John Herschel Quotes

22 quotes in 446 categories

• 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…
• The end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century were remarkable for the small amount of scientific movement going on in this…
• According to this view of the matter, there is nothing casual in the formation of Metamorphic Rocks. All strata, once buried deep enough, (and due…
• 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…
• All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more strongly the truths come from on high, and contained in the…
• [When nature appears complicated:] The moment we contemplate it as it is, and attain a position from which we can take a commanding view, though…
• Speculations apparently the most unprofitable have almost invariably been those from which the greatest practical applications have emanated.
• 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…
• The novel, in its best form, I regard as one of the most powerful engines of civilization ever invented.
• 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…
• Music and dancing (the more the pity) have become so closely associated with ideas of riot and debauchery among the less cultivated classes, that a…
• ...Nature builds up her refined and invisible architecture, with a delicacy eluding our conception, yet with a symmetry and beauty which we are never weary…
• Were I to pray for a taste which should stand me in good stead under every variety of circumstances and be a source of happiness…
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• The stars are the land-marks of the universe.
• The barrier has begun to yield.
• A mind which has once imbibed a taste for scientific enquiry, and has learnt the habit of applying its principles readily to the cases which…
• Humans always have fear of an unknown situation -- this is normal. The important thing is what we do about it. If fear is permitted…
• Accustomed to trace the operation of general causes, and the exemplification of general laws, in circumstances where the uninformed and unenquiring eye perceives neither novelty…
• 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.

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