Norman Lockyer Quotes

9 Sourced Quotes

The idea of simplifying the elements is connected with the philosopher's stone. The use of the philosopher's stone was to transmute metals.

Norman Lockyer
Time out of mind—or, rather, ever since Nicolas Le Fèvre [...] pointed out that chemistry was the art of separations as well as of transmutations—it has been recognized that, with every increase of temperature, or dissociating power, bodies were separated from each other.

Norman Lockyer
It is impossible with our present knowledge to suppose that at any prior stage of the history of the heavens gravitation did not exist. It is impossible, from what we know now, to suppose that even the finest form of matter which entered our clearing in space was not endowed with motion.

Norman Lockyer
The nineteenth century will ever be known as the one in which the influences of science were first fully realised in civilised communities; the scientific progress was so gigantic that it seems rash to predict that any of its successors can be more important in the life of any nation.

Norman Lockyer
In physical science in most cases a new discovery means that by some new idea, new instrument, or some new and better use of an old one, Nature has been wooed in some new way.

Norman Lockyer
I must, in the first place, ask my readers to grant me the scientific use of their imagination; and in order that it may not be called upon to cope with questions as to whether space is infinite or not, or whether space and time ever had a beginning, we will not consider the possibility of the beginning of things or attempt to define the totality of space, but we will in imagination clear a certain part of space and then set certain possibilities at work.

Norman Lockyer
We believe that each molecular vibration disturbs the ether; that spectra are thus begotten' each wavelength of light resulting from a molecular tremor of corresponding wavelength. The molecule is, in fact, the sender, the ether the wire, and the eye the receiving instrument, in this new telegraphy.

Norman Lockyer
Slowly, but very surely, by means of quiet sap, but little of which meets the eye, we are effecting an entrance into the treasure-house wherein are kept the secrets of the sun.

Norman Lockyer
The work of the true man of Science is a perpetual striving after a better and closer knowledge of the planet on which his lot is cast, and of the universe in the vastness of which that planet is lost.

Norman Lockyer