John Herschel Quote

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.]

On the Nature and Contraction of the Sun and Fixed Stars, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Volume 85, 1795 (p. 60)