"Principia" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... foresight, are equally rare in all departments of science. Ignorance ascribes to supernatural inspiration the sagacity derived from extensive observation of nature and history; while philosophy traces to the same source the inspiration of Moses and Mohammed, of Isaiah and Apollo, of the Principia, Paradise Lost, and the Apocalypse, of Rothschild, Napoleon, and Bismarck. Some geniuses expend themselves in poems, some in paintings, others in predictions. All are alike imperfect and fallible. Once in centuries, perhaps, we are astonished ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... after the manner of beasts, to be led by them;" by the advantage of which sloth and dullness, ignorance is now become so powerful a tyrant, as it hath set true philosophy, physics, and divinity in a pillory; and written over the first, "Contra negantem principia;"[22] over the second, "Virtus specifica;"[23] over the third, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... the use, Known Quantities from unknown to educe; And made—no doubt to that old dame's surprise— The Christ-Cross-Row his ladder to the skies. Yet, whatsoe'er Geometricians say, Her lessons were his true PRINCIPIA! ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... else. Of ancient writers, there are few except Hannibal (who used it on crossing the Alps) and Julius Caesar, that notice it. Bacon treats of the instrument in his "Novum Organum;" from which Newton cabbaged his ideas in his "Principia," in the most unprincipled manner. The thermometer remained stationary till the time of Robinson Crusoe, who clearly suggested, if he did not invent the register, now universally adopted, which so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various
... into one beautiful doctrine. He showed not only that those laws are true, but he showed why they must be true, and why no other laws could have been true. He proved to demonstration in his immortal work, the "Principia," that the explanation of the famous planetary laws was to be sought in the attraction of gravitation. Newton set forth that a power of attraction resided in the sun, and as a necessary consequence of that attraction every planet must revolve ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... fundamental distinctions ever made in philosophy; the distinction between action and passion, between mind and matter. Matter is passive, mind is active. The very first law of motion laid down in the Principia, a work so much admired by M. Comte and Mr. Mill, is based on the idea that matter is wholly inert, and destitute of power either to move itself, or to check itself when moved by anything ab extra. This will not be denied. But is mind equally passive? Is there nothing in existence which ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... results of his discoveries were brought together in one great book, the "Principia." Newton was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... delight in Milton—whom Fox did not appreciate—taking pleasure in reciting, from 'Paradise Lost,' the grand speech of Belial before the assembled powers of Pandemonium. Another of Pitt's favourite books was Newton's 'Principia.' Again, the Earl of Chatham's favourite book was 'Barrow's Sermons,' which he read so often as to be able to repeat them from memory; while Burke's companions were Demosthenes, Milton, Bolingbroke, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... compendium of theology, in which he proved, from a multitude of scriptural texts, that the heavens, sun, and moon move about the earth, which stands still in the centre. In England we see similar theological efforts, even after they had become evidently futile. Hutchinson's Moses's Principia, Dr. Samuel Pike's Sacred Philosophy, the writings of Horne, Bishop Horsley, and President Forbes contain most earnest attacks upon the ideas of Newton, such attacks being based upon Scripture. Dr. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... embryo, in its infancy; from the beginning, from its birth; ab initio[Lat], ab ovo[Lat], ab incunabilis[Lat], ab origine[Lat]. Phr. let's get going! let's get this show on the road! up and at 'em! aller Anfang ist schwer [Ger]; dimidium facti qui coepit habet [Lat][Cicero]; omnium rerum principia parva ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... appellati quoque interpretatione Graeca possint Druidae videri. Enimvero quidquid adnascatur illis, e coelo missum putant signumque esse electae ab ipso deo arboris. Est autem id rarum admodum inventu et repertum magna religione petitur, et ante omnia sexta luna, quae principia mensium annorumque his facit, et seculi post tricesimum annum, quia jam virium abunde habeat, nec sit sui dimidia. Omnia sanantem appellantes suo vocabulo, sacrificiis epulisque rite sub arbore praeparatis, duos admovent candidi coloria tauros, quorum cornua ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... will doe the best I can: But I thinke it the difficiller, since ye denie the thing it selfe in generall: for as it is said in the logick schools, Contra negantem principia non est disputandum. Alwaies for that part, that witchcraft, and Witches haue bene, and are, the former part is clearelie proved by the Scriptures, and the last by dailie ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I
... stay a little longer while you were about it. Milton and Ben Jonson were still alive; Bacon's Novum Organum was just coming out; and in thirty or forty years you could have had L'Allegro, Il Penseroso and Paradise Lost; Newton's Principia, too, in 1687. Perhaps these were all too serious and heavy for your national taste; still one sometimes likes to claim things one cannot fully appreciate. And then, too, if you had once begun to stay, waiting for the great things to happen and the great books ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... perpetually changing perturbations. To discover a few of these perturbations, and to assign their nature and in a few rare cases their numerical value, was the object which Newton proposed to himself in writing his famous book, the 'Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis' [Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy], Notwithstanding the incomparable sagacity of its author, the 'Principia' contained merely a rough outline of planetary perturbations, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... at the history of the biological sciences during the last quarter of a century is sufficient to justify the assertion, that the most potent instrument for the extension of the realm of natural knowledge which has come into men's hands, since the publication of Newton's 'Principia,' is ...
— The Reception of the 'Origin of Species' • Thomas Henry Huxley
... and his bathing, and his manners the time and attention which the Short-Hair or "plain blunt man" reserves for reflection on the graver concerns of life, and especially on the elevation of his fellow-men, and this presumption even a career of philanthropy and the composition of the "Principia" would not in many minds suffice to overthrow. We believe it is authentic that General Grant never got over the impression produced on him by seeing that Mr. Motley parted his hair in the middle, and it is said—and if not true is not unlikely,—that ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... exchange of commodities, banking, and whatever relates to it, currency, the rise and fall of prices, the rates of profits, are all subject to laws as universal and unerring as those which Newton deduces in the "Principia," or Donald McKay applies in the construction of a clipper ship. As they are manifested by more complicated phenomena, man may not know them as accurately as he knows the laws of astronomy or mechanics; but he can no more doubt the existence of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Master's degree, to a Fellowship of All Souls, the next year began his friendship with John Evelyn, and he was subsequently chosen Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College[54] and Savilian Professor at Oxford. Isaac Newton in the "Principia" cites him as an authority on mathematics, and, had he never turned his attention to architecture, he would still have taken high rank in other ways. By 1663, as appears by a letter of Thomas Sprat, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, he was looked ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... mathematics, and from the time he left College his life became a series of wonderful physical discoveries. As early as 1666, he discovered the law of gravitation, but it was not till the eve of the Revolution that his "Principia" revealed to the world his new ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... which now looks dreadfully like that of a wiseacre! In Mathematics even,—he did invent the Differential Calculus, but it is certain also he never could believe in Newton's System of the Universe, nor would read the PRINCIPIA at all. For the rest, he was in quarrel about Newton with the Royal Society here; ill seen, it is probable, by this sage and the other. To the Hanover Official Gentlemen devouring their English dead-horse, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... of the south, because the southern stars were in that climate unseen. Matter of generation: Annon sicut lac mulsisti me, et sicut caseum coagulasti me? &c. Matter of minerals: Habet argentum venarum suarum principia; et auro locus est in quo conflatur, ferrum de terra tollitur, et lapis solutus calore in aes vertitur; and so forwards ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... additions from this great authority; and there is not even mention made of the polar compression of the globe, although the experiments on the pendulum by Richer had been made nine years prior to the appearance of the Cambridge edition. Newton's 'Principia Mathematica Philosophie Naturalis' were not communicated in manuscript to the Royal Society until April, 1686. Much uncertainty seems to prevail regarding the birth-place of Varenius. Jaecher says it was England, while, according to 'La Biographie Universelle' (b.xlvii., p. ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... by the aid of the Royal Society [29] that Newton [30] published his Principia. If all the books in the world, except the Philosophical Transactions, [31] were destroyed, it is safe to say that the foundations of physical science would remain unshaken, and that the vast intellectual progress ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... best be led to the true knowledge of God and of the Mediator Christ, is hard to say. I cannot myself wonder enough who it is that has imposed so much upon your Reverence and many others in the Fatherland, concerning the docility of these people and their good nature, the proper principia religionis and vestigia legis naturae which are said to be among them; in whom I have as yet been able to discover hardly a single good point, except that they do not speak so jeeringly and so scoffingly of the godlike and glorious majesty ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... learn'd— To loftier use those elements he turn'd. Forced th' unconscious signs, by process rare, Known quantities with unknown to compare; And, by their aid, profound deductions drew From depths of truth his teacher never knew. Yet the true authoress of all was she!— Newton's Principia were ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.03.23 • Various
... Mr. Newman's principle. The questions on which you seek to enlighten them are, many of them, of the most intricate and difficult character,—are, all of them, dependent on principles, and involve controversies, with which the great bulk of mankind are no more competent to deal than with Newton's 'Principia.' An easy, and often erroneous assent, on ill-comprehended data, is all that you can expect of the mass; and how can it be their duty, when it may often be their ruin, to act upon this? A superficial knowledge is all that you can give them; thorough investigation is ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... Galileo's fate, to withhold from publication during his lifetime. Besides the "Discourse on Method" (1637), with the treatises on dioptrics, meteors, and geometry, his principal works were his "Meditations" addressed to the Deans of the Faculty of Theology in the University of Paris; the "Principia Philosophiae," and the "Traite des Passions de L'Ame," in which, he handled morals. Descartes died at Stockholm, whither he had been summoned by Queen Christina, on February 11, 1649. His work stands a landmark in the ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... It would now perhaps be viewed by the majority of critics rather as a necessary clearing of antiquated rubbish from the ground on which the new construction was to rise. Next to it among his works are usually ranked 'Meditationes de Prima Philosophia,' and 'Principia Philosophiae.' ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... accident, to lead it to a proper channel; to prevent its current from "turning awry and losing the name of action!" We know not whether the story of Newton's apple be true, but it may serve for an illustration, and if that apple had not fallen, where would have been his Principia? If the Lady Egerton had not missed her way in a wood, Milton might have spent the time in which he wrote "Comus," in writing "Accidence of Grammar;" and if Ellwood, the quaker, had not asked him what he could say on "Paradise Regained," that beautiful poem (so greatly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XIII, No. 370, Saturday, May 16, 1829. • Various
... me reasonably curteously. April 12th, my wife churched, and we receyved the communion. John Carpe browght his wife from Prage to Trebona. April 17th, Doctor Reinholt cam to Trebona. April 22nd, nocte hora 9 terribilis et falsa accusatio vel suspicio, quod Puccia annunciavit contra D. K. et ipsum principia (?). May 1st, Mr. Carpio rid to my Lord to the holy well at the glass hows, four myles from Trebona, with my letters of purgation for Puccies his attempts or intents in his letters to my bond and Mr. Kelly, unknown to me. May 4th, Mr. Carpio browght me ...
— The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee - And the Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts • John Dee
... of Earth-Quakes, he subjoins.[1] Nulla res consummata est dum incipit. Nec in hac tantum re omnium maxima ac involutissima, in qua etiam cum multum actum erit, omnis aetas, quod agat inveniet; sed in omni alio Negotio, longe semper a perfecto fuere Principia. ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... loquebatur cum eo, ut frater Leo refert, de capitulo paupertatis," f^o 13a, cf. Spec., 9a, "S. Franciscus, teste fr. Leone, frequenter et cum multo studio recitabat fabulam ... quod oportebat finaliter ordinem humiliari et ad sue humilitatis principia confitenda et tenenda ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... a few particulars, by way of illustration. More wrote his "Utopia," Bacon wrote all the bulk of his philosophical work, in Latin; Newton wrote his "Principia" in Latin. Keble's Lectures on Poetry (if their worth and the name of Keble may together save me from bathos) were delivered in Latin. Our Vice-Chancellor, our Public Orator still talk Latin, securing for it what ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... the help of language, letters and the printing press. Newton was to all intents and purposes a "sport" of a dull agricultural stock, and his intellectual powers are to a certain extent propagated by the grafting of the "Principia," his brain-shoot, on us. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... diversos reperias, ac multis insitam opinionem non initia nostri, non finem, non denique homines dis curae; ideo creberrime tristia in bonos, laeta apud deteriores esse; contra alii fatum quidem congruere rebus putant, sed non e vagis stellis, verum apud principia et nexus naturalium causarum; ac tamen electionem vitae nobis relinquunt, quam ubi elegeris, certum imminentium ordinem; neque mala ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... of any new device into the symbolism of logic is necessarily a momentous event. In logic a new device should not be introduced in brackets or in a footnote with what one might call a completely innocent air. (Thus in Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica there occur definitions and primitive propositions expressed in words. Why this sudden appearance of words? It would require a justification, but none is given, or could be given, since the procedure is in fact illicit.) But if the introduction of a new device ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... He seems himself to have taken a broad view of God's dealings in the moral world, analogous to that which the recent physical discoveries of his time had exhibited in the natural. In the same manner as Newton in his Principia had, by an extension of terrestrial mechanics, explained the movements of the celestial orbs, and united under one grand generalization the facts of terrestrial and celestial motion; so Butler aimed at exhibiting as instances of one and the same set of moral laws the moral ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... rule, however, I have been constrained to make a few exceptions. Sir Thomas More's *Utopia* was written in Latin, but one does not easily conceive a library to be complete without it. And could one exclude Sir Isaac Newton's *Principia*, the masterpiece of the greatest physicist that the world has ever seen? The law of gravity ought to have, and does have, a powerful sentimental interest ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... write the entire life of man, and picture every possible aspect of humanity, in a hundred books to be known as "La Comedie Humaine." It was a conception as great and daring as the plan of Pliny to write out all human knowledge, or the ambition of Newton as shown in the "Principia," or the works of Baron von Humboldt as revealed in the "Cosmos," or the idea of Herbert Spencer as bodied forth in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... to what is said of the centrifugal force, that it does not at all belong to circular relative motion, I do not see how this follows from the experiment which is brought to prove it. See Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, in Schol. Def. VIII. For the water in the vessel at that time wherein it is said to have the greatest relative circular motion, has, I think, no motion at all; as is plain from ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... His shoe becoming loose, he stopped again, but being immediately raised by his attendants upon their shoulders, and unanimously saluted by the title of EMPEROR, he came amidst auspicious acclamations and drawn swords into the Principia [677] in the camp; all who met him joining in the cavalcade, as if they had been privy to the design. Upon this, sending some soldiers to dispatch Galba and Piso, he said nothing else in his address to the soldiery, to secure their affections, than these few words: "I shall be content ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... oculis solum pecudum miranda tueri More nec effusis in humum grave pascere corpus; Nosse fidem rerum dubiasque exquirere causas, Ingenium sacrare caputque attollere caelo, Scire quot et quae sint magno fatalia mundo Principia. ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... as early as 1666; but the erroneous estimate which was then generally received of the earth's diameter prevented him from disclosing it for sixteen years; and it was not till 1687, on the eve of the Revolution, that the "Principia" revealed to the world his new theory ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... philosophising, for which we are indebted to Newton, but to which no religious philosophiser pays due attention. Newton himself, in his Theistical character, wrote and talked as though most blissfully ignorant of that rule. The passages given above from his 'Principia' palpably violate it. But Theists, however learned, pay little regard to any rules of philosophising, which put in peril their fundamental crotchet. If they did, Atheism would need no apologist, and Theism have no defenders; for Theism, in all its varieties, presupposes a supernatural Causer ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... ought especially to be assured that those who lavish abuse on the great men of modern times, are equally incapable of perceiving the real excellence of established canons, are ignorant of the commonest and most acknowledged principia of the art, blind to the most palpable and comprehensible of its beauties, incapable of distinguishing, if left to themselves, a master's work from the vilest school copy, and founding their applause of those great works which they praise, either in ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... Alaric plundered Rome in 410. St. Marcella was scourged by them for the treasures which she had long before distributed among the poor. All that time she trembled only for her dear spiritual pupil, Principia (not her daughter, as some have reputed her by mistake,) and falling at the feet of the cruel soldiers, she begged, with many tears, that they would offer her no insult. God moved them to compassion. They conducted them both ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... L.'s, the then well-known dame school in Clifton, where for three years—prior to migrating to a Public School—I was well grounded in all the mysticisms of Kennedy's Latin Primer and Smith's First Greek Principia. ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... Theol., 1a 2ae, qu. 110, art. 4, ad 1: "Sicut ab essentia animae effluunt eius potentiae, quae sunt operum principia, ita etiam ab ipsa gratia effluunt virtutes [theologicae] in potentias animae, per quas [virtutes] ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... impossible to conceive that an acrobat who exercises gymnastic tricks upon the backs of galloping horses in an American circus could discharge the functions of a First Lord of the Treasury or a Justice in the High Court of Judicature, or that a pantaloon in a Christmas pantomime could think out the Principia of Sir Isaac Newton or the Novum Organum of Lord Bacon. The fact was, the author was a conspicuous, shining light of his generation; the associate of princes and ministers; who, from the commanding position of his exalted eminence, cast his eyes over wide views of mankind ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... esse [Greek: phlogiston] & similia alia, mineralibus, Metallis, Gemmis, Lapidibus, Plantis, Animalibus insunt. Ergo per commune aliquod principium, & subiectum, insunt. At tale principium non sunt Elementa. Nullam enim habent ad tales qualitates producendas potentiam. Ergo alia principia, unde ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... by the aid of the Royal Society that Newton published his "Principia." If all the books in the world, except the Philosophical Transactions, were destroyed, it is safe to say that the foundations of physical science would remain unshaken, and that the vast intellectual progress of the last two centuries would be largely, though incompletely, ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley |
