I perceived that I was on a little round grain of rock and metal, filmed with water ands 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 histories, 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 in the lives of the stars.
— Star Maker, Olaf Stapledon. (Interestingly, though this passage appears to borrow heavily from Carl Sagan’s iconic Pale Blue Dot passage, the above was written in 1937 - 20 years before Sputnik)
