Powdered with stars
“A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold,
And pavement stars, as stars to thee appear
Seen in the Galaxy, that milky way
Which nightly as a circling zone thou seest
Powdered with stars.”
—John Milton, from Paradise Lost, quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in Newton Demands the Muse, 1946.
imagine the diamonds!
the most perfect and most delightful of all our senses
“Our sight is the most perfect and most delightful of all our senses. . . . Our sight . . . may be considered as a more delicate and diffusive kind of touch, that spreads itself over an infinite multitude of bodies. . . . We cannot indeed have a single image in the fancy that did not make its first entrance through the sight.”
—Joseph Addison, quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in Newton Demands the Muse, 1946.
sad and fuscous colours
“Among colours, such as are soft and cheerful (except, perhaps, a strong red which is cheerful) are unfit to produce grand images. An immense mountain, covered with a shining green turf, is nothing, in this respect, to one dark and gloomy; the cloudy sky is more grand than the blue, and night more sublime and solemn than day. Therefore in historical painting, a gay or gaudy drapery can never have a happy effect: and in buildings, when the highest degree of the sublime is intended, the materials and ornaments ought neither to be white, nor green, nor yellow, nor blue, nor of a pale red, nor violet, nor spotted, but of sad and fuscous colours, as black, or brown, or deep purple, and the like.”
—Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1806; as quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in Newton Demands the Muse, 1946.
Thus are two ideas . . . reconciled
“Extreme light, by overcoming the organs of sight, obliterates all objects, so as in its effects exactly to resemble darkness. After looking for some time at the sun, two black spots, the impression which it leaves, seem to dance before our eyes. Thus are two ideas, as opposite as can be imagined, reconciled in the extremes of both; and both, in spite of their opposite nature, brought to concur in producing the sublime.”
—Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1806; as quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in Newton Demands the Muse, 1946.
Darkness strikes
“Darkness strikes the sense no less than Light.”
—Alexander Pope, quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in Newton Demands the Muse, 1946.
Night Thoughts
“Darkness has more divinity for me;
It strikes thought inward; it drives back the soul
To settle on herself, our point supreme!”
—Edward Young, from Night Thoughts, quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in Newton Demands the Muse, 1946.
the Organ that beholds it
“The Sun’s Light when he unfolds it
Depends on the Organ that beholds it.”
—William Blake, from What is Man?, quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in Newton Demands the Muse, 1946.
God is Colouring
“That God is Colouring Newton does shew,
And the devil is Black outline, all of us know.”
—William Blake, from To Venetian Artists, quoted by Marjorie Hope Nicolson in Newton Demands the Muse, 1946.
the stars
“And God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.”
—The Bible, as quoted by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr in The Sirens of Titan, 1959.