Christiaan Huygens Quotes

24 Sourced Quotes

Here we may mount from this dull Earth, and viewing it from on high, consider whether Nature has laid out all her Cost and Finery upon this small Speck of Dirt.

Christiaan Huygens
But indeed all the whole story of Comets and Planets, and the Production of the World, is founded upon such poor and trifling grounds, that I have often wonder'd how an ingenious man could spend all that pains in making such fancies hang together.

Christiaan Huygens
Nature seems to court variety in her Works, and may have made them widely different from ours either in their matter or manner of Growth, in their outward Shape, or their inward Contexture; she may have made them such as neither our Understanding nor Imagination can conceive.

Christiaan Huygens
For if 25 years are required for a Bullet out of a Cannon, with its utmost Swiftness, to travel from the Sun to us... such a Bullet would spend almost seven hundred thousand years in its Journey between us and the fix'd Stars. And yet when in a clear night we look upon them, we cannot think them above some few miles over our heads.

Christiaan Huygens
We know nothing very certainly, but everything only probably, and the probability has degrees that are widely different.

Christiaan Huygens
If any one is resolved to find fault with it, let him first be sure he understands it.

Christiaan Huygens
As happens in all the sciences in which geometry is applied to matter, the demonstrations concerning Optics are founded on truths drawn from experience.

Christiaan Huygens
For my part, I shall be very well contented, and shall count I have done a great matter, if I can but come to any knowledge of the nature of things, as they now are, never troubling my head about their beginning, or how they were made, knowing that to be out of the reach of human Knowledge, or even Conjecture.

Christiaan Huygens
It is surrounded by a thin flat ring, inclined to the ecliptic, and nowhere touches the body of the planet.

Christiaan Huygens
But what God has bin pleas'd to place beyond the Region of the Stars, is as much above our Knowledge, as it is our Habitation. Or what if beyond such a determinate space he has left an infinite Vacuum; to show, how inconsiderable is all that he has made is, to what his Power could, had he so pleas'd, have produc'd?

Christiaan Huygens
We shall be less apt to admire what this World calls Great, shall nobly despise those Trifles the generality of Men set their Affections on, when we know that there are a multitude of such Earths inhabited and adorned as Well as our own.

Christiaan Huygens
... the power of this line [the cycloid] to measure time.

Christiaan Huygens
These Gentlemen must be told, that they take too much upon themselves when they pretend to appoint how far and no farther Men shall go in their Searches, and to set bounds to other Mens Industry; as if they knew the Marks that God has placed to Knowledge...

Christiaan Huygens
It's evident God had no design to make a particular Enumeration in the Holy Scriptures, of all the Works of his Creation.

Christiaan Huygens
How vast those Orbs must be, and how inconsiderable this Earth, the Theatre upon which all our mighty Designs, all our Navigations, and all our Wars are transacted, is when compared to them. A very fit consideration, and matter of Reflection, for those Kings and Princes who sacrifice the Lives of so many People, only to flatter their Ambition in being Masters of some pitiful corner of this small Spot.

Christiaan Huygens
I do not mind at all that [Newton] is not a Cartesian provided he does not offer us suppositions like that of attraction.

Christiaan Huygens
I believe that we do not know anything for certain, but everything probably.

Christiaan Huygens
One may conceive light to spread successively, by spherical waves.

Christiaan Huygens
I had not thought of this regular decrease of gravity, namely that it is as the inverse square of the distance; this is a new and highly remarkable property of gravity.

Christiaan Huygens
Now since in so many Things they... agree, what can be more probable than that in others they agree too; and that the other Planets are as beautiful and as well stock'd with Inhabitants as the Earth? Or what shadow of Reason can there be why they should not?

Christiaan Huygens
What a wonderful and amazing Scheme have we here of the magnificent Vastness of the Universe! So many Suns, so many Earths, and every one of them stock'd with so many Herbs, Trees and Animals, and adorn'd with so many Seas and Mountains! And how must our wonder and admiration be encreased when we consider the prodigious distance and multitude of the Stars?

Christiaan Huygens
A Man that is of Copernicus's Opinion, that this Earth of ours is a Planet, carry'd round and enlighten'd by the Sun, like the rest of the Planets, cannot but sometimes think, that it's not improbable that the rest of the Planets have their Dress and Furniture, and perhaps their Inhabitants too as well as this Earth of ours...

Christiaan Huygens
Since 'tis certain that Earth and Jupiter have their Water and Clouds, there is no reason why the other Planets should be without them. I can't say that they are exactly of the same nature with our Water; but that they should be liquid their use requires, as their beauty does that they be clear. This Water of ours, in Jupiter or Saturn, would be frozen up instantly by reason of the vast distance of the Sun. Every Planet therefore must have its own Waters of such a temper not liable to Frost.

Christiaan Huygens
There are many degrees of Probable, some nearer Truth than others, in the determining of which lies the chief exercise of our Judgment.

Christiaan Huygens