"Astronomer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... constitutes the balloon an exception to that pretended law of nature. But the real law is, that all heavy bodies tend to fall; and to this there is no exception, not even the sun and moon; for even they, as every astronomer knows, tend toward the earth, with a force exactly equal to that with which the earth tends toward them. The resistance of the atmosphere might, in the particular case of the balloon, from a misapprehension ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... and then darker again. And quite recently a photograph has been obtained which shows them plainly, so they must have an existence, and cannot be only in the eye of the observer, as the most sceptical people were wont to suggest. But further than this, one astronomer announced that some of these lines appeared to be double, yet when he looked at them again they had grown single. It was like a conjuring trick. Great excitement was aroused by this, for if the canals were altered so greatly it really did look as if there ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton
... for my chance meeting with Swears, the eminent astronomer and objurgationist, this book would never have been written. He asked me down to our basement, which he rents from me as an observatory, and in spite of all that has happened since I still remember our wigil very distinctly. (I spell it with a "w" from an inordinate affection for that letter.) ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... to dogmatize against and over me. He must certainly be aware of the current logical (not metaphysical) use of the phrase a priori: as when we say, that Le Verrier and Adams demonstrated a priori that a planet must exist exterior to Uranus, before any astronomer communicated information that it does exist. Or again: the French Commissioners proved by actual measurement that the earth is an oblate spheroid, of which Newton had convinced himself ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... that Bandy Legs ought to be somewhere above them in the atmosphere; for it was a traditionary fact that the people from the Duff came ashore when the sun was high overhead. And here the old gentleman, being a very good sort of man, doubtless, but no astronomer, was obliged ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... availed himself of his stay in this port to make some necessary repairs in his vessel, and to confirm the statements of Captain Clerke, who had succeeded Cook in the command of his last expedition, and those of Delisle de la Croyere, the French astronomer, who had been Behring's companion ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Jordan: "It is, of course, true that the life-history of the individual is an epitome of the life-history of the race"; while a distinguished German zoologist (Sarasin) has described it as being of the same use to the biologist as spectrum analysis is to the astronomer. ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... of with as deep an interest as the courses of the stars, and read in the real spectacle of life with as profound emotion as in the miraculous page of Vergil; and no scholar ever read Vergil with such feeling—no astronomer ever watched the stars with more eager inquisitiveness. The whole man opens to the world around him; all affections and powers, soul and sense, diligently and thoughtfully directed and trained, with free and concurrent and equal energy, with distinct yet ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... an astronomer and as an experimental physicist, was born at Pisa, in Italy, Feb. 18, 1564. His talents were most multifarious and remarkable; but his mathematical and mechanical genius was dominant from the first. As a child he constructed ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... Tycho Brah[^e], the Danish astronomer. Having lost his nose in a duel with one Passberg, he adopted a golden one, and attached it to his face by a cement which ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Huygens, a Bacon, a Napier, and a goodly array of lesser lights, to say nothing of a Rembrandt or of a Shakespeare—there began to appear certain unifying principles connecting the great mass of material dug out by the ancients. Thus, in 1604 the great astronomer Kepler(4) introduced the notion that parallel lines should be considered as meeting at an infinite distance, and that a parabola is at once the limiting case of an ellipse and of a hyperbola. He also attributes to the parabola ...
— An Elementary Course in Synthetic Projective Geometry • Lehmer, Derrick Norman
... of February 15, 1868.) with the utmost mildness. I certainly do rejoice over the snubbing, and hope [the reviewer] will feel it a little. Whenever you have SPARE time to write again, tell me whether any astronomers (In discussing the astronomer's objection to Evolution, namely that our globe has not existed for a long enough period to give time for the assumed transmutation of living beings, Hooker challenged Whewell's dictum that, astronomy is the queen of sciences—the only perfect ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... Doctor Baliardo. The Doctor was one of the leading masks, stock characters, in Italian impromptu comedy. Doctor Graziano, or Baloardo Grazian, is a pedant, a philosopher, grammarian, rhetorician, astronomer, cabalist, a savant of the first water, boasting of his degree from Bologna, trailing the gown of that august university. Pompous in phrase and person, his speech is crammed with lawyer's jargon and quibbles, with distorted Latin and ridiculous metaphors. He is dressed in black with ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... filled with reverence, with trust, with boundless love of the Infinite God, who devised these laws of matter and of mind, and thereby bears up this marvellous Universe of things and men. Science has its New Testament; and the beatitudes of Philosophy are profoundly touching. An undevout astronomer is mad. Familiarity with the grass and the trees teaches us deeper lessons of love and trust than we can glean from the writings of Fénélon and Augustine. The great Bible of God is ever open before mankind. The eternal flowers of Heaven seem to shed sweet influence on the perishable blossoms of ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... assistance to the wounded Yankees at Wartrace last year; and a sister of Mrs ——'s, who is a very strong-minded lady, gave me a most amusing description of an interview she had had at Huntsville with the astronomer Mitchell, in his capacity of a Yankee general. It has often been remarked to me that, when this war is over, the independence of the country will be due, in a great measure, to the women; for they declare that had the women been ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... one of central safety: the Kingdom is within. All days are judgment days: but there can be no climacteric purpose of eternity, nor any scheme of the whole. The astronomer abridges the row of bewildering figures by increasing his unit of measurement: so may we reduce the distracting multiplicity of things to the unity for ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... destiny. Indeed, he was. And some few months before this story opens it came about that he encountered a gentleman who was, in fact, the primary cause of this story being true. Who was this gentleman? you will say. Sir Tiglath Butt, the great astronomer, Correspondent of the Institute of France, Member of the Royal College of Science, Demonstrator of Astronomical Physics, author of the pamphlet, "Star-Gazers," and the brochure, "An investigation into the psychical condition of those who see stars," C.B.F.R.S. and popular member ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... Astronomer Royal, Halley, undertook a scientific voyage to the South in 1699 for the purpose of making magnetic observations, and met with ice in 52deg. S., from which latitude ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... that woman has, of late, ris' wonderfully in the market; or that the weaker sex is coming it amazingly strong. The sceptres of three of the first kingdoms in Europe are swayed by female hands. The first writer of young France is a woman. The first astronomer of young England, idem. Mrs Trollope played the Chesterfield and the deuce with the Yankees. Miss Martineau turned the head of the mighty Brougham. Mademoiselle d'Angeville ascended Mont Blanc, and Mademoiselle Rachel has replaced Corneille and Racine on their crumbling pedestals. I might ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... ain't no Astronomer, leastways I ain't never made it my mark To go nap on star-gazing; I've mostly got other good biz arter dark. But when Mister Punch give me the tip 'ow he'd take poor old TIME on the fly, Wy I tumbled to it like a shot; 'ARRY's bound to be in ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... thy Lord? That is my Lord Leonatus? Oh, learn'd indeed were that Astronomer That knew the Starres, as I his Characters, Heel'd lay the Future open. You good Gods, Let what is heere contain'd, rellish of Loue, Of my Lords health, of his content: yet not That we two are asunder, let that grieue him; Some griefes are medcinable, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... author of Souvenirs d'un Aveugle (A Voyage Round the World), &c., and brother of the astronomer and ex-minister, is one of the most remarkable characters of Paris. He is stone blind, and has been so for years; and yet he placed himself at the head of a band of gold seekers, and conducted them to California. Recently he returned to Paris, with little gold—indeed, with none at ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... n. an Australian meteorological phenomenon. See quotations, especially 1879, A. R. Wallace. The phrase is of course used elsewhere, but its Australian use is peculiar. The hot wind blows from the North. Mr. H. C. Russell, the Government Astronomer of New South Wales, writes—"The hot wind of Australia is a circulation of wind about the anticyclone in the rear of which, as it moves to the east, there is a strong force of wind from north to north- west, which blowing over the heated plains of the interior gathers up its excessive temperature ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... me," agreed Arcot. "After all, you're the astronomer, I'm not. To tell you the truth, I'd have to search a while to find Old Sol again. I can't see just where he is. Of course, I could locate him by means of the gyroscope settings, but I'm afraid I wouldn't find him ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... Cassiopea's chair, Pleiades. colures[obs3], equator, ecliptic, orbit. [Science of heavenly bodies] astronomy; uranography, uranology[obs3]; cosmology, cosmography[obs3], cosmogony; eidouranion[obs3], orrery; geodesy &c. (measurement) 466; star gazing, star gazer[obs3]; astronomer; observatory; planetarium. Adj. cosmic, cosmical[obs3]; mundane, terrestrial, terrestrious|, terraqueous[obs3], terrene, terreous|, telluric, earthly, geotic[obs3], under the sun; sublunary[obs3], subastral[obs3]. solar, heliacal[obs3]; lunar; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... around me; for many of the audience were Germans, Frenchmen and Jews, all passionate lovers of music, and to them the ushering in of a new star in the artistic firmament is equal to a new world born before the eyes of an astronomer. ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... known inferences, e. g., those made by the astronomer from the perspective pictures of the stars to their positions in space. These inferences are founded upon well- studied knowledge of the principles of optics. Such knowledge of optics is lacking in the ordinary function of seeing; nevertheless it is permissible to conceive the psychical ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... the sky!" Johnnie shouted. His yellow hair was blowing straight back from his eager, happy face as he peered forward (as a good captain should) into the limitless, but astronomer-charted, leagues ahead. "We're floatin' in the ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... great astronomer, who is studying the sidereal spheres from his attic window in the Rue de Bologny, shudders as he turns his telescope upon the solitary ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... and his red whiskers, the two professors of linear drawing and large drawing, who were always wrangling, and the Pole, the fellow-countryman of Copernicus, with his planetary system on pasteboard, an itinerant astronomer whose lecture had been paid for by a dinner in the refectory, then a terrible debauch while they were out on a walking excursion, the first pipes they had smoked, the distribution of prizes, and the delightful sensation of going home ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... the cases of Bruno, Galileo, and others, [216] persecuted because of the supposed heterodoxy of their views. But there have been other unfortunates amongst men of science, whose genius has been unable to save them from the fury of their enemies. Thus Bailly, the celebrated French astronomer [21who had been mayor of Paris], and Lavoisier, the great chemist, were both guillotined in the first French Revolution. When the latter, after being sentenced to death by the Commune, asked for a few days' respite, to enable him to ascertain the result of some experiments he had made during his ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... over these romances. When unable to refute their theories, it could sneer at the authors, and answer them to the satisfaction of the generation in which they lived, at least by a general charge of lunacy. Some of their notions were no doubt as absurd as those of the astronomer in "Rasselas", who tells Imlac that he has for five years possessed the regulation of the weather, and has got the secret of making to the different nations an equal and impartial dividend of rain and sunshine. But truth, even when ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... honest man knows a knave to his cost, And is neither physician, or skill'd physiognomer, palmester, nor astronomer, But a plain man of the country, like me, That knows a knave, if he do but see ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... Johann Jacob Zimmermann, a distinguished mathematician and astronomer and the founder of an order of mystics called Pietists, started for America, to await the coming of the millennium, which his calculations placed in the autumn of 1694. But the fate of common mortals overtook the unfortunate leader ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... Brunswick Museum. The Lady and Her Servant, in the private collection of James Simon, Berlin. The Merry Company and The Reader in the Dresden gallery. The Geographer at the Window, in the Staedel Institute, Frankfort. In France, The Astronomer of the A. de Rothschild collection at Paris, and the little Lacemaker, in the Louvre Gallery. In Belgium, there was at Brussels the portrait of a girl, which was formerly in the Arenberg gallery. When I tried to see it I was told that it had been sold to some one in Germany. Its type, judging ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... The effect of Locke's forcible and perspicuous reasoning is greatly heightened by his evident anxiety to get at the truth, and by the singularly generous and graceful courtesy with which he treats an antagonist of powers far inferior to his own. Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal, described the controversy well by saying that the point in dispute was whether five was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to be able to convince my readers that it is no fanciful theory, but may be demonstrated as clearly as the problems of the geometer. The naturalist has his mathematics, as well as the geometer and the astronomer; and if the mathematics of the Animal Kingdom have a greater flexibility than those of the positive sciences, and are therefore not so easily resolved into their invariable elements, it is because they have the freedom and pliability of life, and evade our efforts to bring ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... globe. Referring to this standard of magnitude, the geologist may admire the ample limits of his domain, and admit, at the same time, that not only the exterior of the planet, but the entire earth, is but an atom in the midst of the countless worlds surveyed by the astronomer. ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... a contribution to the welfare of the race, or to its stock of knowledge. Its messages from learned men who are dead, have been the silliest bosh; its stories about life upon the planets are wretched guesses, many of which can be proved false by the astronomer; its visions have frightened scores of people into madhouses, and made semi-lunatics of ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... this principle appeared so simple, that at the time when the news of the invention of the balloon was spread abroad the astronomer Lalande wrote—"At this news we all cry, 'This must be! Why did we not think of it before?'" It had been thought of before, as we have seen in the last chapter, but it is often long after an idea is conceived that ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... Committee, consisting of the churchwardens and overseers, and of eight gentlemen for the Hertfordshire side, and three for Cambs. The new local parliament was made up of the following:—For Hertfordshire, George North, churchwarden, Henry Andrews (the astronomer), and Wm. Cockett, the two overseers; Tuttle Sherwood, churchwarden, and Thomas Moule and Thomas Watson, overseers for the Cambs. side; and the following elected members, viz., for Herts., John Phillips, Michael Phillips, Edward Day, Wm. Nash, Samuel Coxall, Thomas Wortham, William ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... saying an old nursery rhyme. To the youth or maiden it suggests love, romance, a summer eve, or a frosty walk under the friendly winter sky. To the rhetorician it suggests a figure of speech—the star of hope. To the mariner it suggests guidance and the homeward port. To the astronomer it means the world in which he lives. His life is centred in that star. To the poet it means all these things and many more. For the poet is the one who, in his own heart, holds all the meanings that words ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... his hat, which was of conical shape, according to the fashion supposed to have been favoured by Guido Fawkes. I wondered what he was looking up at. It couldn't be at the stars; such a desperado was neither astrologer nor astronomer. It must be at the high gallows, and he was going to be hanged presently. Would the executioner come into possession of his conical crowned hat and plume of feathers? I counted the feathers again—three ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... sky, to add to the stock of human knowledge. Very naturally there grew up under such conditions an increasing desire to reach the Pole itself, and to test whether the theoretical conclusions of the astronomer were borne out by the actual observations of one standing upon the apex of the spinning earth. The attempt to reach the Pole became henceforth the great preoccupation of Arctic discovery. From this time on the story of what has been done in {138} the northern seas ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... plain was required. Let the observer raise himself a few feet above the tallest palm trees, and no cloud interposed to prevent his eyes from travelling from the fires that blazed in the zenith to the paler stars that lay clustered upon the horizon. There were no accidents of the ground by which the astronomer could lift himself above the smoke of cities or the mists hanging over the lakes and canals, and to make up for their absence the massive and many-storied towers which men began to construct as soon as they understood how to make bricks and set them, must soon have come into use. ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... the opulent need of a vendor of precious stones and metals. In the strip of dark blue firmament visible above the admirably proportioned cornice he caught sight of two planets flaming high in the west, and in close juxtaposition. Necessity had made him somewhat of an astronomer, and he had studied Chinese astrology as a pastime. He recognized these lamps of the empyrean as Mars and Venus, and, up-to-date American though he was, drew comfort from that favoring augury. Then, in ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... same thing to have happened when the only reply to a difficulty was an appeal to the Astronomer-Royal, where the rotation of the moon was an article of salvation decreed by the law of the land, and where all persons admitted to hold office under the State were required to subscribe to it. The Astronomer-Royal—as it was, if we ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... nowhere," said the Astronomer, earnestly. "It is going toward final destruction. My university has a smaller student body each year. Fewer books are written. Less work is done. An old man sleeps in the sun and his days are peaceful and unchanging, but each day finds him nearer ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov
... Greenwich—which is an eminently practical Observatory—the working part of the building is found crouching behind the loftier towers. These are now occupied as subsidiary to the modern practical building. The ground floor is used as a residence by the chief astronomer; above is the large hall originally built to contain huge moveable telescopes and quadrants—such as are not now employed. Nowadays, this hall occasionally becomes a sort of scientific counting-house—irreverent ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... the greatest modern astronomer, died at Slough in England. Herschel was born in 1738 at Hanover. He was a musician of rare skill and a self-taught mathematician of great ability. In 1757, he deserted the band of Hanoverian Guards in which he played ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... American Rittenhouse was associated with him. This operation was not only of great contemporary fame, but is still quoted in English books among the data whence we derive our knowledge of the magnitude and figure of the earth. So also the same astronomer (Mason) had but a few years before the War of Independence commenced the tracing of a parallel of latitude from the former line to the westward, thus marking the respective limits of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. With such examples before them the framers ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... had a salary for his maintenance from the Secretaries of State. He was a ready witted man, quick of apprehension, very learned, and of great judgment in the Latin and Greek tongues. He was a very great investigator of the more secret Hermetical learning, a perfect astronomer, a curious astrologer, a serious geometrician; to speak truth, he was excellent in all kinds ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... ever, did this journey begin—when, where, and how, if ever, will it end? This is the greatest of the unsolved problems of astronomy. An astronomer who should watch the heavens for ten thousand years might gather some faint suggestion of an answer, or he might not. All we can do is to seek for some hints by study and comparison with ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... been lucky, I guess. Luck got me a place in the Whale. Sure I'm a good astronomer but so are lots of other guys. If I were ten years older, it would have been an honor, being picked for the first long jump in the first starship ever. At ...
— Accidental Death • Peter Baily
... is looking at our planet from the vault of heaven where he hangs suspended, and seizing the image of the scene beneath him as he flies, the astronomer is causing the heavenly bodies to print their images on the sensitive sheet he spreads under the rays concentrated by his telescope. We have formerly taken occasion to speak of the wonderful stereoscopic figures of the moon taken ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... questions were cast up, got into exact totals, and finally settled - if those concerned could only have been brought to know it. As if an astronomical observatory should be made without any windows, and the astronomer within should arrange the starry universe solely by pen, ink, and paper, so Mr. Gradgrind, in his Observatory (and there are many like it), had no need to cast an eye upon the teeming myriads of human beings around him, but could settle ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... St. Peter, was a crew of seventy-seven, Lieutenant Waxel, second in command, George William Steller, the famous scientist, Bering's friend, on board. On the St. Paul, under the stanch, level-headed Russian lieutenant, Alexei Chirikoff, were seventy-six men, with La Croyere d'Isle as astronomer. Not the least {21} complicating feature of the case was the personnel of the crews. For the most part, they were branded criminals and malcontents. From the first they had regarded the Bering expedition with horror. ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... arrangements made with Captain King and Mr. Dunlop, the King's astronomer at the Parramatta observatory, I halted the party this day in order to make hourly observations of the barometer, thermometer, the sky, etc. This plan had been strongly recommended by Sir John Herschel; and for our present purposes it was most desirable in order that we might ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... I believe, as yet quite distinguished men, but I have seen steeples as plainly as I see you. [Footnote: An astronomer of the day had boasted of having ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)
... state immediately before? Yes, if it is agreed a priori to liken the living body to other bodies, and to identify it, for the sake of the argument, with the artificial systems on which the chemist, physicist, and astronomer operate. But in astronomy, physics, and chemistry the proposition has a perfectly definite meaning: it signifies that certain aspects of the present, important for science, are calculable as functions of the immediate past. Nothing of the ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... to what Jefferson thought of the Negro intellect we are still in doubt. Writing in 1791 to Banneker, the Negro mathematician and astronomer, he said that nobody wished to see more than he such proofs as Banneker exhibited that nature has given to our black brethren talents equal to those of men of other colors, and that the appearance of a lack of such native ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson
... Mr.), Green the astronomer, Dr. Solander the naturalist, two draughtsmen, and a staff of servants were also on board. The ship, for defence against savages it is to be presumed, carried ten four-pound carriage guns and twelve swivels. The food supply ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... having received denial of his spirit to be resolved any more in such questions propounded, forgot all good works, and fell to be a calendar-maker by the help of his spirit, and also in short time to be a good astronomer or astrologian. He had learned so perfectly of his spirit the course of the sun, moon, and stars, that he had the most famous name of all the mathematicians that lived in his time, as may well appear by his works dedicated unto sundry dukes and lords, for he did nothing without ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... Faith is dearly bought at the cost of knowledge; nor in a better sense has it yet gone from among us. Far more sublime than any known to the barbarian is the faith of the astronomer, who spends the nights in marking the seemingly wayward motions of the stars, or of the anatomist, who studies with unwearied zeal the minute fibres of the organism, each upheld by the unshaken conviction that from least to greatest throughout this universe, ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... him here as the earliest philosopher who appears to have been convinced of the necessity of scientific proof of whatever was put forward to be believed, and as the originator of mathematics and geometry. He was also a great astronomer; for we read in Herodotus (i. 74) that he predicted the eclipse of the sun which happened in the reign of Alyattes, king of Lydia, B.C. 609. He asserted that water is the origin of all things; that everything is produced out of it, and everything ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... explain to you, Socrates, the order in which we have arranged our entertainment. Our intention is, that Timaeus, who is the most of an astronomer amongst us, and has made the nature of the universe his special study, should speak first, beginning with the generation of the world and going down to the creation of man; next, I am to receive the men whom he has created, and of whom some will have profited by the excellent ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... square block, and cut under to correspond to the polar altitude, is said to have been invented by Berosus the Chaldean; the Scaphe or Hemisphere, by Aristarchus of Samos, as well as the disc on a plane surface; the Arachne, by the astronomer Eudoxus or, as some say, by Apollonius; the Plinthium or Lacunar, like the one placed in the Circus Flaminius, by Scopinas of Syracuse; the [Greek: pros ta historoumena], by Parmenio; the [Greek: pros pan klima], by Theodosius and Andreas; the Pelecinum, ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... be in the same state as before. Nothing was changed. The vast arch of the celestial dome glittered with stars, and constellations blazed with a light clear and pure enough to throw an astronomer into an ecstasy of admiration. Below them shone the Sun, like the mouth of a white-hot furnace, his dazzling disc defined sharply on the pitch-black back-ground of the sky. Above them the Moon, reflecting back his rays from her glowing surface, appeared ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... dispersed in vapour, had it not been a firm, dense body. The guessing the course of comets began then to be very much in vogue. The celebrated Bernoulli concluded by his system that the famous comet of 1680 would appear again the 17th of May, 1719. Not a single astronomer in Europe went to bed that night. However, they needed not to have broke their rest, for the famous comet never appeared. There is at least more cunning, if not more certainty, in fixing its return to so remote a distance as five hundred and seventy-five ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... bases much of his argument on a denial that such an analogy should be drawn. Literary genius cannot be bequeathed and added to as a scientific discovery can. The modern poet does not stand on Shakespeare's shoulders as the modern astronomer stands on Galileo's shoulders. Scientific discovery is progressive. Literary genius, like religious genius, is a miracle less dependent on time. None the less, we may reasonably believe that literature, like science, has ever new worlds to conquer—that, ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... Petersburg—Dannemora. Visit to Nuremberg Albert Durer Adam Krafft Visit to St. Petersburg General Wilson General Greg Struve the astronomer Palaces and shops Ivy ornamentation The Emperor Nicholas a royal salute Francis Baird Work of Russian serfs The Izak Church Voyage to Stokholm Visit to Upsala The iron mines of Dannemora To Gottenburg by steamer Motala Trollhatten ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... the great law of the Discords of the World, as potent as that other principle of Universal Harmony and planetary motion which an illustrious contemporary—that Wurtemberg astronomer, once a soldier of the fierce Alva, now the half-starved astrologer of the brain-sick Rudolph—was at that moment discovering, after "God had waited six thousand years for him to do it," to prevail for the misery of the Republic ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... begins at noon AFTER the midnight at which the civil day begins, and hence is a whole day later than the ship's day. This does not enter into Cook's Journal, but one of the logs of the Endeavour, extant, that of Mr. Green the astronomer, was kept in this time, and the events of say Thursday, June 24th, of Cook's Journal, are therein given as happening on Wednesday, June 23rd. These differences of reckoning have been a fertile source of confusion ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... beauty. The stars were rushing in their eternal courses; the tides swelled to the level of the last expectant weed; the sun was making brilliant day to busy nations oil the other side of the expectant earth. The stream of human thought and deed was hurrying and broadening onward. The astronomer was at his telescope; the great ships were laboring over the waves; the toiling eagerness of commerce, the fierce spirit of revolution, were only ebbing in brief rest, and sleepless statesmen were ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... astronomer, Dr Edmund Halley, was appointed to the command of his majesty's ship the Paramour Pink, on an expedition for improving the knowledge of the longitude, and of the variation of the compass; and for discovering the unknown lands supposed to lie in ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... not the case, the minimum of emission would not be observed simultaneously for different colours during the eclipse of a fixed star by its dark neighbour. By means of similar considerations based on observa- tions of double stars, the Dutch astronomer De Sitter was also able to show that the velocity of propagation of light cannot depend on the velocity of motion of the body emitting the light. The assumption that this velocity of propagation is dependent on the direction "in space" is in ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... his "Pilgrim's Progress" on the untwisted papers used to cork the bottles of milk brought for his meals. Gifford wrote his first copy of a mathematical work, when a cobbler's apprentice, on small scraps of leather; and Rittenhouse, the astronomer, first calculated ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... from him. "The inequalities of the intellect," he says, "like the inequalities of the surface of the globe, bear so small a proportion to the mass" that the sociologist may neglect the one just as safely as the astronomer neglects the other. Now, this may be quite true if our interest in human events is that of social astronomers who are watching them from another planet. But because the inequalities of the earth are nothing to the astronomer, it does not follow that they are nothing to the engineer and ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock
... imperial throne, So distant, O ye gods! from every one, The royal virtues are like many a star, From this our pigmy system rather far: Whose light, though flying ever since creation, Has not yet pitched upon our nation. [Footnote: Such was the sublime opinion of the Dutch astronomer, Huygens] ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... from the law he seems a kindly, good-natured person, and I only mention him because you were particular that I should send some description of the people who surround us. He is curiously employed at present, for, being an amateur astronomer, he has an excellent telescope, with which he lies upon the roof of his own house and sweeps the moor all day in the hope of catching a glimpse of the escaped convict. If he would confine his energies ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... only in old age that change is unwelcome," said the Astronomer, "and races can be old as well ...
— Youth • Isaac Asimov
... visages of Dr. Gilbert; of Sir Joseph Banks, the famous surgeon of the early nineteenth century, who had the honor of being the only man that ever held the presidential chair of the Royal Society longer than it was held by Newton; of James Watts, of "steam-engine" fame; of Sabine, the astronomer, also a president of the society; and of Dr. Falconer and Sir Charles Lyell, ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... opposite school, I will take the following extract from Francesco Sizzi, a Florentine astronomer, who argues ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... of the old Continent. He wrote frequently to the most distinguished savants of his time. Martin Behaim, of whom we have already spoken, was amongst his correspondents, and also the celebrated Florentine astronomer, Toscanelli, whose opinions in some degree ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... Literature. Dr. John Torrey held the chemical professorship. He was engaged with Dr. Gray in preparing the history of American Flora. Stephen Alexander's modest eye had watched Orion and the Seven Stars through the telescope of the astronomer; the flashing wit and silvery voice of Albert B. Dod, then in his splendid prime, threw a magnetic charm over the higher mathematics. And in that old laboratory, with negro "Sam" as his assistant, reigned Joseph Henry, the acknowledged king of American scientists. ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... all the theories enunciated, the most probable is that of Fabricius, who avers that a celebrated Persian astronomer, one Schatrinscha, invented the game, and gave it his own name, which it still bears in that country. It adds, Donatus observes, that Pyrrhus the most knowing and expert prince of his age, ranging a battle, made use of the men at chess, to form his designs, and to shew the secrets thereof to ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... only one rational answer can be returned to this question. Does not experience teach us, that much if not the whole of our sentient nature becomes itself in turn a series of sensations? Does not the sight—that power which contains the whole visible space, and embraces distances which no astronomer can compute—does it not abjure its high prerogative, and take rank within the sphere of sense—itself a sensation—when revealed to us in the solid atom we call the eye? Here it is the touch which brings ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... sensations compel it. Light and colour, of which he has no tactual evidence, he studies fearlessly, believing that all humanly knowable truth is open to him. He is in a position similar to that of the astronomer who, firm, patient, watches a star night after night for many years and feels rewarded if he discovers a single fact about it. The man deaf-blind to ordinary outward things, and the man deaf-blind to the immeasurable universe, are both limited by time ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... Institute. Jeremy Belknap holds an honored place in that unpretending row of local historians. And in the pages of his "History of New Hampshire" may be found a chapter contributed in part by the most remarkable man, in many respects, among all the older clergymen preacher, lawyer, physician, astronomer, botanist, entomologist, explorer, colonist, legislator in state and national governments, and only not seated on the bench of the Supreme Court of a Territory because he declined the office when Washington offered it to him. This manifold individual ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... thoughts to what is remote in time and space, old trees, ruins, the rocks, and, above all, the heavenly bodies—the utilization of these lessons is the most important task of the religious teacher during the kindergarten stage of childhood. Still more than the undevout astronomer, the undevout child under such influences is abnormal. In these directions the mind of the child is as open and plastic as that of the ancient prophet to the promptings of the inspiring Spirit. The child can recognize no essential ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... remembers. Observing that Fontenelle at first opposed the Newtonian philosophy, and embraced it afterwards, his words were:—"Fontenellus, ni fallor, in extrema senectute fuit transfuga ad castra Newtoniana."' See post, under Nov. 12, 1775. Boscovitch, the Jesuit astronomer, was a professor in the University of Pavia. When Dr. Burney visited him, 'he complained very much of the silence of the English astronomers, who answer none of his letters.' Burney's Tour in France and Italy, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... interesting object in Benares, though it is now dirty and ruinous, and the great stone instruments are rapidly crumbling away. The building is square, with a central court and flat roof, round which the astrolabes, etc. are arranged. A half naked Astronomer-Royal, with a large sore on his stomach, took me round—he was a pitiful object, and told me he was very hungry. The observatory is nominally supported by the Rajah of Jeypore, who doles out a too scanty pittance to ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... period did it become well known. Who it was to whom the invention is due, or where he lived, or even in what century, will probably always remain a mystery.[141] It is possible that one of the forms of ancient abacus suggested to some Hindu astronomer or mathematician the use of a symbol to stand for the vacant line when the counters were removed. It is well established that in different parts of India the names of the higher powers took different ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... expressing my surprise at the manner Mr. Dease's name is mentioned in the published narrative of the expedition, where he is represented as being employed merely as purveyor. It might have been said with equal propriety that Mr. Simpson was employed merely as astronomer. The fact is, the services of both gentlemen were equally necessary; and to the prudence, judgment, and experience of Mr. Dease, the successful issue of the enterprise may undoubtedly be ascribed, no less than to the astronomical science of ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... astronomer, declares this phenomenal exhibition of falling stars "the most remarkable one ever observed." (See "Astronomy ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... fascinating that some little time elapsed before he was sufficiently master of himself to recur to the principal purpose of his presence. His box was on the first tier, where he could observe very generally and yet himself be sufficiently screened. As an astronomer surveys the starry heavens until his searching sight reaches the desired planet, so Lothair's scrutinizing vision wandered till his eye at length lighted on the wished-for orb. In the circle above his own, opposite to him but nearer the stage, he recognized ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... corresponded to our eager desires, and on the 7th of January, 1788, the long wished for shore of Van Diemen gratified our sight. We made the land at two o'clock in the afternoon, the very hour we expected to see it from the lunar observations of Captain Hunter, whose accuracy, as an astronomer, and conduct as an officer, had inspired us with equal ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... Atlas, mythologically the first astronomer. Your fancy has carried you on the wings of the wind at this very suggestion. These fourteen maids are Atlas' ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... an astronomer need know the mathematics of the science, but all of us should know the principal facts concerning the universe and the solar system, and it is a pleasure to us to recognize the different constellations as we gaze up at the heavens on a cloudless night. None but a lawyer ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... have known in 1854 what has been discovered since as to a number of these Turanian languages, everybody who writes on any of them seems to be most anxious to show that in 1894 he knows more than I did in 1854. No astronomer is blamed for not having known the planet Neptune before its discovery in 1846, or for having been wrong in accounting for the irregularities of Saturn. But let that pass; I only share the fate of others who have lived ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... the Ptolomean system, said, that "had he been consulted at the creation of the world, he would have spared the Maker some absurdities. [Alphonso X., King of Castile (1221-1284), surnamed the Wise and the Astronomer, "gave no small encouragement to the Jewish rabbis." Under his patronage Judah de Toledo translated the works of Avicenna, and improved them by a new division of the stars. Moreover, "he sent for about 50 learned ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... to explain the mental facts. It is not sufficient to describe the procession of mental experiences in us, we must understand the causes which determine that now this and now that appears and disappears, and appears just in this combination of elements. The astronomer is not satisfied with describing the stars, he wants to explain their movements and to determine which movements are to be expected. The psychologist, like the naturalist, aims towards explanation, and it is this demand which forces him to ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... sent astronomers to Africa to witness the transit of Venus. Preparation for this great sight had been going on for months. There was a critical moment when the sun, Venus and the earth were all in line. Every astronomer knew that at that moment his eye must be at the smaller end of the glass if he would see the planet go flying past the larger end. If he should miss that moment no power on earth could bring the planet back again. The world is full of ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... on a fact which occurred in the experience of the astronomer Sir Paul Neal, a member of the Royal Society of London.—Translator. Sir Paul Neal, whose lapsus suggested this fable, thought he had discovered an animal in the moon. Unluckily, however, after having made his "discovery" known, it was found that the ground of it was simply the accidental presence ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... as much under the mark as is above it that saying of some one, "An undevout astronomer is mad." A man's being endowed with rare mathematical talent is no cause why he should or should not be devout. His gifts to weigh and measure the stars are purely intellectual; and nature being seldom profuse upon one individual,—as she was upon Pascal and Newton,—the presumption ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... besides many others, soldiers, artists, diplomats, and ladies—every one, in fact, who was distinguished either by their personal charm, by mental qualities, or by the brilliancy of their career. Some amongst the number were more congenial to me than others; such as Francois Arago, the astronomer, inexhaustible in wit and humour, whether he was recounting his adventures when he was in captivity in the Barbary States, or the way he plagued his colleague Ampere, a soldier like himself in the regiment of the "Parrots in mourning," as he dubbed the Institute, ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... Various reasons make this date probable, including the fact that there was at that time a conjunction of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars, which must have presented a most brilliant appearance in the sky, and would {79} certainly have attracted the star-loving sages of the East. The great astronomer Kepler was of opinion that this conjunction was followed by the brief appearance of a new star, which is the star mentioned in Matt. ii. 2. This is of importance in considering the statements of St. Luke. Several objections have been made to his ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... European States, and I found it confirmed by a series of developments which have occupied two thousand years. I also found that the whole series of events confirmatory of this law (itself deduced from experience) are not yet entirely fulfilled. Like the astronomer, who, from a known fraction of the path of a newly discovered planet, calculates its whole course, I ventured to divine that which is still wanting, and which may yet take centuries to complete. I turned silently to those whose profession was the study of history, ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... more be such without placing himself on some central point, from which he may command the whole,—that is, some general rule, which, founded in reason, or the faculties common to all men, must therefore apply to each,—than an astronomer can explain the movements of the solar system without taking his stand in the sun. And let me remark, that this will not tend to produce despotism, but, on the contrary, true tolerance, in the critic. He will, indeed, require, as the spirit ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... apace, and the earth was standing still,—a belief just as grand, just as thrilling, so far as all that goes, as the other: men worshipped the sun long before they found out that it stood still. Not the most reverent astronomer, with the mathematics of the heavens at his tongue's end, could have had more delight in the wondrous phenomenon of the dawn, than did this ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... than usual, we irritated carters and coachmen to madness; but they fell harmless upon us within and disturbed not the serenity of our peaceful retreat. As I looked upward, I felt, I should imagine, like the Astronomer Royal. I was enchanted by the contrast between the freezing nature of our external mission on the blood of the populace, and the perfect composure reigning within those sacred precincts: where His Majesty, reclining easily on his left arm, smoked his pipe ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... any one of them. However, there is a little brochure in this direction which we feel may here be appropriately noticed. It is called, Watched by the Dead: A Loving Study of Charles Dickens's half-told Tale, 1887, and was written by R. A. Proctor, F.R.A.S., the Astronomer, whose untimely death from fever in America was announced after our return from our week's tramp. The author had evidently studied the matter both lovingly and attentively, and starts with the assumption that it is an example of what he calls ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... an early age to an engraver, but, attracted by astronomy, he studied so well that, when a lad of sixteen, he was admitted as a pupil to the Paris Observatory. There is no doubt that the great French mathematician, Le Verrier, regarded Flammarion with a certain disdain as more of a poet than an astronomer; but he soon vindicated, by several important discoveries, his title to be regarded as a man of science. "Urania," which appeared in 1889, is an excellent example of his ability as a thinker, and of his charm as a writer. The work is hardly a novel, though it is far ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... is any need of that," replied Nan. "I think such things are the duty of professional men and women only. I am very far from believing that every girl ought to be a surgeon any more than that she ought to be an astronomer. And as for the younger people's being less strong than the old, I am afraid it is their own fault, since we understand the laws of health better than we used. ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... flight than the facts will bear out when the writers make the birds go out of sight into the sky. I could easily follow them on this occasion, though, if I took my eye away for a moment, it was very difficult to get it back again. I had to search for them as the astronomer searches for a star. It may be that in the spring, when the atmosphere is less clear and the heart of the bird full of a more mad and reckless love, that the climax is not reached until the eye loses sight of ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... now established beyond controversy that Americus sailed on the first voyage, not as commander, but as astronomer, of the expedition, May 10, 1497, and first ran to the Grand Canaries. Leaving there May 25th, the first landfall was on the northern coast of Honduras of North America. Thence he sailed around Yucatan and up the Mexican coast to ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... and this power or attraction he called "the force of gravitation." I cannot do much more than tell you the name of this "law," but you will learn more about it one day I hope, and see how simple and yet how wonderful it is. An astronomer of our own day says, in his Story of the Heavens, that there are "grounds for believing that the law of gravitation is obeyed throughout the length, the breadth, the depth, and the height of the entire universe," and a little observation and thought will enable you ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... an astronomer and fire-worshipper, somewhat dazzled at present by the nearness and brilliancy of ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... the Lady Nelson lost two men, one through illness, the other by desertion. On March 15th, when she was quite ready for sea, Captain Schanck and Mr. Bayley* (* W. Bayley, formerly astronomer on board the Adventure.) paid her a visit. Orders had been given for her to leave port in company with H.M.S. Anson, Captain Durham, who (as the Powers were at war) was to convoy a fleet of East Indiamen, ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... any rate does not revolve round the earth, try with all their might to wrest this meaning from Scripture, though plainly nothing of the sort is intended. (70) Such quibblers excite my wonder! (71) Are we, forsooth, bound to believe that Joshua the Soldier was a learned astronomer? or that a miracle could not be revealed to him, or that the light of the sun could not remain longer than usual above the horizon, without his knowing the cause? (72) To me both alternatives appear ridiculous, and therefore I would rather say, that Joshua was ignorant of the true cause ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... Government after the abdication of the Kaiser; and, on the opposite side, Monsieur Emil Liban, Prince Rostoloff, and Sir John Smith, the respective ambassadors of France, Russia, and Great Britain. The sixth person was Thornton, the astronomer. ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... must be remembered, is a physicist and not an astronomer. He developed his theory as a mathematical formula. The confirmation of it came from the astronomers. As he himself says, the crucial test was supplied by the last total solar eclipse. Observations then proved that the rays of fixed stars, having to pass close to the ...
— The Einstein Theory of Relativity • H.A. Lorentz
... the feet of the "humble presbyter" who now plays the part of pope in Scotland. I do not know whom he means: but perhaps the friends of the presbyter-pope may consider this an ungenerous slur. The best proof of the astronomer is just such "as might have been expected from the merest of blockheads"; but as the giver is of course not a blockhead, this circumstance shows how deeply blinded by prejudice he ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... comprehends the dignity of his art. The Poet writes under one restriction only, namely, the necessity of giving immediate pleasure to a human Being possessed of that information which may be expected from him, not as a lawyer, a physician, a mariner, an astronomer, or a natural philosopher, but as a Man. Except this one restriction, there is no object standing between the Poet and the image of things; between this, and the Biographer and Historian, there are ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... the case of the ancient planets we have observations for more than two thousand years past, these times are known to the fraction of the second. The determination of the distances however, depends on the astronomer, and a tyro in the science might suppose that these distances were actually measured; and so they are roughly; but the astronomer does not depend on his instruments, he trusts to analogy, and the mathematical perfection of a law, which ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... "Schliemann," the noted German scholar and author, "as a boy, standing in line at the post-office waiting his turn for the mail, utilized the time by studying Greek from a little pocket grammar." "Mary Somerfield, the astronomer, while busy with her children in the nursery, wrote her 'Mechanism of the Heavens,' without neglecting her duties as a mother." "Julius Caesar, while a military officer and politician found time to write his Commentaries known throughout the world." William ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... astronomer, whose work is notable as being the chief source of the celebrated astronomical treatise, "The Sphere," of Johannes Sacrobosco (John of Halifax), a contemporary Englishman. It was the popular text-book for over three centuries, and was as well known ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele
... Paulus, [Footnote: Paulus Aemilius, who lost two sons, one a few days before, the other shortly after, the triumph decreed to him for the conquest of the Macedonian King Perseus.] I had seen Gallus,[Footnote: Gaius Sulpicius Gallus, mentioned as an astronomer by Cicero, De Officiis, i. 6, and De Senectute, 14.] in their bereavements. But they lost boys; Cato, a man in his prime and respected by all.[Footnote: The younger Cato had won fame as a soldier and ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... and ravelines I shall speak to your Papa when I fight my battle once again in the Armchair at the Park or at Winnington; enough for you to know that we all breakfasted with Sir Thomas Brisbane, a very superior man and a great astronomer, and tho' brave as a lion, seems to prefer looking at la Pleine lune in the heavens than the host of demi-lunes with which he is surrounded in his present quarters. At Cambray Sir George Scovell[116] had most kindly secured ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... of the many kinds still to be worked toward. There are at present no less than forty-six kinds of subjects in which a Scout may achieve, and more are being added daily. Just to mention a few: a Girl Scout may be an Astronomer, a Bee keeper, a Dairy-maid, or a Dancer, an Electrician, a Geologist, a Horsewoman, an Interpreter, a Motorist or a Musician, a Scribe, a Swimmer or accomplished in Thrift. Each subject has its own badge and when earned this is sewn into ...
— Girl Scouts - Their Works, Ways and Plays • Unknown
... fact, cherished as though they were ends in themselves, and not means called into existence to serve the interests of man. Absorbing as it may be to him, how can the philologist prove that his science is useful to humanity either present or prospective? How shall the astronomer, who may frankly admit that he cannot conceive that nine tenths of the work with which he occupies himself can ever be of any actual use to anyone, justify himself in devoting his life to it? Shall a curiosity, which seems ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... a French savant, M. Jean N. Nicollet, visited Minnesota for the purpose of exploration. He was an astronomer of note, and had received a decoration of the Legion of Honor, and had also been attached as professor to the Royal College of "Louis Le Grande." He arrived in Minnesota on July 26, 1836, bearing letters of introduction, and visited Fort Snelling, whence he left with a French trader, ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... a Moulla, speaking of the necessity of a more humane treatment of the Babis, and others of adverse creeds, says that he looks for the time when all conditions of men will be equally treated, and all creeds and classes be alike before the law. Omar Khayyam, the astronomer-poet of Persia, who wrote about eight hundred years ago, gave open expression to the same liberal-minded views, urging tolerance and freedom for all religious ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... need to record names which it is wisdom to forget. But it may be well to point out that Mr. Whistler does not succeed in glorifying great artists when he declares that beauty "to them was as much a matter of certainty and triumph as is to the astronomer the verification of the result, foreseen with the light granted to him alone." No, he only sets up a false analogy; for the true parallel to the artist is the saint, not the astronomer; both are convinced, neither understands. Art is no more the reward of intelligence than ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... was laid June 30, 1696, by John Evelyn (the treasurer), with a select committee of the commissioners, and Sir Christopher Wren, the architect, precisely at five in the evening, after they had dined together! Flamstead, the royal astronomer, observing the punctual time by instruments. The time is not unworthy of remark. The King (Charles II.) subscribed 2,000l.; the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Keeper Sommers, Dukes of Leeds, Pembroke, Devonshire, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... whose business it has been to devote themselves assiduously to that eminently practical and direct end, the alleviation of the sufferings of mankind,—have they been able to confine their vision more absolutely to the strictly useful? I fear they are worst offenders of all. For if the astronomer has set before us the infinite magnitude of space, and the practical eternity of the duration of the universe; if the physical and chemical philosophers have demonstrated the infinite minuteness of its constituent ...
— On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge • Thomas H. Huxley
... and in his garden, near the house, he built the tall octagonal tower, now known as the Monument, respecting the origin of which so many various legendary stories are current. It was, no doubt, erected to enable its owner, who was an astronomer, to obtain from its upper chamber a more extensive field of view for his instruments, and thus to enable him to make observations of the heavenly bodies when they were very low down in the horizon. I am informed, however, by an old inhabitant of Edgbaston, ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards |
