"Astronomical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... different from my universal epitaph—this shrewd and crafty person, determined to rescue at least one mute, inglorious Milton from neglect, has written to me. There! He has read my article on 'The Astronomical Theory with regard to the Early Religions'; he has perceived the profound wisdom, the research, the illuminating genius of that work—by the way, I don't think I ever fully explained to you my notions on ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... society is divided into different ranks, and some are appointed to labour for the support of others, those whom their superiority sets free from labour begin to look for intellectual entertainments. Thus, while the shepherds were attending their flocks, their masters made the first astronomical observations; so music is said to have had its origin from a man at leisure listening to the strokes of a hammer. As the senses in the lowest state of nature are necessary to direct us to our support, when that support is once secure, there is danger in following them further; to him who ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... one of the ten reporters in the astronomical department—a department still in the embryonic stage, but which will yet play an important ...
— In the Year 2889 • Jules Verne and Michel Verne
... Julian Academy, 1889; Temple gold medal, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1889; bronze medal, Paris Exposition, 1889. Member of the Copley Society, Boston; of the Society of Baron Taylor, Paris; and of the Paris Astronomical Society. Born in San Francisco. Pupil of the Julian Academy, under Robert-Fleury, and Jules Lefebvre, where she received, in 1888, the prize of the silver medal and one hundred francs—the highest award given at the annual Portrait Concours, ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... might be guided by some sympathy with our wishes. In this way, an ethically inspired system of metaphysics grew up, whose anthropocentrism was apparently warranted by the geocentrism of astronomy. When Copernicus swept away the astronomical basis of this system of thought, it had grown so familiar, and had associated itself so intimately with men's aspirations, that it survived with scarcely diminished force—survived even Kant's "Copernican ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... to the King of the Reverend Dr. Kennedy's Complete System of Astronomical Chronology, unfolding the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... defend their old positions. Each new invention would violate a greater number of known analogies; for if a theory be required to embrace some false principle, it becomes more visionary in proportion as facts are multiplied, as would be the case if geometers were now required to form an astronomical system on the assumption of ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... house serves merely for a habitation; but above is a large octagonal room, which, being now seldom wanted for astronomical purposes, is used as a repository for such instruments as are too large to be generally employed in the apartments first described, or for old instruments, which modern improvements have superseded. Among the former is a most excellent ten-feet achromatic, by the present Mr. Dolland, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 404, December 12, 1829 • Various
... would it have been to his fellow-creatures, had some competent follower of Laplace bestowed on them a comprehensive but popular compend of the leading astronomical facts, to be used as one of the most ordinary school-books! Apart from the general usefulness of this peculiar species of knowledge, and the chances that, by thus popularizing the study, sparks might be struck from the spirit of some dormant ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... already been founded,—the first in 1554. The distinguished Spanish botanist Jose Celestino Mutis, in 1762, took the chair of mathematics and astronomy in the Colegio del Rosario, and under him were trained many scientists, including Francisco Jose de Caldas. An astronomical observatory was established, the first in America. In 1777 a public library was organized, and a theater in 1794. And of great influence was the visit of Humboldt in 1801. Among the works published in the second half of the eighteenth century mention should ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... I occupied my time by drawing in the Government offices, a map, compiled from the various notes and journals I had kept during the prospecting expeditions in which I had been engaged. I also took the opportunity of getting some knowledge of astronomical subjects, likely to be of service in the more extended expedition I had in my mind. My thanks are due to Mr. Barlee, chief draughtsman, and Mr. Higgins, of the Mines Department, for the kindness they showed in helping me in ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... circumstances, so I had learned to nip all fastidious notions of individual cleanliness in the bud, and to accept the inevitable. When the time arrived for retiring, the Governor and the brothers went out to make astronomical observations or smoke, as the case might be, while the sisters and I made our evening toilet, and disposed ourselves in the allotted corners. That done, the stalwart sons of Adam made their beds with skins and blankets on the floor. When all was still and darkness reigned, ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... the shape of a calendar. It is cut on a square block of marble, upon each side of which three months are registered in perpendicular columns, each headed by the proper sign of the zodiac. The information given may be classed under three heads, astronomical, agricultural, and religious. The first begins with the name of the month; then follows the number of days; then the nones, which in eight months of the year fall on the fifth day, and were thence called quintanae—in the others on the seventh, and were, therefore, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... initiated in the rudiments of astronomical science, they rest upon the great and high-sounding names of Galileo, Kepler, Halley and Newton. But, though these men are eminently entitled to honour and gratitude from their fellow-mortals, they ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... and arrange their simple ceremonial. We must never forget that what is natural in one place is natural in other places also, and we may sum up without fear of serious contradiction, that no case has been made out in favor of a foreign origin of the elementary astronomical notions of the Hindus as found or presupposed in ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... Vienna, the Biological Station at Naples, the Royal Institution in London, the Wellcome Laboratories in England and at Khartoum, the Smithsonian, Wistar, Carnegie and Rockefeller Institutes in the United States; the list of research institutes of important dimensions (excluding astronomical observatories) is, I believe, practically exhausted by the above enumeration, and many of them are woefully undermanned and underequipped. At least two of them, the Solvay Institute wholly, and the Frankfort Institute for Experimental Therapy in part, ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... at Ulietea. Astronomical Observations. A Marine deserts, and is delivered up. Intelligence from Omai. Instructions to Captain Clerke. Another Desertion of a Midshipman and a Seaman. Three of the chief Persons of the Island confined on that Account. A Design to seize Captains Cook and Clerke ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... according to others, to show that the three great attributes of Creator, Destroyer, and Regenerator are combined in him. His loins are enveloped in a tiger's skin. In his character of Time, he not only presides over its extinction, but also its astronomical regulation. A crescent or half-moon on his forehead indicates the measure of time by the phases of the moon; a serpent forms one of his necklaces to denote the measure of time by years, and a second necklace of human skulls ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... scientific treatises addressed to advanced students contemplated the likelihood of their not being able to do simple division. On the other hand, the study of astronomy necessitated, from its earliest days as a science, considerable skill and accuracy in computation, not only in the calculation of astronomical tables but in their use, aknowledge of which latter was fairly common from the ...
— The Earliest Arithmetics in English • Anonymous
... spheres of the planets rotating on their axes and revolving round the sun; and at the little end the spheres of the atoms consisting of particles which, modern science tells us, in like manner rotate round a common center at distances which are astronomical as compared with their own mass. Thus the two ultimate units of physical manifestation, the atom and the planet, both follow the same law of self-sustained motion which we have found that, on a priori grounds, they ought in order to express the primary activity of Spirit. ...
— The Creative Process in the Individual • Thomas Troward
... visitors. Dr. David Gill, astronomer royal, who was of the party, invited me the next day to the famous Cape Observatory. An hour with Dr. Gill was an hour among the stars. His discoveries in stellar photography are well known. He showed me the great astronomical clock of the observatory, and I showed him the tin clock on the Spray, and we went over the subject of standard time at sea, and how it was found from the deck of the little sloop without the aid of a clock of any kind. Later it was advertised that Dr. Gill would preside at a talk about the voyage ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... by the greater viewpoint. Awed by the mysteries of nature, we realize how very small and unimportant we are in the vast scheme of things. We envisage the infinite reaches of astronomical space overhead. Realms of largeness unfathomable. And at our feet, everywhere, are myriad entrances into the infinitely small. With ourselves in between—with our fatuous human consciousness that we are of ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... the necessary magnetic and astronomical observations were now completed I seized the opportunity offered by the first favourable day and started with a party of three in the ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... Kensington. These tapestries are, it is to be presumed, late copies, since, of the two early sets woven at Arras, one is preserved in the Vatican and the other at the Museum at Berlin. A modern fresco of Jeanne Hachette, a local Amazon, adorns one of the choir chapels. A modern astronomical clock, with numerous dials, striking figures, and crowing cocks, is placed near the north transept. It might naturally be supposed that in our day the canons of good taste would plead against such a mere "curio" being housed ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... may be sufficient to say, that many of the applications of steam to locomotion and manufactures, of electricity and magnetism to the production of mechanical motion, the electrical telegraph, the registration of astronomical phenomena, the art of multiplying engravings, the introduction and improvement among us of all the important inventions of the Old World, are striking indications of the progress of this country in the useful arts. The net-work of railroads and telegraphic lines by which this vast country ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... the beginning of the book. Still, I can take but little of the blame, when I consider how I fared through my geography, right to the end of the grammar-school course. I did in time disentangle the symbolism of the orange revolving on a knitting-needle from the astronomical facts in the case, but it took years of training under a master of the subject to rid me of my distrust of the map as a representation of the earth. To this day I sometimes blunder back to my early impression that any given portion of the earth's surface is constructed upon a skeleton ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... Government to form a national gallery of pictures. The same may be said of patronage bestowed on learned men, of the publication of archives, of the collecting of libraries, menageries, plants, fossils, antiques, of journeys and voyages for purposes of geographical discovery or astronomical observation. It is not for these ends that Government is constituted. But it may well happen that a Government may have at its command resources which will enable it, without any injury to its main end, to pursue these collateral ends far more effectually than ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... if the famous verse, 'Coeli enarrant gloriam Dei' ('The heavens declare the glory OF GOD'), had preserved all its force." And, he adds, in a note, "At present, to minds that have been early familiarized with the true astronomical philosophy, the heavens declare no other glory than that of Hipparchus, Kepler, Newton, and all those who have contributed to the establishment of their laws!" The reader of these laws may become illustrious, but the Maker of ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... Toledan tables; the astronomical tables composed by order Of Alphonso II, King of Castile, about 1250 and so called because they were adapted to the ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... doubt, of their physical identity. Then it suddenly occurred to me that I was behaving very ill, so I wheeled about and sauntered away to a little distance in the direction of the shore, in order to take some astronomical observations of the sky, and gaze inquiringly up at the moon, which at that moment broke through a bank of clouds, tipping the icebergs on the sea and the branches of the ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... astronomical also derive their efficacy from the actions of the demons: a sign of this is that it is requisite to inscribe certain characters on them which do not conduce to any effect naturally, since shape is not a principle of natural action. Yet astronomical ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... appointed Mr Charles Green, who had long been assistant to Dr Bradley at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, to assist Lieutenant Cook in the astronomical department of the expedition; and in every respect the persons engaged in this celebrated expedition were well fitted ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... instrument for measuring time. Specifically, it is a large and very accurate watch for use in astronomical observations. ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... fitted up as a very tasteful dwelling. They had even, to gratify their brother, raised on the rock above the grotto a sort of observatory, where the telescope is mounted, to enable him to make his astronomical observations. Yet I perceive his passion for exploring distant planets is less strong, since he has so much ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... ASTRONOMICAL IDEAS. Animals frequently have a part to play in relation to the constellations. Throughout the codices and, to a less degree, in the stone carvings, we find what have usually been considered to be glyphs for several of the constellations. Numerous calculations ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... many opportunities of my life—one which I always enjoyed—of protecting the unfortunate from the stern decree of "justice." The old German custodian came to me one morning in great distress, saying that he had let the "astronomical chronometer" run down, and that the professor would kill him. I went with him to the transit tower, made an observation, and set the chronometer. The professor never knew the difference till I told him, after the lapse of time named ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... the ceremonial worship of his image. Like the private houses the temples too were never complete without the dome-capped towers, which of course were of corresponding size and magnificence. These were used for astronomical observations and ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... An astronomical observatory has been installed in another tower, surmounted by a little white cupola, which you espy amidst the greenery; and under the trees there is also a Swiss chalet, where Leo XIII is fond of resting. He sometimes goes on foot to the kitchen garden, and takes much interest in the ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... which might facilitate the undertaking, with the understanding that all necessary expenses would be defrayed. The earliest period at which he could possibly set out was September, and he determined diligently to improve the interval. He chiefly directed his attention to the method of taking astronomical observations, and to the study of the Arabic language. For the latter purpose, he engaged a native of Mogadore, Sidi Omback Boubi, who then resided in London, and had served as the interpreter to Elphi Bey, the Mameluke ambassador from Cairo, to accompany him to Scotland. Park and ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... C. Whitin, a trustee, gave to the college an astronomical observatory and telescope. The building was completed in 1900. Another gift of 1898, fifty thousand dollars, came from the estate of the late Charles T. Wilder, and was used to build Wilder Hall, the fourth dormitory in the group on Norumbega hill. In 1898, the first of the Society houses, ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... with her wishes. What could poor Ahmed do? He was no astrologer, but he was dotingly fond of his wife, and he could not bear the idea of losing her. He promised to obey, and having sold his little stock, bought an astrolabe, an astronomical almanac, and a table of the twelve signs of the zodiac. Furnished with these, he went to the marketplace, crying, "I am an astrologer! I know the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and the twelve signs ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... counted sixteen Olympiads, and crowned Pythagoras the victor. Hippomenes was archon at Athens. Romulus had been succeeded by Numa Pompilius, and the foundations of imperial Rome were laid in blood by barbarian hordes. The Chaldeans had just taken the palm in astronomical observations, and recorded for the first time a lunar eclipse; while the baffled Assyrian hosts relinquished the siege of Tyre, unhappily reserved for the cruel destruction accomplished by Alexander, a few centuries later. The prophecies of Isaiah were still ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... superior; yet he was not a Christian. Euclid, if I remember right, was not a Christian, and yet he had quite a turn for mathematics. As a matter of fact, Christianity got its idea of algebra from the Mohammedans, and, without algebra, astronomical knowledge of to-day would have been impossible. Christianity did not even invent figures. We got those from the Arabs. The very word "algebra" is Arabic. The decimal system, I believe, however, was due to a German, but whether he was a Christian or ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... Belfast Nat. Hist. Soc., as given in the Belfast Northern Whig, Nov. 19, 1866. Mr. Murphy here follows the line of argument against my views previously and more cautiously given by the Rev. C. Pritchard, Pres. Royal Astronomical Soc., in his sermon (Appendix, p. 33) preached before the British Association ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... ring encircling an astronomical body, but not infrequently confounded with "aureola," or "nimbus," a somewhat similar phenomenon worn as a head-dress by divinities and saints. The halo is a purely optical illusion, produced by ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... philosophical, one produced the theory of gravitation, the other objected to that theory that it was subversive of natural religion. The nebular hypothesis—a natural consequence of the theory of gravitation and of the subsequent progress of physical and astronomical discovery—has been denounced as atheistical even down to our own day. But it is now largely adopted by the most theistical natural philosophers as a tenable and perhaps sufficient hypothesis, and where not accepted is ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... spirit be the highest intelligence in the universe, did it create itself? Does it govern itself? Did it create the universe? Does it govern it? Some Pantheists have gone to this length! M. Comte says: "At this present time, for minds properly familiarized with true astronomical philosophy, the heavens display no other glory than that of Hipparchus, or Kepler, or Newton, and of all who have helped to establish these laws." "Establish these laws!" They were laws governing the planets thousands of years before ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various
... astronomical compliment at once to Honora and Phoebe, who were content to share it. Honora was in a condition of subdued excitement and anxiety, compared to which all other sensations were tame, chequered as was her felicity, a state well known to mothers ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at Olivencia — Curious astronomical conjunction — Lawrence exemplifies the truth of an old proverb at the expense of his hosts, and draws down the wrath of the church on himself — Succeeds more satisfactorily in the case of his comrade ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... and women of my acquaintance there are some (for it is not possible to enumerate all) of whom I should like to make some mention; and, place aux dames, let me speak of the ladies first. In my boyhood I can recollect that astronomical wonder of womankind, Mrs. Mary Somerville, a great friend of my father's; she seemed to me very quiet and thoughtful, and so little self-conscious as to be humbly unregardful of her genius and her fame. Strangely enough I first met her in the same drawing-room ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... I. "First, that my services shall be strictly confined to the keeping of a watch and the checking of your astronomical observations. Secondly, that you undertake to perpetrate no act of piracy while I am on board. And, thirdly, that you will allow me to leave your ship upon the first occasion that we happen to encounter a sail of a ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... writers, the Aztecs understood the true causes of eclipses, as well as we do. Diagrams exist, in their pictorial records, in which the earth is represented as projecting its disc upon the moon—thus indicating, clearly, a true knowledge of this phenomenon. Mr. Gallatin remarks that the Indian astronomical system, as developed in Mexico, is not one of indigenous origin, but that they had, manifestly, received it, at least their calendar, from a foreign source. Its results could not have been attained without long and patient ...
— Incentives to the Study of the Ancient Period of American History • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... is an earlier treatise of Isidore's entitled De natura rerum, written at the request of Sisebut, king of the Visigoths, 612-621, and dedicated to him. It contains the sum of the physical philosophy of his time, and, being largely astronomical, is sometimes found in the MSS. under the title Liber de astronomia. In order to bring it into immediate connection with the corresponding section of the Etymologiae, it is placed immediately ...
— Catalogue of the William Loring Andrews Collection of Early Books in the Library of Yale University • Anonymous
... grand and poetical feeling, I may cite the angels as "Regents of the Planets," in the Capella Chigiana. The cupola represents in a circle the creation of the solar system, according to the theological and astronomical (or rather astrological) notions which then prevailed—a hundred years before "the starry Galileo and his woes." In the centre is the Creator; around, in eight compartments, we have, first, the angel of the celestial sphere, who seems to be listening to the divine mandate: "Let ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... never be another Jacob's dream. Since that time, the heavens have gone farther off, and grown astronomical. They have become averse to the imagination, nor will they return to us on the squares of the distances, or on Doctor Chalmers's Discourses. Rembrandt's picture brings the matter nearer to us.—It is not only the progress of mechanical ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... draught animal existing. On the night of the 20th Lieutenant Schwatka observed a meridian culmination of the moon, which showed in latitude 67 deg. 32 min. 42 sec. north, only three miles from our reckoning. It is a difficult task to make astronomical observations with a sextant in a temperature thirty-eight degrees below zero, or seventy below the freezing-point, as it was this night. It is not pleasant to sit still for any length of time in such weather. A thin skim of ice ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... station orbiting around Acquatainia—the capital planet of the Acquataine Cluster—served simultaneously as a transfer point from starships to planetships, a tourist resort, meteorological station, communications center, scientific laboratory, astronomical observatory, medical haven for allergy and cardiac patients, and military base. It was, in reality, a good-sized city with its own markets, its own local government, and ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... it come from the verb [Hebrew: MSHSH], mashash, to feel: but Dr. Hyde derives it from the Arabic, Khamush, which signifies gnats, (though in the particular dialect of the tribe Hodail) supposing it to have been an astronomical talisman in the figure of a gnat:—and Le Clerc, who takes this idol for the Sun, from Comosha, a root, in the same tongue, signifying to be swift. There is the same variety of sentiment about Silenus, the companion of Bacchus. [476]Bochart ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant
... food supply. It is impossible to tell when this interest would "begin," but it would become intense whenever the number of men was great in proportion to the food supply. Hence the rainfall, the course of the seasons, the prevalence of winds, the conjunction of astronomical phenomena with spawning or fruit seasons, and the habits of plants and animals caught the feeble attention of savage man and taught him facts of nature, through his eagerness to get signs of coming plenty ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... their food was then fitter for the prolongation of life, might well live so great a number of years: and besides, God afforded them a longer time of life on account of their virtue, and the good use they made of it in astronomical and geometrical discoveries, which would not have afforded the time of foretelling [the periods of the stars] unless they had lived six hundred years; for the great year is completed in that interval. Now I have for witnesses to what I have said, all ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... their glories so on each limb fall, The whole frame render'd was celestial. Come, learned Ptolemy[3] and trial make, If thou this hero's altitude canst take: 40 But that transcends thy skill; thrice happy all, Could we but prove thus astronomical. Lived Tycho[4] now, struck with this ray which shone More bright i' the morn, than others' beam at noon. He'd take his astrolabe, and seek out here What new star 'twas did gild our hemisphere. Replenish'd then with such rare gifts as these, Where was room left ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... the Stevens Institute of Technology; Member of the National Academy of Sciences; of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia; of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston; of the New York Academy of Sciences; of the German Astronomical Society; of the American Otological Society; and Honorary Member of ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... of the Middle Ages to Christendom, asserted itself in the old strongholds of theological thought, the universities. Neither the powerful logic of Bishop Butler nor the nimble reasoning of Archdeacon Paley availed. Just as the line of astronomical thinkers from Copernicus to Newton had destroyed the old astronomy, in which the earth was the centre, and the Almighty sitting above the firmament the agent in moving the heavenly bodies about it with ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... remarks, "the former doctrine is supported by their own Bible, not less than by our Koran." These sentiments are repeated whenever the subject is referred to; and particularly on the occasion of a visit to the Observatory at Greenwich, where he was shown all the telescopes and astronomical apparatus, "though, owing to the state of the weather, I had not the opportunity of viewing the heavens to satisfy myself of the correctness of the statements made to me. I was told, however, that on looking through ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... magnificent aspect of the ocean when Captain Nemo appeared. He did not seem to be aware of my presence, and began a series of astronomical observations. Then, when he had finished, he went and leant on the cage of the watch-light, and gazed abstractedly on the ocean. In the meantime, a number of the sailors of the Nautilus, all strong and healthy men, had come up onto the platform. They ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... completeness and accuracy, we may mention that by its means a screw five feet in length, and two inches in diameter, was cut with fifty threads to the inch; the nut to fit on to it being twelve inches long, and containing six hundred threads. This screw was principally used for dividing scales for astronomical purposes; and by its means divisions were produced so minute that they could not be detected without the aid of a magnifier. The screw, which was sent for exhibition to the Society of Arts, is still carefully preserved ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... inattention even while the Master was discoursing in a way that I found agreeable enough. I am quite sure it is no intentional disrespect to the old Master. It seems to me rather that he has become interested in the astronomical lessons he has been giving the Young Girl. He has studied so much alone, that it is naturally a pleasure to him to impart some of his knowledge. As for his young pupil, she has often thought of being a teacher herself, so that she is of course very glad to acquire any accomplishment ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... account for all the facts hitherto observed, there is not a single fact which proves the occurrence of a totally different order of causes." [81] This, however, is (1) limited to the period of geology which gives record of organic life, and not to the earlier astronomical period; nor (2) does it exclude changes in temperature, climate, distribution of seas and lands; nor (3) does it "affirm positively that there may not have been in past ages explosions more violent than that of Krakatoa; lava-streams more extensive than that of Skaptar-Jokul, and earthquakes ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... about the harmony or discord between this account of Creation, and the facts of Geographical, Astronomical, or Geological science. I do not trouble myself about such matters. To me it is a question of no importance or concern whatever. And I have no trouble about ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... events, some of the many plans suggested are even now of curious interest. The establishment of a magnificent national library at the Capital; the founding of a great university; of a normal school; a post graduate school; and astronomical observatory "equal to any in the world," are a few of the plans from time to time proposed ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... the hermit, turning abruptly to a small wooden shed which had hitherto escaped the youth's observation, so covered was it with overhanging boughs and tropical creeping plants, "these are my astronomical instruments." ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... memorial of the early Aryan settlements in the Punjab. The age of this venerable hymnal is unknown. Orthodox Hindus believe, without evidence, that it existed "from before all time," or at least from 3001 years B.C. European scholars have inferred from astronomical data that its composition was going on about 1400 B.C. But the evidence might have been calculated backward, and inserted later in the Veda. We only know that the Vedic religion had been at work ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... prodigious advantages, and ought certainly to animate us in our searches. I might add to this the great benefits we receive from our more perfect acquaintance with the properties of the loadstone, and from the surprising accuracy of astronomical observations, to which I may add the physical discoveries made of late years in relation to the figure of the earth, all of which are the result of the lights which these ...
— Early Australian Voyages • John Pinkerton
... Joliet had astronomical instruments with which they ascertained, with much accuracy, the latitude of all their important stopping places. As they state that the two villages, which they visited, were on the western side of the Mississippi, at the latitude of forty degrees north, and upon the banks of a stream flowing ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... his bent. His scientific tastes led him to adopt the surveying branch of his profession, and in 1836, when appointed to the Terror on her expedition to the North Seas, he had charge of the astronomical and ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... now dealing (though published in the complete sequence nearly twenty-five years later), it may be best to traverse it at this stage. Though called a full series of sonnets, there is no intimation that it is not fragmentary as to design; the title is an astronomical, not an architectural figure. The work is at once Shakspearean and Dantesque. Whilst electively akin to the Vita Nuova, it is broader in range, the life involved being life idealised in all phases. What Rossetti's idea ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... on Graves' life of the great mathematician. The remaining chapters now appear for the first time. For many of the facts contained in the sketch of the late Professor Adams, I am indebted to the obituary notice written by my friend Dr. J. W. L. Glaisher, for the Royal Astronomical Society; while with regard to the late Sir George Airy, I have a similar acknowledgment to make to Professor H. H. Turner. To my friend Dr. Arthur A. Rambaut I owe my hearty thanks for his kindness in aiding me in ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... Quadripartito; to the College of God's House, afterwards absorbed in Christ's College, Egidius and a Doctrinale; to King's College Isaac de Urinis; to the University Library three books; as well as an astronomical ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... about them the feelings derived from this old repugnance of a class to all that did not associate direct doctrinal teaching of religion with every attempt to communicate knowledge. I will take one more instance, by way of pointing out the extent to which stupidity can go. If there be an astronomical fact of the telescopic character which, next after Saturn's ring and Jupiter's satellites, was known to all the world, it was the existence of multitudes of double stars, treble stars, etc. A respectable quarterly of the theological cast, which in ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... revolution of the earth that brings blessed lengthening days and growing summer, and that cuts short the sun's course and brings declining days and increasing cold. It is the same motion which hurls a comet close to the burning sun, and sends it wandering away out into fields of astronomical space, beyond the ken of telescope, and almost beyond the reach of thought. And so one uniform divine purpose, the 'favour' which uses the 'anger,' fills the life, and there are no interruptions, howsoever brief, to the steady continuous flow ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... primary or secondary planets, being possible but at certain times, could be of no use to the sailor; that the motions of the moon had been long attended, however accurately, without any consequence; that other astronomical observations were difficult and uncertain, with every advantage of situation, instruments, and knowledge; and were, therefore, utterly impracticable to the sailor, tost upon the water, ill provided with instruments, and not very ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... kind of competitive examination is an examination in writing. This is entirely appropriate for certain classes of work, for lawyers, stenographers, typewriters, clerks, mathematicians, and assistants in an astronomical observatory, for instance. It is utterly inappropriate for carpenters, detectives, and mounted cattle inspectors along the Rio Grande—to instance three types of employment as to which I had to do battle to prevent well-meaning bureaucrats ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... now become one of the most important capitals of Europe. Peter was not only the founder of this city, but, in a great measure, the architect. An observatory for astronomical purposes was reared, on the model of that in Paris. A valuable library was in the rapid progress of collection, and there were several cabinets formed, filled with the choicest treasures of nature and art. There were now in Russia ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... admitting this, why did Prometheus give the stars animal names? Goguet easily explains this by a hypothetical account of the manners of primitive men. 'The earliest peoples,' he says, 'must have used writing for purposes of astronomical science. They would be content to design the constellations of which they wished to speak by the hieroglyphical symbols of their names; hence the constellations have insensibly taken the names of the chief symbols.' Thus, ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... continent a couple of thousand years ago were apparently quite unconcerned with what went on in Europe or Asia, say, in the domain of mathematical and astronomical knowledge. But the ultimate effect of that knowledge on navigation and discovery was destined to affect them—and us—profoundly. But the reaction of European thought upon this continent, which originally required twenty, or, for that matter, two hundred or two thousand years to show itself, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... (Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," vol. iii. p. 402). Arius maintained that "the Logos was a dependent and spontaneous production, created from nothing by the will of the Father. The Son, by whom all things were made, had been begotten before all worlds, and the longest of the astronomical periods could be compared only as a fleeting moment to the extent of his duration; yet this duration was not infinite, and there had been a time which preceded the ineffable generation of the Logos.... He governed the universe ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... His treatise, De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium, which was dedicated to Pope Paul III., appeared at Nuremberg in 1543, with a preface added to it by the preacher, Andreas Osiander, which calls the heliocentric system merely an hypothesis advanced as a basis for astronomical calculations. Copernicus reached his theory rather by speculation than by observation; its first suggestion came from the Pythagorean doctrine of the motion of the earth. On Copernicus cf. Leop. Prowe, vol. i. Copernicus Leben, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... ineffably blessed in one presence? Why, in quitting that presence, did Duty become so grim? Why dost thou address to me those inept pedantic questionings, under the light of yon moon, which has suddenly ceased to be to thy thoughts an astronomical body and has become, forever and forever, identified in thy heart's dreams with romance and poesy and first love? Why, instead of gazing on that uncomfortable orb, art thou not quickening thy steps towards a cozy inn and a good supper at Oxford? Kenelm, my friend, thou art ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... number of facts, a number constantly growing with research, which cannot be so dismissed. Such are the employment of abstract symbolism, the erection of great structures all having a definite and identical astronomical bearing and evident use, the common possession of so-called myths all telling the one story, and only slightly modified locally, such as the birth-stories of Huitzilopochtli and of Herakles, and the stories of the travail of Latona pursued ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... to measure the angles from which to deduce the height of the clouds is a peculiar form of altazimuth that was originally designed by Prof. Mohn, of Christiania, for measuring the parallax of the aurora borealis. It resembles an astronomical altazimuth, but instead of a telescope it carries an open tube without any lenses. The portion corresponding to the object glass is formed by thin cross wires: and that corresponding to the eye piece by a plate of brass, pierced in the center by a small circular hole an eighth of an ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 611, September 17, 1887 • Various
... may be nothing but water and sky within his view; he may be in the midst of the ocean, or gradually nearing the land; the curvature of the globe baffles the search of his telescope; but if he have a correct chronometer, and can make an astronomical observation, he may readily ascertain his longitude, and know his approximate position—how far he is from home, as well as from his intended destination. He is even enabled, at some special place, to send down his grappling-irons ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... introduced into the physical sciences when we are able to range all the indefinitely complex phenomena which arise under some simple law of force. If Bentham's aim could have been achieved, 'utility' would have been in legislative theories what gravitation is in astronomical theories. All human conduct being ruled by pain and pleasure, we could compare all motives and actions, and trace out the consequences of any given law. I shall have hereafter to consider how this conception ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... seeking in it for buried treasures of wisdom which existed only in their own wild reveries. The finest passages were little valued till they had been debased into some monstrous allegory. Louder applause was given to the lecture on fate and free-will, or to the ridiculous astronomical theories, than to those tremendous lines which disclose the secrets of the tower of hunger, or to that half-told tale of guilty love, so passionate and ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Muse The Learned Workman The Duty of All A Problem The Peculiar Ideal To Mystics The Key The Observer Wisdom and Prudence The Agreement Political Precept Majestas Populi The Difficult Union To a World-Reformer My Antipathy Astronomical Writings The Best State To Astronomers My Faith Inside and Outside Friend and Foe Light and Color Genius Beauteous Individuality Variety The imitator Geniality The Inquirers Correctness The Three Ages ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... stones an altar, with the other series marking the approaches to it? Or was it the grave of some great chieftain, with the remaining stones indicating the graves of his relations and friends? Or was it the commemoration of some battle in olden times, or the record of astronomical or geometrical discoveries, or a temple once devoted to serpent-worship, or what? Lavender, who knew absolutely nothing at all about the matter, was probably as well qualified as anybody else to answer these questions, but he ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... Royal Academical Institute in Belfast, from whence he was transferred to the mathematical professorship of Glasgow University. The subject of our present sketch commenced his University life at the early age of eleven years. Both in the chemistry classes of Dr. Thomas Thomson, and in the astronomical lectures of Dr. Nichol, he showed himself an exceedingly apt student, and gained numerous prizes. In 1845, he graduated as second wrangler and first Smith's prizeman at Cambridge University. On Sir William's career ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... from Vienna by John Sobieski in 1683 is now a small park, "Tuerkenschanz-Park," located in Doebling, one of the northwestern quarters of Greater Vienna. Only a little ways south of this park, and overlooking it, stands the Astronomical Observatory, not far from which Schnitzler has been living for a number of years. Numerous references to localities in this play indicate that he has placed the Wegrat home in that very villa quarter of Waehring, where he himself ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... talking rapidly of data which he had derived from the study of the photograph as from plumb line, level, compass, and tape, astronomical triangle, vertices, zenith, pole, and sun, declination, azimuth, solar time, parallactic angles, refraction, and a dozen ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... unparalleled for astronomical purposes, has no observatory. The largest telescope in the city is about five feet long, but the astute professor of natural philosophy in the Jesuit College who has charge of it had not the most distant idea that an eclipse of the sun would occur on ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... of Newton we now proceed to the history of his astronomical discoveries, those transcendent deductions of human reason by which he has secured to himself an immortal name, and vindicated the intellectual dignity ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... calamities or successes, but the prohibition was not understood to prevent them telling fortunes and casting nativities by the stars in the usual manner. Whenever signs of calamity were observed in the heavens by the officers of the astronomical board, and they failed to give faithful notice thereof; they were punished with one hundred and twenty blows and two years' banishment. In later times a law was passed against sorcerers and magicians, prohibiting them, under pain of death, from employing spells and incantations, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... of Mexico, and scattered about in the archaeological collections of Europe and America. The celebrated calendar stone found buried in the Plaza Mayor of Mexico, and now preserved in that city, demonstrates the astronomical advancement of the Aztecs in an incontrovertible manner, and that monument alone ...
— The Mayas, the Sources of Their History / Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, His Account of Discoveries • Stephen Salisbury, Jr.
... navigation. It is a complicated and difficult science, but by calculating the distance of the sun above the horizon, sometimes by views of stars, by knowing the speed of the ship, and by having the exact astronomical time at hand, shown on an accurate chronometer, the exact position of a ship at any ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... Dutch; and not only in that, but in the other mathematical sciences, as geometry, astronomy, music. For while waiting for the digestion of his food, they made a thousand joyous instruments and geometrical figures, and at the same time practised the astronomical canons. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... be true or not, this original incandescence of the Earth is now inductively established—or, if not established, at least rendered so highly probable that it is a generally admitted geological doctrine. Let us look first at the astronomical attributes of this once molten globe. From its rotation there result the oblateness of its form, the alternations of day and night, and (under the influence of the moon) the tides, aqueous and atmospheric. From the inclination of its ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... There he stands upon the great outward sweep of the terrace before the huge main entrance, a little figure, ridiculously disproportionate to that forty-foot arch, with the granite ball behind him—the astronomical ball, brass coopered, that represented the world, with a little adjustable tube of lenses on a gun-metal arm that focussed the sun upon just that point of the earth on which it chanced to be shining vertically. There he stands, Napoleonically grouped with his retinue ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... account of the "Original Theory or new Hypothesis of the Universe" of Thomas Wright, whose anticipations of modern speculation on the milky way, the central sun, and some other points, make him one of the most remarkable astronomical thinkers of his day. In the biography in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1793, he is described as struggling for a livelihood when a young man, and no account is given of the manner in which he obtained the handsome competence with which he emerges in 1756, or thereabouts. A few days ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... the other hand, there does exist any evidence by which the probability of certain religious facts may be shown, as clearly, even, as the probabilities of things not absolutely ascertained in astronomical or geological science, let this evidence be set before all our youth so distinctly, and the facts for which it appears inculcated upon them so steadily, that although it may be possible for the evil conduct of after life to efface, or for its earnest and ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... thought had taken upon their conquerors was shown when Alfonso X., son of Ferdinand, came to the throne. So in love was he with learning and science that he let his kingdom fall into utter confusion while he busied himself with a set of astronomical tables upon which his heart was set and in holding up to ridicule the Ptolemaic theory. If he had given less thought to the stars, and more to the humble question as to who was to be his successor, it would have ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... of temperature, occasioned not only by astronomical influences, but by local causes and geographical characteristics. For while, as a general rule, the nearer we approach the equator, the warmer we shall be, yet temperature is greatly affected by mountains, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... boast, since by means of this instrument the wonderful motions of the planets and fixed stars, and all the heavenly bodies, are revealed to us. The honor of the invention is much disputed; it is certain, however, that the celebrated Galileo was the first who improved the telescope so as to answer astronomical purposes. The name is formed from two Greek words, one signifying ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... earth it would seem that our country had contracted the engagement to contribute her share of mind, of labor, and of expense to the improvement of those parts of knowledge which lie beyond the reach of individual acquisition, and particularly to geographical and astronomical science. Looking back to the history only of the half century since the declaration of our independence, and observing the generous emulation with which the Governments of France, Great Britain, and Russia have devoted the genius, ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... small case which contained books, the latest astronomical data sheets, and a space computer and scratch board. These were obviously for Rip's personal use. He examined them. There were all the references he would need for computing orbit, speed, and just about anything ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... the entire length of the broad ceiling overhead was painted a pale blue; it was divided into two large panels with ornate borders; each panel was dotted with stars and planets in such a methodical way as to form a complete astronomical map of the visible heavens, both northern and southern hemispheres. This, with several of the large drop curtains, served as adjuncts to the well equipped observatory which was located in one of the large towers at the ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... employed, making astronomical observations to determine the position of the point, Mr. Earl obtained considerable information ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... infinitely great, and the microscopic movements of these tiny strips of contractile tissue would be no more real to us than the figures which express the rapidity of light and the vast stretches of astronomical time and distance. Moreover, no two persons have their laryngeal muscles arranged in precisely the same manner—a circumstance which of itself goes a considerable way toward explaining the almost infinite variety of human voices. The wonderful diversity ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... by which an individual astronomical fact was thus ascertained, exactly similar to those by which the same science establishes its general truths, but also (as we have shown to be the case in all legitimate reasoning) a general proposition might have been concluded instead of a single fact. In strictness, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill |
