Roger Ebert Quotes

Ordinary men live among marvels and feel no wonder, grow familiar with objects and learn nothing new about them.

The more often we see the things around us - even the beautiful and wonderful things - the more they become invisible to us. That is why we often take for granted the beauty of this world: the flowers, the trees, the birds, the clouds - even those we love. Because we see things so often, we see them less and less.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night, and we watch television.

Familiarity reduces the greatness of things.

He that has satisfied his thirst turns his back on the well.

Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering.

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

If you see somebody running down the street naked every single day, you stop looking up.

We always like the new shiny thing–I benefitted from that when I was a candidate. And we take for granted sometimes, what is steady and true.

The only thing that should astonish us is that anything can yet astonish us.

People always get used to beauty though.

I like the night. Without the dark, we'd never see the stars.

I looked at the stars, and considered how awful it would be for a man to turn his face up to them as he froze to death, and see no help or pity in all the glittering multitude.

People dont pay attention until they have to

No one sees what is before his feet: they scan the tracks of heaven.

Do not be proud of the fact that your grandmother was shocked at something which your are accustomed to seeing or hearing without being shocked. ... It may be that your grandmother was an extremely lively and vital animal and that you are a paralytic.

We ought to be grateful that the Universe out there knows no smile.

There is no light in earth or heaven but the cold light of stars; and the first watch of night is given to the red planet Mars.

All of a sudden I became aware of a little star in one of those patches and I began looking at it intently. That was because the little star gave me an idea: I made up my mind to kill myself that night. I had made up my mind to kill myself already two months before and, poor as I am, I bought myself an excellent revolver and loaded it the same day. But two months had elapsed and it was still lying in the drawer. I was so utterly indifferent to everything that I was anxious to wait for the moment when I would not be so indifferent and then kill myself. Why -- I don't know.

We are all alike, and we love to keep passion aglow at our feet, Like one that sitteth in shade and complacently smiles at the heat.

People take the feeling of full for granted.

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

We live with them every day, and they come so easily to us that they cease to be precious.

From there we came outside and saw the stars

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of stars-mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere". I too see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? ...What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it.