reaching for the stars

40 Deep and Meaningful Quotes About The Stars

Last Updated: February 3, 2023

The night sky has fascinated humankind for thousands of years. The proof is that many stars in the night sky are part of a constellation invented by humans. They are part of myths and legends depicted in many books from ancient times. 

The stars illuminate our lives in many ways, not only by the photons that reach our eyes but also by the inspiration they give us every time we admire them in the night sky. Many men and women have been inspired by the stars and have created books, poems, plays and music about them.

I’m often lost for words when admiring the stars through my telescope. This is not the case for the many people I have listed on this page. I hope you will enjoy these inspiring and meaningful short quotes about the stars as much as I do.

Our stellar selection of quotes about the stars

“There’s as many atoms in a single molecule of your DNA as there are stars in the typical galaxy. We are, each of us, a little universe.”

– Neil deGrasse Tyson

“We are all of us stars, and we deserve to twinkle.”

Marilyn Monroe

“All we ever see of stars are their old photographs.”

Alan Moore

“Shoot for the stars but if you happen to miss shoot for the moon instead.”

Neil Armstrong

“There are more stars in the heavens than all the grains of sands covering the world’s beaches”

Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan quote

“It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”

William Shakespeare

“There is stardust in your veins. We are literally, ultimately children of the stars.”

Jocelyn Bell Burnell

“Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.”

– Theodore Roosevelt

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

Oscar Wilde

“Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.”

Stephen Hawking

“For my part, I know nothing with any certainty but the sight of the stars makes me dream.”

Vincent Van Gogh

“It is reasonable to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be competent to understand so simple a thing as a star.”

Arthur Eddington

“The real friends of the space voyager are the stars. Their friendly, familiar patterns are constant companions, unchanging, out there.”

James Lovell

“Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life. I thought of their unfathomable distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of the unknown past into the unknown future.”

Herbert George Wells

“And as I looked at the star, I realised what millions of other people have realised when looking at stars. We’re tiny. We don’t matter. We’re here for a second and then gone the next. We’re a sneeze in the life of the universe.”

Danny Wallace

“The stars are the land-marks of the universe.” 

Sir John Frederick William Herschel

“New stars offer to the mind a phenomenon more surprising, and less explicable, than almost any other in the science of astronomy.”

George Adams

“There wouldn’t be a sky full of stars if we were all meant to wish on the same one.”

Frances Clark

“I’ve loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”

Galileo Galilei

“Do not complain beneath the stars about the lack of bright spots in your life.”

Bjornstjerne Bjornson

“I love the stars. Because they can’t say anything. I love the stars. Because they do not judge anyone.”

Natsuki Takaya

“Stars, everywhere. So many stars that I could not for the life me understand how the sky could contain them all yet be so black.”

Peter Watts

“The stars look like they’re so close, you could reach out and touch them. But you can’t. Sometimes things look a lot closer than they are”

Kami Garcia

“You and I are made of stardust. We are the stuff of exploded stars. We are, therefore, at least 1 way that the Universe knows itself. That, to me, is astonishing.”

Bill Nye

“When we look out into space, we are looking into our own origins, because we are truly children of the stars.”

Brian Cox

Brian Cox quote

Look to the stars and from them learn.

Albert Einstein

“If you love a flower that lives on a star, it is sweet to look at the sky at night. All the stars are abloom with flowers.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“I am a child of the Milky Way. The night is my mother. I am made of the dust of stars

Chet Raymo

“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will love the darkness because it shows me the stars

Og Mandino

“Do not look at stars as bright spots only. Try to take in the vastness of the universe.

Maria Mitchell

“Some people wish upon stars. Others go out and make their wishes come true.”

Unknown

“We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”

Carl Sagan

“Not only do we live among the stars, the stars live within us.”

Neil deGrass Tyson

“Life, just like the stars, the planets and the galaxies, is just a temporary structure on the long road from order to disorder.”

Brian Cox

“The stars, that nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps with everlasting oil, give due light to the misled and lonely traveller.”

John Milton

“One of the great things about stargazing is that it’s immediately at hand for so many people. You know, you could get into scuba diving or bird watching, but the stars are always up there.”

Tim Ferriss

“If an object – a star, for instance, like our own sun – is eight hundred light years away from the Earth, it would take light leaving that object eight hundred years until it reached our eyes. So when you look at that object, you are seeing it as it appeared eight hundred light years ago, not as it looks today. It might not even exist anymore. Every time you look up at the stars, you are looking into the past.”

Wendy Mass in “Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life”

“Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.”

Isaac Asimov

“Did you know that the center of a Protostar (the star in the middle of a nebula) is called a Nuclear Furnace? So you can call that the star’s “heart.” The heart of a star is a furnace. Not much unlike the human heart.””

C. JoyBell C.

““Sometimes while gazing at the night’s sky, I imagine stars looking down making wishes on the brightest of us.”

Richelle E. Goodrich

So there you have it. A list of my favourite inspiring quotes about the stars. They touch upon themes of wonder, beauty, mystery, and the connection between us and the universe.

These short quotes show the inspiring and thought-provoking impact that stars have on people, and how they bring people together to appreciate the mysteries of the cosmos

As a passionate amateur astronomer, observing the night sky fills me with a sense of amazement and I hope these beautiful quotes will make you feel the same way. 

If you come across one that inspired you online, in a book, or on TV, feel free to send it to me 🙂

Tom Urbain

 I’ve been fascinated by space and astronomy from a very young age. When I’m not watching space-themed documentaries, movies or TV series, I spend most of my free time in my backyard admiring the planets and galaxies with my telescope.

Wow! There's more to read 🚀

This page is part of our collection of articles about astronomy. If you enjoyed the read, then you’ll love the following articles.

a planet and a star

How can we tell the difference between stars and planets, and how can this help us to identify them in the night sky?

The brightest stars in the night sky

When you look up into the night sky, you might have noticed that not all the stars shine equally.

composite image of a star

While there are ~10^24 stars in the universe, there are less than 20 types of stars. In this article, we’ll explore star types.

proto star
Discover the incredible process of star formation and the mysteries of a star’s life cycle. From birth to death and possibly beyond, we explore the science behind it all.