Moongazing Quotes & Sayings

The exercise of power in this century has meant for all of us in the United States not arrogance, but agony. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow — T. S. Eliot

It was humanly impossible for the disciples to free themselves from their selfish pursuit of self-exaltation, just as it's impossible for us to free ourselves from the very same sins. — C.J. Mahaney

Laughter nibbled at my lips like tiny fish in warm water. — Anne Rivers Siddons

Let us cherish and love old age; for it is full of pleasure if one knows how to use it. Fruits are most welcome when almost over; youth is most charming at its close; the last drink delights the toper, the glass which souses him and puts the finishing touch on his drunkenness. Each pleasure reserves to the end the greatest delights which it contains. Life is most delightful when it is on the downward slope, but has not yet reached the abrupt decline. — Seneca.

We have almost all had the experience of gazing at the full moon. But those of us who are neither astronomers nor astronauts are unlikely to have scheduled moongazing appointments. For Zen Buddhists in Japan, however, every year, on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the traditional Japanese lunisolar calendar, followers gather at nightfall around specially constructed cone-shaped viewing platforms, where for several hours prayers are read aloud which use the moon as a springboard for reflections on Zen ideas of impermanence, a ritual known as tsukimi. Candles are lit and white rice dumplings (tsukimi dango) are prepared and shared out among strangers in an atmosphere at once companionable and serene, a feeling thereby supported by a ceremony, by architecture, by good company and by food. — Alain De Botton