"Solar system" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on the following themes: The enjoyment of nature; matter and forces, growth and existence; natural philosophy; the fixed stars, their parallaxes, groups, movements, nebulae; double stars, structure of the universe, resisting medium; the solar system; the laws of motion, Kepler and Newton; density of the heavenly bodies; our moon, its orbit, no atmosphere, no water; comets; meteors, and meteoric stones; form of the earth; magnetism; volcanic ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... dance. He is the sworn enemy of specialisation, as he explains in his remarkable essay on "The Twelve Men." The subject of the essay is the British jury, and its thesis is that when our civilisation "wants a library to be catalogued, or a solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... avail to win an election and lose the whole Solar System," Fisher paraphrased. "It looks as though the ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Shadow-hunter, or Shadow-hunted; and, when I looked through his brave garnitures, miserable enough? Thy wishes have all been sniffed aside, thought I: but what, had they even been all granted! Did not the Boy Alexander weep because he had not two Planets to conquer; or a whole Solar System; or after that, a whole Universe? Ach Gott, when I gazed into these Stars, have they not looked down on me as if with pity, from their serene spaces; like Eyes glistening with heavenly tears over the little lot of man! Thousands of human generations, all as noisy ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... not be decided. For science assures us that the stability of the present conditions of the solar system is certified for many myriads of years to come. Whatever gradual modifications of climate there may be, the planet will not cease to support life for a period which transcends and flouts all efforts of imagination. In short, the POSSIBILITY ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... We are seeking a permanent place in this great Galactic Confederation, which was in existence many thousands of years before we even knew of its existence. It was not until our own scientists discovered the Koenig star-drive, enabling us to break free of our own solar system, that we were met face to face with a confederation of intelligent races inhabiting the galaxy—among others, the people from whom this same ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... Oriental wisdom. Nevertheless, it sufficed to establish Thales as the father of Greek astronomy. In point of fact, his actual astronomical attainments would appear to have been meagre enough. There is nothing to show that he gained an inkling of the true character of the solar system. He did not even recognize the sphericity of the earth, but held, still following the Oriental authorities, that the world is a flat disk. Even his famous cosmogonic guess, according to which water ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... appointed to the general overseership of the solar system, still, what would his occupation be but a regular pacing to and fro from the sun to the outermost limits of Le Verrier's calculations, and perhaps a little farther? A succession of rather longish strides he would have to ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... would try to find out. On reflecting sufficiently deeply, under the shadow of Richard Hunt's architecture, he decided that the American people probably knew no more than he did; but that they might still be driving or drifting unconsciously to some point in thought, as their solar system was said to be drifting towards some point in space; and that, possibly, if relations enough could be observed, this point might be fixed. Chicago was the first expression of American thought as a unity; ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... Sketches of Creation: a Popular View of some of the Grand Conclusions of the Sciences in reference to the History of Matter and of Life. Together with a Statement of the Intimations of Science respecting the Primordial Condition and the Ultimate Destiny of the Earth and the Solar System. By ALEXANDER WINCHELL, LL.D., Chancellor of the Syracuse University. With ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... who is capable of consciously using his spiritual body with the same facility that we now use our physical vehicles should glide away from the earth into interplanetary space, the earth and the various other planets of our solar system would appear to him to be composed of three kinds of matter, roughly speaking. The densest matter, which is our visible earth, would appear to him as being the center of the ball as the yolk is in the center of an egg. Around that nucleus he would observe a finer ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... my type existing today in all the Solar System. I, too, am the last existing who, in memory, sees the struggle for this System, and in memory I am still close to the Center of Rulers, for mine was the ruling type then. But I will pass soon, and with me will pass the last ...
— The Last Evolution • John Wood Campbell
... task of spectroscoping. The cab drivers spoke a different language and the bell-hops couldn't read our currency. Yet, we think we have X-rayed the dizziest—and this may amaze you—the dirtiest planet in the solar system. Beside it, the Earth is as white as the Moon, and Chicago is as peaceful ...
— Mars Confidential • Jack Lait
... but these are all exceptions to general rules. And it is according to these common laws that human behaviour ought to be regulated. The eccentric orbit of the comet never influences astronomical calculations respecting the invariable order established in the motion of the principal bodies of the solar system. ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... parochialism, possibly with a smile of amusement, motor-car civilization going its triumphant way, outstripping time, consuming space, seeing all and seeing nothing, roaring on at last to the capture of the solar system, only to find the sun cockney and the ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Planetesimal Theory suggests that these thickened knots are embryo planets and the central portion of the nebulae an embryo sun. After all the material in such a body has condensed either around the knots or about the central mass a new solar system will be complete. As before stated, neither of these theories can be said to be demonstrated. Each of them has points in its favor and each has its difficulties. It is pleasant to know what men have clearly thought concerning ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... "Couldn't take the acceleration, boys. Bad heart. I send out more than five hundred cargoes a year, to all parts of the solar system; but myself, I've never been more than a mile off the surface of ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... one. We couldn't make it go for any time at all. She wants excitement, and after the summer folks began to leave, and we'd been to Florida for a winter, and then came back to Lion's Head-well! This planet hasn't got excitement enough in it for that girl, and I doubt if the solar system has. At any rate, I'm not going to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... are practiced by the North American Pueblos.[408] A well-developed solar system of festivals existed in Peru, where the sun was the central object of worship; equinoxes and solstices were observed with great ceremonies, and especially at the summer solstice the rising of the sun was ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... sentences: thus, "The Georgians cultivate rice. They cultivate cotton." The conjunction, though chiefly used to connect sentences, sometimes connects only words; in which capacity it is nearly allied to the preposition; as, "The sun and (add) the planets constitute the solar system." In this, which is a simple sentence, ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... would produce that hot, seething, nebulous fire-mist, out of which, the physicists say, was evolved, by agglomeration and centrifugal and centripetal attraction, our fair, harmonious system of worlds bounded by outermost Neptune, thus far the Ultima Thule of the solar system. Perhaps Asgard, translated from mythic into scientific language, means the Zodiacal Light, and the Bridge Bifroest, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... of the outlying clusters of this universe. Presently, it was far behind, and all about me shone the splendor of the countless stars. Later, years it seemed, I saw the sun, a clot of flame. Around it, I made out presently several remote specks of light—the planets of the Solar system. And so I saw the earth again, blue and unbelievably minute. It grew larger, and ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... the mouth of his modern science,—he is not of real importance withal. The little planet on which he dwells would, to all seeming, move on in its orbit in the same way as it does now, without him. In itself it is a pigmy world compared with the rest of the solar system of which it is a part. Nevertheless, the fact cannot be denied that his material surroundings are of a quality tending to either impress or to deceive Man with a sense of his own value. The world is his oyster which he, with the sword of enterprise, will open,—and all ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... with these data,—matter, force, and the law of gravitation,—what must happen? We have the strongest scientific reason to believe that the matter of the solar system primordially existed in a highly diffused or nebulous form. By mutual gravitation, therefore, all the substance of the nebula must have begun to concentrate upon itself, or to condense. Now, from this point onwards, I wish it to be clearly understood that the mere consideration of the supposed ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... the globe: Without a central luminary, and a revolution of the planetary body, there could not have been a living creature upon the face of this earth; and, while we see a living system on this earth, we must acknowledge, that in the solar system ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... Owl. 'But the sun is rather unreliable, after all. He has the Ecliptic to go round, and the whole of the Solar System to attend to, and one must make allowances for him. But, for purposes of strict chronology, watches are better, especially these watches! They wind themselves up punctually every night, and if their owners break the mainsprings ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... contrast of figures used in the Old Testament which accurately emphasizes the mighty power of the Creator in the regeneration of a soul. In Psalm 8:3 the creation of the solar system is mentioned as the work of the fingers of God: "When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained," but in Isa. 53:1, where the substitutionary ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... and endeavour to explain all seeming deviations from these rules, and even make additions to our system which no experience can ever substantiate—for example, the theory, in affinity with that of ellipses, of hyperbolic paths of comets, pursuing which, these bodies leave our solar system and, passing from sun to sun, unite the most distant parts of the infinite universe, which is held together by the same ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... bedraggled, thinking with an unscientific enthusiasm of the hot dinner awaiting his homecoming. The lingering moon, peering over the mountain edge, saw the instructor clear the fence and plunge into the shadowy gulch. Then, before she could see what happened next, the stern law of the solar system ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... instrument with my trembling hand, I walked the floor, imploring back my nervous self-possession. Fixing the tower by photograph, I took the centre of its dome as the next point for expansion. Slowly, slowly, as if the fate of a solar system depended on each turn of the screw, I drew on the final view. An instant of gray confusion,—another of tremulous crystallization,—and, scarcely in contact with the tower's dome, as if about to float from it, hovered an aerial ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... earthquake, Za'fiel the angel of the showers, Ra'miel the angel of the thunder, Ra'shiel the angel of the whirlwind, Shalgiel the angel of the snow, Matriel the angel of the rain, Shamshiel the angel of the day, Leliel the angel of the night, Galgliel the angel of the solar system, Ofaniel the angel of the wheel of the moon, Kokabiel the angel of the stars, and Rahtiel the angel ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... on yesterday was seven thousand nine hundred and twenty; today it is seven thousand, nine hundred and twenty-one. The inhabitants of the globe are enriched by the same stupendous unit; the solar system must adjust itself to new laws of equilibrium; the choir of angels is sweetened by the advent of another musician. During the night Georgiana bore a son—not during the night, but at dawn, and amid such singing of birds that every tree in the yard became a dew-hung ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... Europe, the Earth, the Solar System—similarly involve, when used, descriptions which start from some one or more particulars with which we are acquainted. I suspect that even the Universe, as considered by metaphysics, involves such a connexion with particulars. In logic, on the contrary, where we are concerned not ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... relay back the information. Didn't you see him accelerate to an impossible speed in an impossible time? Didn't you see how he just vanished as he exceeded the speed of light, and stopped reflecting it? That ship was no ship of this solar system!" ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... their way, all classes put on a new vigor, a new enterprise, and a new intelligence, which brought advancement into every walk of life. The spread of the Copernican doctrine of the revolutions of the earth, and the relations of our planet to the solar system gradually drove before it the old anthropocentric ideas. Men looked into the heavens and saw a new universe. In the grand scheme of creation there unfolded before them, they read in spite of themselves the comparative insignificance of their own world, and an overwhelming blow was ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... the position of the planets; the date to which they pointed was the autumnal equinox of the year 1722 B.C. Professor Mitchell, to whom the fact was communicated, employed his assistants to ascertain the exact position of the heavenly bodies belonging to our solar system on the equinox of that year. This was done, and a diagram furnished by parties ignorant of his object, which showed that on the 7th of October, 1722 B.C. the moon and planets occupied the exact point in the heavens marked upon the coffin in the British ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... extraordinary perseverance and perspicuity that Bradley was able to explain it in 1727. Its origin is seated in attempts made to free from doubt the prevailing discordances as to whether the stars possessed appreciable parallaxes. The Copernican theory of the solar system—that the earth revolved annually about the sun—had received confirmation by the observations of Galileo and Tycho Brahe, and the mathematical investigations of Kepler and Newton. As early as 1573, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... in the doorway of a hotel in Pisa. Landor had lived in Italy many years, for he detested the climate of his native country, and used to say "one could only live comfortably in England who was rich enough to have a solar system of ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... giving it, in the light of Newton's great utterances, a consistency which it never before had; and about the same time Laplace gave it yet greater strength by mathematical reasonings of wonderful power and extent, thus implanting firmly in modern thought the idea that our own solar system and others—suns, planets, satellites, and their various movements, distances, and magnitudes—necessarily result from the obedience of nebulous masses to ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the crew, bronzed space-sailors out of every port in the solar system, had listened mutely. Now, one of them, a tall ...
— The Sargasso of Space • Edmond Hamilton
... causes of the Renaissance should strictly be considered its effects. The application of the modern theory of the solar system, the desire for exploration, the use of the mariner's compass, the invention and spread of printing, were more effects of the new movement ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... some logic, Mr. Cornell. After all, we know now that while we could live on Mars or Venus with a lot of home-sent aid, we'd be most uncomfortable there. We could not live a minute on any planet of our solar system ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... directly reached, which every son of man in his progress through the ages is privileged to hear of, and to tread, if he so chooses. We find that this was so in the Venus scheme also, and we may presume it is or will be so in all the schemes which form part of our Solar system. This Path is the Path of Initiation, and the end to which leads is the same for all, and that end ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... around the sun in circles, and that the sun itself, bearing all these orbits, described a mighty circle around the earth. This point having been reached, only one more step would have been necessary to reach the glorious truths that revealed the structure of the solar system. That last step ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... system of Astronomy which prevailed during the Middle Ages, and was only discredited at an epoch nearly simultaneous with that of the discovery of the New World by Columbus. The true arrangement of the solar system was then expounded by Copernicus in the great work to which he devoted his life. The first principle established by these labours showed the diurnal movement of the heavens to be due to the rotation of the earth on its axis. ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... Settignano, three miles back of Florence, on the hills—the same certainly affording the most charming view to be found on this planet, and with it the most dreamlike and enchanting sunsets to be found in any planet or even in any solar system—and given, too, in the swell room of the house, with the busts of Cerretani senators and other grandees of this line looking approvingly down upon me, as they used to look down upon Dante, and mutely asking me to ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... astronomy the moon and all the planets of our solar system were supposed to be gliding along over the smooth blue firmament like a boat upon smooth water or a sleigh upon ice. The blue vault was a solid substance; hence the word firmament. In this vault were set the "fixed" stars, and of course the moon or any planet passing across ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... God because he wanted a risky universe. But the universe without God is not risky; it is a foregone conclusion; the dice are all loaded. After the lapse of millions of years which, however long they be stretched out, will ultimately end, our solar system will be gone, without even a memory left of anything that ever was dreamed or done within it. That is the inevitable issue of such a "risky" universe. When scientifically-minded men, therefore, now take a long look ahead, the Utopian visions of the mid-Victorian age are not foremost in their ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... cadences (Prose has her cadences) not unfrequently to the charm of the drowsier watchman, "blessing the doors;" or the wild sweep of winds at midnight. Even now a loftier speculation than we have yet attempted, courts our endeavours. We would indite something about the Solar System.—Betty, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... not go one better, and improve the orbit as well?—increase the difference between aphelion and perihelion, and give those that still like a changing climate a chance, while incidentally we should see more of the world—I mean the solar system—and, by enlarging the parallax, be able to measure the distance of a greater number of fixed stars. Put your helm hard down and shout 'Hard-a-lee!' You see, there is nothing simpler. You keep her off now, and six months hence you let her luff." "That's an idea!" said ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... years, became distant friends of mine, too. And the thoughts which the sight of the countless globes involuntarily and inevitably evokes, were born in me, too,—thoughts of the littleness of the earth in our Solar System, and of our Solar System in the Universe, of immeasurable distances—so great that the stars whose rays, with the rapidity of light's travelling, are striking against our eyes now, may have gone out in our childhood; of immeasurable periods of time, in which a human life, ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... organized. The darkness grows bright. On the long ribbon of the winding road, at intervals, there are brilliant fires, which in their turn shall be in the work of creation the nucleus of little planetary worlds linked up in the girdle of their solar system.... ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... to a wondrous cyclopean eye, endued with superhuman power, by which the astronomer extends the reach of his vision to the further heavens, and surveys galaxies and universes compared with which the solar system is but an atom floating in the air. The transit may be compared to the measuring rod which he lays from planet to planet, and from star to star, to ascertain and mark off the heavenly spaces, and transfer them to his note-book; the clock is that marvelous apparatus ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... us. Kerans, a good Amharic scholar, was the interpreter on those occasions: one of them, Deftera Zenab, the King's chief scribe, (now tutor to Alamayou,) is an intelligent; honest man; but he was quite mad on astronomy, and would listen for hours to anything concerning the solar system. Unfortunately, either the explanations were faulty or his comprehension dull as each time he came he wanted the whole dissertation over again until at last our patience was fairly exhausted, and we gave him up as a bad job. His other intimate was a good-natured young man called Afa ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... letter to Lady Altamont; in which case, as I could readily have mimicked his style of writing, it would have been easy for me to fill up thus: "With respect to your ladyship's anxiety, &c., I think I may now venture to say that, if the solar system were searched, there could not be found a companion more serviceable to your son than Mr. De Q. He speaks the Ziph most beautifully. He writes it, I am told, classically. And if there were a Ziph nation as well as a Ziph language, I am satisfied that he would very soon be at the head of it; as ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... MASTERS and MISSES." The contents show that this purpose was carried out. It tutored them by giving directions for reading with eloquence and propriety; by presenting "the antient and present State of Great Britain with a compendious History of England;" by instructing them in "the Solar System, geography, Arts and Sciences" and the inevitable "Rules for Behaviour, Religion and Morality;" and it admonished them by giving the "Dying Words of Great Men when just quitting the Stage of Life." As a museum it included descriptions of the Seven Wonders ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... Wharne looking on without a shade of cynicism in the gladness of his face, and Sin Saxon and Frank Scherman flitting up in the pauses of dance and promenade,—well, after all, these were the central group that night. The pivot of the little solar system was changed; but the chief planets made but slight account of that; they just felt that it had grown ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... seamless material, the home of the Central System's brain. There were smaller towers at many points in the world but this was the most important, capable of receiving on its mile-long axons, antennas of the very soul itself, every thought projected at it from any point in the solar system. The housing gleamed blindingly in the sun of high noon, as perfect as the day it had been completed. That surface was designed to repel all but the most unusual of the radiation barrages that could bring on subtle changes in the brain within. The breakdown, ...
— Cerebrum • Albert Teichner
... and the familiar comfortable distant noises of domestic activity announced that the solar system was behaving much as usual in infinite and inconceivable space, he decided that he was too tired to be scientifically idle that day—even though he had a trying-on appointment with Mr. Melchizidek. He decided, too, that ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... upon a poor wretch to answer for his actions! Why, even when the solar system was still no more than a pale nebula, forming, in the ether, a fragile halo, whose circumference was a thousand times greater than the orbit of Neptune, we had all of us, for ages past, been fully conditioned, determined and irrevocably destined, and your ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... a slight difference in the opinions of the young and the mature, relative to the general plan on which the solar system should be operated, no doubt. There are also points of disagreement in other matters, and it looks as though there ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... stop here. On the same principle there would be a superior collective individuality for the humanity of the entire solar system, and finally we reach the conception of a supreme intelligence bringing together in itself the collective individualities of all the systems in the universe. This is by no means a merely fanciful notion. We find it as the law by which our own conscious individuality is constituted; and we find the ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... contrary," triumphed Peter, "it is because they are optimists, that they suspect there must be forwarder and more luminous regions than the Solar System." ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... had filled up now and Strong rapped on the desk for attention. He stared at the faces of the men before him, men who had spent their lives in space. They were the finest pilots and crew chiefs in the solar system. They sat quietly and attentively as Strong gave them the details of the greatest race of spaceships in over ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... humanity. Unrestrained faith in Nature as both a model and a working power was strengthened by the advances of natural science. Inquiry freed from prejudice and artificial restraints of church and state had revealed that the world is a scene of law. The Newtonian solar system, which expressed the reign of natural law, was a scene of wonderful harmony, where every force balanced with every other. Natural law would accomplish the same result in human relations, if men would only get rid of the ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... earth and her satellite is sufficiently close to be used as an argument (if not as actual demonstration) that the earth and the moon were originally portions of the same mass, and that during some very early stage in the development of the solar system these bodies parted company, to assume for ever after the relations of planet and satellite. At the epoch referred to, we may also suppose that these two masses of matter were in a highly incandescent, if not even gaseous, state; and we conclude, therefore, ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... mountains on the moon, the satellites of Jupiter, and the spots on the sun, and brought the celestial bodies under observation in a way that no one had dreamed of before. In our view to-day, the planets of the solar system are worlds; we can examine their surfaces and judge wherein they resemble or differ from our earth. To the ancients they were but points of light; to us they are vast bodies that we have been able to measure and to weigh. The telescope has ...
— The Astronomy of the Bible - An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References - of Holy Scripture • E. Walter Maunder
... the Feringhis of the time-honoured system of Ptolemy, in favour of the new-fangled theories of Copernicus, by which the earth is degraded from its recognised and respectable station in the centre of the universe, to a subordinate grade in the solar system, seems to have been a source of great scandal and perplexity to the Khan; "since," as he remarks, "the former doctrine is supported by their own Bible, not less than by our Koran." These sentiments are repeated whenever the subject is referred to; and particularly ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... matter revealed by our astronomy is almost infinitesimal compared with the space through which it is distributed, so the electrons which compose the matter with which we deal are comparable to the bodies of the solar system moving in vast spaces. It is indeed a fantastic world where science conceives of bodies a thousand times smaller than the hydrogen atom—the smallest body known to science; where it conceives of vibrations in the ether millions of millions times ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs
... of a certainty, be done with "Copperfield"), I had, of course, given out "Copperfield" to be read again. Conceive my amazement and dismay when I find the printer to have announced "Little Dombey"!!! This, I declare, I had no more intention of reading than I had of reading an account of the solar system. And this, after a sensation last night, of a really extraordinary nature ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... the evidence of an experiment which it did not understand. But when the fact was clearly established, no man sets up his interpretation of the Bible in opposition to it. Religious men admit all the facts connected with our solar system; all the facts of geology, and of comparative anatomy, and of biology. Ought not this to satisfy scientific men? Must we also admit their explanations and inferences? If we admit that the human embryo passes ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... mathematics, and dependent upon myself alone for any culture I might have arrived at, I came to the university much like a simple plant of nature myself. I was at this time peculiarly moved by a little knowledge I had picked up about the solar system, including particularly a general conception of Kepler's laws, whereby the laws of the spheres appealed to me on the one hand as an all-embracing, world-encircling whole, and on the other as an unlimited individualisation ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... member of a reading-room club, and read all the works of Dr. Dick that the library contained: his 'Treatise on the Solar System,' his 'Practical Astronomer,' and other works. There were also some very good popular works to which I was indebted for amusement as well as instruction: Chambers's 'Information for the People,' Cassell's ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... the science of proof, in any practical application, not to go beyond the evidence. Still, the rule may be relaxed if the universal quantity of a preindesignate proposition is well known or admitted, as in Planets shine with reflected light—understood of the planets of our solar system at the present time. Again, such a proposition as Man is the paragon of animals is not a preindesignate, but an abstract proposition; the subject being elliptical for Man according to his proper nature; and the translation of it into a ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... out of the world like an unfixed photograph which is exposed to the sun. Even if it could endure, as the old demigod, or demidevil, Oro, had pointed out, very shortly, by comparison with Time's unmeasured vastness, the whole solar system will also fade. So of what use is this feeble love of fame and this vain attempt to be remembered that animates us so strongly? Moreover, the idea of enjoying mere temporal as opposed to intellectual power, appealed to me not at all. I am a student of history and I know ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... only heat and motion. Gradually, when her vapours were condensed into a unified rounded whole through a force that strove to bring all straggling matters under the control of a centre, she occupied her proper place among the planets of the solar system, like an emerald pendant in a necklace of diamonds. So with our soul. When the heat and motion of blind impulses and passions distract it on all sides, we can neither give nor receive anything truly. But when we ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... it's been. When we first came here twenty years back, we drove the Rumi out of all this country and more or less took their cat feet off the Narakan's backs but now that so much of the Earth garrison has been pulled all the way back into the Solar System, the Rumi are acting up again. So much so that the dope I got is that we may be pulling everything back into the Little Texas peninsula to wait for reinforcements and it will take four years for those to come ...
— Narakan Rifles, About Face! • Jan Smith
... natural science. Through the simplicity of its basic idea, an attraction between two bodies proportionate to their mass and also proportionate to the square of the distance; through the completeness with which it explained so many of the peculiarities in the movement of the bodies making up the solar system; and, finally, through its universal validity, even in the case of the far-distant planetary systems, it compelled ...
— The Einstein Theory of Relativity • H.A. Lorentz
... orders of mind go with the vaster orders of body. The entire earth on which we live must have, according to Fechner, its own collective consciousness. So must each sun, moon, and planet; so must the whole solar system have its own wider consciousness, in which the consciousness of our earth plays one part. So has the entire starry system as such its consciousness; and if that starry system be not the sum of all that ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... mystery of the Solar System, was excommunicated for heresy. But Christians acknowledge now that the earth goes round the sun, and the ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... adventures. Most are exhilarated and happy, though complaints may occasionally be heard—"The mountain does not look so very high after all, nor so very white; the snow is in patches like rags spread out to dry," reminding one of Sydney Smith's joke against Jeffrey, "D—n the Solar System; bad light, planets too indistinct." But far the greater number are in good spirits, showing the influence of holiday enjoyment and mountain air. Fresh roses come to cheeks that long have been pale, and sentiment often begins to blossom under ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... exceedingly small. Curiously enough the class which in theory was omnipotent, was the only class financially ill-treated. Throughout the history of our former Parliaments the constituency could no more have originated the policy which those Parliaments selected than they could have made the solar system. ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... if any one had called him an imperialist, and therefore it is highly regrettable that nobody did. But he was an imperialist of the lowest type. He popularized this contemptible notion that the size of the solar system ought to over-awe the spiritual dogma of man. Why should a man surrender his dignity to the solar system any more than to a whale? If mere size proves that man is not the image of God, then a whale may be the ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... and inaccessible have been toiled over by rival explorers; new records have been made by rival aviators; while competitive and co-operative activities in every line have known a phenomenal growth. New names have been placed in the Pantheon of the immortals, new planets discovered in the solar system, new stars added to the clear skies of our nightly vision. Out of all the striving has come a sweeping advance in lingual requirements. In most departments of Science, Art, and Manufacture, the processes and methods of to-day are not those of yesterday, and the doers ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... thing, then is not the hypothesis of a Creator made substantial? If the stuff of life can create, then it is fair to assume that there can be a He who created the stuff of life. It is merely a difference of degree. I have not yet made a mountain nor a solar system, but I have made a something that sits in my chair. This being so, may I not some day be able to make a mountain or a ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... deal more than that, Captain, if she wants to. I am just taking a trial trip across the Atlantic before I start on a run round the Solar System. Sounds like a lie, doesn't it? But it's coming off. Oh, good morning, Miss Rennick! Captain, may I ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... wanted a place and a time for thinking," he said across the Solar System. "But I'll die and I don't know if you can dream ...
— Measure for a Loner • James Judson Harmon
... the Heavens themselves teach unchangeable permanency in the works of creation. Change is observable there quite as rapid and complete as in the confines of our solar system. In the year 1752, one of the small stars in the constellation Cassiopeia blazed up suddenly into an orb of the first magnitude, gradually decreased in brilliancy, and finally disappeared from the skies. Nor has it ever been visible since that period for a single moment, ...
— The Case of Summerfield • William Henry Rhodes
... spreading their fanlike fronds, and majolica glows and gleams; and fabrics, of which Morris is the actual or spiritual begetter, delight the eye. In summer-time our fireplace is indeed a thing of beauty, but, alas for the solar system! it is not a joy for ever. The sun at last recedes beyond the equinoxes, and the black bogey who has slept awakens again. Euphemia restores the fender kerb and the brazen dogs and the fireirons that will ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... criticism, which led to a correct knowledge of the classics, to a fresh taste in poetry, to new systems of thought, to more accurate analysis, and finally to the Lutheran schism and the emancipation of the conscience. Men of science will discourse about the discovery of the solar system by Copernicus and Galileo, the anatomy of Vesalius, and Harvey's theory of the circulation of the blood. The origination of a truly scientific method is the point which interests them most in the Renaissance. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... further off, and Spurgeon's soul may pull the bell and rouse Saint Peter long after the earth is a frozen ball, and not only the human race but all life has disappeared from its surface. Nay, by the time he arrives, the earth may have gone to pot, and the whole solar system may have vanished from the map ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... sky, When the tempest sweeps the lands, Still about, below, on high, God's great solar system stands. Never yet a star went out. What have I to fear or doubt?— I, a part of this great whole, Governed by ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... astronomical discoveries none has been regarded as more important than that of Neptune, the outermost known planet of the solar system. It was a rich reward to the watchers of the sky when this new planet swam into their ken. This discovery was hailed by astronomers as "the most conspicuous triumph of the theory of gravitation." Long after Copernicus even, the genius of philosophers was slow to grasp the full conception ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... kinds of Insects. Their cold intelligence, their empty, stereotyped, unremitted industry repel me. And I am not altogether happy about the future of the Human Race; when I think of the slow refrigeration of the Earth, the Sun's waning, and the ultimate, inevitable collapse of the Solar System, I have grave misgivings. And all the books I have read and forgotten-the thought that my mind is really nothing but a sieve—this, too, ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... must play the part of time-unit upon which all our conceptions depend. If we date the geological history of the Earth by thousands of years, as did our forerunners, we must shape our ideas of planetary time accordingly; and the duration of our solar system, and of the heavens, becomes comparable with that of the dynasties of ancient nations. If by millions of years, the sun and stars are proportionately venerable. If by hundreds or thousands of ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly
... to the dying soldier whose necessity is greater than his. Men's minds in this time were employed with big questions; the old theory of the universe is just losing its long hold upon the intellect, and people are busy with all space, trying to apprehend the relation of their globe to the solar system. To all this ferment the desperate conflict of the Catholic religion with the new form of faith now coming in adds an element of stern strength; men are pondering not only the physical relation of the earth to the heavens, ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... everything. The Egyptians found a hint of the solar system in the concentric circles of the onion, and revered it as a symbol, while we respect it as a condiment in cookery, and can pass through all Weathersfield without a thought of the stars. Our world is a museum of natural history; that of our forefathers ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... theory of the solar system was propounded and upheld in the sixteenth century, quite supplanting the Ptolemaic theory in the course of the seventeenth. The new system is called Copernican after its first modern exponent—and its general acceptance went far to annihilate astrology ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... has been applied, first, to explain the origin of worlds and planetary systems, by showing that, certain specified conditions being presupposed, there are fixed mechanical laws which might sufficiently account for the production of the earth and of the other planets and satellites of our Solar System, without any special interposition of Divine power at the commencement of the existing order of things. It has been applied, secondly, to explain the origin of the various tribes or races of vegetable ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... more about the heavenly bodies than what they have learned from Sir John Herschel's beautiful little volume. But, to speak seriously, is not a little truth better than a great deal of falsehood? Is not the man who, in the evenings of a fortnight, has acquired a correct notion of the solar system, a more profound astronomer than a man who has passed thirty years in reading lectures about the primum mobile, and in drawing ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... civilizations. Then radar screens erupting crazily with signals from a multi-thousand ship space fleet; vector computers hurriedly plotting and re-plotting the fast-moving trajectory, submitting each time an unvarying answer for the fleet's destination—our own solar system." He slapped his hand flat against the desk. "The point is, Doc, it's not much to go on, and we don't dare send another ship to check for fear of attracting attention to ourselves. If we ...
— Alien Offer • Al Sevcik
... and the biggest one I wuz aimin' to hit from this tower of ourn wuz Washington, D.C. I wanted to visit the Capitol of our country, the center of our great civilization that stands like the sun in the solar system, sendin' out beams of power and wisdom and law and order, and justice and injustice, and money and oratory, and talk and talk, and wind and everything, to the uttermost points of our vast possessions, and from them clear to the ends ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... too, come under this law; issuing as nebulae from the great womb of the Universe at the beginning of the evolution of a solar system they are absorbed back again when the hour of their dissolution strikes. Finally, the very Universes go forth from the breast of Brahma when he out-breathes, and return to him ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... was insisted by astronomers and the world at large that the new globe, then supposed to bound the solar system on its outer circumference, should be called Herschel, in honor of its discoverer. But the old system of naming the planets after the deities of classical and pagan mythology prevailed; and to the names of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, was now added ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... life is an independent centre of action, with the option of acting either positively or negatively, that any real life has been produced at all. The further the created thing is from being a merely mechanical arrangement, the higher is the grade of creation. The solar system is a perfect work of mechanical creation, but to constitute centres which can reciprocate the highest nature of the Divine Mind, requires not a mechanism, however perfect, but a mental centre which is, in itself, an independent source of action. ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... thousand hours all the surroundings had changed. New leaves had sprouted, flowers faded and turned to fruit, the moon had twice attained her full brightness, our earth and sun and the whole solar system had swept headlong a full two-score million miles on the endless swing toward Vega. Only the roots and the crane-flies remained. A thousand hours had apparently made no difference to them. The roots might have been the granite near by, fashioned by ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... him an excuse to say that we've failed, that the Project is a menace to the Solar System. If you try to escape, you wreck everything we've done. If you don't tell the truth, you may cost thousands ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett
... obtained;—with moderate desires, regular employment, a loving home, correct theology, the right politics, and a year's subscription to the "Atlantic Monthly," I have no doubt that life, in this planet, may be as happy as in any other of the solar system, not excepting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... author's fees. The result was that the playwrights and the great actors ceased to think of themselves as having any concern with one another: Tom Robertson, Ibsen, Pinero, and Barrie might as well have belonged to a different solar system as far as Irving was concerned; and the same was true of their ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... this comfortable scheme ran as merrily as a stream down hill. And then a strange thing happened to me. I was talking one afternoon to Penny on the absurdities of the Solar System, when I became conscious that my mind had closed upon seven words: "That Rupert, the best of ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... part of their sovereignty to the United States, and the like. Now, if there be any one great principle pervading the Federal Constitution, the State Constitutions, the writings of the fathers, the whole American system, as clearly as the sunlight pervades the solar system, it is that no government is sovereign—that all governments derive their powers from the people, and exercise them in subjection to the will of the people—not a will expressed in any irregular, lawless, tumultuary manner, but the will of the organized political ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... takes up that small part of the universe which we call our solar system and sums up the little we have learned regarding it. I used to think the earth the most important part of the solar system, on account of Man. So the earliest natural philosophers believed. That is like believing that the American continent ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... peoples and tribes, whose minute actions and reactions on each other are the histories which absorb our attention, whilst the grand universal life moves on beyond our ken, or only guessed at, as the astronomers shadow out movements of our solar system around or towards some ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... a noble painting is Chaucer's pilgrimage to Canterbury." "It is indeed," said Mr. Beckford. "But, sir, there is another painter, Howard, whose conceptions are most poetical. Do you remember his painting at Somerset House in 1824, representing the solar system, from Milton's ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... what you think, commander. You can forget it. It's wishful thinking and we cannot permit such daydreaming in our precarious condition. Face the facts as they exist in the present. After we kick the aliens out of our solar system, maybe we can go back to the old ideas again. Maybe. I'm not even very sure of that. But as for now, the characteristic of despair is the lowest common denominator among the combat patrols, and we therefore ...
— Shock Absorber • E.G. von Wald
... therefore, a discrepancy between the doctrines of Dr. Buchanan and the occult doctrines in regard to Anthropology; but this discrepancy is of no serious consequence; because the moon (the intellect) is in our solar system as necessary as the sun (the will), and as the vast majority of people have a considerably developed intellect, but only a very little developed will, and live, so to say, more in their brains than in their hearts, they may be looked upon ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... full of them even before your ship reaches Procyon!" He sensed now the full importance of what he had done. "Now that there's practical transportation between stars, the Galaxy will grow close together—as close as the Solar System is now!" ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... seek to prove. The conception of the might of Jehovah grew through the centuries and followed upon the extension of the knowledge of the Hebrews about the world in which they lived. If tomorrow morning some revolutionary astronomical discovery should convince us that the solar system is much vaster than we have ever imagined, the theist would, of course, extend the thought of the sway of God to all that solar system. If there were some method of becoming aware that the bodies of the entire astronomical system are millions of times more numerous than ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... a question from the general. "We don't know who they are, Sir. They're not from Earth, obviously. And the best scientific minds go still further—they're not even from our solar system. Whoever they are, it's clear that they don't want us to build ...
— Double Take • Richard Wilson
... velocities, and relative distances of the planets, in a manner corresponding to the proportion of the notes in a musical scale. Hence the "music of the spheres." From what can be gathered of the astronomical doctrine of Pythagoras, it has been inferred that he was possessed of the true idea of the solar system, which was revived by Coper'nicus and fully established by Newton. With respect to God, Pythagoras appears to have taught that he is the universal, ever-existent mind, the first principle of the universe, the source ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... doctrine that other orbs besides our earth are inhabited, and compare it with the reasoning on which judicial astrology was based, we shall not find much to choose between the two, so far as logical weight is concerned. Because the only member of the solar system which we can examine closely is inhabited, astronomers infer a certain degree of probability for the belief that the other planets of the system are also inhabited. And because the only sun we know much about is the centre of a system ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... gathered into zones or strata; that our own wicked little earth, with the whole of our peculiar solar system, is a part of such a zone; and that all this perfect geometry of the heavens, these radii in the mighty wheel, would become apparent, if we, the spectators, could but survey it from the true center; which center may be far too distant for any vision of man, naked ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... the largest of all the planets in the solar system, and it is easily distinguished from the fixed stars because of its brilliancy and splendor, exceeding in brightness all the planets excepting Venus, ...
— A Field Book of the Stars • William Tyler Olcott
... be removed, and the length of time taken to accomplish it. The future progress will probably be more rapid than the past. Since the invention of printing, the application of the properties of the magnet, and the knowledge of the structure of the solar system, it is difficult to conceive of a cause that can produce a new state of barbarism; unless it be some great convulsion in the physical world, so extensive as to change the face of the earth or a considerable part of it. ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... record that it preserves of the parallelism of the three telescopes. You would say it was stiff and unnatural, did you not know that it was the ordering of Nature herself—they all point to the centre of the solar system. ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... life into another, he expected still to be a student there. He stated that it had at different times of his life been a matter of serious consideration as to how much inflammable matter in a given time the sun used in warming the space included in the solar system. He said he expected to be able to make this calculation ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten
... heath, the hills; and beyond these, other counties, other countries, the rest of the turning globe, the universe it turned in—and once again he had that feeling of infinite smallness, the insect unfairly matched against a solar system, the speck of dust whirled as the biggest stars are ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... Procope, "that a fragment of considerable magnitude has been detached from the earth; that it has carried with it an envelope of the earth's atmosphere, and that it is now traveling through the solar system in an orbit that does not correspond at all with the ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... contribute much more to the continued existence of the whole body, these philistines cannot on that account be allowed to guide and lead. That is a business which belongs solely to the brain; government must proceed from one central point. Even the solar system is monarchical. On the other hand, a republic is as unnatural as it is unfavourable to the higher intellectual life and the arts and sciences. Accordingly we find that everywhere in the world, and at all times, nations, whether civilised ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... diverted; and a furtive sliding in of any poor make- weight piece of amusement, shame-facedly and edgewise. Thus, I observed that it was necessary for the members to be knocked on the head with Gas, Air, Water, Food, the Solar System, the Geological periods, Criticism on Milton, the Steam-engine, John Bunyan, and Arrow-Headed Inscriptions, before they might be tickled by those unaccountable choristers, the negro singers in the court costume of the reign of George the Second. ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens |
