Camille Flammarion Quotes

41 Sourced Quotes

Impossible to deny what I saw, impossible to admit it.

Camille Flammarion
The mathematician requires tact and good taste at every step of his work, and he has to learn to trust to his own instinct to distinguish between what is really worthy of his efforts and what is not; he must take care not to be the slave of his symbols, but always to have before his mind the realities which they merely serve to express.

Camille Flammarion
Diamonds, turquoises, rubies, emeralds, all the precious stones with which women love to deck themselves, are to be found in greater perfection, more beautiful, and more splendid, set in the immensity of Heaven!

Camille Flammarion
The human mind is insatiable for knowledge. It is of its essence to desire to penetrate into the nature of things, and to make conjectures on all points which it cannot thoroughly comprehend.

Camille Flammarion
The earth appears to us as an immense plain, chequered with a thousand varieties of aspects and reliefs - verdant hills, flowery valleys, mountains more or less elevated, winding rivers in the plains, lakes of fresh water, vast oceans, countries of infinite variety.

Camille Flammarion
As changeable as the iridescent bubble which the breath of a child blows by the aid of a simple drop of soapy water, and allows to fly away through the air in the rays of the cheerful sun, the terrestrial globe floats in space - the veritable sport of cosmical forces which carry it whirling through the vast heavens.

Camille Flammarion
Without an atmosphere, without this gaseous envelope whence organised beings incessantly draw what nourishes their own existence, it is impossible for us to conceive anything but immobility and the silence of death.

Camille Flammarion
The visible, tangible, ponderable, and constantly moving universe is composed of invisible, intangible, imponderable, and inert atoms.

Camille Flammarion
It has been said that nature has implanted in our bosoms a craving after the discovery of truth, and assuredly that glorious instinct is never more irresistibly awakened than when our notice is directed to what is going on in the heavens.

Camille Flammarion
What inexhaustible variety distinguishes the planets from each other!

Camille Flammarion
O Night, mysterious, sublime, and infinite! withdrawing from our eyes the veil spread above us by the light of day, giving back transparency to the Heavens, showing us the prodigious reality, the shining casket of the celestial diamonds, the innumerable stars that succeed each other interminably in immeasurable space!

Camille Flammarion
The science of the stars [astronomy] ceases to be the confidential secret of a small number of the initiated; it penetrates all understandings, it illuminates nature.

Camille Flammarion
The dial of the heavens is eternal, and the inexorable hand which slowly marks their destinies shall turn forever. It is we who say yesterday or to-morrow. For nature it is always today.

Camille Flammarion
Nothing could be more beautiful, nothing purer, and more celestial, than this lunar globe floating in the silence of space, and sending back to us as in some fairy dream the solar illumination that floods it.

Camille Flammarion
Orb of dream and mystery, pale sun of the night, solitary globe wandering in the silent firmament, the moon has in all times and among all nations peculiarly attracted attention and thought.

Camille Flammarion
The infinitely little is equal to the infinitely great.

Camille Flammarion
Thus perpetual motion bears the world along! The sun moves through space; the earth moves round him, letting herself be carried along in his flight; the moon moves, circulating round us, while we gravitate round the radiant hearth which precipitates itself into the eternal void.

Camille Flammarion
Astronomy is the most accurate of the sciences. All the truths which it teaches are absolutely demonstrated, and cannot be disputed by any mind which gives itself the trouble, or rather the pleasure, to gain information in the study of this admirable science.

Camille Flammarion
The most fairy-like transformations of our theaters, the most resplendent pageants of our military reviews, the most sumptuous marvels on which the human race can pride itself - all that we admire, all that we envy on the Earth - is as nothing compared with the unheard-of wonders scattered through Infinitude.

Camille Flammarion
If the comparison were not offensive to the sun-god, we might say that he [the Sun] is like the spider at the centre of his web. In the net of his attraction the worlds are sustained. Relatively to his magnitude and might, the planets are but toys turning round him.

Camille Flammarion
The sun is but a star; he will meet with the fate of his sisters; suns, like worlds, are born to die, and in eternity their long career will have endured but ' the space of a morning.'

Camille Flammarion
Like the eagle which rises higher and higher in the upper regions where the atmosphere itself loses its density, so we sail ourselves over-looking the mysterious horizons of the future.

Camille Flammarion
Le Verrier-without leaving his study, without even looking at the sky-had found the unknown planet [Neptune] solely by mathematical calculation, and, as it were, touched it with the tip of his pen!

Camille Flammarion
Nature is immense in the little as in the great, or, to speak more correctly, for here there is neither little nor great.

Camille Flammarion
Attempt to understand it! As well might the ant attempt to drink the ocean!

Camille Flammarion
I have ears only for hearing you... and intelligence only for trying to understand you. Speak, then, fearlessly and directly, and design to describe the impressions, unknown to me.

Camille Flammarion
The torch of progress was lit and could not be extinguished.

Camille Flammarion
The Heavens afford us a perennial store of treasure, wherein the thinker, poet or artist can find inexhaustible subjects of contemplation.

Camille Flammarion
Eclipses, like comets, have always been interpreted as the indication of inevitable calamities. Human vanity sees the finger of God making signs to us on the least pretext, as if we were the end and aim of universal creation.

Camille Flammarion
What, indeed, is the Present Moment? It is an open trap through which the Future falls incessantly into the gulf of the Past.

Camille Flammarion