The International Space Station is a phenomenal laboratory, an unparalleled test bed for new invention and discovery. Yet I often thought, while silently gazing out the window at Earth, that the actual legacy of humanity's attempts to step into space will be a better understanding of our current planet and how to take care of it.

A few years ago, the city council of Monza, Italy, barred pet owners from keeping goldfish in curved bowls... saying that it is cruel to keep a fish in a bowl with curved sides because, gazing out, the fish would have a distorted view of reality. But how do we know we have the true, undistorted picture of reality?

All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.

"Life is pretty short yet magnanimous if we know just how to live right. It isn't that easy, it takes a lot of our soul, sometimes too many broken pieces to finally come together in binding a masterpiece that smiles like a solitary star forever gazing around at the music of an eternal cosmos.

"Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

"When people stargazing, they stare at stars

The beauty of God is in the wind, in the movement of the ocean, it is in the eyes of a woman gazing at her lover, pouring the deep red wine of love from her eyes like two crystal cups. There is a God who dances and who loves and who longs to sing of love...And I mean that God is music; all inclusive, benevolent and life-affirming, unashamed human emotion.

Poetry is inspired by the elements of random thoughts, an overflow of gazing at the unseen.

"It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.

It looks as though your shop is doing well," Luka said gazing around, "Could you help me find a gift for a lady friend of mine?

Marius and Cosette were in the dark in regard to each other. They did not speak, they did not bow, they were not acquainted; they saw each other; and, like the stars in the sky separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing upon each other.

He's dozed off again, but I kiss him awake, which seems to startle him. Then he smiles as if he'd be happy to lie there gazing at me forever.

"Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star.

All great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.