Maria Mitchell Quotes

55 Sourced Quotes

We call the stars garnet and sapphire; but these are, at best, vague terms. Our language has not terms enough to signify the different delicate shades; our factories have not the stuff whose hues might make a chromatic scale for them.

Maria Mitchell
Our faculty meetings always try me in this respect: we do things that other colleges have done before. We wait and ask for precedent. If the earth had waited for a precedent, it never would have turned on its axis!

Maria Mitchell
A young sailor boy came to see me to-day. It pleases me to have these lads seek me on their return from their first voyage, and tell me how much they have learned about navigation.

Maria Mitchell
But why look back at all? Why turn your eyes to your shadow, when, by looking upward, you see your rainbow in the same direction?

Maria Mitchell
There is this great danger in student life. Now, we rest all upon what Socrates said, or what Copernicus taught; how can we dispute authority which has come down to us, all established, for ages? We must at least question it; we cannot accept anything as granted, beyond the first mathematical formulae. Question everything else.

Maria Mitchell
Study as if you were going to live forever; live as if you were going to die tomorrow.

Maria Mitchell
The world of learning is so broad, and the human soul is so limited in power! We reach forth and strain every nerve, but we seize only a bit of the curtain that hides the infinite from us.

Maria Mitchell
Altogether, St. Louis is a growing place, and the West has a large hand and a strong grasp.

Maria Mitchell
Why can not a man act himself, be himself, and think for himself? It seems to me that naturalness alone is power; that a borrowed word is weaker than our own weakness, however small we may be?

Maria Mitchell
I was a little doubtful about the propriety of going to the Mammoth Cave without a gentleman escort, but if two ladies travel alone they must have the courage of men.

Maria Mitchell
There is something of the same pleasure in noticing the hues of the stars that there is in looking at a flower garden in autumn.

Maria Mitchell
I know I shall be called heterodox, and that unseen lightning flashes and unheard thunderbolts will be playing around my head, when I say that women will never be profound students in any other department except music while they give four hours a day to the practice of music.

Maria Mitchell
No woman should say, 'I am but a woman!' But a woman! What more can you ask to be?

Maria Mitchell
There is a God, and he is good, I say to myself. I try to increase my trust in this, my only article of creed.

Maria Mitchell
The phrase 'popular science' has in itself a touch of absurdity. That knowledge which is popular is not scientific.

Maria Mitchell
An English village could never be mistaken for an American one: the outline against the sky differs; a thatched cottage makes a very wavy line on the blue above.

Maria Mitchell
We have a hunger of the mind which asks for knowledge of all around us, and the more we gain, the more is our desire; the more we see, the more are we capable of seeing.

Maria Mitchell
I saw, in looking over Cooper, elements of a comet of 1825 which resemble what I get out for this, from my own observations, but I cannot rely upon my own.

Maria Mitchell
A meteor seems to come like a messenger from departed spirits.

Maria Mitchell
People have to learn sometimes not only how much the heart, but how much the head, can bear.

Maria Mitchell
It is sad to see a woman sacrificing the ties of the affections even to do good.

Maria Mitchell
The love of one's own sex is precious, for it is neither provoked by vanity nor retained by flattery; it is genuine and sincere.

Maria Mitchell
I am just learning to notice the different colors of the stars, and already begin to have a new enjoyment.

Maria Mitchell
The great gain would be freedom of thought. Women, more than men, are bound by tradition and authority. What the father, the brother, the doctor, and the minister have said has been received undoubtingly. Until women throw off this reverence for authority they will not develop. When they do this, when they come to truth through their investigations, when doubt leads them to discovery, the truth which they get will be theirs, and their minds will work on and on unfettered.

Maria Mitchell
The Southern character is opposed to haste. Safety is of more worth than speed, and there is no hurry.

Maria Mitchell