"Astronomy taught us our insignificance in Nature." (Ralph W Emerson)
"[Arithmetic] is another of the great master-keys of life. With it the astronomer opens the depths of the heavens; the engineer, the gates of the mountains; the navigator, the pathways of the deep. The skillful arrangement, the rapid handling of figures, is a perfect magician's wand." (Edward Everett)
" For the realm of the stars was slow to change. The sun evolves in billions of years, double stars rotate round each other in many decades, and even famous comets return only after many years. Astronomy deals still in the eternities, but nowadays it cannot neglect the split-second [...]" (Philip Morrison)
"I wonder what an astronomy would look like which has been rigorously demonstrated in every respect. It seems as if one can get to the truth only through a series of hypotheses, and that one has to reject each previous one to espouse the next and to abandon it again." (Johann H Lambert)
"In almost every true series of observations, some are found, which differ so much from the others as to indicate some abnormal source of error not contemplated in the theoretical discussions, and the introduction of which into the investigations can only serve, in the present state of science, to perplex and mislead the inquirer." (Benjamin Peirce, The Astronomical Journal)
"It is Astronomy that reveals to us the Universe in its majestic whole; it is she who has made us comprehend its structure, and after having gathered its thousand various elements into a gorgeous picture, has initiated us into the eternal laws that govern the Heavens." (Amédée Guillemin)
"The periodic law has given to chemistry that prophetic power long regarded as the peculiar dignity of its sister science, astronomy." (Henry C Bolton)
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