing with it!

If nothing else, you will get some idea about what your descendants may be able to find out about you.

Oh, and sorry it's been so long between comments--now you know one of the things that was taking my attention.

I believe that our very concept of beauty, necessarily relative and cultural, has over the centuries patterned itself on them, as on the stars, the mountains, and the sea.  We have proof of this if we consider what happens when we examine the head of a butterfly under the microscope; for the greater part of observers, admiration is replaced by horror or revulsion.

— Primo Levi, 'Butterflies' in Other People's Trades, p. 7

Happiness is like a butterfly which appears and delights us for one brief moment, but soon flits away.

— Anna Pavlova (1881-1931), Russian ballerina.

It is said that the famous British biologist, J. B. S. Haldane ... asked by a churchman what his concept of God was, answered: 'He is inordinately fond of beetles'.

— Primo Levi, 'Beetles' in Other People's Trades, page 14

It appears, by the dung that they drop on the turf, that beetles are no inconsiderable part of their food.

— Gilbert White (1720 - 1793), The Natural History of Selborne, (1789), Letter XXVII, about hedgehogs.

March 28.  A neighbour complained to me that her house was over-run with a kind of black-beetle, or as she expressed herself, with a kind of black-bob, which swarmed in her kitchen when they get up in a morning before daybreak.  Soon after this account, I observed an unusual insect in one of my dark chimney-closets; & find since that in the night they swarm also in my kitchen.  On examination I soon ascertained the Species to be the Blatta orientalis of Linnaeus, & the Blatta molendinaria of Mouffet.  The male is winged, the female is not; but shows somewhat like the rudiments of wings, as if in the pupa state.  These insects belonged originally in the warmer parts of America, & were conveyed from thence by shipping to the East Indies; & by means of commerce begin to prevail in the more N. parts of Europe, as Russia, Sweden &c.  How long they have abounded in England I cannot say; but have never observed them in my house 'till lately. [They had probably been there since late in the 17th century]

— Gilbert White (1720 - 1793), Journal, (1790), MIT Press, 1970.

When the servants are gone to bed, the kitchen-hearth swarms with minute crickets not so big as fleas.  The Blattae are almost subdued by the persevering assiduity of Mrs. J. W. who waged war with them for many months, & destroyed thousands: at first she killed some hundreds every night.

— Gilbert White (1720 - 1793), Journal, (1792), MIT Press, 1970.

And you should never own to a mosquito.  I once unfortunately stated to a Queensland gentleman that my coat had been bitten by cockroaches at his brother's house, which I had just left.  'You must have brought them with you then,' was the fraternal defence immediately set up.  I was compelled at once to antedate the cockroaches to my previous resting-place, owned by a friend, not by a brother.  'It is possible,' said the squatter, 'but I think you must have had them with you longer than that.'  I acquiesced in silence, and said no more about my coat till I could get it mended elsewhere.

— Trollope, Anthony, Australia and New Zealand, London: 1873 and Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1967 (edited by Edwards and Joyce), page 67.

In Australia, as everywhere, the mosquitoes sing their irritating 'perpetual melody', an imitation of Wagner.  Grasshoppers are numerous, but less to be feared than in Egypt and Algeria.  The flies are exceptionally obstinate, always wanting to take up residence on your face and hands.  By their bright and pleasing colours the butterflies make any non-land-owner forget what damage their grubs do to agriculture.

— Oscar Comettant, In the Land of Kangaroos and Gold Mines, translated by Judith Armstrong.  Adelaide: Rigby, 1980, originally published as Au Pays des Kangourous et des Mines d'or.  Paris: Librairie Fischbacher, 1890, page 78.

We had wandered too far from the camp to admit of our returning to it to sleep; we therefore commenced a search for water, and having found some, we tethered our horses near it for the night, and should have been tolerably comfortable, had not the mosquitoes been so extremely troublesome.  They defied the power of smoke, and annoyed me so much, that, hot as it was, I rolled myself in my boat cloak, and perspired in consequence to such a degree, that my clothes were wet through, and I had to stand at the fire in the morning to dry them.  Mr. Hume, who could not bear such confinement, suffered the penalty, and was most unmercifully bitten.

— Charles Sturt, Two expeditions into the interior of Southern Australia during the years 1828, 1829, 1830 and 1831.  2 vols: London: Smith Elder and Co., 1833.

Said Robert Bridges,
When bitten by midges:
'They're only doing their duty
As a testament to my beauty.'

— W. H. Auden (1907 -  ), 'Academic Graffiti', Collected Poems, p. 511.

Early in January, I certainly did find it very hot in Victoria, but the heat was intermittent, lasting only for a few days; and though I am told that the mercury rose occasionally to 90o in the shade, I was not seriously oppressed by it.  And I may add to this that Australian mosquitoes, of which I had heard much and which I feared greatly, were never so venomous to me as mosquitoes have been in other countries, nor are they in force for so large a proportion of the year.  The mosquito of Australia is a poor, impotent and contemptible creature as compared, for instance, with the mosquito of the United States.

— Trollope, Anthony, Australia and New Zealand, London: 1873 and Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1967 (edited by Edwards and Joyce), pages 207-208.

The world changed in a curious way in 1800, when Alessandro Volta wrote to Sir Joseph Banks about his piles.  Voltaic piles were batteries, though.  Once the pile was common, people could discover electrolysis, chemistry got a leg-up, and in time, teenagers would be able to share boom-tish and doof-doof with their fellow passengers on train and bus.

You can't win them all.

Sixty or more pieces of ... silver, applied each to a piece of tin or zinc ... and as many strata of cardboard, soaked in salt solution, interposed between every pair of metal discs, and always in the same order, constitutes my new instrument.

 . . . an apparatus having resemblance in its effects . . . to an electric battery . . .

— Alessandro Volta, in a letter to Sir Joseph Banks, 1800.

Having a few pet plants which slugs and snails are particularly fond of as food, I have devised the following simple and efficacious mode of protecting them against their and my enemies ; and as this plan may be useful to some of your readers, I herewith send you a description of my galvanic circle. Procure a flat ring of zinc, large enough to encircle the plant; make a slit in the ring after the manner of a keyring, so that it can be put round the stem of the plant and then rest upon the ground.

Now twist a copper wire into a ring very nearly of the same circumference as the flat zinc ring, and putting it round the plant, let it rest upon the zinc, as in the illustration. No slug or snail will cross that magic circle; they can drag their slimy way upon the zinc well enough, but let them but touch the copper at the same time and they will receive a galvanic shock sufficient to induce them at once to recoil from the barrier.

— Septimus Piesse in Scientific American May 2, 1863, p. 276.

For the sake of portability, many forms of Leclanché cell have been constructed in which there is no free liquid present.  In most of these there is a paste containing manganese dioxide surrounding a carbon rod.  This is in contact with a layer of sawdust, or in some cases, plaster of Paris, saturated with sal-ammoniac.  The whole is contained in a zinc case which forms the negative electrode.

— J. Duncan and S. G. Starling, A Text Book of Physics, Macmillan, 1918, p. 912.

. . . the magnetic needle was moved from its position by the help of the galvanic apparatus when the galvanic apparatus was closed, but not when open . . .

— Hans Christian Oersted (1777-1851)

Oersted would never have made his great discovery of the action of galvanic currents on magnets had he stopped in his researches to consider in what manner they could possibly be turned to practical account; and so we would not now be able to boast of the wonders done by the electric telegraphs.  Indeed, no great law in Natural Philosophy has ever been discovered for its practical implications, but the instances are innumerable of investigations apparently quite useless in this narrow sense of the word which have led to the most valuable results.

— Lord Kelvin (1824-1907), quoted in R. A. Gregory, Discovery (1916), p. 241-2.

The quantity of electricity requisite to deflect a magnetic needle is so inconsiderable, that if the current of a moderately-sized pair of plates were sent into one end of a wire, and only one-hundredth part of it came out at the other end, it would still be sufficient.

— Edward Davy, (1806-1885), inventor of the electrical relay.

Few of our readers have heard of the name of Edward Davy in connection with the history of the telegraph . . . nothing has been published of his labours.  Yet it is certain that, in those days, he had a clearer grasp of the requirements and capabilities of an electric telegraph than, probably, Cooke and Wheatstone themselves . . .

— J. J. Fahie, The Electrician, July 7, 1883.

Of making many books there is no end.

— Holy Bible, Ecclesiastes, 12:12.

Look for knowledge not in books but in things themselves.

— William Gilbert (1540-1603), De Magnete [All About Magnets], 1600

Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.

— Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626), Proposition Touching Amendment of Laws.

A fishmonger near the British Museum once discovered that parchment or limp vellum, though defaced by ancient ink or paint, was better than oiled paper for wrapping fish.  Before the authorities caught up with him, numerous rare manuscripts had found their way into London kitchens, and from thence to the trash bin.

— Lloyd A. Brown, The Story of Maps, Dover edition, 1979, p. 6.

Whitehead caught the unhistorical spirit of the scientific community when he wrote, 'A science that hesitates to forget its founders is lost.'  Yet he was not quite right, for the sciences, like other professional enterprises, do need their heroes and do preserve their names.  Fortunately, instead of forgetting these heroes, scientists have been able to forget or revise their works.

— Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 138-139.

Contrast this situation with that in at least the contemporary natural sciences.  In these fields the student relies mainly on textbooks until, in his third or fourth year of graduate work, he begins his own research.  Many science curricula do not ask even graduate students to read in works not written specially for students.

— Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, second edition, 1970, p. 165

Another damned, thick square book!  Always scribble, scribble, scribble!  Eh!  Mr. Gibbon?

— William Henry, Duke of Gloucester (1743-1805) (attributed).

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

— Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) (1835 - 1910), 'Notice' at the start of Huckleberry Finn, 1884.

You know in England we read their works, but seldom or never take notice of authors.  We think them sufficiently paid if their books sell, and of course leave them in their colleges and obscurity, by which means we are not troubled with their vanity and impertinence.

— Sir Robert Walpole (1676 - 1745), to the philosopher, David Hume.

Some books are only cursorily to be tasted of: namely first, voluminous books, the task of a man's life to read them over; secondly, auxiliary books, only to be repaired to on occasions; thirdly, such as are mere pieces of formality, so that if you look on them you look through them, and he that peeps through the casement of the index, sees as much as if he were in the house.

— Thomas Fuller (1608 - 1661), Worthies of England.

If I were to pray for a taste which would stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me through life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss, and the world frown on me, it would be a taste for reading.

— Sir John Herschel (1792 - 1871) 'Address to the Subscribers of the Windsor and Eton Public Libraries', Charles Mackay (ed.), A Thousand and One Gems of English Prose (n.d.), p. 73.

King David and King Solomon
  Led merry, merry lives,
With many, many lady friends
  And many, many wives;

But when old age crept over them,
  With many, many qualms,
King Solomon wrote the Proverbs
  And King David wrote the Psalms.

—  James Ball Naylor

My desire is . . . that mine adversary had written a book.

— Holy Bible, Job, 31:35.

Lily: 'We looked at the books about crystals but they are so dreadful.'

— John Ruskin (1819 - 1900) The Ethics of the Dust, Ten Lectures to Little Housewives on the Elements of Crystallisation, 1866.

If you happen to have an Elzevir classic in your pocket, neither show it nor mention it.

— Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694 - 1773), Letters from a Celebrated Nobleman to his Heir,

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

— Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) (1835 - 1910), Mark Twain's Speeches, 1910.

Thou should'st be living at this hour,
Milton, and enjoying power.
England hath need of thee and not
Of Leavis and of Eliot.

— Heathcote William Garrod

To such a person my hope has been that my treatise would prove of the very greatest assistance.  Still, such people may be expected to be quite few in number, while, as for the others, this book will be as superfluous to them as a tale told to an ass.

— Galen, On the natural faculties III, 10

I was in a Printing-House in Hell, and saw the method in which knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation.

— William Blake (1757 - 1827)

First, a note about "curtiosity": it is the key attribute of Rudyard Kipling's 'E;ephant's Child.  It isn't a typo.  The curtiosities were collected originally as possible epigraphs, and then as a possible book in their own right, but it all seemed too hard.  Most collections of "quotes" on the web lack the necessary details of chapter and verse and are commonly spurious.  You get my notes, so you know where they came from, and any agile mind will recognise the occasional traps laid for mindless plagiarists. Verb. sap.

Atoms move in the void and catching each other up jostle together, and some recoil in any direction that may chance, and others become entangled with one another in various degrees according to their shapes and sizes and positions and orders, and they come together and thus the coming into being of composite things is effected.

— Simplicius (c. 400 BC), De Caelo

To understand the very large, we must understand the very small.

— Democritus (470 - 380 BC)

The Atoms of Democritus

And Newton's Particles of Light

Are sands upon the Red sea shore

Where Israel's tents do shine so bright.

— William Blake (1757 - 1827), Complete Blake (Oxford Paperback, 1974), page 418.

1.  From nothing comes nothing.  Nothing that exists can be destroyed.  All changes are due to the combination and separation of molecules.

2.  Nothing happens by chance.  Every occurrence has its cause from which it follows by necessity.

3.  The only existing things are atoms and empty space; all else is mere opinion.

4.  The atoms are infinite in number and infinitely various in form; they strike together and the lateral motions and whirlings which thus arise are the beginnings of worlds.

5.  The varieties of all things depend upon the varieties of their atoms, in number, size, and aggregation.

6.  The soul consists of fine, smooth, round atoms like those of fire.  These are the most mobile of all.  They interpenetrate the whole body and in their motions the phenomena of life arise.

— Robert Andrews Millikan quotes these words of Democritus in his book The Electron, saying that they are from [Sir John] Tyndall.

When any body exists in the elastic state, its ultimate particles are separated from each other to a greater distance than in any other state; each particle occupies the centre of a comparatively large sphere, and supports its density by keeping all the rest, which by their gravity or otherwise, are disposed to encroach upon it, at a respectable distance.

Chemical analysis and synthesis go no further than to the separation of particles one from another, and to their reunion.  No new creation or destruction of matter is within the reach of the chemical agency.  We might as well attempt to introduce a new planet into the solar system, or to annihilate one already in existence, as to create or destroy a particle of hydrogen.  All the changes we can produce consist in separating particles that are in a state of cohesion or combination, and joining those that were previously at a distance.

— John Dalton, A New System of Chemical Philosophy, 1808.

They may say what they like.  Everything is organised matter.

— Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 - 1821)

We shall never get people whose time is money to take much interest in atoms.

— Samuel Butler (1835 - 1902), Notebooks

The first support of the isotope theory among non-radioactive elements was given by the anomalous behaviour of the inactive gas neon, when analysed by Sir J. J. Thomson's method of positive rays . . . This peculiarity was that whereas all elements previously examined gave single, or apparently single, parabolas, that given by neon was definitely double.  The brighter curve corresponded roughly to an atomic weight of 20, the fainter companion to one of 22, the atomic weight of neon being 20.20.

— Francis Aston (1877 - 1945), address before the Royal Institution, 1921.

No one has ever seen, nor probably ever will see, an atom, but that does not deter the physicist from trying to draw a plan of it, with the aid of such clues to its structure as he has.

— Maria Goeppert Mayer (1906 - 1972), 'The Structure of the Nucleus', Scientific American Reader (1953), page 116.

In fact it may be logically impossible for anyone to be able to correctly visualize certain physical systems, such as atoms, because they contain features that simply do not exist in the world of our experience.

— Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Penguin Books, 1990, p. 18.

There have been almost innumerable attempts to reduce the differences between atomic weights to regularity by contriving some formula which will express the numbers which represent the weights with all their irregularities.  Needless to say, such attempts have in no way been successful.

— Sir William Ramsay (1852 - 1916), address to the British Association, Toronto, 1897.

The division of our culture is making us more obtuse than we need be: we can repair communications to some extent: but, as I have said before, we are not going to turn out men and women who understand as much of their world as Piero della Francesca did of his, or Pascal, or Goethe.  With good fortune, however, we can educate a large proportion of our better minds so that they are not ignorant of the imaginative experience, both in the arts and in science, nor ignorant either of the endowments of applied science, of the remediable suffering of most of their fellow humans, and of the responsibilities which, once seen, cannot be denied.

— C. P. Snow (1905 - 1980), The Two Cultures: a Second Look, 1963.

What happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all works of art which preceded it.

— T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)

There is a likeness between the creative acts of the mind in art and in science.  Yet, when a man uses the word science in such a sentence, it may be suspected that he does not mean what the headlines mean by science.

— Jacob Bronowski (1908 -    ), Science and Human Values, Julian Messner, 1956.

What is the insight with which the scientist tries to see into nature?  Can it indeed be called either imaginative or creative?  To the literary man the question may seem merely silly.  He has been taught that science is a large collection of facts; and if this is true, then the only seeing which scientists need to do is, he supposes, seeing the facts.

— Jacob Bronowski (1908 -    ), Science and Human Values, Julian Messner, 1956.

. . if science were a copy of fact, then every theory would be either right or wrong, and would be so forever.  There would be nothing left for us to say but that this is so or not so.  No one who has read a page by a good critic or a speculative scientist can ever again think that this barren choice of yes or no is all that the mind offers.

— Jacob Bronowski (1908 -    ), Science and Human Values, Julian Messner, 1956.

There should be no honours for the artist; he has already, in the practice of his art, more than his share of the rewards of life; the honours are pre-empted for other trades, less agreeable and perhaps more useful.

— Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894), Letter to a Young Gentleman.

When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.

— W. H. Auden (1907 -  ), 'The Poet and the City', in The Dyer's Hand, Faber, 1963, p. 81.

At one time, the state of culture in Czechoslovakia was described, rather poignantly, as a 'Biafra of the spirit'. . . I simply do not believe that we have all lain down and died.  I see far more than graves and tombstones around me.  I see evidence of this in . . . expensive books on astronomy printed in a hundred thousand copies (they would hardly find that many readers in the USA) . . .

— Vaclav Havel, Czech playwright (and later president), 'Six asides about culture' in Living in Truth, Faber 1989, pp. 124-5.

Science is part of culture.  Culture isn't only art and music and literature, it's also understanding what the world is made of and how it functions.  People should know something about stars, matter and chemistry.  People often say that they don't like chemistry but we deal with chemistry all the time.  People don't know what heat is, they hardly know what water is./I'm always surprised how little people know about anything.  I'm puzzled by it.

— Max Perutz, quoted in New Scientist 26 June 1993, 31.

If anything as whacky as this has planets going round it, then surely ordinary stars stand a much better chance these days.

— Heather Couper, British astronomer, 1991, on a pulsar with possible planets (New Scientist??)

We are no other than a magic row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
   Round with the Sun-illumin'd Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show . . .

— Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883), The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

It is possible to see that the sun, moon and stars do not rise and set at the same time for every observer, but always rise earlier in the east and later in the west.  Eclipses, especially those of the moon, are not always recorded at the same time after noon, being at a later hour in the east than in the west.  And as this difference in times is proportional to the distances between places, we can see that the surface of the earth is spherical.

— Claudius Ptolemy (?75 - 150?? AD), Almagest, written about 150 A.D.

The brightness of the sun, which lights up the world, the brightness of the moon and of fire — these are my glory.

— Bhagavad Gita, 15:12, in the translation of Eknath Easwaran, Arkana Books, 1985.

Howbeit, we cannot choose but confess, that the true reason and knowledge of agriculture, dependeth principally upon the observation of the order in heavenly bodies

— Pliny the Elder (AD 23 - 79), The Natural History, translated by Philemon Holland (1552 - 1637)

Observatory, altar, temple, tomb,
Erected none knows when by none knows whom,
To serve strange gods or watch familiar stars,
We drive to see you in our motor-cars
And carry picture postcards back to town
While still the unsleeping stars look coldly down.

— Sir John Squire (1884 - 1958), 'Stonehenge', Collected Poems, Macmillan, 1959, p. 209.

Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere.

— William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 1, V, iv, 65

Fool:    The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason.
Lear:    Because they are not eight?
Fool:    Yes, indeed; thou wouldst make a good fool.

—  William Shakespeare, King Lear, I, v.

Yet we have but to make a few lines on a chart
And the distance of the furthest stars
In the sky can be measured.

— The Sixth Dalai Lama, (1682 - 1705).

who knows if the moon's
a balloon, coming out of a keen city
in the sky - filled with pretty people?

— e. e. cummings (1894-1962)

When fishes flew and forests walked
  And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
  Then surely I was born;

— G. K. Chesterton (1874 - 1936), The Donkey

The Milky Way, our galaxy (a word derived from the Greek gala, meaning milk), has great depth.  Its distances are most conveniently measured in terms of travelling times at the speed of light.

— Bart J. Bok, 'The Milky Way', Scientific American Reader (1953), page 13.