Maria Mitchell Quotes

49 quotes in 600 categories

• Why can a man not act himself, be himself, and think for himself? It seems to me that naturalness alone is power; that a borrowed…
• People have to learn sometimes not only how much the heart, but how much the head, can bear.
• I have worn myself thin trying to find out about this comet, and I know very little now in the matter.
• The best that can be said of my life so far is that it has been industrious and the best that can be said of…
• We especially need imagination in science. Question everything.
• 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…
• That knowledge which is popular is not scientific.
• No woman should say, "I am but a woman!" But a woman! What more can you ask to be?
• The phrase ‘popular science’ has in itself a touch of absurdity. That knowledge which is popular is not scientific.
• For women there are, undoubtedly, great difficulties in the path, but so much the more to overcome. First, no woman should say, "I am but…
• 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,…
• When we are chafed and fretted by small cares, a look at the stars will show us the littleness of our own interests.
• A traveller, lost on a desert plain, feels that the recognition of one star, the Pole star, is of itself a great acquisition.
• Nothing comes out more clearly in astronomical observations than the immense activity of the universe.
• A sphere is made up of not one, but an infinite number of circles; women have diverse gifts, and to say that women's sphere is…
• The eye that directs a needle in the delicate meshes of embroidery will equally well bisect a star with the spiderweb of the micrometer.
• In my younger days, when I was painted by the half-educated, loose and inaccurate ways women had, I used to say, "How much women need…
• As a general rule, people disappoint you as you know them.
• Yesterday I had a Shaker visitor, and today a Catholic; and the more I see and hear, the less do I care about church doctrines.
• Every formula which expresses a law of nature is a hymn of praise to God.

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