"Astronomy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... reached a point of intellectual and moral culture in many respects surpassing that of the most renowned nations of the other world. We are surprised to find the high degree of refinement which they had reached. The sciences, especially of mathematics and astronomy, were understood to a degree of nicety scarcely attained by the Romans in their palmiest days. Their political organization was of a wonderfully perfect character; and their laws, and especially the organization of the judiciary, the department by which ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... played a prominent part in society during the Regency, but who had no salon in the proper sense of that word, was Mme. du Chatelet, commonly called Voltaire's Emilie. She was especially interested in sciences, mathematics, geometry, and astronomy, and did more than any other woman of that time to encourage nature study. It was at her Chateau de Cirey that Voltaire found protection when threatened with a second visit to the Bastille; and there, from time to time for sixteen years, he did some of ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... The student of astronomy is often deterred from telescopic observation by the thought that in a field wherein so many have laboured, with abilities and means perhaps far surpassing those he may possess, he is little likely to reap results ...
— Half-hours with the Telescope - Being a Popular Guide to the Use of the Telescope as a - Means of Amusement and Instruction. • Richard A. Proctor
... Literature at Columbia, though without salary, managed to sell the college a large number of Italian books, and was engaged to make a catalogue of the college library. Another friend was Henry James Anderson, who became Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy in the college in 1825, the year in which Garcia came to New York with his operatic enterprise. Professor Anderson married his daughter and became the father of Edward Henry and Elbert Ellery Anderson. Other friends were Giulian C. Verplanck, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... I wish you could know Astronomy by instinct; for I begin to see I've a job before me, if only to keep you to ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... in a difficulty," said the stranger. "I confess I have no great notion of the use of books, except to amuse a railway journey; although, I believe, there are some very exact treatises on astronomy, the use of the globes, agriculture, and the art of making paper flowers. Upon the less apparent provinces of life I fear you will find nothing truthful. Yet stay," he added, "have ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reasonable origin of things. [Transcriber's Note: three dots in a vertical line above a tiny circle] These objects to an eye at [Transcriber's Note: low tiny circle] might all melt into one another, as stars are confluent which modern astronomy has prismatically split. Says Rennell, as a reason for a Mahometan origin of a canal through Cairo, such is the tradition of the people. But we see amongst ourselves how great works are ascribed to the devil or to the Romans by antiquarians. In ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... their Learning. Their Books and Arts. How they learn to write. How they make and write a Book. The Priests write Books of Bonna. The Kings Warrants how wrapped up. They write upon two sorts of Leaves. Their Skill in Astronomy. Their Almanacks. They pretend to know future things by the Stars. Their AEra. Their Years, Months, Weeks, Days, Hours. How they measure their Time. Their Magic. The Plenty of a Country destroyed by Magic. Their Charm to find out a Thief. The way to ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... Nero, and he by no means represents all that was known of such mathematics at the latter date. The ancients were quite sufficiently versed in the solution of triangles to have made the necessary calculations in geography and astronomy, if they had but possessed the right instruments. Perhaps only an expert should deal—even in the few sentences required for our purpose—with such matters as the calculation of the capacity and proportional relations of cylinders, or with the mechanics ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... worth In the circle of the earth; And to thine eye the vast skies fall, Dire and satirical, On clucking hens and prating fools, On thieves, on drudges and on dolls. And thou shalt say to the Most High, "Godhead! all this astronomy, And fate and practice and invention, Strong art and beautiful pretension, This radiant pomp of sun and star, Throes that were, and worlds that are, Behold! were in vain and in vain;— It cannot be,—I will look again. Surely now will the curtain rise, And earth's fit tenant me surprise;— But ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the Druids were, perhaps, better versed in the science of astronomy than the scholars of any other nation at the time. It was not in Gaul and Britain only that they pursued their course of studies for a score of years; the same fact is attested for Ireland by authorities whose testimony is beyond question. May we not suppose that a representation of mere ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... this meaning, some have chosen to call the complex of phenomena, in so far as it is intuited, mundus sensibilis, but in so far as the connection thereof is cogitated according to general laws of thought, mundus intelligibilis. Astronomy, in so far as we mean by the word the mere observation of the starry heaven, may represent the former; a system of astronomy, such as the Copernican or Newtonian, the latter. But such twisting of words is a mere sophistical subterfuge, ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... forbade them to destroy Cain on pain of their own destruction. Seth he describes as the model of the virtuous, and of him the Rabbis likewise say, "From Seth dates the stock of all generations of the virtuous." He pictures him also as a great inventor and the discoverer of astronomy, and tells how he set up pillars of brick and stone recording these inventions, so that they might not be forgotten if the world was destroyed either by fire or water: here again agreeing with the Book of Jubilees, which relates that Cainan found an inscription in which his forefathers ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... Astronomy and geography, two sciences so closely allied with and so essential to navigation, flourished now throughout Europe. Ortilius of Antwerp, and Gerard Mercator of Rupelmonde, were two of the greatest ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... must go with it: for, even on the soberest view, it demands an indefinitely long time antecedent to the introduction of organic life upon our earth. A fortiori is physical astronomy a branch of metaphysics, demanding, as it does, still larger "instalments of infinity," as the reviewer calls them, both as to time and number. Moreover, far the greater part of physical inquiries now relate to molecular actions, which, a distinguished natural philosopher informs us, "we ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... universal science, the principles of which are universally known, or admitted, and applied without distinction to the common benefit of all countries, obtain thereby a larger share of philanthropy than those who only study national arts and improvements. Natural philosophy, mathematics and astronomy, carry the mind from the country to the creation, and give it a fitness suited to the extent. It was not Newton's honor, neither could it be his pride, that he was an Englishman, but that he was a philosopher, the heavens had liberated him from the prejudices of an island, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... the Elixir of Life. The second, at the age of nineteen, was "somewhat acquainted with the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, rhetoric, logic, poetry, natural philosophy, arithmetic, geometry, cosmography, astronomy, astrology, geography, theology, physics, dialling, navigation, caligraphy, stenography, drawing, heraldry and history." He also drew horoscopes, wrote treatises on astrology and other sciences, suffered, like his father, for his religion, and ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... in time, as astronomy comes first in logical order. Stars and suns, and planets and satellites, necessarily precede in development plants and animals. You can have no cabbages without a world to grow them in. The science of the stars was therefore ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... of Astronomy at Glasgow, published a paper in the Philosophical Transactions for 1774, demonstrating that the spots in the sun's disk are real cavities, excavations through the luminous material, which covers the other parts ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... counselor, Cassiodorus (d. 575), to whose letters we owe a great part of our knowledge of the period, busied himself in his old age in preparing text-books of the liberal arts and sciences,—grammar, arithmetic, logic, geometry, rhetoric, music, and astronomy. His manuals were intended to give the uninstructed priests a sufficient preparation for the study of the Bible and of the doctrines of the Church. His absurdly inadequate and, to us, silly treatment of these ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... of intelligent interest attaches to the first three lines if one has no knowledge beyond the literal meaning of the phrases! "The hollow round of Cynthia's seat" has beauty for that person only who knows something of the Ptolemaic system of astronomy and of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... serious difficulty. The cosmical theories upon which the conception was founded were essentially the same among Jews and Gentiles, and indeed were but little modified until the establishment of the Copernican astronomy. The doctrine of the Messiah's second coming was also received without opposition, and for about a century men lived in continual anticipation of that event, until hope long deferred produced its ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... the learned leisure of the cloister. The little town of Palos, with its seafaring population and maritime interests, was near the monastery, and the principal men of the place were glad to pass the long winter evenings in the society of Juan Perez, discussing questions of cosmography and astronomy. Among these visitors were Martin Alonzo Pinzon, the chief shipowner of Palos, and Garcia Hernandez, the village doctor; and one can fancy how the schemes of Columbus must have appeared to the little conclave as a ray of sunlight ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... reaching a very considerable result. I had got these facts pretty clearly worked out, and carried them around with me some years, before a, fresh conclusion came over me one day with a feeling of surprise. In the old days before the Copernican astronomy was promulgated, man regarded himself as the centre of the universe. He used to entertain theological systems which conformed to his limited knowledge of nature. The universe seemed to be made for his uses, the earth seemed to have been fitted up for his dwelling place, he occupied ...
— The Meaning of Infancy • John Fiske
... human. It accepts the Cosmos and it obeys the Purpose; therefore there is a Cosmos, and there is a purpose in the world. Stoicism, like much of ancient thought at this period, was permeated by the new discoveries of astronomy and their formation into a coherent scientific system, which remained unshaken till the days of Copernicus. The stars, which had always moved men's wonder and even worship, were now seen and proved to be no wandering ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... one great star-jewel had fallen on the apex of cruel Khufu's Pyramid. I should have liked to believe it was Sirius, the "lucky" star sacred to Isis and Hathor; but Monny's schoolgirl knowledge of astronomy bereft me of that innocent pleasure. No wonder that the ancient Egyptians, with such jewels in their blue treasure-house, were famous astrologers and astronomers before the days when Rameses' daughter found Moses in the bulrushes ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... shape of the corpuscles into which the blood can be evaporated?' Nor does the reviewer fail to flavour this outpouring of incapacity with a little stimulation of the odium theologicum. Some inkling of the history of the conflicts between astronomy, geology, and theology leads him to keep a retreat open by the proviso that he cannot 'consent to test the truth of Natural Science by the Word of Revelation,' but for all that he devotes pages to the exposition of his conviction that Mr. Darwin's theory 'contradicts the revealed ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... Amongst other things he wore at his girdle an astrolabe not bigger than the hollow of a man's hand, often two to three inches in diameter and looking at a distance like a medal." These men practiced both natural astrology astronomy, as well as judicial astrology which foretells events and of which Kepler said that "she, albeit a fool, was the daughter of a wise mother, to whose support and life the silly maid was indispensable." Isidore of Seville (A. D. 600-636) was the first to distinguish between the two branches, and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... a Nation was a mechanical conception of government, and the mechanical conception of government which underlay it was the Newtonian theory of the universe. If you pick up the Federalist, some parts of it read like a treatise on astronomy instead of a treatise on government. They speak of the centrifugal and the centripetal forces, and locate the President somewhere in a rotating system. The whole thing is a calculation of power and an adjustment of parts. There was a time when nobody ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... much esteemed by men of thought, but sought out as very successful teachers of rhetoric. They were full of logical tricks, and contrived to throw ridicule upon profound inquiries. They taught also mathematics, astronomy, philology, and natural history with success. They were polished men of society, not profound nor religious, but very brilliant as talkers, and very ready in wit and sophistry. And some of them were men of great learning and talent, like Democritus, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... as the prize of a circus side-show. The huge, weighty head with its ugly brooding mask of a face, the child's body below—this was for the brain of Professor Erich Geinst, the solitary German who had stood preeminent on Earth in astronomy. ...
— The Passing of Ku Sui • Anthony Gilmore
... was to turn up in these parts, just you put the chain down—it's all square and sound now—and tell him he'll find me at The Sun." He closed the door and put the chain he had been revising on its mettle; adding as he did so, in defiance of Astronomy:—"'Tain't any so far off, The Sun." Dolly's amusement at the function of the chain, and its efficacy, was so great as to cause her aunt to rule, as a point of Law, that six times was plenty for any little girl, and that she must leave her ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... bore him several children, and who shared all his interests with the fullest sympathy; and henceforth his greatest joys and his deepest sorrows were always associated with his family life. At home his first hobby was astronomy. At the age of twenty-eight he was ardently devoted to it and would spend all his leisure on it for weeks together, till graver duties absorbed his time. But he was no recluse, and all through his life he found pleasure in the society of his friends and in paying them ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... study to-night,—don't feel up to it. Besides, I want to visit Mr Blurt. The book he lent me on Astronomy ought to be returned, and I want to borrow another.—Come, you'll go ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... what thing may symbolise for us A love like ours; what gift, whate'er it be, Hold more significance 'twixt thee and me Than paltry words a truth miraculous, Or the poor signs that in astronomy Tell giant splendours in their gleaming might? Yet love would still give such, as in delight To mock ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... of the University of Paris," says Brande, "the seven liberal arts (grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music) seem to have been the subjects of academic instruction. These constituted what was afterwards designated the Faculty of Arts. Three other faculties—those of divinity, law, and medicine—were subsequently added. In all these four, lectures were given, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... born in 1473 at Thorn in West Prussia, of a Polish father and a German mother. He attended the university of Cracow and Bologna, lectured on astronomy and mathematics at Rome, and later studied medicine at Padua and canon law at Ferrara. He was appointed canon of the cathedral of Frauenburg, and in this town he died in 1543, having devoted the latter part of his life largely ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... still at school, his father proposed to him during the holidays that he should construct a sun-dial, to be placed over their cottage-door at West Moor. "I expostulated with him at first," said Robert, "that I had not learnt sufficient astronomy and mathematics to enable me to make the necessary calculations. But he would have no denial. 'The thing is to be done,' said he; 'so just set about it at once.' Well; we got a 'Ferguson's Astronomy,' and studied the subject together. Many a sore head ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... the rudiments of Transcendentalism from the Orphic Alcott. It was now a fairly good school as things went in those days, with the same lectures in Natural Philosophy and Chemistry—the same mild doses of French and Latin. The chief assistant was E. Otis Kimball, subsequently a professor of astronomy, a very gentlemanly and capable instructor, of a much higher type than any assistant-teacher whom I had ever before met. Under him I read Voltaire's "Charles the Twelfth." George H. Boker, who was one year older than I, and the son of my father's old partner, went to this school. I ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... reconcile the interpretation of it with our Lord's words concerning the Sabbath, 'My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.' There is no more reason for setting aside Geology, because it does not agree in detail with Genesis, than there is for setting aside Astronomy because all through the Old Testament the sun is spoken of ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... my experience in nautical astronomy from the deck of the Spray—so much so that I feel justified in briefly telling it here. The first set of sights, just spoken of, put her many hundred miles west of my reckoning by account. I knew that this could not be correct. In about an hour's time I took another set of observations ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... Astronomy finds in those eyes Better light than she studies above; And Music would borrow your sighs As the melody fittest ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... last grew tired of him, and sent him back to the village. Here he remained till the middle of March, baptizing infants and trying to convert adults. He told them of the sun, moon, planets, and stars. They listened with interest; but when from astronomy he passed to theology, he spent his breath in vain. In March, the old man with whom he lived set forth for his spring fishing, taking with him his squaw, and several children. Jogues also was of the party. ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... foremost philosopher of the eighteenth century, born at Koenigsberg in 1724, died 1804. His greatest work, the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritick der reinen Vernunft, 1781), produced about the same revolutionary effect on metaphysics as that produced by Copernicus in astronomy, or by Darwin in natural science.... Major ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... an account of Fan's proficiency in astronomy, ethics, (not the Nicomachean), and eloquence, see Moore's Epistles, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... both of us go down to Bristol. I'm sure you'll like Applegarth. By the bye, you never went in for astronomy, did you? I felt ashamed of my ignorance. Why, it's one of the most interesting subjects a man can study. I shall take it up. One might have a little observatory of one's own. Do you know Bristol at all? A beastly place, the town, but perfectly delightful country quite near ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... Chaldaeans, who perceived that its principles lay at the root of Astronomy, Music, Mechanics, Architecture, Medicine, Logic, and every science which deals with generals. This science was eagerly welcomed by the Egyptians, who perceived the advantage it would be to them in recovering ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... presidence over some particular department of literature, art, or science. Calliope was the muse of epic poetry, Clio of history, Euterpe of lyric poetry, Melpomene of tragedy, Terpsichore of choral dance and song, Erato of love poetry, Polyhymnia of sacred poetry, Urania of astronomy, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... ASTRONOMY.—The contemplation of celestial things will make a man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he descends ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... and identification of asteroid claims among the miners of Mars. Each asteroid registered as a claim showed up as a red pinpoint; unclaimed asteroids were white. But even with the advances of modern astronomy only a small percentage of the existing asteroids were on the map, for the vast majority had never ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... presiding over poetry, etc—Calliope, epic poetry, Clio, history, Erato, love poetry, Euterpe, lyric poetry; Melpomene, tragedy, Polyhymnia, oratory and sacred song Terpsichore, choral song and dance, Thalia, comedy and idyls, Urania, astronomy ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... have given the greatest impulse to the sublime science of astronomy, we find Copernicus, the son of a Polish baker; Kepler, the son of a German public-house keeper, and himself the "garcon de cabaret;" d'Alembert, a foundling picked up one winter's night on the steps of the church of St. Jean le Rond at Paris, and ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... dead but a few days when the great eclipse of the sun took place, on the sixteenth of June, which excited in the Indians a great degree of astonishment; for as they were ignorant of astronomy, they were totally unqualified to account for so extraordinary a phenomenon. The crisis was alarming, and something effectual must he done, without delay, to remove, if possible, the cause of such coldness and darkness, which it was expected would increase. They accordingly ran together ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... bed and wandered about. I sat at the window and stared at the immensity of space. Between the stars was the void, the unfathomable darkness! I tried to recall the fragmentary knowledge of astronomy I had gained in my irregular reading, but it was all too vague to furnish any idea of the things we might expect. At last I got back to bed and snatched some moments of sleep—moments of nightmare rather—in which I fell and fell and fell ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... gained here by serious criticism of a view of this kind from a positive point. How little, the reader will understand from De Maistre's own explanations of his principles of Proof and Evidence. 'They have called to witness against Moses,' he says, 'history, chronology, astronomy, geology, etc. The objections have disappeared before true science; but those were profoundly wise who despised them before any inquiry, or who only examined them in order to discover a refutation, but without ever doubting that there was one. Even a mathematical objection ought to be ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley
... imagine that I am to defend by every means in my power your departed friend; and that you are to defend nothing and nobody. At any rate, my good man, do not sheer off until we know whether you are a true measure of diagrams, or whether all men are equally measures and sufficient for themselves in astronomy and geometry, and the other branches of knowledge in which you ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... and corruptions inhering in an individual apart from external authoritative guidance. In fact, as distinct from principle, intellectual individualism is tolerated in certain technical regions—in subjects like mathematics and physics and astronomy, and in the technical inventions resulting therefrom. But the applicability of a similar method to morals, social, legal, and political matters, is denied. In such matters, dogma is still to be supreme; certain eternal truths made known by revelation, intuition, ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... in many respects; but it has its advantages. William has already taught me much about the habits of animals and the qualities of plants. Did you ever see an eye so sure as his to measure distances, or to send an arrow to the mark? He never studied astronomy, but he knows how to make use of the stars better than we do. Last week, when we got benighted in the woods, he at once took his natural place as our leader; and how quickly his sagacity brought us out of our trouble! He will learn enough of our ways, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... and a smaller number of younger students, who lived together just as undergraduates do, in separate apartments, but with common hall, library, and garden. One of Turgot's masters, Sigorgne, was the first to teach in the university the Newtonian principles of astronomy, instead of the Cartesian hypothesis of vortices. As is well known, Cartesianism had for various reasons taken a far deeper root in France than it ever did here, and held its place a good generation after Newtonian ideas were accepted and taught at Oxford and Cambridge.[8] ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... ear. Many a nebulous mass of hieroglyphically inscribed meanings did he—this Champollion, defying all human enigmas, this Herschel, or Lord Rosse, forever peering into the obscure chasms and yawning abysses of human astronomy—resolve into orderly constellations, that, once and for all, through his telescopic interpretation and enlargement, were rendered distinct and commensurable amongst men. The conditions of his power in this respect are psychologically inseparable from the remarkable conditions of his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Montpellier, then a celebrated school of medicine, where he seems to have studied some little time. From there he proceeded to Padua, one of the most famous of the Italian universities, and noted for the views some of its members held on the subjects of astronomy and necromancy. During his residence here, Browne doubtless acquired some of his peculiar ideas on the science of the heavens and the black art, and, what was more im- portant, he learnt to regard the Romanists with that abundant charity we find throughout ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... had complimented him on the clearness of his explanation—'God knows,' he wrote to his son, 'I had not even attempted to explain the Bill to them; I might as soon have talked Celtic or Sclavonic to them as astronomy. They would have understood it full as well.' So much for ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... brow reproving: Lies are, my dear, the soul of loving! If half we tell the girls were true, If half we swear to think and do, Were aught but lying's bright illusion, The world would be in strange confusion! If ladies' eyes were, every one, As lovers swear, a radiant sun, Astronomy should leave the skies, To learn her lore in ladies' eyes! Oh no!—believe me, lovely girl, When nature turns your teeth to pearl, Your neck to snow, your eyes to fire, Your yellow locks to golden wire, Then, only then, can ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... inevitable theory. It was first suggested by the wearing out and dissolution of all material objects, and by the specks of dust floating in a sunbeam; and it is confirmed, on an enlarged scale, by the stellar universe as conceived by modern astronomy. When today we talk of nuclei and electrons, if we imagine them at all, we imagine them as atoms. But it is all a picture, prophesying what we might see through a sufficiently powerful microscope; the important philosophical ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... in any of the received sciences, or branches of literature, has rich capabilities of affording happiness. To penetrate the depths of mathematics, chemistry, or astronomy—to revel in the stores of ancient lore;—all such pursuits generally become more delightfully attractive, the further one advances; or, after the ancient indefinite use of terms, knowledge might ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... different world, and we were all ignorant together. The Lord let us in on the ground floor, gave us corner lots, and then started in to improve the adjacent property. We didn't have to know fractions to figure out our profits. Now a merchant needs astronomy to see them, and when he locates them they are out somewhere near the fifth decimal place. There are sixteen ounces to the pound still, but two of them are wrapping paper in a good many stores. And there're just as many chances for a fellow as ever, but they're a little gun shy, and ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... suggested to you some serviceable arguments. The practical application of my teaching interests you mostly. But from the moment I have undertaken to interview you I have also given some attention to the practical aspect of the question. What do you think of having a go at astronomy?" ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... much, but was at times diverted from his painting by his love of science, sometimes making studies in astronomy and again in natural history and botany; he also went much into society, and lived extravagantly. He had the power to remember faces that he had seen accidentally, and could make fine portraits from memory; he was also accustomed to invite to his house people from the lower ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture - Painting • Clara Erskine Clement
... branch of learning can be secured only by devoting to it special study and attention. When the faculty of a university is to be chosen, how are its members selected? For instance, how is the chair of astronomy filled? Do they choose the man who is celebrated for his general scholastic attainments, or do they not rather confer it upon one who is known to have devoted special attention and study to the science of astronomy, and is, therefore, especially ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... whereof they treat. If, therefore, my bookseller approaches me, with a nice new book under his arm, and observes coaxingly that he knows I am interested in history, I always ask him to be good enough to show me the latest work on psychology. If he reminds me of my fondness for astronomy, I ask him for a handbook of botany. If he refers to my predilection for agriculture, I inquire if there is anything new in the way of poetry; and if he politely refers to my weakness for the West Indies, I ask him to bring me something dealing with Lapland. ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... instruction of children. For these reasons, I think it could not justly be considered as either a misemployment or profanation of the Sabbath-day. For the elder children, moreover, it would be advisable to have occasional class lectures, simplified for the purpose, on astronomy, natural history, &c.; and although it might be unadvisable to occupy the hours of the Sabbath-day with the delivery of them, they might be given, on some week-day evening, and should be made the medium of reward to good behaviour; such children ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... it out in the evening. Henry followed a rabbit under the Public Library at Albany, found a hole in the floor that admitted him to the shelves, and, unknown to any one, read all the fiction the library contained, then turned to physics, astronomy, and chemistry, and developed a passion for the sciences. He was stage-struck, and became a good amateur actor. H. H. Boyesen was thrilled by nature and by the thought that he was a Norseman. He had several hundred pigeons, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... through the speculations of the Greek philosophers, the mysteries of the Egyptian sun-god, and the observations of the ancient Chaldeans, the rich and varied traditions of astronomy stretch far away into a shadowy past. All peoples, in the first stirrings of their intellectual youth, drawn by the nightly splendor of the skies and the ceaseless motions of the planets, have set up some system of the heavens, in which ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... upon them as queenly as though they understood all the laws by which she is governed. As they contemplate, with wonder and admiration, the shining stars with which the brow of night is studded, though they understood not all the principles that astronomy unfolds, concerning those heavenly bodies, yet, no scornful light flashes from those brilliant orbs, as they look down from their high estate; and although they do sometimes emit a merry twinkle, yet, there is nothing of ridicule in the expression: but it seems rather to woo the beholder, ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... two unimportant contributions to certain minor periodicals.[1] But he was educating himself, saturating himself with all that is best in the poetry of Ancient Greece and Rome, of modern Italy, of Germany and of his own country, studying theology, metaphysics, natural history, geology, astronomy and travels, observing nature with the eye of a poet, a painter and a naturalist. Nor was he a recluse. He threw himself heartily into the life of his time, following with the keenest interest all the great political and social movements, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... by Lines & Numbers; from thence, Astronomy, Cosmgraphy, and Navigation proved and delineated by the Doctrine of Plane and ...
— The Compleat Cook • Anonymous, given as "W. M."
... tell mankind some of the truths that have since been discovered regarding the nature of the bodies that fill these heavens, and the laws that govern their motions. Mankind could not, either from the Koran, or from the traditions, perceive that he was at all aware of the errors of the System of astronomy that prevailed in his ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... horse in the direction of a child, the sight, or worse still, the touch of a dead snake, heralded domestic woe. A wagon driving past the house with a load of baskets was a warning of atmospheric disturbance. A vague and ignorant astronomy governed their plantings and sowings, the breeding of their cattle, and all farm-work. They must fell trees for fence-rails before noon, and in the waxing of the moon. Fences built when there was no moon would ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... Saint Aaron; therein was many a good man; canons there were, who known were wide; there was many a good clerk, who well could (were well skilled) in learning. Much they used the craft to look in the sky; to look in the stars, nigh and far;—the craft is named Astronomy. Well often they said of many things to the king; they made known to him what should happen to him in the land. Such was the burgh of Kaerleon; there was much wealth; there was much bliss with the ...
— Brut • Layamon
... Uranus, and who first conceived the generally-accepted theory as to the cause of sun-spots, was brought up by his father to be a musician. In spite of his predilection for astronomy, he continued to earn his bread by playing the oboe, until he was promoted from being a performer in the Pump Room at Bath to the position of ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... from enlisting in the crew of the privateer Terrible, Captain Death, only to sail somewhat later in the King of Prussia, Captain Mendez. One cruise under a licensed pirate was enough for him, and he soon settled in London, making stays for a living and spending his leisure in the study of astronomy. He qualified as an exciseman, acquiring in this employment a grasp of finance and an interest in budgets of which he afterwards made good use in his writings. Cashiered for negligence, he turned schoolmaster, and even aspired to ordination ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... and the bequest of $60,000, by Mr. Seybert, to the old fogies of the Pennsylvania University was among the stupidest of these follies. If a friend of Galileo had made such a bequest to the Catholic church in his time, to get an opinion of the new astronomy, it would have been as sensible a proceeding. It will however have one good result; it will erect a permanent monument to the ignorance of the universities, a record from which they cannot hereafter escape. Prof. Leidy was one of the salaried commissioners whose ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... be admitted that maritime expeditions are less fitted to advance the progress of geology and other parts of physical science, than travels into the interior of a continent. The advancement of the natural sciences has been subordinate to that of geography and nautical astronomy. During a voyage of several years, the land but seldom presents itself to the observation of the mariner, and when, after lengthened expectation, it is descried, he often finds it stripped of its most beautiful productions. Sometimes, beyond a barren coast, he perceives ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... now become the land of obliviousness, and doteth. Her ancient civility is gone, and her glory hath vanished as a phantasma. Her youthful days are over, and her face hath become wrinkled and tetric. She poreth not upon the heavens; astronomy is dead unto her, and knowledge maketh other cycles. Canopus is afar off, Memnon resoundeth not to the sun, and Nilus heareth strange voices. Her monuments are but hieroglyphically sempiternal. Osiris and Anubis, her averruncous deities, have departed, while Orus yet remains dimly shadowing the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... Roman Catholic religion, which has been shown, first by persecuting, and then by expelling the Jesuits from the empire, the Chinese government is, however, obliged to keep at least some missionaries at Pekin to compile the almanac. While astrology has led in other nations to the study of astronomy, the Chinese, though they have studied astrology for some thousand years, have made no progress in the real knowledge of the stars. Their ancient boasted observations, and the instruments which they make use of, were brought by the learned men, whom ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... folly of learning out of place; in Philaminte, the central female figure, he has depicted the elevation that belongs even to a mistaken and perverted love of what is excellent; and when she finally goes out, ridiculous, baffled, but as unyielding as ever in her devotion to grammar and astronomy, we come near, in the face of her majestic absurdity, to a feeling of respect. More remarkable still is Moliere's portrayal of the eminence of the human spirit in the case of Tartufe. Here it is vice in its meanest and ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... 1116, where he taught classes of scholars from sixty to a hundred in number. But every thing which we call science came there with the Jews, who settled under the shadow of Saint Frideswide shortly after the Conquest. Hebrew, astronomy, astrology, geometry, and mathematics, were taught by them, at their hostels of Lombard Hall, Moses Hall, and Jacob Hall; while law, theology, and the "humanities," engaged the attention of the Christian lecturers. Cardinal Pullus, Robert de Cricklade, and the ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... Sanskrit. They did not rest content with explaining their own teaching in Sanskrit works: they turned also to the secular sciences of the Brahma[n.]s. They have accomplished so much of importance, in grammar, in astronomy, as well as in some branches of letters, that they have won respect even from their enemies, and some of their works are still of importance to European science. In southern India, where they worked among ...
— On the Indian Sect of the Jainas • Johann George Buehler
... must necessarily be weakened by a study of its domain. Advantages of general views which impart an exalted and solemn character to natural science. The possibility of separating generalities from specialties. Examples drawn from astronomy, recent optical discoveries, physical geognosy, and the geography of plants. Practicability of the study of physical cosmography — p. 33-54. Misunderstood popular knowledge, confounding cosmography with a mere encyclopedic enumeration of natural sciences. ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... mentioned by Bertrand, expressed themselves, during the paroxysms, very distinctly in Latin; although they afterward admitted having an imperfect acquaintance with this language. An ignorant servant girl, described by Dr. Dewar, evinced an astonishing knowledge of astronomy and geography, and expressed herself in her own language in a manner which, though often ludicrous, showed an understanding of the subject. It was afterward discovered that her notions on these subjects had been derived from hearing ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... so well known for his acquirements in mathematics and his successful experiments in natural science that he was elected to a Fellowship at All Souls'. A few years later he was appointed to the Professorship of Astronomy at Gresham College, and his brilliant reputation made his rooms a meeting-place of the men who subsequently founded the Royal Society. A fresh preferment, that to the Chair of Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, did not hinder him from pursuing ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... The study of women, my dear Peter," said Morgan, with a wink at Conrad, which fortunately the seventh-century pirate did not see, else there would have been an open break—"the study of women is more difficult than that of astronomy; there may be two stars alike, but all women are unique. Because she was this, that, or the other thing in your day does not prove that she is any one of those things in our day—in fact, it proves the contrary. Why, I venture even to say that ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... that night. Stephen kept pace in silence with Mr. Lincoln's strides, another shock in store for him. This rail-splitter, this postmaster, this flat-boatman, whom he had not credited with a knowledge of the New Code, was talking Astronomy. And strange to say, Mr. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Turgot devoted himself to literature, science, and charity, translating Odes of Horace and Eclogues of Virgil, studying geometry with Bossut, chemistry with Lavoisier, and astronomy with Rochon, and interesting himself in every thing by which human welfare could be advanced. Such a character, with such an experience of government, and the prophet of American independence, was naturally prepared to welcome Franklin, not only as philosopher, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... Arizona department of astronomy, said he was certain that the object was not a meteor or other natural phenomenon. . . . Switchboards Swamped Switchboards at the Pima county sheriff's office and Tucson police station were jammed with inquiries. Hundreds saw the object. ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... of records, of letters, of printing, of critics; wars, revolutions, factions, and other causes, occasioned these defects in ancient history. Chronology and astronomy are forced to tinker up and reconcile, as well as they can, those uncertainties. This satisfies the learned—but what should we think of the reign of George the Second, to be calculated two thousand years hence by eclipses, lest ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... and most loyal friends; they were bound together by the link of genius and kindred political views; and Carlyle was himself an expert in mathematics, the mental science that most obviously subserves physical research: but of Physics themselves (astronomy being scarcely a physical science) his ignorance was profound, and his abusive criticisms of such men as Darwin are infantile. This intellectual defect, or rather vacuum, left him free to denounce material views ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... revels even in the more complicated problems of mathematical astronomy. Give a woman ten minutes and she will describe a heliocentric parallax of the heavens. Give her twenty minutes and she will find astronomically the longitude of a place by means of lunar culminations. Give that same woman an hour and a half, with the present fashions, ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... is preeminently true of the concept of time, the concept of space is fairly well cultivated by geologic study, though far less effectively than is done by astronomical study. Astronomy and geology work happily together in contributing to largeness ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... much afraid that our minute contributions to the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, which are intended to assist to an accurate comprehension of history, will crumble to dust before they have been read. It is by chemistry at one end and by astronomy at the other, and especially by general physiology, that we really grasp the secret of existence of the world or of God, whichever it may be called. The one thing which I regret is having selected for my study researches of a nature which will never force themselves upon the world, ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... of men like Thomas Boston and Jonathan Edwards. In due season, the growth of knowledge, chiefly under the form of that part of knowledge called science, so changes the views of the universe that many of its long-unchallenged legends become no more than nursery tales. The text-books of astronomy and geology work their way in between the questions and answers of the time-honored catechisms. The doctrine of evolution, so far as it is accepted, changes the whole relations of man to the creative power. It substitutes ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... fluid. The evidence points rather towards the axiom, Omnis cellula a cellula; that is, the germ of a new cell is always derived from a preexisting cell. The doctrine of Schwann, as I remarked long ago (1844), runs parallel with the nebular theory in astronomy, and they may yet stand or ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in the matter of red wines. One dinner-time he talked himself out on the possibilities of the metric system, and pictured the effects of a right angle with a hundred instead of ninety degrees. Another night he walked me up and down the garden until 2 A.M., expatiating on astronomy. He tried to make me realise the beyond comprehension remoteness of the new star by explaining that astronomers did not calculate its distance from the earth in thousands of miles. "Light travels at 186,000 miles a second; to astronomers the ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... acceptation, means a man who is ignorant of those two languages. You are by this time, I hope, pretty near master of both, so that a small part of the day dedicated to them, for two years more, will make you perfect in that study. Rhetoric, logic, a little geometry, and a general notion of astronomy, must, in their turns, have their hours too; not that I desire you should be deep in any one of these; but it is fit you should know something of them all. The knowledge more particularly useful and necessary for you, considering your destination, consists of modern languages, modern history, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... the materials, slight enough, on which hung future development. The secular knowledge taught in the ordinary schools was that represented by the division of the Seven Arts into the elementary Trivium of Grammar, Rhetoric, Dialectic, followed by the Quadrivium of Music, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy. The scope of the Trivium was much wider than the terms denote. Thus Grammar included the study of the classical Latin authors, which never entirely ceased; Rhetoric comprised the practice of composition in prose and verse, and even a knowledge ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... sun, the moon, the stars, and the Signs of the Zodiac in the heavens is wanting. The prominence of the celestial bodies in the history of creation is not to be wondered at, for the greater number of the religious beliefs of the Babylonians are grouped round them. Moreover, the science of astronomy had gone hand in hand with the superstition of astrology in Mesopotamia from time immemorial; and at a very early period the oldest gods of Babylonia were associated with the heavenly bodies. Thus the Annunaki and the Igigi, who are bodies of deified spirits, were ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum
... chronology, but was disgusted at the critical part, which I found had neither bottom nor banks; this made me prefer the more exact measurement of time by the course of the celestial bodies. I should even have contracted a fondness for astronomy, had I been in possession of instruments, but was obliged to content myself with some of the elements of that art, learned from books, and a few rude observations made with a telescope, sufficient only to give me a general idea of the situation of the heavenly bodies; for my ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... with popular errors. A few Words will put the reader in possession of my view. Speaking of the Bible, Phil. says, 'We admit that its separate parts are the work of frail and fallible human beings. We do not seek to build upon it systems of cosmogony, chronology, astronomy, and natural history. We know no reason of internal or external probability which should induce us to believe that such matters could ever have been the subjects of direct revelation.' Is that all? There is no reason, certainly, for expectations so foolish; but is there no adamantine reason against ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... the different paragraphs appear to us to be in utter confusion; on one and the same page, observations on the most dissimilar subjects follow each other without any connection. A page, for instance, will begin with some principles of astronomy, or the motion of the earth; then come the laws of sound, and finally some precepts as to colour. Another page will begin with his investigations on the structure of the intestines, and end with philosophical remarks as to the relations ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... moost heuy Moost derke and moost ferre from lyghtnes As philosophers afferme by astronomy Is in the myddes of the erthe doutles That is a place of dyssolate derkenes Wherfore by reason it must nedes be sette In the myddes of the ...
— The Example of Vertu - The Example of Virtue • Stephen Hawes
... Exercitia, ibid. p. 171. In this spirit a Jesuit of the present century writing on astronomy develops the heliocentric theory while he professes his submission to the geocentric theory ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... a fitter task for younger brothers, or poor men's sons, to be pen and inkhorn men, pedantical slaves, and no whit beseeming the calling of a gentleman, as Frenchmen and Germans commonly do, neglect therefore all human learning, what have they to do with it? Let mariners learn astronomy; merchants, factors study arithmetic; surveyors get them geometry; spectacle-makers optics; land-leapers geography; town-clerks rhetoric, what should he do with a spade, that hath no ground to dig; or they with ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... and account for all the facts of a given kind. Theories which have been for a time believed have, as the world progressed in learning, been found unable to account for all of a given class of conditions. They have been replaced, therefore, by other theories, just as the Copernican theory of astronomy has displaced the ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... the story of early astronomy and the school-divines. Come down a little later, Archbishop Usher, a very learned Protestant prelate, tells us that the world was created on Sunday, the twenty-third of October, four thousand and four years before the birth of Christ. Deluge, December 7th, two thousand three ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... and as doctrine, to the truths it inculcates. In these relations, grammar is a science. It is the first of what have been called the seven sciences, or liberal branches of knowledge; namely, grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Secondly, It is as skill, to the thing to be done; and as power, to the instruments it employs. In these relations, grammar is an art; and as such, has long been defined, "ars recte scribendi, recteque ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... much room for it in yours," retorted Keyork. "Your system is constantly traversed in all directions by bodies, sometimes nebulous and sometimes fiery, which move in unknown orbits at enormous rates of speed. In astronomy they call them comets, and astronomers would be ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... seems to be composite, but into its first elements the philologer has never been able to penetrate. However far he goes back, he never arrives at the beginning; or rather, as in Geology or in Astronomy, there is no beginning. He is too apt to suppose that by breaking up the existing forms of language into their parts he will arrive at a previous stage of it, but he is merely analyzing what never existed, or is never known to have existed, except in a composite form. He may divide ...
— Cratylus • Plato
... you won't take me in.' Nikolai Artemyevitch's frondeurism consisted in saying, for instance, when he heard the word nerves: 'And what do you mean by nerves?' or if some one alluded in his presence to the discoveries of astronomy, asking: 'And do you believe in astronomy?' When he wanted to overwhelm his opponent completely, he said: 'All that is nothing but words.' It must be admitted that to many persons remarks of that kind seemed (and still seem) irrefutable arguments. But Nikolai Artemyevitch never suspected ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... moulded. Within ten months of my eighth year, my teacher, who had previously dealt with Sarah and Mary with great success, made the following remark to me: "If thou wilt learn to answer all those questions in astronomy," passing her pencil lightly over two pages in Wilkin's Elements "before next seventh day, I'll give thee two cents and a nice note to thy parents" (my father was a scientific man, and my mother a prime mover in ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... brother and myself or our college friends, he was, I used to think, almost at his best, for he would quote us the fine passages from ancient or modern literature and show us why they are fine, or he would tell us about the great facts and discoveries in astronomy, geology, botany, chemistry, and the great problems in philosophy, helping us toward a higher conception of the laws which govern the world and of "the law behind the law." He was so sympathetic that the enthusiasm of youth seemed to kindle his own. He spoke out of the fullness of his ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... took in his welfare shows that the way was opening in that direction. But in the various cities where he traveled he merely used his consular letters to reach the men in each place who knew most of mathematics, anatomy, geology, astronomy and physics. He hunted out the thinkers and the doers, and it seems he had enough specific gravity of soul so he was never ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... possessed unusual facilities—for a woman—for acquiring knowledge; and especially for becoming acquainted with the abstruse sciences. Of these facilities she availed herself with commendable earnestness; and at an early age she had made herself mistress of both Geometry and Astronomy, as far as either science was then understood or taught in any of the schools. As is the case with less profound natures, the mind grew on what it fed upon; reasoning, and the elucidation of knotty ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... children were to be taught being got over, another remained, not less liable to dispute—which was, the choice of what they were to learn. Almost every member had a favourite article—-music, physic, prophylactics, geography, geometry, astronomy, arithmetic, natural history, and botany, were all pronounced to be requisites in an eleemosynary system of education, specified to be chiefly intended for the country people; but as this debate ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... Josi, a native of the village of Periasamudram in the Mysore Provinces, came to the little town in the Bellary District where I was then employed. He was a good Sanskrit, Telugu and Canarese poet, and an excellent master of Vedic rituals; knew the Hindu system of astronomy, and professed to be an astrologer. Besides all this, he possessed the power of reading what was contained in any sealed envelope. The process adopted for this purpose was simply this:—We wrote whatever we chose on ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... a living embodiment of the comprehensive requirements laid down by the ancients as essential to the orator. He had a knowledge of logic, ethics, astronomy, philosophy, geometry, music, and rhetoric. Little wonder, therefore, that his amazing eloquence was described as a ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... understand mine. We are very dissimilar, but we both strive after the same object. Before we separated he conducted me to his little observatory; now his dearest world. He seems now to live for poetry and now for philosophy, andufor which I fancy he is least of all calculated—for astronomy. I ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... as a third branch of our education, astronomy? 'Very good,' replied Glaucon; 'the knowledge of the heavens is necessary at once for husbandry, navigation, military tactics.' I like your way of giving useful reasons for everything in order to make friends of the world. And there is a difficulty in proving to mankind that education is not only ...
— The Republic • Plato
... reserve. In conversation with him, it was almost impossible to make any direct statement, however trivial, that he would accept without either modification or open contradiction. He had a passion for violent discussion. He would argue upon every subject in the range of human knowledge, from astronomy to the tariff, from the doctrine of predestination to the height of a horse. Never would he admit himself to be mistaken; when cornered, he would intrench himself behind the remark, "Yes, that's all ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... his store-room, and soon returned with several volumes. Two were on navigation, another on astronomy, and a fourth on natural history; but Lord Reginald found that the others were not such as were likely to prove edifying either to himself or Dick. He first took up one, and glancing over its pages, said, "Throw that into the fire." A second and a third were treated in the same way. He looked ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... words, from a discipline in which the thinking is only apparent, to a discipline in which the thinking is real. Ordinary observation does not reveal to us the real, but only the apparent revolutions of the celestial orbs. We must call astronomy to our aid if we would reach the truth. In the same way, ordinary or psychological thinking may show us the apparent movements of thought—but it is powerless to decipher the real figures described in that mightier ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... call hydrogen or oxygen may well turn out to be worlds, as the stars are which make atoms for astronomy. Their inner organisation might be negligible on our rude plane of being; did it disclose itself, however, it would be intelligible in its turn only if constant parts and constant laws were discernible within ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... he insisted. "Why, the whole principle of it is so awful simple! Ef you'd ben to high school, now, an' knew astronomy an' all, you'd see right through it ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... old, he took his bachelor's degree, after a rigorous examination not only in the classics but astronomy, mathematics, jurisprudence, and theology, at an age when most youths would have been accounted brilliant if able to enter ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... expressed to me respecting the education which ought to be given youth. Though the sworn enemy of everything like liberty, Bonaparte had at first conceived a vast system of education, comprising above all the study of history, and those positive sciences, such as geology and astronomy, which give the utmost degree of development to the human mind. The Sovereign, however, shrunk from the first ideas of the man of genius, and his university, confided to the elegant suppleness of M. de Fontaines, was merely a school capable ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... almost unseen but steady advance of science in all its branches. During this epoch perhaps the most formidable enemy of orthodoxy was the rising study of geology, challenging, as it did, the traditional theories of creation. The discoveries of astronomy—the law of gravitation, the rotation of the earth, its place in the solar system, and, above all, the infinite compass of the universe—were in themselves of a nature to revolutionise theological beliefs more radically than any conclusions respecting the antiquity ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... spark of liberality or gentility.... The only Parsee I was ever acquainted with who had received a liberal education, was Moula Firoz, whom I met at the house of a friend; he was a sensible and well-informed man, who had travelled into Persia, and there studied mathematics, astronomy, and the sciences of Zoroaster." If this account be correct, a marvellous improvement must have taken place during the last forty years. Many of the Parsees of the present day are almost on a level with Europeans ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... to-day with their language of the cab-stand, and their coats smelling of smoke) bowing at her feet; and then thinks of to-day's Lady Lorraine—a little woman in a black silk gown, like a governess, who talks astronomy, and laboring classes, and emigration, and the deuce knows what, and lurks to church at eight o'clock in the morning. Abbots-Lorraine, that used to be the noblest house in the county, is turned into a monastery—a regular ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I hae h'ard o' cairts, an' bogles, an' witchcraft, an' astronomy, but sic a thing as this ye bring me noo, I never did hear tell o'! What can the warl' be comin' till!—An' dis the father o' ye, laddie, ken what ye spen' yer midnicht hoors gangin' teachin' to the lass-bairns o' ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Philosophie; they know her not but by heare-say; what? Is it not shee that cleereth all stormes of the mind? And teacheth miserie, famine, and sicknesse to laugh? Not by reason of some imaginarie Epicicles [Footnote: A term of the old astronomy.], but by naturall and palpable reasons. Shee aymeth at nothing but vertue; it is vertue shee seekes after; which as the schoole saith, is not pitcht on the top of an high, steepie, or inaccessible hill; for they that have come unto her, ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... East, South, West, and identifies himself with man in all straits and conditions on the continent. Like the old poets, he does not dwell upon nature, except occasionally through the vistas opened up by the great sciences, as astronomy and geology, but upon life and movement and personality, and puts in a shred of natural history here and there,—the "twittering redstart," the spotted hawk swooping by, the oscillating sea-gulls, the yellow-crowned heron, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... d'Alembert to a single theorem, and that superb collection of theories which, elaborated by the Bernouillis, Euler, Clairaut, d'Alembert, Taylor and Maclaurin, is finally completed at the end of the century by Monge, Lagrange, and Laplace.[3102] In astronomy, the series of calculations and observations which, from Newton to Laplace, transforms science into a problem of mechanics, explains and predicts the movements of the planets and of their satellites, indicating the origin and formation of our solar system, and, extending beyond this, through ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... How can you, of all men, replies his son, ask me to care much for that? You trained me from the first for learning, not for the City or the Bar; the father who had his son taught not only Latin, but Greek and Hebrew, French and Italian, astronomy and physical science, cannot ask him to regard money making as the object of life. I have chosen a better part than that: and you were the inspirer of my choice. And I know that at heart you agree with it ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... at first, but by-and-by recollected that it dazzled her eyes just as she was looking for the runaway pony; and Hal declared that it proved that the convent must have been to the south of the spot of her fall; but his astronomy, though eagerly demonstrated, was not likely to have brought her back to Greystone. Still Doll was thankful for the safe subject, as he went on to mark out what he promised that she should see in the winter—the swarm of glow-worms, as he called the Pleiades; and ...
— The Herd Boy and His Hermit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... (their only history) the exploits of their heroes, and who composed those verses which contained the secrets of Druidical discipline, their principles of natural and moral philosophy, their astronomy, and the mystical rites of their religion. These verses in all probability bore a near resemblance to the Golden Verses of Pythagoras,—to those of Phocylides, Orpheus, and other remnants of the most ancient Greek ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... this happened several years before) he helped a boy in his patrol to become an Eagle Scout. It was the talk of Temple Camp how, one more merit badge (astronomy) and Will O'Connor would be an Eagle Scout and Tom Slade, leader of the Elks, would have the only Eagle Scout at Camp in his patrol. He didn't care so much about being an Eagle Scout himself, but he wanted Will O'Connor to be an ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... perfect master, and could not from his youth have travelled into so many countries, or have attained so much knowledge and learning as his actions demonstrate; more especially in those four principal sciences which were so indispensably necessary to fit him for what he performed, astronomy, cosmography, geometry, and navigation. It is not much to be wondered that Justiniani should be guilty of untruth in this circumstance, which is hidden, since he has inserted above a dozen falsehoods in half a sheet of paper ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... knowledge and point of view were inevitably imperfect. Even in natural science he was not altogether abreast of his time—he refused to accept Harvey's discovery of the manner of the circulation of the blood and the Copernican system of astronomy. Neither was he, as is sometimes supposed, the inventor of the inductive method of observation and reasoning, which in some degree is fundamental in all study. But he did, much more fully and clearly than any one before him, demonstrate the importance ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... the aloes. I think R.'s prescription was fairly shrewd. Many men would merely have laughed at the men's fears, and would neither have shaken their beliefs nor given them something new to think of. That was the way the great Columba scored off the Druids and Picts. "I don't know about your astronomy or your fine music, or tales of ancestors and heroes, but I'm telling you, old Baal himself, with all his thunder and lightning, will not be so much as touching the least hair on your head if you were just to hold up this trifle of two sticks of wood. And if you do not believe me you will ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... astronomy, geography, and other sciences, correct views had been gained as to the position and relations of the earth, and as to the structure of the world; and since Religion, resting itself on what was assumed to be the proper interpretation of the ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... himself to believe the irrefutable evidence. What of astronomy? he asked himself. Why was this matter not visible through telescopes? Why did it not make its presence known through interference? Through refraction of light?... And then he realized the incredible distance within the scope of ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... Burton translates, "astrology," and astrology (or astronomy); is the classical meaning of the word; but the common meaning in modern Arabic is "the science of physiognomy," cf. the Nights passim. See especially ante, ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne |
