Comet

"I am as familiar with the paths of heaven as with the streets of Nehardea, with the exception of the comet, about which I am ignorant."

"What you fellows call progress moves by two springs, men and events. But sad to say, from time to time the exceptional is necessary. For events as well as for men, the stock company is not enough; geniuses are needed among men, and revolutions among events. Great accidents are the law; the order of things cannot get along without them; and, to see the apparitions of comets, one would be tempted to believe that Heaven itself is in need of star actors. At the moment you least expect it, God placards a meteor on the wall of the firmament. Some strange star comes along, underlined by an enormous tail. And that makes Caesar die. Brutus strikes him with a knife, and God with a comet."

"When the Deep Impact probe hit Comet 9P/Tempel, there was almost no change in brightness. … This outburst by Comet Holmes is extreme!"

"I see myself as a huge fiery comet, a shooting star. Everyone stops, points up and gasps "Oh look at that!" Then — whoosh, and I'm gone... and they'll never see anything like it ever again... and they won't be able to forget me — ever."

"When in your middle years The great comet comes again Remember me, a child, Awake in the summer night, Standing in my crib and Watching that long-haired star So many years ago. Go out in the dark and see Its plume over water Dribbling on the liquid night, And think that life and glory Flickered on the rushing Bloodstream for me once, and for All who have gone before me, Vessels of the billion-year-long River that flows now in your veins."

"I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: "Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together."

"By being seldom seen, I could not stir But like a comet I was wonder'd at."

"Ruling the calm spaciousness of that heaven was the great comet, now green-white, and wonderful for all who had eyes to see."

"At first it had been an almost telescopic speck; it had brightened to the dimensions of the greatest star in the heavens; it had still grown, hour by hour, in its incredibly swift, its noiseless and inevitable rush upon our earth, until it had equaled and surpassed the moon. Now it was the most splendid thing this sky of earth has ever held. I have never seen a photograph that gave a proper idea of it. Never at any time did it assume the conventional tailed outline, comets are supposed to have."

"As I drew near the end, the sense of strangeness returned to me. It was more and more evident to me that this was a different humanity from any I had known, unreal, having different customs, different beliefs, different interpretations, different emotions. It was no mere change in conditions and institutions the comet had wrought. It had made a change of heart and mind."