Although all the good arts serve to draw man's mind away from vices and lead it toward better things, this function can be more fully performed by this art, which also provides extraordinary intellectual pleasure. — Nicolaus Copernicus Copy Share Image
In the center of all rests the sun. For who would place this lamp of a very beautiful temple in another or better place that this wherefrom it can illuminate everything at the same time? As a matter of fact, not unhappily do some call it the lantern; others, the mind and still others, the pilot of the world. Trismegistus… — Nicolaus Copernicus Copy Share
Hence I feel no shame in asserting that this whole region engirdled by the moon, and the center of the earth, traverse this grand circle amid the rest of the planets in an annual revolution around the sun. Near the sun is the center of the universe. Moreover, since the sun remains stationary, whatever appears as a motion of the… — Nicolaus Copernicus Copy Share
Those who know that the consensus of many centuries has sanctioned the conception that the earth remains at rest in the middle of the… — Nicolaus Copernicus Copy Share Image
The two revolutions, I mean the annual revolutions of the declination and of the centre of the Earth, are not completely equal; that is the return of the declination to its original value is slightly ahead of the period of the centre. Hence it necessarily follows that the equinoxes and solstices seem to anticipate their timing, not because the sphere… — Nicolaus Copernicus Copy Share
The Universe has been wrought for us by a supremely good and orderly Creator — Nicolaus Copernicus Copy Share Image
If there should chance to be any mathematicians who, ignorant in mathematics yet pretending to skill in that science, should dare, upon the authority… — Nicolaus Copernicus Copy Share Image
Although all the good arts serve to draw man's mind away from vices and lead it toward better things, this function can be more… — Nicolaus Copernicus Copy Share Image
For I am not so enamoured of my own opinions that I disregard what others may think of them. — Nicolaus Copernicus Copy Share Image
In the first book I shall describe all the positions of the spheres, along with the motions which I attribute to the Earth, so that the book will contain as it were the general structure of the universe. In the remaining books I relate the motions of the remaining stars, and all the spheres, to the mobility of the Earth,… — Nicolaus Copernicus Copy Share
Among the authorities it is generally agreed that the Earth is at rest in the middle of the universe, and they regard it as… — Nicolaus Copernicus Copy Share Image
I therefore took this opportunity and also began to consider the possibility that the Earth moved. Although it seemed an absurd opinion, nevertheless, because I knew that others before me had been granted the liberty of imagining whatever circles they wished to represent the phenomena of the stars, I thought that I likewise would readily be allowed to test whether,… — Nicolaus Copernicus Copy Share
