18th-century Astronomer Quotes

William Herschel
James Bradley
William Henry Smyth
David Rittenhouse

We need not hesitate to admit that the Sun is richly stored with inhabitants.

William Herschel
William Herschel
The direct tendency of (Astronomy) is to dilate the heart with universal benevolence, and to enlarge its views.

David Rittenhouse
David Rittenhouse
The Carmelites and other religious orders, who subsist only on the productions of the vegetable world, live to a greater age than those who feed on meat, and in general herbivorous persons are milder in their dispositions than other people.

What! the girl I adore by another embraced?
What! the balm of her breath shall another man taste?
What! pressed in the dance by another's man's knee?
What! panting recline on another than me?
Sir, she's yours; you have pressed from the grape its fine blue,
From the rosebud you've shaken the tremulous dew;
What you've touched you may take. Pretty waltzer—adieu!

In fabricating new constellations, puerility and meanness aided blind zeal in ransacking the heavens for amorphotae, or unformed stars, wherewith to wheedle accidental rulers of the hour, by exalting them and a heterogeneous assemblage of modern implements, among the heroes and classical symbols of remote ages.

William Henry Smyth
William Henry Smyth
Hitherto we have considered the apparent motion of the star about its true place, as made only in a plane parallel to the ecliptic, in which case it appears to describe a circle in that plane; but since, when we judge of the place and motion of a star, we conceive it to be in the surface of a sphere, whose centre is our eye, 'twill be necessary to reduce the motion in that plane to what it would really appear on the surface of such a sphere, or (which will be equivalent) to what it would appear on a plane touching such a sphere in the star's true place.

James Bradley
James Bradley
Compared with the splendour, the amplitude, the august motions, and the ideas of infinity which the celestial vault presents, the most resplendent terrestrial scenes sink into inanity, and appear unworthy of being set in competition with the glories of the sky.

We cannot long observe the beauteous Parts of the visible Creation, not only those of this World on which we live, but also the Myriads of bright Bodies round us, with any Attention, without being convinced, that a Power supreme, and of a Nature unknown to us, presides in, and governs it...

I have searched through the heavens, and nowhere have I found a trace of God.