# Quote — Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon

> "Arrh! Stars and Mud, ever conjugate, a Paradox to consider, — one…for the Astronomer-Royal, perhaps?" His current scheme being, to assail Maskelyne's Sanity, by now and then posing to him Questions that will not bear too much cogitating upon, — most lately, Über Bernouillis Brachistochronsprobleme, 1702 by Baron von Boppdörfer ("Mind like a Spanish Blade. Read it at the Risk of your Self-Esteem.") having almost done the Trick.

- Author: [Thomas Pynchon](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-pynchon.md)
- Book: [Mason & Dixon](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-pynchon/mason-dixon.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon#Mason_%26_Dixon_(1997)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-pynchon/mason-dixon/arrh-stars-and

## More from this book

> If America was a person, — and it sat down, — Lancaster town would be plunged into a Darkness unbreathable.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-pynchon/mason-dixon/if-america-was.md)

> Have you ever fall'n into one of those Cometary Dazes, with the way the Object grows brighter and brighter each night? These Apparitions in the Sky, we never observe them but in Motion, — gone in seconds, and if they return, we do not see them. Once safely a part of the Night Sky, they may hang there at their Pleasure, performing whatever their Work corresponds to shifting jibs and stay-sails, keeping perfectly upon Station, mimicking any faint, unnam'd Star you please. Do they watch us? Are they visits from the past, from an Age of Faith, when Miracles still literally happen'd?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-pynchon/mason-dixon/have-you-ever.md)

> Now, nothing in the Sky looks the same. "As to the Comet, — I cannot account for how, — but there came this night, to this boggy Miasmatick place, an exceptional Clarity of the Air, … a sort of optickal Tension among the Stars, that seem'd ever just about to break radiantly thro'… And there. In Leo, bright-man'd, lo, it came. It came ahead. And 'twould be but Prelude to the Finger of Corsica, — which now appear'd, pointing down from Heaven. And the place where it pointed was the place I knew I must journey to, for beneath the Sky-borne Index lay, as once beneath a Star, an Infant that must, again, re-make the World, — this time 'twas a Sign from Earth, not only from Heaven, showing the way.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/thomas-pynchon/mason-dixon/now-nothing-in-the.md)