Johann Heinrich Lambert Quotes

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How small a part of our system is known! What a pitiful molehill is our Earth; and, how insignificant are we — we who creep so proudly on her surface.

Johann Heinrich Lambert
I wonder what an astronomy would look like which has been rigorously demonstrated in every respect. It seems as if one can get to the truth only through a series of hypotheses, and that one has to reject each previous one to espouse the next and to abandon it again.

Johann Heinrich Lambert
Happy intelligences, how excellent must be the frame of your nature! Myriads of ages pass away with you, like so many days with the inhabitants of the Earth. Our largest measurements are your infinitely small quantities; our millions the elements of your arithmetic; we breathe but a moment; our lot is error and death; yours science and immortality.

Johann Heinrich Lambert
A hypothesis will in the end become a truth when all phenomena let themselves be derived from it in a natural and in an obvious manner, when all these consequences are connected with one another and with the general reasons, in short, when that hypothesis is consistent in all its parts with itself.

Johann Heinrich Lambert
In a grain of sand, in a drop of water, we discover worlds and inhabitants; besides, our best microscopes only shew us the whales and elephants of those worlds; they are still far from reaching the insects.

Johann Heinrich Lambert
Nothing is more simple than the plan of the Solar System...

Johann Heinrich Lambert
If we admit the existence of a Supreme Disposer, who brought order out of Chaos, and gave form to the universe, it will follow that the universe is a perfect work, the impression, the character, the reflected image of the perfections of its author.

Johann Heinrich Lambert
I am undecided whether or not the visible Milky Way is but one of countless others all of which form an entire system. Perhaps the light from these infinitely distant galaxies is so faint that we cannot see them.

Johann Heinrich Lambert
While we raise our eyes to the firmament, we see the whole of the stars attached, as it were, to the same vaulted surface; this, however, is an optical illusion; they are, in reality, at very different distances from us, as well as from the Sun, which is the fixed star of our system.

Johann Heinrich Lambert
The firmament must be more enduring than things on our earth and the empires of the world.

Johann Heinrich Lambert
We suppose the existence of a wise and beneficent Being who presided over the formation of the World, and who is pleased to display his infinite perfections on this illustrious theatre.

Johann Heinrich Lambert
I leave it undecided whether the Milky Way visible to us still belongs to uncounted others and forms with these a whole system. Perhaps the light of this so immeasurably distant Milky Way is so weak that we are unable to see it.

Johann Heinrich Lambert
Something mysteriously formed, Born before heaven and earth. In the silence and the void, Standing alone and unchanging, Ever present and in motion.

Johann Heinrich Lambert
But, are the faculties of our nature equal to this? and what are the principles which ought to guide us in these researches?

Johann Heinrich Lambert
We would wish to discover the Plan of the Universe, and the means employed by the Eternal Architect in the execution of his magnificent design. We will first contemplate the System of which we make a part, and of which our Sun is the center. Thence we will ascend towards those Suns and those innumerable Worlds which are scattered through the immensity of space.

Johann Heinrich Lambert
We will next proceed by the lamp of experience, consulting with care the observations deposited in the records of astronomy.

Johann Heinrich Lambert
This is all to which weak and limited beings can pretend, beings who occupy a point, and last but a moment in this mighty edifice built for eternity.

Johann Heinrich Lambert
We will found our hypothesis in the general laws of motion, whose effects are every where the same, and whose influence extends to the utmost limits of matter.

Johann Heinrich Lambert
In order to supply the defects of experience, we will have recourse to the probable conjectures of analogy, conclusions which we will bequeath to our posterity to be ascertained by new observations, which, if we augur rightly, will serve to establish our theory and to carry it gradually nearer to absolute certainty.

Johann Heinrich Lambert