20 Star Quotes, Short and Sorted by Theme
Star quotes split into a few clear groups: the short ones that fit a caption, the ones that are really about scale, the ones people say to encourage someone, and the handful that get attributed to the wrong person almost every time.
They are sorted that way below.
Most of these read differently away from a city.
Under a real dark sky you can see a few thousand stars instead of a few dozen, and lines that sound decorative on a screen turn out to be descriptions.
Short Star Quotes
These fit a caption or a card without cutting.
“Hitch your wagon to a star.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Society and Solitude (1870)
“We are made of star stuff.” — Carl Sagan, Cosmos (1980)
“Look up at the stars and not down at your feet.” — Stephen Hawking
“Second to the right, and straight on till morning.” — J.M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy (1911)
“Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight.” — traditional rhyme
“Stars can’t shine without darkness.”
The Barrie line is worth knowing about. His original has no star in it; Disney added “star” in the 1953 film, and the version everyone quotes is the film’s, not the book’s.
Deep Meaningful Star Quotes
The ones that hold up on a second read.
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” — Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892)
“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.” — Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason (1788)
“I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” — Sarah Williams, from the poem “The Old Astronomer” (1868)
“For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.” — Carl Sagan, Contact (1985)
“For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.” — Vincent van Gogh, letter to his brother Theo, 1888
The Sarah Williams line gets attributed to Galileo constantly. It is from a Victorian poem written more than two hundred years after he died, and the full stanza is better than the fragment.
Inspirational Star Quotes
Encouragement, mostly, and one warning.
“Astronomy compels the soul to look upward, and leads us from this world to another.” — Plato, Republic
“The stars are not afraid to appear like fireflies.” — Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds (1916)
“Doubt thou the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move.” — Shakespeare, Hamlet
“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”
That last one is on a thousand posters under Norman Vincent Peale’s name and sometimes Les Brown’s. Nobody has produced a source for either, so it runs here without one. It is also, astronomically speaking, backwards.
Star Quotes About Life
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” — Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handywork.” — Psalm 19:1, King James Version
“Nothing in the sky is in a hurry.”
The Shakespeare line is usually quoted as “it is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves,” which is a paraphrase somebody smoothed out. The real line is sharper because of the word underlings.
You Are a Star Quotes
For a card, a toast, or a message to someone who needs it.
“There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights.” — Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)
“You don’t have to be the brightest thing up there to be worth looking for.”
The Stoker line surprises people who have not read the book. It is said by Van Helsing, in earnest, and it is the least gothic sentence in the novel.
Where the Quotes Actually Make Sense
Roughly eighty percent of people in North America cannot see the Milky Way from where they live.
That is the practical reason these lines land harder on a trip than at home.
You need about twenty minutes of full darkness for your eyes to adapt, and one glance at a phone resets the clock.
If you are going out on purpose, a red-light headlamp is the one piece of gear that matters, because red light does not undo the adaptation.
For specific places worth the drive, see 6 magical stargazing spots.
For the shorter version of the same idea, there are more lines in big sur captions.
FAQ
What is the most famous quote about stars?
Wilde’s “we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars” is the most quoted, and Sagan’s “we are made of star stuff” is the most quoted from the last century.
Did Galileo say “I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night”?
No. It is from Sarah Williams’s poem “The Old Astronomer,” published in 1868. The misattribution is everywhere and has been for decades.
What is a good short star quote for a caption?
“We are made of star stuff” or “hitch your wagon to a star.” Both are five or six words and both are properly sourced.
Are there star quotes that are not about wishing or dreaming?
Kant’s and Sagan’s are about scale rather than aspiration, and both are better for it. The wishing quotes are mostly aimed at children.
Why do so many star quotes have no author?
Because they spread as graphics rather than as text in books. A line with no source that circulates for ten years eventually gets assigned to whoever sounds plausible, which is how Galileo and Einstein end up with dozens of quotes they never said.
