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In the Simpsons episode Deep Space Homer, when the space shuttle is taking off, Lisa says this:

How doth the hero strong and brave, a celestial path in the heavens pave.

Is this a reference to something else (poem/play etc) or did the writers come up with this themselves?

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  • Good question. The only non-Simpsons reference to it I found was in a blog post mentioning For All Mankind (1989), however I found the subtitles for it and it doesn't appear in there, so I'm out of ideas.
    – Crow T Robot
    Commented Jul 9, 2014 at 20:41
  • Between the title and "celestial path", it sounds like a reference to Deep Space Nine and the wormhole - the Bajoran prophecies referred to it in a few ways, most often the Celestial Temple. It doesn't bring to mind any specific quote, though.
    – Izkata
    Commented Mar 22, 2016 at 16:53

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The saying is not a famous quote.

Precocious young Lisa is trying to sound smart by using sophisticated words like "doth" and "celestial" in a rhyme. Ever the intelligent overachiever, she's essentially trying to come up with a wisely worded quote of her own. But "hero strong and brave" is actually quite a cheesy, uninspired bit of phrase-making. And the use of "pave" to describe laying a pathway is a clear reach for something to rhyme with brave.

Before you take a second to think about it, the quote sounds impressive and potentially historical -- but it definitely isn't. That's the joke.

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  • Not to mention that "celestial" is redundant with "in the heavens".
    – nanoman
    Commented Apr 16, 2022 at 23:43

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