Speck Of Dust Quotes & Sayings

The light is already there. In Zen Buddhism there's a little speck of dust on the mirror, and that's us. — Frederick Lenz

all this world of ours is nothing but a speck of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet. And for us to suppose we can have something great - ideas, work - it's all dust and ashes." "But — Anton Chekhov

There is nothing but God, nothing but the Goddess, nothing but Spirit in all directions, and not a grain of sand, not a speck of dust, is more or less Spirit than any other. — Ken Wilber

You can't take this speck of dust in this midst of all this incredible panorama of birth and complexifying and say ... this is the only place that [life] happens. It's like turning your back on the whole idea of growth and evolution. — Gene Roddenberry

Yes, in the feverish dance of dust, she thinks, there is surely a speck of Zachariah. Even in his absence, in so many ways, he is so very much here. — Emma Richler

Someday in the very distant future, what would only be the blink of a second to the rest of the universe, the sun would burn out, and this planet would die. Eventually, the speck of mud once known as Earth would break apart, and all vestiges of humanity - art, and literature, and pictures of families - would be decomposed into their elements, and would be scattered throughout the stars in tiny bits and pieces. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. She had dealt with the fact that things die. And because it all dies, none of it really mattered. Lena, — A.L. Tyler

You may not see it now," said the Princess of Pure Reason, looking knowingly at Milo's puzzled face, "but whatever we learn has a purpose and whatever we do affects everything and everyone else, if even in the tiniest way. Why, when a housefly flaps his wings, a breeze goes round the world; when a speck of dust falls to the ground, the entire planet weighs a little more; and when you stamp your foot, the earth moves slightly off its course. Whenever you laugh, gladness spreads like the ripples in the pond; and whenever you're sad, no one anywhere can be really happy. And it's much the same thing with knowledge, for whenever you learn something new, the whole world becomes that much richer. — Norton Juster

When the Universe was not so out of whack as it is today, and all the stars were lined up in their proper places, so you could easily count them from left to right, or top to bottom, and the larger and bluer ones were set apart, and the smaller, yellowing types pushed off to the corners as bodies of a lower grade, when there was not a speck of dust to be found in outer space, nor any nebular debris - in those good old days ... — Stanislaw Lem

We live on a cosmic speck of dust, orbiting a mediocre star in the far suburbs of a common sort of galaxy, among a hundred billion galaxies in the universe. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

If he was truly as old as she suspected, she was likely little more than a speck of dust to him, a fizzle of life in the long-burning fire of his immortality. — Sarah J. Maas

Ann Druyan suggests an experiment: Look back again at the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn't strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim? — Carl Sagan

If I venture to displace ... the microscopical speck of dust ... on the point of my finger, ... I have done a deed which shakes the Moon in her path, which causes the Sun to be no longer the Sun, and which alters forever the destiny of multitudinous myriads of stars. — Edgar Allan Poe

Why would a man not argue his own shameful culpability, why would he not crave responsibility for disaster, when the alternative was to feel himself to be nothing more than a speck of human dust? — Julie Orringer

However, every advance in our knowledge of the cosmos has revealed that we live on a cosmic speck of dust, orbiting a mediocre star in the far suburbs of a common sort of galaxy, among a hundred billion galaxies in the universe. The news of our cosmic unimportance triggers impressive defense mechanisms in the human psyche. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

trailed off as her attention moved from Will taking his juice from the bartender to the glass behind the bartender. There were red dots on the glass. Alessandro brushed her shoulder again and Bree followed a row of red dots from the glass mirror to the wall. Some of the red dots danced over the guests and as an icy cloak of understanding fell over Bree, it seemed to grip Alessandro as well. Then she turned to face him and there were red dots on his chest, as well as her shoulder, which he had been brushing, thinking it was a speck of dust. "GET DOWN!" he screamed to everyone grabbing Bree by the waist and throwing her down while and trying to be heard over the music. Chaos erupted as gunfire drowned out the sound of music and people fell screaming on top of each other as pieces of the wall and glass from the doors and the mirrors rained down on them. The gunfire raged on and on for what seemed like an eternity. Then there was silence. — E. Jamie

Show some respect. They were your grandparents. -Batman
Just names and dusty frames on the wall to me. -Damien
I take exception to that. There is not a speck of dust collecting on those portraits. -Alfred — Peter J. Tomasi

He'd read accounts of extravehicular euphoria, but the experience was unlike anything he'd imagined. He was the eye of God, drinking in the light of infinite stars, and he was a speck of dust on a speck of dust, clipped by his mag boots to the body of a ship unthinkably more powerful than himself, and unimportant before the face of the abyss. — James S.A. Corey

He thought of himself not as something heavy that left tracks behind it, but if anything, as a speck upon the surface of an earth too deeply asleep to notice the scratch of ant feet, the rasp of butterfly teeth, the tumbling of dust — J.M. Coetzee

Let me begin again as a speck
of dust caught in the night winds
sweeping out to sea. Let me begin
this time knowing the world is
salt water and dark clouds, the world
is grinding and sighing all night, and dawn
comes slowly, and changes nothing. — Philip Levine

If it has been revealed to man that the Almighty made him out of the dust of the earth, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, it is in vain to tell a Christian that man was originally a speck of albumen, and passed through the stages of monads and monkeys, before he attained his present intellectual preeminence. If it be a received truth that the Creator has repeatedly interposed in the government of the universe and displayed his immediate agency in miraculous interpositions, it is an insult to any reader to tell him that the being slumbers on his throne and rules under a "primal arrangement in his counsels," and "by a code of laws of unbending operation. — David Brewster

In churchmen, luxury is wrong, except in connection with representations and ceremonies. It seems to reveal habits which have very little that is charitable about them. An opulent priest is a contradiction. The priest must keep close to the poor. Now, can one come in contact incessantly night and day with all this distress, all these misfortunes, and this poverty, without having about one's own person a little of that misery, like the dust of labor? Is it possible to imagine a man near a brazier who is not warm? Can one imagine a workman who is working near a furnace, and who has neither a singed hair, nor blackened nails, nor a drop of sweat, nor a speck of ashes on his face? The first proof of charity in the priest, in the bishop especially, is poverty. — Victor Hugo

The very word 'disappears' implies that the universe is, so to speak, finite, and that it is possible to leave it. But no-o-othing" (he deliberately drew the word out) "can ever leave the universe. And nothing can enter it. Not a single speck of dust can appear or disappear. Matter is transformed into energy, and energy into matter, — Amos Oz

To say that there is still a chasm between our current scientific understanding of the universe and the truth as I saw it is a considerable understatement. I still love physics and cosmology, still love studying our vast and wonderful universe. Only I now have a greatly enlarged conception of what "vast" and "wonderful" really mean. The physical side of the universe is as a speck of dust compared to the invisible and spiritual part. In my past view, spiritual wasn't a word that I would have employed during a scientific conversation. Now I believe it is a word that we cannot afford to leave out. — Eben Alexander

But I guessed that no matter how strong it was, love alone couldn't turn a speck of dust into a galaxy of stars. — Tiffanie DeBartolo

All religions enjoined worship of the One God who is all-pervasive. He is present even in a drop of water or in a tiny speck of dust. — Mahatma Gandhi

Around us, life bursts with miracles
a glass of water, a ray of sunshine, a leaf, a caterpillar, a flower, laughter, raindrops. If you live in awareness, it is easy to see miracles everywhere. Each human being is a multiplicity of miracles. Eyes that see thousands of colors, shapes, and forms; ears that hear a bee flying or a thunderclap; a brain that ponders a speck of dust as easily as the entire cosmos; a heart that beats in rhythm with the heartbeat of all beings. When we are tired and feel discouraged by life's daily struggles, we may not notice these miracles, but they are always there. — Thich Nhat Hanh

I beg you, cease going from lecture to lecture; It's better to seek truth directly. The nature of Diamond Wisdom excludes even a speck of dust. From "Thus we have heard," to "This I believe," All is but an array of unreal names. — Layman Pang

I didn't know jack, but I did know that even after the people you love are torn from you, time keeps beating away at the black metronome that's called life. It doesn't care that you've cracked wide open, that you're screaming for everyone to just stop. It doesn't hear you. You are nothing. People still go to dinner, planes take off and land, lions roar, violins play. And you are left in your corner, hanging on to memories, nothing more than a speck of dust on the metronome's base. - from the journal of Violet St. Lyons — Ilsa Madden-Mills

You are not a powerless speck of dust drifting around in the wind ... we are, each of us, like beautiful snowflakes-unique, and born for a specific reason and purpose. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

The works of Mozart may be easy to read, but they are very difficult to interpret. The least speck of dust spoils them. They are clear, transparent, and joyful as a spring, and not only those muddy pools which seem deep only because the bottom cannot be seen. — Wanda Landowska

Watch the little things in life, the ones you have control over. Keep your eyes glued to the peas and every speck of dust on the floor. — Paul Zindel

Giants of literature, philosophy, and the arts have influenced my life, but what have I done with this life? I remain a speck in a tumultuous universe that has little concern for me. I am no more than dust, a mote - dust to dust. I am a blade of grass upon which the stormtrooper's boot stomps. — Rabih Alameddine

As the brain of man is the speck of dust in the universe that thinks, so the leaves - the fern and the needled pine and the latticed frond and the seaweed ribbon - perceive the light in a fundamental and constructive sense. ... Their leaves see the light, as my eyes can never do. ... They impound its stellar energy, and with that force they make life out of the elements. — Donald C. Peattie

Which brings me to the Hubble Space Telescope's newest images. If it's wonder that you're looking for, and mystery, don't just scan the photographs. Stop and think about them. Try to imagine the scale. The Earth is just a speck of dust on one distant whirling tentacle of the Milky Way galaxy, which contains billions of stars. A 'collision' of galaxies seems unimaginably large - and yet it is something scientists long ago imagined ... The imaginings of pseudoscience are feeble by comparison. — Mark Bowden

I do not feel that I am the product of chance, a speck of dust in the universe, but someone who was expected, prepared, prefigured. In short, a being whom only a Creator could put here; and this idea of a creating hand refers to God. — Jean-Paul Sartre

At some point in reading, we realize we have to read not just the books that we'd enjoy, but the books that move us, touch us, those that break us and hurt us, those which remind us that we will always be the ignorant of this life. We have to read the books that make us so little, make us a speck of dust or a grain of sand in a galaxy, until we feed our minds with all the knowledge we need, which is infinite in itself. — Nema Al-Araby

I begin my pictures under the effect of a shock which I feel and which makes me escape from reality ... I need a point of departure, even if it's only a speck of dust or a flash of light. — Joan Miro

To what shall we compare our fragile life?

Life is like a speck of dust that alights upon a surface. It remains there, unmoved, until a draft threatens it. When a breeze comes it holds on till the last. Finally, a gust of wind comes and it is blown asunder. That is how fragile life is, like a speck of dust blown to nothingness. — Paul Worthington

What is man - and of course the writer means all of us puny little insignificant creatures - what is a mere human being that God who made the immense universe should ever notice?' She chuckled. 'The sky does take you down to size.'
Not even big as bugs. Not even a speck of dust to the nearest star,' Angel agreed.
But the psalmist answers his own question. "Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor ... " '
What?' Angel asked, not sure she had heard right.
A little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor.'
The real angels? Do you believe that?'
Yes, Angel, I do. When people look down on me, and these days' - she laughed shortly - 'these days everyone over the age of five does. When people look down on me, I remember that God looks at this pitiful, twisted old thing that I have become and crowns me with glory. — Katherine Paterson

I am a speck of dust in an ocean of time, floating with the waves of change, vanishing with the infinite. I have no time to complain, condemn, or criticize because I am so busy loving, enjoying, appreciating, and being kind. — Debasish Mridha

The Supreme Arrogance of Religious Thinking:

That a carbon-based bag of mostly water on a speck of iron-silicate dust around a boring dwarf star in a minor galaxy in an underpopulated local group of galaxies in an unfashionable suburb of a supecluster would look up at the sky and declare "it was all made so I could exist — Peter Walker

Everything, every speck of dust, every drop of water continue to exist eternally, albeit in different forms, except for my soul? — Amos Oz

From inaccessible mountain range by way of desert untrod by human foot to the ends of the unknown seas, the breath of the everlasting creative spirit is felt, rejoicing over every speck of dust that hearkens to it and lives. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

We may not know exactly what is happening: we do not know exactly even about a speck of dust. But when we feel the flow of life in us to be one with the universal life outside, then all our pleasures and pains are seen strung upon one long thread of joy. The facts: I am, I move, I grow, are seen in all their immensity in connection with the fact that everything else is there along with me, and not the tiniest atom can do without me. — Rabindranath Tagore

He became almost speechless for a minute, and then went on, Do you know what the place is? Have you seen that awful den of hellish infamy, with the very moonlight alive with grisly shapes, and ever speck of dust that whirls in the wind a devouring monster in embryo? Have you felt the Vampire's lips upon your throat? — Bram Stoker

Because any guilt the size
of a speck of dust, or shame,
can crush even the best of men,
in mountains of weight — Phil Volatile

It was clear: I was sick. I never used to dream. They say in the old days it was the most normal thing in the world to have dreams. Which makes sense: Their whole life was some kind of horrible merry-go-round of green, orange, Buddha, juice. But today we know that dreams point to a serious mental illness. And I know that up to now my brain has checked out chronometrically perfect, a mechanism without a speck of dust. — Yevgeny Zamyatin

He was the sun and I was just a speck of dust, existing on his horizon. Eventually I would burn up and the sun would continue to shine. — Yelena Lugin

It's certainly nice to have my options open." He looked back out at the city. "Can this possibly work, Mister Brekker? Or am I risking the fate of Ravka and the world's Grisha on the honor and abilities of a fast-talking urchin?"
"More than a bit of both," said Kaz. "You're risking a country. We're risking our lives. Seems a fair trade."
The king of Ravka offered his hand. "The deal is the deal?"
"The deal is the deal."
They shook.
"If only treaties could be signed so quickly," he said, his easy privateer's mien sliding back in place like a mask purchased on West Stave. "I'm going to have a drink and a bath. One can take only so much mud and squalor. As the rebel said to the prince, it's bad for the constitution."
He flicked an invisible speck of dust from his lapel and sauntered out of the solarium. — Leigh Bardugo

We can see the Divine in each speck of dust, but that doesn't stop us from wiping it away with a wet sponge. The Divine doesn't disappear; it's transformed into the clean surface. — Paulo Coelho

There was a water-drop, it joined the sea,
A speck of dust, it was fused with earth;
what of your entering and leaving this world?
A fly appeared, and disappeared. — Omar Khayyam

It is possible that these millions of suns, along with thousands of millions more we cannot see, make up altogether but a globule of blood or lymph in the veins of an animal, of a minute insect, hatched in a world of whose vastness we can frame no conception, but which nevertheless would itself, in proportion to some other world, be no more than a speck of dust. — Anatole France

Imagine one atom of that speck of dust, with electrons traveling around its nucleus at 180,000 miles per second. It is very exciting. To return to a speck of dust with be quite an exciting adventure! — Thich Nhat Hanh

We all come into existence as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The lungs the brain the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our mother's birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us. — Anthony Doerr

Poirot was an extraordinary looking little man. He was hardly more than five feet, four inches, but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side. His moustache was very stiff and military. The neatness of his attire was almost incredible. I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound. Yet this quaint dandyfied little man who, I was sorry to see, now limped badly, had been in his time one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian police. As a detective, his flair had been extraordinary, and he had achieved triumphs by unravelling some of the most baffling cases of the day. — Agatha Christie

Daffy had stopped talking, without her noticing. It was if he'd run out of words. He did a peculiar thing, then; he reached out and touched Mary's cheekbone; lightly, as if he was brushing away a speck of coal dust. She thought of Doll, that first morning, wiping mud out of the lost child's eyes. Her throat hurt, all at once, as if she were swallowing a stone. She wished the two of them could stay forever frozen in this moment, hidden in the grass, as the setting sun slid across the fields of Monmouth. Before any asking, any refusal. While this strange, tame young man was still looking at her as is she were worth any price. — Emma Donoghue

It's true that even though I'm a world unto myself, I've just a speck of dust in the avalanche of events. But nothing will ever force me to think like a speck of dust! — Stanislaw Lem

But most days,
I wander around feeling invisible.
Like I'm a speck of dust
floating in the air
that can only be seen
when a shaft of light hits it. — Sonya Sones

Because if indestructible is every atom of a speck of dust, so must be immortal the spirit of a man. And if every wave of the wind creates eternity, so must the consequences of our acts. So every one of us would leave on a big Hajj to our Creator. — Osyp Nazaruk

What a tiny speck of dust I am compared to the rest of this universe. — Anonymous

If you want to correct your brother when he is doing wrong? you must keep yourself calm; otherwise you yourself may catch the sickness you are seeking to cure and you may find that the words of the Gospel now apply to you? 'Why do you look at the speck of dust in your brother's eye, and not notice the rafter in your own eye?' — John Cassian

I didn't believe for a minute that this liquid colossus, which had brought about the death of hundreds of humans within itself, with which my entire race had for decades been trying in vain to establish at least a thread of communication - that this ocean, lifting me up unwittingly like a speck of dust, could be moved by the tragedy of two human beings. But — Stanislaw Lem

In size the electron bears the same relation to an atom that a baseball bears to the earth. Or, as Sir Oliver Lodge puts it, if a hydrogen atom were magnified to the size of a church, an electron would be a speck of dust in that church. — Waldemar Kaempffert

Detailed scientific arguments by the authors present a serious challenge to the expositors of the Copernican Principle (that man is merely an impure lump of carbon crawling about on the surface of an insignificant speck of cosmic dust). — David Medved

Nothing is working. Nothing in my life is working. Giants of literature, philosophy, and the arts have influenced my life, but what have I done with this life? I remain a speck in a tumultuous universe that has little concern for me. I am no more than dust, a mote - dust to dust. I am a blade of grass upon which the stormtrooper's boot stomps. I had dreams, and they were not about ending up a speck. I didn't dream of becoming a star, but I thought I might have a small nonspeaking role in a grand epic, an epic with a touch of artistic credentials. I didn't dream of becoming a giant - I wasn't that delusional or arrogant - but I wanted to be more than a speck, maybe a midget. I could have been a midget. All our dreams of glory are but manure in the end. — Rabih Alameddine

This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust! — Friedrich Nietzsche

Reality is an absolute, existence is an absolute, a speck of dust is an absolute and so is a human life. Whether you live or die is an absolute. Whether you have a piece of bread or not, is an absolute. Whether you eat your bread or see it vanish into a looter's stomach, is an absolute. — Ayn Rand

Many of the stars in the universe are thousands of times bigger than the earth. God focuses on the earth, a little speck of dust in the galaxy, and even loves each of us intensely as if each of us are the only person who exists. — Paul Silway

True, my boy. Only Hashem is omniscient, and until He decides we're worthy of His communication via prophets or the Messiah, we mortals are forced to live in a state of ignorance. I've spent my whole life learning, Detective, acquiring knowledge not only from the scriptures of my belief, but from countless other sources - American law, philosophy, psychology, economics, political science: I have studied them all at great length. Yet, a madman can slip under my nose, and I realize I know nothing. I am still a meaningless speck of dust in the scheme of things. A most humbling experience. — Faye Kellerman

He learned how to look at himself from a distance, to see himself first of all as a man among other men, then as a collection of random particles of matter, and finally as a single speck of dust - and the farther he traveled from his point of origin, she said, the closer he came to achieving greatness. — Paul Auster

There's a great rabbinical motto that says you start each day with a note in each pocket. One note says, "The world was created for you today," and the other note says, "I'm a speck of dust in a meaningless universe," and you have to balance both things. — Judd Apatow

So, gently, and using the greatest of care, the elephant stretched his great trunk through the
air, and he lifted the dust speck and carried it over and placed it down, safe, on a very soft
clover — Dr. Seuss

No one, especially not you, can change an entire universe's purpose at the drop of a dramatic speech. Like the rest ... You're just another speck of dust on God's windshield. — Charles Lee

I thought all I had to do to get you back was kill off your so-called mother and that little girl. No, I also pondered eating you alive. I imagined drinking all your blood and swallowing you whole many times. A thousand times ... no, a million times over the past few days! I couldn't even tell apart my dreams from reality. Why are you so obsessed with your piece of shit family? They abandoned you! Why must you only desire the things I can't give you, huh?! If you have any love left to go around, then don't give it to those worthless people. Give it to me! Give me everything. I want it all, even the last speck of dust lying at the bottom of your heart! Give me everything before I lose my mind! Before I really do drink your blood and eat your flesh! Before I swallow you whole! — Hajin Yoo

As for me, I consider myself as a speck of the dust of the devotee's feet. — Ramakrishna

Know the world from end to end is a mirror;
in each atom a hundred suns are concealed.
If you pierce the heart of a single drop of water,
from it will flow a hundred clear oceans;
if you look intently at each speck of dust,
in it you will see a thousand beings.
A gnat in its limbs is like an elephant;
in name a drop of water resembles the Nile.
In the heart of a barleycorn is stored a hundred harvests.
Within a millet-seed a world exists.
In an insects wing is an ocean of life.
A heaven is concealed in the pupil of an eye.
The core at the center of the heart is small,
yet the Lord of both worlds will enter there. — Mahmud Shabistari

If we knew that tonight we were going to go blind, we would take a long, last real look at every blade of grass, every cloud formation, every speck of dust, every rainbow, raindrop-everything. — Pema Chodron

This sense of my own weakness and emptiness comforts me. I feel myself a mere speck of dust lost in space, yet I am part of that endless grandeur which envelopes me. I could never see why that should be cause for despair, since there could very well be nothing at all behind the black curtain. — Gustave Flaubert

Kami," he said, "you're crying."
"No, I am not," Kami lied. "I got something in my eye."
"You got something in your eye."
"Yes. Possibly a speck of dust," Kami said, and broke down. "All right, possibly my feelings. — Sarah Rees Brennan

I am as a speck of dust in the sun, and not even so much, in this solemn, mysterious, unknowable universe. — Andrew Carnegie

Imagine a speck of dust next to a planet a billion times the size of the earth. The speck of dust represents the odds in favor of your being born; the huge planet would be the odds against it. So stop sweating the small stuff. Don't be like the ingrate who got a castle as a present and worried about the mildew in the bathroom. Stop looking the gift horse in the mouth - remember that you are a Black Swan. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I do value my work awfully; but in reality only consider this: all this world of ours is nothing but a speck of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet. And for us to suppose we can have something great - ideas, work - it's all dust and ashes. — Leo Tolstoy

Is it not peculiar that nearly all of the great philosophers and psychologists have always paid attention to the earth and nothing but the earth? Would it not be more sublime to lift our eyes from this crumb, and instead of considering a speck of dust in the universe, to turn our attention to space itself? — Rainer Maria Rilke

In this thatched hut there ought not to be a speck of dust of any kind; both master and visitors are expected to be on terms of absolute sincerity; no ordinary measures of proportion or etiquette or conventionalism are to be followed. — Sen No Rikyu

In this model, the sun is a very tiny speck of dust indeed-a speck less than a three-thousandth of an inch in diameter ... Think of the sun as something less than a speck of dust in a vast city, of the earth as less than a millionth part of such a speck of dust, and we have perhaps as vivid a picture as the mind can really grasp of the relation of our home in space to the rest of the universe. — James Jeans