Sagan's "pale blue dot"

In the midst of my own troubles, and the shortening of the days in the Northern Hemisphere, a wise woman read this passage to me; it's from Carl Sagan's book, A Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space.

Check it out. An excerpt:

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.