John Herschel Quotes

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Of the splendid constellation of great names... we admire the living and revere dead far too warmly and too deeply to suffer us sit in judgment on their respective claims to in this or that particular discovery; to balance mathematical skill of one against the experimental dexterity of another, or the philosophical acumen a third. So long as "one star differs from another in glory,"—so long as there shall exist varieties, or even incompatibilities of excellence,—so long will the admiration of mankind be found sufficient for all who merit it.

John Herschel
Time! Time! Time! — we must not impugn the Scripture Chronology, but we must interpret it in accordance with whatever shall appear on fair enquiry to be the truth for there cannot be two truths. And really there is scope enough: for the lives of the Patriarchs may as reasonably be extended to 5000 or 50000 years apiece as the days of Creation to as many thousand millions of years.

John Herschel
Geology, in the magnitude and sublimity of the objects of which it treats, undoubtedly ranks, in the scale of the sciences, next to astronomy.

John Herschel
To ascend to the origin of things and speculate on the creation, is not the business of the natural philosopher. An humbler field is sufficient for him in the endeavor to discover, as far as our faculties will permit; what are these primary qualities impressed on matter, and to discover the spirit of the laws of nature

John Herschel
The novel, in its best form, I regard as one of the most powerful engines of civilization ever invented.

John Herschel
Man is constituted as a speculative being; he contemplates the world, and the objects around him, not with a passive indifferent eye, but as a system disposed with order and design.

John Herschel
Speculations apparently the most unprofitable have almost invariably been those from which the greatest practical applications have emanated.

John Herschel
Almost all the greatest discoveries in astronomy have resulted from what we have elsewhere termed Residual Phenomena, of a qualitative or numerical kind, of such portions of the numerical or quantitative results of observation as remain outstanding and unaccounted for, after subducting and allowing for all that would result from the strict application of known principles.

John Herschel
It can hardly be pressed forcibly enough on the attention of the student of nature, that there is scarcely any natural phenomenon which can be fully and completely explained, in all its circumstances, without a union of several, perhaps of all, the sciences.

John Herschel
In whatever state of knowledge we may conceive man to be placed, his progress towards a yet higher state need never fear a check, but must continue till the last existence of society.

John Herschel
Every student who enters upon a scientific pursuit, especially if at a somewhat advanced period of life, will find not only that he has much to learn, but much also to unlearn.

John Herschel
To the natural philosopher, there is no natural object unimportant or trifling. From the least of Nature's works he may learn the greatest lessons.

John Herschel
Science is the knowledge of many, orderly and methodically digested and arranged, so as to become attainable by one.

John Herschel
The sparks of information from time to time struck out, instead of glimmering for a moment, and dying away in oblivion, began to accumulate into a genial glow, and the flame was at length kindled which was speedily to acquire the strength and rapid spread of a conflagration.

John Herschel
No doubt the testimony of natural reason, on whatever exercised, must, of necessity, stop short of those truths which it is the object of revelation to make known; still it places the existence and personal attributes of the Deity on such grounds as to render doubts absurd and atheism ridiculous.

John Herschel
Experience has been declared, with equal truth and poetry, to adopt occasionally the tone, and attain to something like the certainty, of Prophecy. In the contemplating mind the past and the future are linked by a bond as indissoluble as that which connects them in their actual sequence.

John Herschel
He must have studied astronomy to little purpose, who can suppose man to be the only object of his Creator's care, or who does not see in the vast and wonderful apparatus around us provision for other races of animated beings.

John Herschel
The great mystery, however, is to conceive how so enormous a conflagration [as the sun] can be kept up. Every discovery in chemical science here leaves us completely at a loss, or rather, seems to remove farther the prospect of probable explanation.

John Herschel
The constellations seem to have been almost purposely named and delineated to cause as much confusion and inconvenience as possible. Innumerable snakes twine through long and contorted areas of the heavens, where no memory can follow them; bears, lions and fishes, large and small, northern and southern, confuse all nomenclature.

John Herschel
The Milky Way is like sand, not strewn evenly as with a sieve, but as if flung down by handfuls (and both hands at once), leaving dark spaces in between.

John Herschel
The stars are the land-marks of the universe...

John Herschel
Seeing is in some respects an art which must be learnt. To make a person see with such a power is nearly the same as if I were asked to make him play one of Handel's fugues upon the organ. Many a night I have been practicing to see, and it would be strange if one did not acquire a certain dexterity by such constant practice.

John Herschel
Giant Size and Giant Strength are ugly qualities without beneficence. But the sun is the almoner of the Almighty, the delegated dispenser to us of light and warmth, as well as the centre of attraction; and as such the immediate source of all our comforts, and indeed of the very possibility of our existence on earth.

John Herschel
Man is the undisputed lord of the creation. The strongest and fiercest of his fellow-creatures - the whale, the elephant, the eagle, and the tiger - are slaughtered by him to supply his most capricious wants, or tamed to do him service, or imprisoned to make him sport.

John Herschel
Many of the operations of nature are carried on in her great laboratory which we cannot comprehend, but now and then we see some of the tools with which she is at work. [The many telescopic comets may restore to the sun what is lost by the emission of light.]

John Herschel