"Astronomer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as being foreign to their views of trade and commerce. Eloquence, poetry, history, seem to have been little known among them. A Carthaginian philosopher was considered as a sort of prodigy by the learned. What then would an astronomer or a geometrician have been thought? I know not in what esteem physic, which is so highly useful to life, was held at Carthage; or jurisprudence, so ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... May, 1866, a great conflagration, infinitely larger than that of London or Moscow, was announced. To use the expression of a distinguished astronomer, a world was found to be on fire! A star, which till then had shone weakly and unobtrusively in the corona borealis, suddenly blazed up into a luminary of the second magnitude. In the course of three days from its discovery in this new character, by Birmingham, at Tuam, it ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... the triumphs of modern science naturally opens with Astronomy. The picture of the Universe which the astronomer offers to us is imperfect; the lines he traces are often faint and uncertain. There are many problems which have been solved, there are just as many about which there is doubt, and notwithstanding our great ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... smaller ones, all of the best quality. To these he added in 1896 a telescope with 24 inch object glass, the last work of the celebrated firm of Alvan Clark & Sons, with which he has made his later discoveries. He thus became perhaps more favourably situated than any astronomer in the northern hemisphere, and during the last twelve years has made a specialty of the study of Mars, besides doing much valuable astronomical ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... the establishment of a national observatory. "Connected with the establishment of an university," he said "or, separate from it, might be undertaken the erection of an astronomical observatory, with provision for the support of an astronomer, to be in constant attendance of observation upon the phenomena of the heavens, and for the periodical publication of his observations. It is with no feeling of pride, as an American, that the remark may be made, that, on the comparatively small territorial ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... another kind. It was a self- repeater—of some violence, moreover, when the smallness of the hero is considered. Whether in after-life he become an astronomer-poet or a "silver-and-mechanical engineer"—both dreams of his—he will ever be sharp upon rescuing something. A lost star or a burning mine will be his objective, but with the essential condition that it be— unattainable. Achievement would mean lost interest. For Tim's desire was, is, and ever ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... used in our schools. Archimedes (287-212 B.C.), who studied under Euclid, made many important discoveries and advances in mechanics and physics. Eratosthenes (226-196 B.C.), librarian at Alexandria, is famous as a geographer [12] and astronomer, and made some studies in geology as well. Ptolemy (b.?; d. 168 A.D.) here completed his Mechanism of the Heavens (Syntaxis) in 138 A.D., and this became the standard astronomy in Europe for nearly fifteen hundred years, while his geography was used in the schools until well into the fifteenth ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... trousers-straps from old boots, M. Mirbal 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
... a tawny coat south-eastward, and is in the middle of London, and will shortly to the sea side. He was curate unto the parson of Honey Lane.[521] It is likely he is privily cloaked there. Wherefore, as soon as I knew the judgment of this astronomer, I thought it expedient and my duty with all speed to ascertain your good lordship of all the premises; that in time your lordship may advertise my lord his Grace, and my lord of London. It will be a gracious deed ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... there 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. 'Who ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... that while his ship was refitting in Queen Charlotte Sound the astronomer's tent was robbed by a party of natives. One who was seen escaping was fired upon and wounded, when he and his confederates made for the woods, leaving their canoe with most of the stolen goods on the ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... observer who really wishes to become an astronomer will not rest satisfied by learning only the principal stars shown in these maps. By means of the regular star-maps, such as those of my School Star Atlas, he will be able to explore the depths of all the constellations, ...
— Half-Hours with the Stars - A Plain and Easy Guide to the Knowledge of the Constellations • Richard A. Proctor
... has given the world a rational and satisfying doctrine of God. Other teachers have tried to answer the inquiry, Does God exist? Jesus treated that question as an astronomer treats the sun. No sane scientist would fill his pages with speculations as to the reality of the sun. It moves and shines in the heavens; beginning with that fact, the astronomer asks concerning the function which the sun performs in the solar ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... keeper of the Sun were, is not precisely known. Probably he was required to superintend the scouring and brightening of the solar disk. At any rate, since he gave up his office, the Sun has become freckled over with ugly spots, the cause of which no modern astronomer has yet discerned;—the scientific chaps, with their customary want of common sense, having never once surmised that these spots were simply rust occasioned by a lack of proper scouring. The theory that APOLLO really did scour the Sun ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... described by one of the present leaders of the sect as 'the late worthy John Taylor, of Gower Street, London;' but hitherto the chief prophets of the new faith have been in this country Professor Smyth, Astronomer Royal for Scotland, and in France the Abbe Moigno. I propose to examine here some of the facts most confidently urged by pyramidalists in ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... declining Northward, it stretcheth foorth an huge length, insomuch that the farthest Chinian inhabitants that way doe behold the North pole eleuated, at least 50 degrees, and perhaps more also: whereupon a man may easilie coniecture (that I may speake like an Astronomer) how large the latitude of this kingdom is, when as it containeth about more then 540 leagues in direct extension towards the North. But as concerning the longitude which is accounted from East to West, it is not so exactly found out, that it may be distinguished into degrees. ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... is that of 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 ...
— Chess History and Reminiscences • H. E. Bird
... "An undevout astronomer is mad! * * * * * * Oh, what a genius must inform the skies! And is Lorenzo's salamander-heart Cold and ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... both parties had omens in mind. The astronomical reports, of which quite a number have already been published,[550] may therefore be reckoned as part of the omen literature. The vernal equinox was a period of much significance. The astronomer royal accordingly reports:[551] ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... contemptuously whether his gamekeeper is the equal of the Astronomer Royal; but he insists that they shall both be hanged ...
— Maxims for Revolutionists • George Bernard Shaw
... eager at a jest, that no one of all the gathering fits the occasion half so well. And to exchange a word with them is to feel a pleasant contact with all the gentleness and mirth that have lodged with them during the space of their eighty years. The old gentleman is an astronomer and until lately, when he moved to a newer quarter of the town, he had behind his house in a proper tower a telescope, through which he showed his friends the moon. But in these last few years his work has been entirely mathematical and his telescope has fallen into disorder. His work ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... The latter astronomer discovered, in 1572, what appeared to be a new star in the constellation, Cassiopeia. It was a star of the first magnitude when first perceived, and daily it increased in brilliancy, till it out-shone Sirius, equaled Venus in lustre, and could be perceived, even by the naked eye, ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... The English 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 he returned ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... distinguished professor in Yale College; and his grandfather, Hon. Elizur Goodrich, for some years a representative in Congress, and for twenty years Mayor of New Haven; and his great-grandfather, Rev. Elizur Goodrich, D. D., distinguished both as a clergyman and an astronomer. His mother was the daughter of Noah ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... beds, and how to make plum pudding out of turnip-tops, and venison cutlets out of rusty bacon. He showed the fencing-master how to fence, and the professional cricketer how to bowl, and instructed the rat-catcher in breeding terriers. He set sums to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and assured the Astronomer Royal that the sun does not go round the earth—which, for my part, I believe it does. The young ladies of the court disliked dancing with him, in spite of his good looks, because he was always asking, "Have you read this?" and "Have you read that?"—and when they said they hadn't, he sneered; ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... born 611-546, was a celebrated geometrician, astronomer, philosopher and geographer. He was the author of a book on natural phenomena, drew the first map of the world on metal, and introduced into Greece a kind of clock which he seems to have borrowed from the Babylonians. He supposes a primary and not easily definable Being, by which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Abroad." I was out of money, and I went down to Washington to see if I could earn enough there to keep me in bread and butter while I should write the book. I came across William Clinton, brother of the astronomer, and together we invented a scheme for our mutual sustenance; we became the fathers and originators of what is a common feature in the newspaper world now—the syndicate. We became the old original first Newspaper Syndicate on the planet; it was ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... Chrysostom says (Hom. vi in Matth.): "It is not an astronomer's business to know from the stars those who are born, but to tell the future from the hour of a man's birth: whereas the Magi did not know the time of the birth, so as to conclude therefrom some knowledge of the future; rather was ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... recommendation of Captain Smyth's Celestial Cycle (ante, p. 70.), that soon after it appeared it obtained for its author the annual gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society; and that it is a book adapted to the exigencies of astronomers of all degrees, from the experienced astronomer, furnished with every modern refinement of appliances and means of observation, to the humbler, but perhaps no less zealous beginner, furnished only with a good pair of natural eyes, aided, on occasion, by the common opera-glass. Such an observer, if he goes ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various
... I never knew Kelton. They say he was a very able mathematician and astronomer. It's rather remarkable that we should have kept him in Indiana. I suppose you may have seen him at Mrs. Owen's; they had a common tie in their Kentucky connections. I guess there's no tie quite like the Kentucky tie, ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... considerable approximation to regularity; or the mathematic is so nearly localized that eclipses, for instance, can, with rather high approximation, be foretold, though I have notes that would deflate a little the astronomers' vainglory in this respect—or would if that were possible. An astronomer is poorly paid, uncheered by crowds, considerably isolated: he lives upon his own inflations: deflate a bear and it couldn't hibernate. This solar system is like every other phenomenon that can be regarded "as a whole"—or the affairs of a ward are interfered ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... 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
... saying, "Come, and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart." But S. Paul says that the love of Christ passeth knowledge. And indeed we poor, sinful, selfish creatures can never hope, at least here, to understand all the wideness, the depth, the power, of that love. When the astronomer looks up at the starry sky above him, he does not think so much of what he knows about that shining world as about what he does not know. He thinks of the mysteries which those calm skies hold, and of the countless stars which no telescope has ever yet ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... character of Moses after the fashion of the German, evolving the idea of an elephant out of his inner consciousness. But now that it was done, he was amazed to see how well it was done; he was like an astronomer who works out the orbit of a new planet, and afterwards ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... Cassiopea's chair, Pleiades. colures^, equator, ecliptic, orbit. [Science of heavenly bodies] astronomy; uranography, uranology^; cosmology, cosmography^, cosmogony; eidouranion^, orrery; geodesy &c (measurement) 466; star gazing, star gazer^; astronomer; observatory; planetarium. Adj. cosmic, cosmical^; mundane, terrestrial, terrestrious^, terraqueous^, terrene, terreous^, telluric, earthly, geotic^, under the sun; sublunary^, subastral^. solar, heliacal^; lunar; celestial, heavenly, sphery^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of their own shores—Irish, Welsh, Breton, or Spanish,—and then, as these islands became better known, men's imaginations carried the mystery further out over the unknown western sea. The line of legend gradually extended itself till it formed an imaginary chart for Columbus; the aged astronomer, Toscanelli, for instance, suggesting to him the advantage of making the supposed island of Antillia a half-way station; just as it was proposed, long centuries after, to find a station for the ocean telegraph in the equally imaginary island of Jacquet, which ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... had failed. I had come to the conclusion that minds nurtured in the insular atmosphere were forever incapable of visualizing a continent. In my fugitive letters to friends at home I had been reduced to the astronomer's facile illustrations. "Just as," I had written in despair—"just as a railway train, travelling at a mile a minute, takes nearly 180 years to reach the sun, so we, travelling in a tourist car at rather ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... wit, in the 34. yeere of the reigne of the triumphant king Edward the third) a frier of Oxford, being a good Astronomer, went in companie with others to the most Northren Islands of the world, and there leauing his company together, hee transited alone, and purposely described all the Northerne Islands, with the indrawing seas: and ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries - of the English Nation, v. 1, Northern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... this the astronomer answer that he is able to carry the history of evolution further back than any planet or star, as far back as a vast floating mass of homogeneous fiery vapour, even then we should still maintain that this original nebular mass of fire was the material "body" of an integral ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... the north star itself, which, like the other heavenly bodies, had its changes and revolutions, and every day described a circle round the pole. The high opinion they entertained of Columbus as a profound astronomer gave weight to his theory, ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... other hand, some things which are remote in space and time from a living creature, especially a human creature, may form his environment even more truly than some of the things close to him. The things with which a man varies are his genuine environment. Thus the activities of the astronomer vary with the stars at which he gazes or about which he calculates. Of his immediate surroundings, his telescope is most intimately his environment. The environment of an antiquarian, as an antiquarian, consists of the remote epoch of human life with which he is concerned, ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... arise amazing witnesses, which speak in tones that cannot be hushed, with facts that cannot be denied, and bear testimony beyond all possibility of dispute to the truth and accuracy of the book; so much so, indeed, that such an one as Sir John Herschell, the great astronomer, has said: "All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more and more strongly the truths contained ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... reading by the busiest person, who really wants to read. "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." ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... celebrated Italian astronomer, member of the Jesuit Order. The Jesuits are still in charge of the Observatory ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... Further, different sciences are different habits. But the same scientific truth belongs to different sciences: thus both the physicist and the astronomer prove the earth to be round, as stated in Phys. ii, text. 17. Therefore habits are not distinguished ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... work off his superfluous nervous energy—also to occupy the centre of our local stage for the brief time of train-stop. If it is love that makes the world go round, certainly vanity first put it into motion. "All is vanity," said the Preacher. From the devoted astronomer's austere lifework to the twinkle of a fairy's glittering tinsel; from the glories of the first man up the battle-swept hill to the infamous assassin, all is vanity. Such a universal attribute must ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... very good marine picture by Birch in the drawing-room. This was after living in the Washington Square house, of which I shall speak anon. I am not clear as to these removals. There were some men of culture at Mrs. Eaton's—among them Sears C. Walker, a great astronomer, and a Dr. Brewer, who had travelled in Italy and brought back with him pieces of sculpture. We were almost directly opposite the State House, where liberty had been declared, while to the side, across the street, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... cavalry, who left an arm in Egypt, and changed his way of life to become a wizard, as the common people about his neighbourhood supposed, because he foretold the weather and had cures for aches and pains without a doctor's diploma. But we know now that he was only a mathematician and astronomer, all for inventing military engines. The brother and sister were great friends in their youth, when he had his right arm to defend her reputation with; and she would have done anything ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 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, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... ignorance, placed the garden of the Hesperides there. In the Middle Ages it was supposed that the earth was upheld on axles placed at the poles, on which it revolved; but when comets were seen moving freely, that idea had to be given up. Later, there was a French astronomer, Bailly, who said that the lost people mentioned by Plato, the Atlantides, lived here. Finally, it has been asserted in our own time that there was an immense opening at the poles, from which came the Northern Lights, and through which one could reach the inside of the earth; since in the ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... philosopher Archytas of Tarentum invented a mechanical pigeon, which was filled with some kind of light air, and flew. The two schools of aeronautics were here reconciled. Other mechanists were Roger Bacon, who is reported to have designed a flying chariot; and Regiomontanus, astronomer and mathematician, who made a mechanical eagle which flew to meet the Emperor Charles the Fifth, on his solemn entry into the city of Nuremberg. It is not necessary to inquire whether these stories are true or false; what is certain is that the inventors did not leave their inventions ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... the next day there was nothing of this in the papers except a little note in the Daily Telegraph, and the world went in ignorance of one of the gravest dangers that ever threatened the human race. I might not have heard of the eruption at all had I not met Ogilvy, the well-known astronomer, at Ottershaw. He was immensely excited at the news, and in the excess of his feelings invited me up to take a turn with him that night in a scrutiny of the ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... you may, to acquire this knowledge ought to be your first and greatest care. A man who has had a new-built house tumble down will derive little more consolation from being told that the architect is a great astronomer, than this distressed nation now derives from being assured that its distresses arise from the measures of a long list of the greatest orators and greatest heroes ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... which people our 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
... come from India (p. 33),—and who interprets each vision that the poet lives through from the standpoint of the pessimistic sceptic, shows the influence of 'Umar Xayyam. In fact he indulges sometimes in unmistakable reminiscences of the quatrains of the famous astronomer-poet, ...
— The Influence of India and Persia on the Poetry of Germany • Arthur F. J. Remy
... a historic fact, but I am no happier for believing it. However, too much education is a nuisance, and very likely Mamma Church was wise in toasting an astronomer now and then." ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell
... in the thirty-fourth century that the dark star began its famous conquest, unparalleled in stellar annals. Phobar the astronomer discovered it. He was sweeping the heavens with one of the newly invented multi-powered Sussendorf comet-hunters when something caught his eye—a new star of great brilliance in the foreground of the ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... is said to have kept a fool, who frequently sat at his feet in his study, and to whose mutterings he used to listen in the pauses of his own thought. The shining soul of the astronomer drew forth the rainbow of harmony from the misty spray of words ascending ever from the dark gulf into which the thoughts of the idiot were ever falling. He beheld curious concurrences of words therein, and ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... the room, gave added weight to every word. In proof of the good faith of Congress he began reading a letter from one of the members, when, finding his sight dim, he paused and took from his pocket the new pair of spectacles which the astronomer David Rittenhouse had just sent him. He had never worn spectacles in public, and as he put them on he said, in his simple manner and with his pleasant smile, "I have grown gray in your service, and now find myself growing ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... from the little passions and the drear calamities of earth; both lead to heaven and away from hell,—art and science. But art is more godlike than science; science discovers, art creates. You have faculties that may command art; be contented with your lot. The astronomer who catalogues the stars cannot add one atom to the universe; the poet can call a universe from the atom; the chemist may heal with his drugs the infirmities of the human form; the painter, or the sculptor, fixes into everlasting youth forms divine, which no disease can ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... not thought it advisable to describe in detail the various instruments of precision, which we have been called upon to construct from time to time for the scientists in the astronomical as well as other branches of science during the last ten years. As a rule every astronomer is interested in some special line of research, which for a successful investigation requires a special adaptation of the instrument he proposes to use, and in such cases we are confident we can fill the requirements and shall ...
— Astronomical Instruments and Accessories • Wm. Gaertner & Co.
... whilst at a later period the light established at the Desierto, but well directed, was seen every evening from Campvey. It will easily be imagined what must be the ennui experienced by a young and active astronomer, confined to an elevated peak, having for his walk only a space of twenty square metres, and for diversion only the conversation of two Carthusians, whose convent was situated at the foot of the mountain, and who came in ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... to decide whether Leonardo, when living in Florence, became acquainted in his youth with the doctrines of Paolo Toscanelli the great astronomer and mathematician (died 1482), of whose influence and teaching but little is now known, beyond the fact that he advised and encouraged Columbus to carry out his project of sailing round the world. His ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... mayor of Dublin. I have moved in the charmed circle of the highest... Queens of Dublin society. (Carelessly) I was just chatting this afternoon at the viceregal lodge to my old pals, sir Robert and lady Ball, astronomer royal at the levee. Sir Bob, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... boy, that's easy," cried Tom. "A clothespin is for sticking something fast, and we are stuck fast. Now, can't you see the joke, as the blind astronomer said to the ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... misleading one. Professor Gilbert Murray, in Religio Grammatici, 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, ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... monuments marking the international boundary line," and the maps, records, and general reports relating to the commission, have been deposited in the Department of State. The official report of the commissioner on the part of the United States, with the report of the chief astronomer of the United States, will be submitted to Congress within a ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... persuade the Hairy Ammophila that Spiders have a nutty flavour, as Lalande asserts; and you will see how coldly your hints are received. (Joseph Jerome Le Francois de Lalande (1732-1807), the astronomer. Even after he had achieved his reputation, he sought means, outside the domain of science, to make himself talked about and found these in the display partly of odd tastes, such as that for eating Spiders and caterpillars, and partly of atheistical opinions.—Translator's Note.) Try ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... 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
... argument, and having cast one more despairing look at the bright face of the moon, for never did the most ardent astronomer with a theory to prove await a celestial event with such anxiety, I stepped with all the dignity that I could command between the prostrate girl and the ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... all the voyages Vespucci went, whether under the flag of Portugal or of Spain, he was never leader. He went as astronomer, or as pilot, while other men captained ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... the spectator only because the artist, in producing those works, has gradually sunk his intellectual and spiritual ideas in sensuous form. He may live, as Keats lived, a pure life; but his soul, like that of Plato's false astronomer, becomes more and more immersed in sense, until nothing which lacks an appeal to sense has interest for him. How could such an one ever again endure the greyness of the ideal or spiritual world? The spiritualist is satisfied in seeing the sensuous elements escape ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... her what thou thyself hast there written, And, to gladden the eye, placest her wonders in groups;— Since o'er her boundless expanses thy cords to extend thou art able, Thou dost think that thy mind wonderful Nature can grasp. Thus the astronomer draws his figures over the heavens, So that he may with more ease traverse the infinite space, Knitting together e'en suns that by Sirius-distance are parted, Making them join in the swan and in the horns of the bull. But because the firmament shows ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... permitted to drink in the varied hues of the landscape, and to gaze with such delight upon the celestial revelations spread out nightly above and around them, are indeed in double darkness when all this power and privilege are swept away, it may be forever. The astronomer can truly estimate ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... Talleyrand, from malignity or revenge, often heightened and confirmed His Holiness's aversion. This was at least once the case with regard to De Lalande. When Duroc inquired the cause of the Pope's displeasure against this astronomer, and hinted that it would be very agreeable to the Emperor were His Holiness to permit him the honour of prostrating himself, he was answered that men of talents and learning would always be welcome to approach his person; that he pitied the errors and prayed for the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... A question. Field-flower. The cloud's swan-song. To the sinking sun. Grief's harmonics. Memorat memoria. July fugitive. To a snow-flake. Nocturn. A May burden. A dead astronomer. 'Chose vue.' 'Whereto art thou come.' Heaven and hell. To a child. Hermes. House of bondage. The heart. A sunset. Heard ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... question. If nothing short of the marvellous is to satisfy us, who shall say that even this will not present itself to the far-piercing ken of the new monster telescope—refracting, not reflecting—established on Wandsworth Common, at the cost of an amateur astronomer, for the promotion of the celestial science? Lord Rosse has now a competitor; and with a tube of eighty feet in length, and the power of looking direct at the distant object, may we not hope to hear of great discoveries by means of the new instrument? Photographers ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... nature than other men; and the point which we have gained now, is that no obstruction is to be thrown in the way of science by any dread that any scientific truth will infringe on any theological system. The great truth has gone forth at last, not to be recalled, that the astronomer may point his glass to the heavens as long and as patiently as he pleases, without apprehending opposition from the Christian world; the chemist may subject all objects to the action of the crucible and the blowpipe, 'with none to molest him or make him afraid;' ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... Annuaire of the Bureau des Longitudes, recently published in Paris, appears a paper by the distinguished astronomer Arago—'On the Observations which have made known the Physical Constitution of the Sun and of different Stars; and an Inquiry into the Conjectures of the Ancient Philosophers, and of the Positive Ideas of Modern Astronomers on the Place that the Sun ought ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... authors, living between the second and the fifteenth century, besides those mentioned, who quote Tacitus, it will be found that their quotations are from the History, the Germany, or the Agricola; and this can be predicted with just as much confidence, as an astronomer predicts eclipses of the sun and the moon, and, for their verification, needs not wait to see the actual ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... observations. As a new month began on the day on which the new moon was seen, it is clear that a month would often exceed twenty-nine days, but that a new moon might sometimes be seen on the twenty-ninth. Nabua, the astronomer of the city Asshur, sends a number ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... surrounding orbs taken together. The question might then have been asked—"Why do we not see it?"—we, especially, who occupy the mid region of the cluster—the very locality near which, at least, must be situated this inconceivable central sun. The astronomer, perhaps, at this point, took refuge in the suggestion of non-luminosity; and here analogy was suddenly let fall. But even admitting the central orb non-luminous, how did he manage to explain its failure to be rendered visible by the incalculable host of glorious ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and in 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 but descriptive term—in which, from time to time, a band ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... 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 ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... should as soon think of compassionating the star that shines brightest in the van of night. Compassion looks down; kindness implies an equal ground; admiration looks up with the gaze of the astronomer and the worship ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... here, in communication with AIRY, the astronomer Royal, about a telegraph to the moon. A lunatic observation makes it wax plain that it will not be in wane to attempt it. STOKES and HUGGINS, moreover, have been taking views of people through the spectroscope. Absorption bands are very striking in the spectra ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... backward." The date of this would be about 700 years before the Christian era, but we know nothing of the character or construction of the instrument. The earliest of all sun-dials of which we have any certain knowledge was the hemicycle, or hemisphere, of the Chaldaean astronomer Berossus, who probably lived about 300 B.C. It consisted of a hollow hemisphere placed with its rim perfectly horizontal, and having a bead, or globule, fixed in any way at the centre. So long as the sun remained above the horizon the shadow of the bead would fall on the inside of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... 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 Tampico ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... mineralogical collections, and the chemical laboratories have each their separate building, whilst at the extreme end of the University gardens is the handsome new observatory, with covered way leading to the equally handsome residence of the astronomer in charge. Thus the learned star-gazer can reach his telescope under cover in wintry weather. In addition to the University library described above, the various class-rooms have each small separate libraries, sections of history, literature, etc., ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... marvellous. It is an honor to man, put upon him from above, as one of the gratuitous dignities of his being. "An undevout astronomer is mad," said one who had opened his mind to a broad grasp of the wonders which this upper heaven holds in its bosom. The floriculturist is an astronomer, with Newton's telescope reversed; and if its revelations do not stir up holy thoughts in his soul, he is blind as well ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... still continued to sleep in the public squares, although the capital had hitherto escaped the greatest violence of the shocks. Various rumors among the most ignorant part of the population, however, still kept up the general excitement. A certain astronomer or professor of the occult sciences, a Dr. Briceno by name, had even the audacity to circulate a paper throughout the city, headed by the ominous title, "Vigilemos!" (Let us watch!). He prophesied that on the 17th of April, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... and Sir George smiled. Sir John Herschel had visited the Cape to fix the southern stars. The recollection carried Sir George Grey to the astronomer's part in quite a different affair. He had the tale from Herschel himself, and classed it with the somewhat relative incidents of Carlyle and Babbage. It was worse for ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... 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, ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... aroused, probably through French influence. England soon came to the front in scientific investigation. Among the principal contributors to this movement were Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen, and Black, of latent heat; Cavendish, the investigator of air and water; Sir William Herschel, the astronomer, who spent most of his life in England; Hutton, the father of British geological science; Sir Joseph Banks, the naturalist; Hunter, the "founder of scientific surgery"; and Jenner, who in 1798 announced the protective power ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... 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 belongs not to Canada but to the ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... floor, and the Museo Galileo in the first floor. Both open on Thursdays and Saturdays, from 10 to nearly 3. In the vestibule is an old terrestrial globe, black with age, 3feet in diameter, probably by Ignazio Dante, afamous astronomer, brought to Florence by CosmoI. He died in 1586. Upstairs is the Museo, or Tribuna di Galileo.[*] Explanatory catalogues in Italian and French are on the table. The statue of him is by A.Costoli. In the niche to ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... 611 B.C., an astronomer and geographer, following Thales chronologically, wrote a book on "Nature," the first written on the subject in the philosophy of Greece. He held that all things arose from the "infinite," a primordial chaos in which was ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... not come to Rome until the following December, and then only met Hawthorne a few times, according to his own confession. [Footnote: Mrs. Lathrop, 406.] We must not forget, however, that excellent lady and skilful astronomer, Miss Maria Mitchell, who joined the Hawthorne party in Paris, and became an indispensable accompaniment to them the ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... pieces. But it is the same specimen; and the same chemical elements and the same quantities of those elements are present within the case at the end as were present at the beginning. Again the engineer and the astronomer deal with the motions of real permanences in nature. Any theory of nature which for one moment loses sight of these great basic facts of experience is simply silly. But it is permissible to point ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead
... to the Martian's attention that two scientists, Sir Arthur Eddington, a British astronomer, and Sir James Jeans, a mathematical physicist, had ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... Exchange and Library rooms are upon it, fronting the principal street; and back of the Exchange is a rough brick and mortar pillar to mark the spot where Sir J. Herschell, the astronomer, made his observations. ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... conduct the ship of state into the haven of prosperity—the practical astronomer who knows by frequent observations, that lunars are not to be ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of taste. All judgment of art must be based on expert knowledge, for art, he says, "is based upon laws as rigid and defined as those of the known sciences." Yet whereas "no polished member of society is at all affected by admitting himself neither engineer, mathematician, nor astronomer, and therefore remains willingly discreet and taciturn upon these subjects, still he would be highly offended were he supposed to have no voice in what clearly to him is a matter of taste." So to Whistler art has no more to do with the life of the ordinary ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... the astronomer, like that of the votary of almost every other science, is becoming every year more and more specialised; and among its manifold subdivisions, the study of the physical features of the moon is undoubtedly increasing ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... doubtless committed within its precincts by writers who venture there without the laborious preparation which this science, more than almost any other, demands. But the proceedings of the trained philologist are no more arbitrary than those of the trained astronomer. And though the former may seem to be straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel when he coolly tells you that violin and fiddle are the same word, while English care and Latin cura have nothing to do with each other, he is nevertheless ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... not the works of nature for his principal object, without which they could not consist, and on which they so depend, as they become actors and players, as it were, of what nature will have set forth. So doth the astronomer look upon the stars, and by that he seeth, setteth down what order nature hath taken therein. So do the geometrician, and arithmetician, in their diverse sorts of quantities. So doth the musician, ...
— English literary criticism • Various |
