Here the sky is wrapped in silk. The breathings of so many men and animals, and the smoke of your coal, and the fog, oh, it is too much. The Paris sky is perfect. A man must see clearly, to see something new.
The same ratios that govern music give laws to optics and to the movement of the heavens as well. Simple. Elegant. Predictable.
So we will cover every possibility. We will take turns at the telescope. I will keep watch in the day, and at night you will take my place, and together we will see to it that no part of the sky goes unobserved.
Her calculations have always held the utmost accuracy, but mathematics alone will not be enough to guide her; she must learn to trust in chance and, if need be, in accident.
Each new scientific fact gives rise to new uncertainties, and every pattern of starlight holds both a record and a prophecy.
The heavens are too immense, too beautiful and varied, to fit into the mind of any one deity; the murmured creeds of fathers and sons are no match for the astronomer’s gasp.
Nothing in heaven or earth is content to be alone, and so there must always be something more. The universe is governed by a principle no more complicated than this: that a solitary body will forever attract another to itself.
It is one of the great blessings of youth, this guiltlessness, the source of gentle sleep and peaceful days.
Wisdom tolerates blustered opinions, the better to dismiss them later with discovery.
It is only the sudden and unpredictable appearance of comets that spoils the immutable celestial sphere.
The basis of English law is as simple as this: If you would know the future’s shape, look to the past.