"Astronomer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... picturesque in history; it would have been more pathetic still if Galileo could have known that his name would be written in "Paradise Lost," or Milton could have foreseen that within thirteen years he too would see only with the inner eye, but that the calamity which disabled the astronomer would restore inspiration to the poet. How deeply he was impressed appears, not merely from the famous comparison of Satan's shield to the moon enlarged in "the Tuscan artist's optic glass," but by the ventilation in the fourth and eighth books of "Paradise Lost," of the points ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... The celebrated Flamstead, the astronomer, when a lad of nineteen, went into Ireland to be touched by Greatrakes, and he testifies that he was an eyewitness of several cures, although he himself was not benefited. In a letter to Lord Conway, Greatrakes says: "The King's doctors, this day (for the confirmation of their ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... were directly overhead, and by morning she was convinced that there was a case of serious illness in the German family. Led by her sympathies, and also by the hope of thawing the reserve of the eccentric old astronomer, she resolved to go and ask if she could be of ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... pair of globes, and attended the philosophical lectures of Martin and Ferguson, and became afterwards acquainted with Dr. Bevis, of the society called the Royal Society, then living in the Temple, and an excellent astronomer. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... the bitterness of a "home-mood," imagined himself a Martian astronomer explaining to a friend, with the aid of a powerful telescope, the institutions of the earth. "There are the continents," he indicated; "and up there near the polar cap is a country, frigid and burning and lonely and apart, called Alaska. ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... this did not excite them to borrow their learning, 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 ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... various branches of social science, especially political economy, sociology, anthropology, and psychology, is succeeding in explaining many things; but history must always remain, from the standpoint of the astronomer, physicist, or chemist, a highly inexact and fragmentary body of knowledge.... History can no doubt be pursued in a strictly scientific spirit, but the data we possess in regard to the past of mankind are not of a nature to lend themselves to organization ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... I need the hypothesis of God to establish the authority of social science.—When the astronomer, to explain the system of the world, judging solely from appearance, supposes, with the vulgar, the sky arched, the earth flat, the sun much like a football, describing a curve in the air from east to west, ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... rights as a human being first, which belong to no sex, and ought to be as freely conceded to her as if she were a man,—and, first and foremost, the great right of doing anything which God and Nature evidently have fitted her to excel in. If she be made a natural orator, like Miss Dickinson, or an astronomer, like Mrs. Somerville, or a singer, like Grisi, let not the technical rules of womanhood be thrown in the way of her free use of her powers. Nor can there be any reason shown why a woman's vote in the state should not be received with as much respect ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... be said of an irreverent floriculturist, and with equal truth—perhaps indeed with greater. For the astronomer, in some cases, may be hard and cold, from indulging in habits of thought too exclusively mathematical. But the true lover of flowers has always something gentle and genial in his nature. He never looks upon his ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... of the camels, went as second in command, and William John Wills, an astronomer and surveyor, ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... 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 ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... exhibitions of Animuccia and of Cafossis, the "Silvae" of Gesualdo, the "Prince of Venosa," the "Satyr" of Laura Guidiccioni, the "Despair of Philene," the "Death of Ugolina," by Vincent Galileo, father of the astronomer, which Vincent Galileo sang his own music, and accompanied himself on his viol de gamba; as well as all the first attempts of the Italian opera which, from 1580, substituted free inspiration for ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... 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 account ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... 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 ...
— Girl Scouts - Their Works, Ways and Plays • Unknown
... 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 ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... duty of bringing confusion into order, and the completeness with which the work was accomplished at the first moment of his leisure shows that he had found time in the midst of his campaigns to think of other things than war or politics. Sosigenes, an Alexandrian astronomer, was called in to superintend the reform. It is not unlikely that he had made acquaintance with Sosigenes in Egypt, and had discussed the problem with him in the hours during which he is supposed to have amused ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... moon, saw it move round the planet, plunge into Jupiter's shadow, behaving like a lamp suddenly extinguished: then at the other edge of the shadow he saw it reappear, like a lamp suddenly lighted. The moon thus acted the part of a signal light to the astronomer, and enabled him to tell exactly its time of revolution. The period between two successive lightings up of the lunar lamp he found to be 42 hours, 28 ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... a 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 a "blind focus" ...
— An Elementary Course in Synthetic Projective Geometry • Lehmer, Derrick Norman
... 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 he ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Air Force contract astronomer told Shallett. I've checked with two astronomers here. They say that even when Venus is at full magnitude you can barely see it in the daytime even when you're looking for it. It was only half magnitude that day, so ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... Malkin, who, like himself in after life, was a great admirer of Crabbe. Among his schoolfellows were James Spedding and his elder brother, W. B. Donne, J. M. Kemble, and William Airy the brother of Sir George Airy, formerly Astronomer-Royal. I have often heard him say that the best piece of declamation he had ever listened to was Kemble's recitation of Hotspur's speech, beginning 'My liege, I did deny no prisoners,' on a prize day at Bury. When he left for ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... charmed apartment, the most complicated social 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 all their destinies ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... death the plain sights long before discarded by most other astronomers. The advantages of these telescope sights have been discussed under the article treating of Robert Hooke, but no such advantages were ever recognized by Hevelius. So great was Hevelius's reputation as an astronomer that his refusal to recognize the advantage of the telescope sights caused many astronomers to hesitate before accepting them as superior to the plain; and even the famous Halley, of whom we shall speak further in a moment, was sufficiently in doubt over ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... Venus, avers the astronomer, Not thus idly dancing goes Flushing the eternal orchard with wild rose. She through ether burns Outpacing planetary earth, And ere two years triumphantly returns, And again wave-like swelling flows, And again her flashing ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... natural capacity of multiplication, such a question might conceivably disturb the equanimity of mankind. But it need not now. It is only one of many disasters that must sooner or later overtake mankind. The sun, so the astronomer tells us, is cooling down; the night is coming; an all-pervading cold will some day chill into rigid death the last vestige of organic life. Our poor planet will be but a silent ghost whirling on its dark path in the starlight. This ultimate ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... but with his hands folded, and in silence. "I know not why it is," said he, "but that story of yours, my friend, brings to my mind a story of a man whom I once knew—a great magician in his time, and a necromancer and a chemist and an alchemist and mathematician and a rhetorician, an astronomer, an astrologer, and a philosopher ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... and astronomer from the Cambridge and also from a government observatory, who had donned the cassock, gave me much valuable information in regard to the mountain peaks of Lake George,* which he had carefully studied and accurately measured. ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... 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 be happy to correspond with interested ...
— Astronomical Instruments and Accessories • Wm. Gaertner & Co.
... Kircher (p. 69) were not yet known, and they had nothing whatever to guide their researches beyond the mathematical computations of Ptolemy and the other Greek writers. At length, one evening, Vincenzo Galilei, father of the astronomer Galileo, presented himself with a monody. Taking a scene from Dante's "Purgatorio" (the episode of Ugolini), he sang or chanted it to music of his own production, with the accompaniment of the viola played by himself. The assembly was in raptures. "Surely," they said, "this must have ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... visited the observatory of the famous astronomer, Dey Singh. If that at Benares has been seen, this may well be passed by. Both were built by the same architect, and in the same style; but that at Benares is well preserved, while the one here is already much dilapidated. Some travellers consider this memorial as one of the most ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... paper by Edmund Halley, the astronomer, in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for 1715, contains a suggestion for finding the age of the world by the following procedure. He proposes to make observations on the saltness of the seas and ocean at intervals of one or more centuries, ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... eternal dews — The violet with her low-drooped eye, For learned modesty, — The student snow-drop, that doth hang and pore Upon the earth, like Science, evermore, And underneath the clod doth grope and grope, — The astronomer heliotrope, That watches heaven with a constant eye, — The daring crocus, unafraid to try (When Nature calls) the February snows, — And patience' perfect rose. Thus sped with helps of love and toil and thought, Thus ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... 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 to occupy among the Prodigious Number ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... our solar center, has always attracted attention. At perihelion, when in opposition with the earth, it is 35 millions of miles from the earth, and its surface, as is well known from the drawings of Kaiser, the Leyden astronomer, and of Schiaparelli, Denning, Perrotin and Terby, has apparently revealed an alternation of land and water which, with the assumption of meteorological conditions, such as prevail on the earth, has gradually made it easy to think of its occupation by rational ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... beforehand. A ship was fitted up, instruments packed, the ocean crossed, a site selected and the telescopes mounted. Scientists made all things ready for that opportune time when the sun and Venus and earth should all be in line. That critical moment was very brief. Instinctively each astronomer knew that his eye must be at the small end of the glass when the planet went scudding by the large end. Once the period of conjunction had passed no machinery would offer itself for turning the planet back upon her axis. Not for astronomers only are the opportune times brief. ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... degrees 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 ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... out of a 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 ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... 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 on ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... This done there would be time to consider the future. The Lord Mayor and the Aldermen took counsel together how to rebuild the City. They called in Sir Christopher Wren, lately become an architect after being astronomer at Cambridge, and Evelyn: they invited plans for laying out the City in a more uniform manner with wider streets and houses more protected from fire. Both Wren and Evelyn sent in plans. But while these were under consideration ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... always the pioneer. From the astrologer came the astronomer, from the alchemist the chemist, from the mesmerist the experimental psychologist. The quack of yesterday is the professor of tomorrow. Even such subtle and elusive things as dreams will in time be reduced to system and order. When that time comes the researches of our friends on the bookshelf ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of course possible exactly to classify ideas, because there is a great overlapping of them and a wide interchange. The thought of the slow progress of man from something rude and beastlike, the statement of the astronomer about the swarms of worlds swimming in space, may awaken the sense of poetry which is in its essence the sense of wonder. I shall not attempt in these few pages to limit and define the sense of poetry. ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... publication, in 1772, of the Treatise on Determinate Section; to which was appended an amended restoration of the same work by Mr. William Wales, the well-known geometer, who attended Captain Cook as astronomer, in one of his earlier voyages. In 1773 appeared the Synopsis of Data for the Construction of Triangles, which was followed in 1774 by his valuable Dissertations on the Geometrical Analysis of the Ancients; ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... irrespectively of our minds, and equally so of any question as to its author or origin. Such a book confessedly exists, and is ever open to us in the natural world. Or, to put the case under a slightly different form:—When the astronomer, the physicist, the geologist, or the naturalist notes down a series of observed facts or measured dates, he is not an author expressing his own ideas,—he is a mere amanuensis taking down ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... and action than the Constituent Assembly. The efforts of the Constituent Assembly to build up were tardy and ineffectual. The activity of the municipality of Paris in pulling down was after a time ceaseless, and it was thoroughly successful. The first mayor was the astronomer Bailly, Condorcet's defeated competitor at the Academy. With the fall of the Bastille, summary hangings at the nearest lantern-post, October insurrection of women, and triumphant and bloody compulsion of king, queen, and Assembly to Paris from Versailles, the two rivals, now colleagues, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... who had served in that country; so that many of them would spend their time sitting in the gymnasia and public seats, drawing sketches of the shape of the island of Sicily, and of the position of Libya and Carthage. It is said that Sokrates the philosopher, and Meton the astronomer, did not expect that the state would gain any advantage from this expedition; the former probably receiving a presentiment of disaster, as was his wont, from his familiar spirit. Meton either made calculations ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... scenes of his peril and his pain. His expedition, though conducted with spirit and determination, was not of great scientific value, as he was greatly handicapped in his observations by the death of his astronomer, who slipped through thin ice into the sea, and froze to ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... There are comic phrases in which this theme is audible, like a distant echo, coupled with an ingenuousness, whether sincere or affected, which acts as accompaniment. Take, as an instance, the remark made by a lady whom Cassini, the astronomer, had invited to see an eclipse of the moon. Arriving too late, she said, "M. de Cassini, I know, will have the goodness to begin it all over again, to please me." Or, take again the exclamation of one of Gondiinet's characters on arriving ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... humor, in which the crystalline lens lies, a fine, transparent humor, about as thick as the white of an egg, giving way behind it, and also slightly altering its form and power of refraction to suit the case. Thus, that which the astronomer, or the microscopist, performs by a tedious process, and then very imperfectly, we perform perfectly, easily, instantly, and almost involuntarily, with that perfect compound microscope and telescope ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... branches of knowledge with which we are most familiar will always appear the most important. The endeavor, therefore, to judge of the relative beauty or interest of the sciences is utterly hopeless. Let the astronomer boast of the magnificence of his speculations, the mathematician of the immutability of his facts, the chemist of the infinity of his combinations, and we will admit that they all have equal ground for their ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... APOLLO'S duties as 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 is substantiated by the ancient legend that he ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 13, June 25, 1870 • Various
... am, Egyptian; never did I see its like! Thou art Court astronomer from this day forward, with right of access to the Queen's presence. Hast thou more of such magic ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... its professors in every village to construct horoscopes, and cast the nativities of the peasantry. Dutugaimunu, in the second century before Christ, after his victory over Elala, commended himself to his new subjects by his fatherly care in providing "a doctor, an astronomer, and a priest, for each group of sixteen villages throughout the kingdom;"[2] and he availed himself of the services of the astrologer to name the proper day of the moon on which to lay the foundation of his ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... moves the soul of the dullest man; but I remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea from which all heights and depths are measured. When the storm has passed and the hour of calm settles on the ocean, when the sunlight bathes its peaceful surface, then the astronomer and surveyor take the level from which they measure all ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... to raise its head against the ancient Church. The Polish astronomer Copernicus had long since conceived his idea that the earth was not the centre of the universe. He even pointed out the proofs of his theory to a few brother-scientists; but the Church taught otherwise, so Copernicus kept silent till, on his death-bed, he let his doctrines ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... went to Slough, where he was introduced to Herschel. In this case there was something like real community of tastes, for the astronomer was musical, having once played the oboe, and later on acted as organist, first at Halifax Parish Church, and then at the Octagon Chapel Bath. The big telescope with which he discovered the planet Uranus in 1781 was an object of great interest to Haydn, who ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... undertaken only for a matter of convenience and nomenclature—such, for instance, as the classification of stars in constellations. On the contrary, the classification of a naturalist differs from that of an astronomer, in that the objects which he has to classify present structural resemblances and structural differences in numberless degrees; and it is the object of his classification to present a tabular statement of these facts. Now, ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... not remained long at Yakutsk, when Captain Billings returned from the Kolyma. This officer had attended the astronomer Bayley, as his assistant, on the last voyage of Cook, and was, of course, well known to Ledyard. Being on his journey to Irkutsk, he invited Ledyard to accompany him thither. They travelled in sledges up the Lena, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... and number, may challenge any in Great Britain. The Staffs are originally of Staffordshire, which took its name from them; the first that I find of the Staffs was one Jacobstaff, a famous and renowned astronomer, who, by Dorothy his wife, had issue seven sons—viz., Bickerstaff, Longstaff, Wagstaff, Quarterstaff, Whitestaff, Falstaff, and Tipstaff. He also had a younger brother, who was twice married, and had five sons—viz., Distaff, Pikestaff, Mopstaff, Broomstaff, ...
— Isaac Bickerstaff • Richard Steele
... flew with inconsiderate haste, That now their afternoon began to waste; And, what was ominous, that very morn The sun was enter'd into Capricorn; Which, by their bad astronomer's account, That week the Virgin balance should remount. 600 An infant moon eclipsed him in his way, And hid the small remainders of his day. The crowd, amazed, pursued no certain mark; But birds met birds, and jostled ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... doctrine of evolution cannot be well founded, because it requires the lapse of a very vast period of time; the duration of life upon the earth, thus implied, is inconsistent with the conclusions arrived at by the astronomer and the physicist. I may venture to say that I am familiar with those conclusions, inasmuch as some years ago, when President of the Geological Society of London, I took the liberty of criticising them, and of showing in what ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... attempt to make a Guy Fawkes of him; and, striking out savagely, he felled me with a weighty blow from his great fist, sending me rolling along under the table, and causing me to see many more stars than an active astronomer could count in the same space of time—but I'm sure he had sufficient justification to ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of the Universe to the East. They became the teachers of the East in astronomy as in medicine and other sciences, and the credit of having discovered the law of the precession of the equinoxes belongs to Hipparchus, the Greek astronomer, who announced this important theory about the year 130 B.C."[346] Undoubtedly the Greeks contributed to the advancement of the science of astronomy, with which, as other authorities believe, they became acquainted after it had become well developed ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... in fact, are not to the point. It has been known, as far back as our records go, that man running wild in the woods is different to man kennelled in a city slum; that a dog seems to understand a shepherd better than a hewer of wood and drawer of water can understand an astronomer; and that breeding, gentle nurture and luxurious food and shelter will produce a kind of man with whom the common laborer is socially incompatible. The same thing is true of horses and dogs. Now there is clearly room for great changes in the world by increasing the percentage of individuals ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... fiery numbers] Numbers are, in this passage, nothing more than poetical measures. Could you, says Biron, by solitary contemplation, have attained such poetical fire, such spritely numbers, as have been prompted by the eyes of beauty? The astronomer, by looking too much ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... terms of peace with France. During his absence he observed an eclipse of the sun, which was so well done that his results were published in the "Philosophical Transactions," adding greatly to his reputation as an astronomer. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... Skylark of Space" Mrs. Garby and I decided, after some discussion, to allow two mathematical impossibilities to stand. One of these immediately became the target of critics from Maine to California and, while no astronomer has as yet called attention to the other, I would not be surprised to hear about it, even at ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... surely have been the fate of the Man had there not been present an old astronomer who had often looked at the moon through his telescope, and so had discovered that what was hot on earth was cold in the moon, and what was cold here was hot there; so he began to think the Man had told the truth. Therefore he begged ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... round of physical science, for their special subject. A typical example in the ninth century was Abuhassan Ben Korra, many of whose family during succeeding generations attracted attention as scholars. He became the astronomer and physician of the Caliph Motadhid. His translations in medical literature were mainly excerpts from Hippocrates and Galen meant for popular use. These Christian translators, thoroughly scientific as far ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... to last. The savage sees individual stars as animate beings, or combines star-groups into living celestial creatures, or limbs of them, or objects connected with them; while at the other extremity of the scale of civilisation the modern astronomer keeps up just such ancient fancies, turning them to account in useful survival, as a means of ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... and know neither age nor place; and to a degree—let the fact be stated softly and never hereafter be so much as whispered—all good men and women have at some time loved one-sidedly, the beloved being as unaware of the love as a star is of the astronomer ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... that adorned them, yielding to the stroke of affliction, with all the vehemence of the bitterest anguish. It is by pictures of life, and profound moral reflection, that expectation is engaged, and gratified throughout the work. The history of the mad astronomer, who imagines that, for five years, he possessed the regulation of the weather, and that the sun passed, from tropic to tropic, by his direction, represents, in striking colours, the sad effects of a distempered imagination. It becomes ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... astronomer, a disciple of Tycho-Brahe. The opinion here quoted appears in his Specimen Historicorum Islandiae et magna ex parte chorographicum; Amsterdam, 1643. When aged 91, he is said to have married a young girl. Born ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... the observed facts of the motion of the moon, the way he accounted for precession and nutation and for the tides; the way in which Laplace explained every detail of the planetary motions—these achievements may seem to the professional astronomer equally, if not more, striking and wonderful; but of the facts to be explained in these cases the general public is necessarily more or less ignorant, and so no beauty or thoroughness of treatment appeals to it or excites its imagination. But to predict in the solitude of the study, with no weapons ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... of the paper, entitled 'The Negro, Benjamin Banneker, Astronomer and Mathematician,' it was brought out that Banneker, who was a free Negro, friend of Washington and Jefferson, published a series of almanacs, unique in that they were his own work throughout. In the almanac for 1793 one of the articles from Banneker's pen was 'A Plan of Peace ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... inevitable surrender to materialism? When Laplace was asked by Napoleon, on presenting to him his famous essay on the nebular hypothesis of the origin of the stellar universe, "Why do I see here no mention of the Deity?" the French astronomer proudly replied: "Sire, I have no need ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... whom I saw last night made me feel like making a prophecy that he would be the first Kentucky astronomer," said Paul, with a smile. "He was hardly more than a baby, not much over two years old—a toddling curly-head. Yet there he stood by the roadside, looking up at the heavens, as solemn as you please. And he ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... mythologically the first astronomer. Your fancy has carried you on the wings of the wind at this very suggestion. These fourteen ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... "Night Thoughts," and the poems of Cowper and Bloomfield were conspicuous objects on the bookshelves of most houses in those days. Mr. Mitchell was very apt, while observing the heavens in the evening, to quote from one or the other of these poets, or from the Bible. "An undevout astronomer is mad" was one ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... had tried life, too. Once in a while one meets with a single soul greater than all the living pageant which passes before it. As the pale astronomer sits in his study with sunken eyes and thin fingers, and weighs Uranus or Neptune as in a balance, so there are meek, slight women who have weighed all which this planetary life can offer, and hold ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... guide me—until near the meridian hours. Then I should have to halt, and wait a while; for in that southern latitude, and just at that time of the year, the sun at noon is so near the zenith that a practised astronomer could not tell north ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... wild rationality seemed to light up the affair. I knew it was unusual, in my own country, for the Astronomer Royal to walk down the Strand with his coat plastered all over with the Solar System. Indeed, it was unusual for any English astronomical lecturer to advertise the subject of his lectures in this fashion. But though it ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... has only by observation to ascertain the exact time and place of the appearance of his favourite bright particular Star, and then to pay his money, take his choice between sitting and standing, and like a true astronomer, he will—glass in hand, a strong glass too,—await the great event of the evening, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... delighted to write to you this morning. We have just eaten our breakfast. Mildred is running about downstairs. I have been reading in my book about astronomers. Astronomer comes from the Latin word astra, which means stars; and astronomers are men who study the stars, and tell us about them. When we are sleeping quietly in our beds, they are watching the beautiful sky through the telescope. A telescope is like a very strong eye. The stars ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... temple of this deity in the moon; and it may therefore be presumed that it was the walls of this edifice that Professor Grinthausen, of Munich, lately mistook for an immense fortress. The error of the German astronomer would seem to corroborate the hypothesis of the Italian poet, who doubtless did not assign that local habitation to the goddess of fashion without mature reflection. Indeed, it cannot be denied that that planet possesses some mysterious influence over female fashions, analogous ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... Humphrey of Gloucester to attack him through his wife, who was believed to be influential with the young king. The first move was made by arresting a Roger Bolingbroke who had been connected with the duke and the duchess, and who was said to be an astronomer or necromancer. It was declared that he had cast the duchess's horoscope with a view to ascertaining her chances to the throne. Bolingbroke made confession, and Eleanor was then brought before "certayne bisshoppis of the kyngis." In the mean time several lords, members of the privy council, ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... heavenly bodies than what they have learned from Sir John Herschel's beautiful little volume. But, to speak seriously, is not a little truth better than a great deal of falsehood? Is not the man who, in the evenings of a fortnight, has acquired a correct notion of the solar system, a more profound astronomer than a man who has passed thirty years in reading lectures about the primum mobile, and in drawing schemes ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the modification of specific doctrines as in "the impulse and tendency and general spirit which he imparted to theological thought." Dr Munger's estimate may be accepted, with reservations, as the true one: "He was a theologian as Copernicus was an astronomer; he changed the point of view, and thus not only changed everything, but pointed the way toward unity in theological thought. He was not exact, but he put God and man and the world into a relation that thought can accept while it goes ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... 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 ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... probably be appreciated. But, when we try to determine the distance of, say, the Moon (240,000 miles away), we are helpless, especially as we have no marked background, except in the case of occultations of the Sun or Stars. But the Astronomer at once comes to our aid; a distance of several miles is carefully measured on a level plane, and, by placing telescopes at the extremities of that known line, we can mark the inclination of those telescopes to each other when focussed upon a ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... 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 ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... community), potter, watchman, barber, shoemaker, &c., &c.[4] To these may be added the little banker, or agricultural capitalist, the shopkeeper, the brazier, the confectioner, the ironmonger, the weaver, the dyer, the astronomer or astrologer, who points out to the people the lucky day for every earthly undertaking, and the prescribed times for all religious ceremonies and observances. In some villages the whole of the lands are ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... is profit, and a physical laboratory, whose end is the advancement of knowledge, is false and misleading. The expert had suggested a general research board to correlate researches; the professor cited the cases of Airy, the astronomer royal of England, who by his dominating position held back astronomical research in England for a generation, and of Sir Humphry Davy, who discouraged the work of Faraday, when ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... a cross-light be? An unamiable and inhospitable light, like that which gleams from the eyes of an astronomer when he is interrupted in the midst ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 11, June 11, 1870 • Various
... speculation which has been raised quite above the plane of guesswork by making no other assumption than that of the uniformity of nature, is the well-known Nebular Hypothesis. Every astronomer knows that the earth, like all other cosmical bodies which are flattened at the poles, was formerly a mass of fluid, and consequently filled a much larger space than at present. It is further agreed, on all hands, that the sun is a contracting body, since there is ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... tarried several days. He had a narrow escape here of falling into danger, for, had he not been forewarned by Guglielmo Gratarolo, a friend, he would have taken up his quarters in a house infected by the plague. He was received as a guest by Carlo Affaidato, a learned astronomer and physicist, who, on the day of departure, made him accept a valuable mule, worth a hundred crowns. Another generous offer of a similar kind was made to him shortly afterwards by a Genoese gentleman of the family of Ezzolino, who fell in with him ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... treated with coldness and contempt by the great, which was intolerable to a person of his spirit. He associated, therefore, with men of like fortunes, whose merits had been similarly neglected, and particularly with one Ray Falero, a great astronomer, whom the Portuguese represented as a conjuror, retiring along with him to the Spanish court, where be made propositions for new discoveries to Cardinal Ximenes, who was then prime minister of Spain. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... year. Caesar was a student of astronomy, and always found time for its contemplation. He even wrote an essay on the motion of the stars, assisted in his observation by Sosigenes, an Alexandrian astronomer. He took astronomy out of the hands of priests, and made it a matter of civil legislation. He was drawn away from legislation to draw the sword once more against the relics of the Pompeian party, which had been ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... islands known as Gold and Silver Land. It is probable that the poet did not distinguish clearly between Java and Sumatra. He goes on to say that beyond Java is the peak called Sisira. This is possibly the same as the Yavakoti mentioned in 499 A.D. by the Indian astronomer Aryabhatta. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... were, Mr Green, an astronomer; Mr Banks, a naturalist, who afterwards became Sir Joseph Banks and a celebrated man; Doctor Solander, who was also a naturalist; and two draughtsmen, one of whom was skilled in drawing objects of natural history, the other ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... remember that, do you? Whenever you hear a man talking about the stars you may conclude that he is either an astronomer or a fool. But you and a fine starry night would make ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... The astronomer tells us the immense distances and immense sizes of the stars—great facts, most interesting facts; but the imagination of literature gets hold of all the vastness and wonder and suggestion of such a universe, and by the gift of expression ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... here Mr. Janes of Aberdeenshire, a naturalist. Janes said he had been at Dr. Johnson's in London, with Ferguson the astronomer[455]. JOHNSON. 'It is strange that, in such distant places, I should meet with any one who knows me. I should have thought I might hide ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... from referring, with sentiments of admiration and gratitude, to my friend Thomas Maclear, Esq., the accomplished Astronomer Royal at the Cape. I shall never cease to remember his instructions and help with real gratitude. The intercourse I had the privilege to enjoy at the Observatory enabled me to form an idea of the almost infinite variety of acquirements necessary ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... profitable to some unworthy political purpose, appear to have enjoyed safety, and sometimes even honour, while those who, occupied with some practical, useful, and noble pursuits uncomprehended by prince or people, denied their sorcery were despatched without mercy. The mathematician and astronomer Bolingbroke (the greatest clerk of his age) is hanged and quartered as a wizard, while not only impunity but reverence seems to have awaited a certain Friar Bungey, for having raised mists and vapours, which greatly befriended Edward IV. at ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... 73.5 centimeters. Our compass indications no longer offered any guarantees. The deranged needles would mark contradictory directions as we approached the southern magnetic pole, which doesn't coincide with the South Pole proper. In fact, according to the astronomer Hansteen, this magnetic pole is located fairly close to latitude 70 degrees and longitude 130 degrees, or abiding by the observations of Louis-Isidore Duperrey, in longitude 135 degrees and latitude 70 degrees ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... parents to the Observatory, where Arago then was, who, at the earnest instance of Cholet, agreed to test the child's powers at once. There were present on this occasion, besides Arago, MM. Mathieu and Laugier, and an astronomer of the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... 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
... Bethlehem was standing sentry over the northward passes, but want of supplies and deficiency of ammunition prevented him advancing at once on the Basin: and of the range before him he had no accurate maps and knew less about its topography than an astronomer knows of the Mountains of the Moon. While formulating a scheme for blocking the passes, De Wet's sudden outbreak took him by surprise, and he was unable to head the Free State leader, who passed northwards between Bethlehem and Senekal, pursued by Broadwood's cavalry. ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... of salmon fly-hooks ever made was that which belonged to the late Mr. Henry Grant of Elchies, a property on which is some of the best water in all the run of Spey. His father was a distinguished Indian civil servant and of later fame as an astronomer; and his elder brother, Mr. Grant of Carron, was one of the best fishermen that ever played a big fish in the pool of Dellagyl. Henry Grant himself had been a keen fisherman in his youth, and when, after a chequered and ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... 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 ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... that nature seems to have imposed upon it. If it be certain that all human individuals taken together would never have arrived, with the visual power given them by nature, to see a satellite of Jupiter, discovered by the telescope of the astronomer, it is just as well established that never would the human understanding have produced the analysis of the infinite, or the critique of pure reason, if in particular branches, destined for this mission, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... own doctrine, and in practice, from first to last, he used literature as a medium for criticising the life and conduct of his fellow-men. In the last year of his life he produced with approbation "a favourite saying of Ptolemy the astronomer, which Bacon quotes in its Latin version thus:—Quum fini appropinquas, bonum cum augmento operare"—"As you draw near to your latter end, redouble your efforts to do good." And this redoubled effort was in his case all of a piece with what had gone before. In 1863 he ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... tower at Rozel Head unnecessary, and only a few rats and bats now resented Alaric Hobbs' sequestration of the second story. He meditated a comparative memoir upon the "Tides of Fundy Bay, and the Channel Islands," with a treatise upon "Contracted Ocean Surface Currents." Astronomer, hydrographer, geologist, and all-round savant, his lank form was already familiar to the Channel Islanders. And, like the wind, he veered around "where ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... 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 ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... he was only thirty-seven years of age, he had already risen to eminence among his countrymen, and attracted the notice of several successive sovereigns. He is said to have been a skilful physician, an accomplished painter, and an excellent astronomer, as well as an acute metaphysician. Like Montanus, he laid claim to a divine commission, and alleged that he was the Paraclete who was promised to guide into all truth. He maintained that there are two First Principles ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... what year this happened Chaucer does not inform us"—he was not astronomer enough to know that if Chaucer had meant to leave, in these lines, a record of the moon's place on the day of the journey, he could not have chosen a more certain method of informing us in what year ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 81, May 17, 1851 • Various
... to 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 ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... M. LEVERRIER, the astronomer, has published a long and able argument in support of the free and universal use of the electric telegraph. He has supplied a most instructive and interesting exposition of the employment and utility of the invention, ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... strays was what they call an astronomer. His speciality was the stars, nothing less; an' he knew 'em by name an' could tell you how far off they are an' what they weigh an' how many moons they had an'—oh, he knew 'em the same as I know the home herd, an' he didn't only know what they ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... living in Florence an old man who knew a great deal about the stars, and who made wonderful calculations about them. He was a famous astronomer, but he cared not at all for honour or fame, but lived a simple quiet life by himself and would not ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman
... sea. The Jordan flows between two mountains, and over the plain which is the place that is called Ashdoth Hapisgah, and thence continues its course till it falls into the Sea of Sodom, which is the Salt Sea. In Tiberias there are about fifty Jews, at their head being R. Abraham the astronomer, R. Muchtar, and R. Isaac. There are hot waters here, which bubble up from the ground, and are called the Hot Waters of Tiberias. Near by is the Synagogue of Caleb ben Jephunneh, and Jewish sepulchres. R. Johanan ben Zakkai and R. Jehudah Halevi[96] are buried here. All these places are situated ...
— The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela • Benjamin of Tudela
... she answered, her voice softening a little, "and by difficult steps—not by leaps and bounds. You must learn the multiplication table before you can be an astronomer. None the less, it is ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... of 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 white, ...
— Stories By English Authors: France • Various
... a depression into which you cannot look; you can peer at them all day long through a telescope and wonder why it is they are stoking their chimneys, or what it is that causes the haze to hang deeply on such and such a day over this or that corner—you can study the place as an astronomer studies the faint markings upon the surface of Mars. But to all intents and purposes that country is as much cut off from you as is the ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... 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 years. As to Mr. Whiston, he affirmed ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... 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 shore. "This petty larceny," Captain Furneaux remarks, ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... appeared to 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 ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... notably that of Besancon, the rural parishes were served by distinguished men. (Sauzay, I., 16.) "It was not surprising to encounter a man of European reputation, like Bergier, so long cure of Flangebouche; an astronomer of great merit, like M. Mongin, cure of la Grand Combe des Bois, whose works occupy an honorable place in Lalande's bibliography, all passing their lives in the midst of peasants. At Rochejean, a priest of great intelligence ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... 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 ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... water—a great ocean. The flickering gold expanse that reflected back the color of the sunlit clouds passed to one side as the ship took its station above the island, a continent in size, that had shown by its shape like a sharply formed "L" an identifying mark to the astronomer. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... territory. I 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 less than a mile a minute, took an ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... our meetings was with Miss Maria Mitchell, the astronomer, who, like ourselves, was stopping a few days in Paris on her way to Rome. She desired the protection of our company on the journey, though, as my father remarked, she looked well able to take care of ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... accomplished—certain noteworthy truths to the human race. The founder of the pyramid religion is 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 support ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... up to the skies and, bursting, lit up the night with a shower of stars; an astronomer, observing the heavens with a telescope, might have come to the conclusion that new stars had been born. And he would not have been altogether wrong, for in the year 1880 new thoughts were kindled in new hearts, and new light and new discoveries ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... of 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 ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... these observations were of so novel a character that astronomers for some time hesitated to receive them as facts.[6] Yet so eminent an astronomer as Sir John Herschel does not hesitate now to describe them as "a most wonderful discovery." "According to Mr. Nasmyth's observations," says he, "made with a very fine telescope of his own making, the bright surface of the sun consists of separate, insulated, ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... Gottfried Leibnitz of Leipzig had perfected the system of infinitesimal calculus. Eight years before the peace of Westphalia, Newton, the great English natural philosopher, was born, and in that same year Galileo, the Italian astronomer, died. Meanwhile the Thirty Years War had destroyed the prosperity of central Europe and there was a sudden but very general interest in "alchemy," the strange pseudo-science of the middle-ages by ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... Light is the astronomer's necessity. When the sublime word was uttered, "Let there be light!" the study of astronomy was made possible. Man can gather but little of it with his eye; so he takes a lens twenty-six inches in diameter, and bends all the light that passes ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... 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 the sight within, and very ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... scientific spirit, and Professor Marc Thury and the Count de Gasparin completely demonstrated the fact of telekinesis; and at about the same time that the Dialectical Society was getting into action, Flammarion, the astronomer, took up his study of the subject. But it was not until 1891 that anything like Crookes's searching analysis was made of a medium. This important sitting—a sitting which marks an epoch in science—took place in Milan, and was attended, among others, by Lombroso and Richet. For the ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... begin with the following month, or October. The author of the first book of Maccabees makes the era commence with the month Nisan, or April; and the author of the second book with the first Tishrin, or October. Albategni, a celebrated Arabian astronomer, dates from the 1st of October. Some of the Arabian writers, as Alfergani, date from the 1st of September. At Tyre the year was counted from the 19th of our October, at Gaza from the 28th of the same month, and at Damascus from the vernal equinox. These discrepancies render it ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... form of the common information of ordinary minds. The specific attribute by which it is distinguished from the latter is quantitative prevision. Mere prevision is not peculiar to science. When the school-boy throws a stone into the air, he can predict its fall as certainly as the astronomer can predict the recurrence of an eclipse; but his prevision, though certain, is rude and indefinite: though he can foretell the kind of effect which will follow the given mechanical impulse, yet ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... him to bring them to a close. In June, 1682, when he was attending a meeting of the Royal Society of London, the measurement of a degree of the meridian, executed by M. Picard in 1679, became the subject of conversation. Newton took a memorandum of the result obtained by the French astronomer, and having deduced from it the diameter of the earth, he immediately resumed his calculation of 1665, and began to repeat it with these new data. In the progress of the calculation he saw that the result which he had formerly expected ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson |
