# Quote — Olaf Stapledon, Star Maker

> I perceived that I was on a little round grain of rock and metal, filmed with water and with air, whirling in sunlight and darkness. And on the skin of that little grain all the swarms of men, generation by generation, had lived in labour and blindness, with intermittent joy and intermittent lucidity of spirit. And all their history, with its folk-wanderings, its empires, its philosophies, its proud sciences, its social revolutions, its increasing hunger for community, was but a flicker in one day of the lives of the stars.

- Author: [Olaf Stapledon](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon.md)
- Book: [Star Maker](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/star-maker.md)
- Page: 11
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Olaf_Stapledon#Star_Maker_(1937)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/star-maker/i-perceived-that

## More from this book

> Thus, little by little, it came about, as so often before, that the Star Maker outgrew his creature. Increasingly he frowned upon the loveliness that he still cherished. Then, seemingly with a conflict of reverence and impatience, he set our cosmos in its place among his other works.

p. 179 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/star-maker/thus-little-by-little.md)

> It seemed that he gazed down on me from the height of his divinity with the aloof though passionate attention of an artist judging his finished work; calmly rejoicing in his achievement, but recognizing at last the irrevocable flaws in his initial conception, and already lusting for fresh creation.

p. 164 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/star-maker/it-seemed-that.md)

> As I contemplated the host of deities that rose to me like a smoke cloud from the many worlds, a new image, a new symbol of the infinite spirit, took shape in my mind. Though born of my own cosmical imagination, it was begotten by a greater than I.

p. 161 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/olaf-stapledon/star-maker/as-i-contemplated.md)