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Astronomer   Listen
noun
Astronomer  n.  
1.
An astrologer. (Obs.)
2.
One who is versed in astronomy; one who has a knowledge of the laws of the heavenly orbs, or the principles by which their motions are regulated, with their various phenomena. "An undevout astronomer is mad."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Astronomer" Quotes from Famous Books



... different sciences are different habits. But the same scientific truth belongs to different sciences: thus both the physicist and the astronomer prove the earth to be round, as stated in Phys. ii, text. 17. Therefore habits are not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... tried life, too. Once in a while one meets with a single soul greater than all the living pageant which passes before it. As the pale astronomer sits in his study with sunken eyes and thin fingers, and weighs Uranus or Neptune as in a balance, so there are meek, slight women who have weighed all which this planetary life can offer, and hold it like a bauble in the palm of their slender hands. This was ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... village schoolmaster, he lived to become one of the eight foreign associates of the Institute of France, the first native American since Franklin to be so honored; to win the Huygens medal, given once in twenty years to the astronomer who had done the greatest service to the science in that period, and to receive the highest degree from practically ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... the mark as is above it that saying of some one, "An undevout astronomer is mad." A man's being endowed with rare mathematical talent is no cause why he should or should not be devout. His gifts to weigh and measure the stars are purely intellectual; and nature being seldom profuse upon one individual,—as she was upon Pascal and Newton,—the presumption ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert

... was. And some few months before this story opens it came about that he encountered a gentleman who was, in fact, the primary cause of this story being true. Who was this gentleman? you will say. Sir Tiglath Butt, the great astronomer, Correspondent of the Institute of France, Member of the Royal College of Science, Demonstrator of Astronomical Physics, author of the pamphlet, "Star-Gazers," and the brochure, "An investigation into the psychical condition of those who see stars," C.B.F.R.S. and ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... packed, the ocean crossed, a site selected and the telescopes mounted. Scientists made all things ready for that opportune time when the sun and Venus and earth should all be in line. That critical moment was very brief. Instinctively each astronomer knew that his eye must be at the small end of the glass when the planet went scudding by the large end. Once the period of conjunction had passed no machinery would offer itself for turning the planet back upon her axis. Not for ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... "The Brick Moon" which I have received from sympathetic friends, I now recall with the greatest pleasure one sent me by Mr. Asaph Hall, the distinguished astronomer of the National Observatory. In sending me the ephemeris of the two moons of Mars, which he revealed to this world of ours, he wrote, "The smaller of these moons is the veritable Brick Moon." That, ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale

... notions of the world may seem, they include two great ideas of modern science. The universe is infinite or at least immeasurable[731]. The vision of the astronomer who sees a solar system in every star of the milky way is not wider than the thought that devised these Cakkavalas or spheres, each with a vista of heavens and a procession of Buddhas, to look after its salvation. Yet compared with the sum of being a sphere is an atom. Space is filled ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... work off his superfluous nervous energy—also to occupy the centre of our local stage for the brief time of train-stop. If it is love that makes the world go round, certainly vanity first put it into motion. "All is vanity," said the Preacher. From the devoted astronomer's austere lifework to the twinkle of a fairy's glittering tinsel; from the glories of the first man up the battle-swept hill to the infamous assassin, all is vanity. Such a universal attribute must necessarily be ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips

... favourable terms. She notices its numerous splendid palaces; its large and regular squares; its broad and handsome promenades. At the Museum of Art she was interested by the chair which Tycho Brahe, the astronomer, formerly used; and at the Thorvaldsen Museum, the colossal lion executed by the great Danish sculptor. Having seen all that was to be seen, she took ship for Iceland, passing Helsingborg on the Swedish coast, and Elsinore on the Danish, the latter associated ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous

... Australian meteorological phenomenon. See quotations, especially 1879, A. R. Wallace. The phrase is of course used elsewhere, but its Australian use is peculiar. The hot wind blows from the North. Mr. H. C. Russell, the Government Astronomer of New South Wales, writes—"The hot wind of Australia is a circulation of wind about the anticyclone in the rear of which, as it moves to the east, there is a strong force of wind from north to ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris

... encyclopedic manner, and, according to some authorities, the first writer to mention coffee. He assumed the poetical name of Razi because he was a native of the city of Raj in Persian Irak. He was a great philosopher and astronomer, and at one time was superintendent of the hospital at Bagdad. He wrote many learned books on medicine and surgery, but his principal work is Al-Haiwi, or The Continent, a collection of ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... parents to the Observatory, where Arago then was, who, at the earnest instance of Cholet, agreed to test the child's powers at once. There were present on this occasion, besides Arago, MM. Mathieu and Laugier, and an astronomer of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various

... pleasure and profit. The effect of Locke's forcible and perspicuous reasoning is greatly heightened by his evident anxiety to get at the truth, and by the singularly generous and graceful courtesy with which he treats an antagonist of powers far inferior to his own. Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal, described the controversy well by saying that the point in dispute was whether five was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the mathematics, and some skill both in architecture and in the anatomy of the human skeleton and muscles; while of perspective he perhaps knew well-nigh as much as was known at the time. I remember he preferred the Treatise on this art, of Ferguson the astronomer and mechanician, to any other; and used to say that the twenty years spent by the philosopher as a painter were fully redeemed, though they had produced no good pictures, by his little work on Perspective alone. My friend ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... The astronomer smiled again as he took the paper back. Meanwhile the Astronef was rushing upward like a meteor through the clouds. In ten minutes the limits of the Jovian atmosphere were passed. Stars and suns and planets blazed out of the black ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith

... of salmon fly-hooks ever made was that which belonged to the late Mr. Henry Grant of Elchies, a property on which is some of the best water in all the run of Spey. His father was a distinguished Indian civil servant and of later fame as an astronomer; and his elder brother, Mr. Grant of Carron, was one of the best fishermen that ever played a big fish in the pool of Dellagyl. Henry Grant himself had been a keen fisherman in his youth, and when, after a chequered and roving life in South Africa and elsewhere, he came into ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... fact, but I am no happier for believing it. However, too much education is a nuisance, and very likely Mamma Church was wise in toasting an astronomer now ...
— The Pines of Lory • John Ames Mitchell

... was living in Florence an old man who knew a great deal about the stars, and who made wonderful calculations about them. He was a famous astronomer, but he cared not at all for honour or fame, but lived a simple quiet life by himself and would not mix ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman

... philosopher Gleichen, has a very imposing appearance. Here is also an obelisk erected to the memory of Gleichen himself, the founder of these gardens; and a monument to the memory of Keplar, the astronomer; which latter was luckily spared in the assault of this town ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... cultivated. The ancients regarded him as the first promulgator of the utility of medicines, in which he was said to have instructed his pupil AEsculapius. He was also considered to be an excellent musician and a good astronomer, as we learn from Homer, Diodorus Siculus, and other authors. Most of the heroes of that age, and among them Hercules and Jason, studied under him. Very probably, the only foundation for the story of the transformation ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... Soliman-Pasha. The palace of Thermes, in the Rue de La Harpe, served as a shop for a cooper. On the platform of the octagonal tower of the Hotel de Cluny, the little shed of boards, which had served as an observatory to Messier, the naval astronomer under Louis XVI., was still to be seen. The Duchesse de Duras read to three or four friends her unpublished Ourika, in her boudoir furnished by X. in sky-blue satin. The N's were scratched off the Louvre. The bridge of Austerlitz had abdicated, and was entitled ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... BAILLY, Astronomer, account of, President of National Assembly, Mayor of Paris, receives Louis in Paris, and Paris Parlement, on Petition for Deposition, decline of, in prison, at Queen's ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle

... permitted to fill to the best advantage her circle of action, we shall find a capacity for education equal to that of him who, merely in reference to the temporary relations of society, has been constituted her lord. If you look up into yonder firmament with your naked eye, the astronomer will point you to a star which shines down upon you single in rays of pure liquid light. But if you will ascend yon eminence and direct towards it that magnificent instrument which modern science has brought to such perfection of power, the same star will suddenly resolve itself ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... observes a smell, he infers a cheese, he seeks and finds. The astronomer observes this and that; adds his this and that to the this-and-thats of a hundred predecessors, infers an invisible planet, seeks it and finds it. The rat gets into a trap; gets out with trouble; infers that cheese in traps lacks value, and meddles ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... is happening to-day in its relations to slow processes of elaboration, and to form judgments based upon wide and systematic inquiry, which, if they do not entitle us to predict particular events, as an astronomer predicts an eclipse, will at least be a guide to sane and sober minds, and suggest at once a humbler appreciation of what is within our power, and—I think also—a more really hopeful anticipation of ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... clear, dark, moonless night, with a ring of frost in the air, and only a star or two set sparsely in the vault of heaven; and you will find a sight as stimulating as the hoariest summit of the Alps. The solitude seems perfect; the patient astronomer, flat on his back under the Observatory dome and spying heaven's secrets, is your only neighbour; and yet from all round you there come up the dull hum of the city, the tramp of countless people marching out of time, the rattle of carriages ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Earth miles. Already they had swung out to a new orbit between those of Ganymede and Callisto. And what of the effect on the other satellites? Blaine listened carefully as the astronomer continued. ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent

... works of KEPLER is preparing in Germany, under the supervision of Prof. FRISCH, of Stuttgart. The manuscripts of the great astronomer, preserved at St. Petersburg, have been examined for the purpose, with rich results. It is also proposed to erect a ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... earth and other planets, their respective distances from each other, their revolutions, their eclipses and their orbits, and, more wonderful still, the precise time when the various movements of each occur. In art, the astronomer has originated and perfected the many powerful and beautiful instruments now required for taking observations, and these, when compared with the instruments in use in bypast times, are excellent evidences of modern progress in this direction. Our wonder is excited when we look at ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness

... direction of the modification of specific doctrines as in "the impulse and tendency and general spirit which he imparted to theological thought." Dr Munger's estimate may be accepted, with reservations, as the true one: "He was a theologian as Copernicus was an astronomer; he changed the point of view, and thus not only changed everything, but pointed the way toward unity in theological thought. He was not exact, but he put God and man and the world into a relation that thought can accept while it goes on to state it more fully with ever ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... various branches of social science, especially political economy, sociology, anthropology, and psychology, is succeeding in explaining many things; but history must always remain, from the standpoint of the astronomer, physicist, or chemist, a highly inexact and fragmentary body of knowledge.... History can no doubt be pursued in a strictly scientific spirit, but the data we possess in regard to the past of mankind are ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... you gather some idea of the eternity past of God's existence,—go to the astronomer, and bid him lead you in one of his walks through space; and, as he sweeps outward from object to object, from universe to universe, remember that the light from those filmy stains on the deep pure blue of heaven, now falling on your eye, has ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders

... the early nineteenth century, who had the honor of being the only man that ever held the presidential chair of the Royal Society longer than it was held by Newton; of James Watts, of "steam-engine" fame; of Sabine, the astronomer, also a president of the society; and of Dr. Falconer and Sir ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams

... my profession done so? The hearts of criminals and prisoners of war even are declared sacred from touch, and when we stand helpless by a patient, and see our medicines work harm as often as good, why is it? Only because we physicians are expected to work as blindly as an astronomer, if he were required to look at the stars through a board. At Heliopolis I entreated the great Urma Rahotep, the truly learned chief of our craft, and who held me in esteem, to allow me to examine the heart of a dead Amu; but he refused me, because the great Sechet ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... great part of its figures are gone. Selvatico states them as follows: Solomon, the wise; Priscian, the grammarian; Aristotle, the logician; Tully, the orator; Pythagoras, the philosopher; Archimedes, the mechanic; Orpheus, the musician; Ptolemy, the astronomer. The fragments actually remaining are ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... to you, nor would it to the average person; but to a mathematician and astronomer—to Dr. Ku Sui—it would be a challenge! He would be studying the paper on which it is written down. One of Eliot Leithgow's papers. Plans for an addition to a laboratory. Therefore, Eliot Leithgow's laboratory. And then the figure: half the circumference of Satellite III. Why, ...
— The Bluff of the Hawk • Anthony Gilmore

... You just won't see many of them. People always think there ought to be dozens of them around, like sheep on a hillside, but it just doesn't work that way." Johnny peered at the screen. "Of course, to an astronomer the Belt is just loaded ... hundreds of thousands of chunks, all sizes from five hundred miles in diameter on down. But actually, those chunks are all tens of thousands of miles apart, and the Belt looks just as empty as the space between Mars ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse

... are, however, of opinion that Talleyrand, from malignity or revenge, often heightened and confirmed His Holiness's aversion. This was at least once the case with regard to De Lalande. When Duroc inquired the cause of the Pope's displeasure against this astronomer, and hinted that it would be very agreeable to the Emperor were His Holiness to permit him the honour of prostrating himself, he was answered that men of talents and learning would always be welcome to approach his person; that he pitied ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... Zimmermann, a distinguished mathematician and astronomer and the founder of an order of mystics called Pietists, started for America, to await the coming of the millennium, which his calculations placed in the autumn of 1694. But the fate of common mortals overtook the unfortunate leader and he died just as he ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth

... question. If nothing short of the marvellous is to satisfy us, who shall say that even this will not present itself to the far-piercing ken of the new monster telescope—refracting, not reflecting—established on Wandsworth Common, at the cost of an amateur astronomer, for the promotion of the celestial science? Lord Rosse has now a competitor; and with a tube of eighty feet in length, and the power of looking direct at the distant object, may we not hope to hear of great ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various

... "An undevout astronomer is mad! * * * * * * Oh, what a genius must inform the skies! And is Lorenzo's salamander-heart Cold and untouched amid ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... child. The sounds came from the rooms of the Ulphs, which were directly overhead, and by morning she was convinced that there was a case of serious illness in the German family. Led by her sympathies, and also by the hope of thawing the reserve of the eccentric old astronomer, she resolved to go and ask if she ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... manner of statement represents fitly the scientific school of historical writers. He was thorough in his investigation, sparing neither labor nor pains to get at the truth. It may well enough be true that the designedly untruthful historian, like the undevout astronomer, is an anomaly, for inaccuracy comes not from purpose, but from neglect. Now Gardiner went to the bottom of things, and was not satisfied until he had compassed all the material within his reach. As a matter of course he read ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... object, and it gradually ceases to be familiar. Certainly for the most part, the way we see things is a combination of what is there and of what we expected to find. The heavens are not the same to an astronomer as to a pair of lovers; a page of Kant will start a different train of thought in a Kantian and in a radical empiricist; the Tahitian belle is a better looking person to her Tahitian suitor than to the readers of the National ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... to century or millennium to millennium. When we pass a certain boundary-line, which, after all, is reached very soon, figures cease to convey to our finite faculties any real notion of the periods with which we have to deal. The astronomer can employ material illustrations to give form and substance to our conceptions of celestial space; but such a resource is unavailable to the geologist. The few thousand years of which we have historical evidence sink into absolute insignificance beside the unnumbered aeons which unroll themselves ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson

... lively sketch of the market at Anjui, to which, in 1821, the Chukches still went fully armed with spears, bows, and arrows (Wrangel's Reise, i. p. 270), and a visit to it in 1868 is described by C. von Neumann, who took part as Astronomer in von Maydell's expedition to Chukch Land (Eine Messe im Hochnorden; Das Ausland 1880, p. ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... Cycle (ante, p. 70.), that soon after it appeared it obtained for its author the annual gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society; and that it is a book adapted to the exigencies of astronomers of all degrees, from the experienced astronomer, furnished with every modern refinement of appliances and means of observation, to the humbler, but perhaps no less zealous beginner, furnished only with a good pair of natural eyes, aided, on occasion, by the common opera-glass. Such an observer, if he goes the right way ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various

... the following: "What a prodigious influence must our thirteen times larger globe have exercised upon this satellite when an embryo in the womb of time, the passive subject of chemical affinity!" This is very fine; but it should be observed that no astronomer would have made such remark, especially to any journal of Science; for the earth, in the sense intended, is not only thirteen, but forty-nine times larger than the moon. A similar objection applies to the whole of the concluding ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... school was large, and comprised a male and female department, in the former of which a number of young men were prepared for the university. Among them was James Watson, who became so famous as an astronomer, and who from the first astonished all by his wonderful facility in all branches of mathematics. We meet now and then some of our old pupils, middle-aged men and women, and are proud to see them filling their ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve

... remember that there was a very good marine picture by Birch in the drawing-room. This was after living in the Washington Square house, of which I shall speak anon. I am not clear as to these removals. There were some men of culture at Mrs. Eaton's—among them Sears C. Walker, a great astronomer, and a Dr. Brewer, who had travelled in Italy and brought back with him pieces of sculpture. We were almost directly opposite the State House, where liberty had been declared, while to the side, across the street, was the Library founded by Dr. Franklin, with ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... built an Observatory on the top with which, to use his own words, he meant to lick Creation by seeing further into Creation than anyone else had done, and that is just what his great reflector had enabled his astronomer to do. ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... My astronomer had dived under the bench. I saw for the moment little more than his posterior and the soles of ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... between the second and the fifteenth century, besides those mentioned, who quote Tacitus, it will be found that their quotations are from the History, the Germany, or the Agricola; and this can be predicted with just as much confidence, as an astronomer predicts eclipses of the sun and the moon, and, for their verification, needs not wait to see the actual ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross

... expected to furnish materials for an extended biography. But the important position held by my late son, as second in command in what is now so well-known as the Burke and Wills Exploring Expedition across the Island Continent of Australia; the complicated duties he undertook as Astronomer, Topographer, Journalist, and Surveyor; the persevering skill with which he discharged them, suggesting and regulating the march of the party through a waste of eighteen hundred miles, previously untrodden by ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills

... more at large by Segrais, agrees with the rising of Orion, which caused the tempest described in the beginning of the first book. By some passages in the "Pastorals," but more particularly in the "Georgics," our poet is found to be an exact astronomer, according to the knowledge of that age. Now Ilioneus, whom Virgil twice employs in embassies as the best speaker of the Trojans, attributes that tempest to Orion in his ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden

... was standing sentry over the northward passes, but want of supplies and deficiency of ammunition prevented him advancing at once on the Basin: and of the range before him he had no accurate maps and knew less about its topography than an astronomer knows of the Mountains of the Moon. While formulating a scheme for blocking the passes, De Wet's sudden outbreak took him by surprise, and he was unable to head the Free State leader, who passed northwards between Bethlehem and ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... with justice called by his contemporaries the 'Great Geometer', on the strength of his great treatise, the Conics. He is mentioned as a famous astronomer of the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes (247-222 B. C.); and he dedicated the fourth and later Books of the Conics to King Attalus I of Pergamum (241-197 ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... Red Deer, up the Bow, up the Athabaska, up the Smoky, up the Pembina, and to press over the mountains wherever any river led oceanwards through the passes. This duty of finding new passable ways to the sea was especially incumbent on the company's surveyor and astronomer, David Thompson. He was formerly of the Hudson's Bay Company, but had come over to the Nor'westers, and in their service had surveyed from the Assiniboine to the Missouri and from Lake ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut

... and Dominican licensers thought." One may be sure that it was not merely the interest of the new theory about the motion of the earth which drew him back so often to that question in Paradise Lost. The blind astronomer, whose scientific heresies had placed him in some danger of the thumbscrew, must have been a very near and moving memory to the blind poet whose political and ecclesiastical heresies had so nearly brought him ...
— Milton • John Bailey

... precincts by writers who venture there without the laborious preparation which this science, more than almost any other, demands. But the proceedings of the trained philologist are no more arbitrary than those of the trained astronomer. And though the former may seem to be straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel when he coolly tells you that violin and fiddle are the same word, while English care and Latin cura have nothing to do with each other, he is nevertheless no more indulging ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... M. Jean N. Nicollet, visited Minnesota for the purpose of exploration. He was an astronomer of note, and had received a decoration of the Legion of Honor, and had also been attached as professor to the Royal College of "Louis Le Grande." He arrived in Minnesota on July 26, 1836, bearing letters of introduction, and visited Fort Snelling, whence he left with a French ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... Danish astronomer. Having lost his nose in a duel with one Passberg, he adopted a golden one, and attached it to his face by a cement which he ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... stable, a distillery, a camphene and oil store, or some other kind of building. In the nighttime, he knew the lights which mapped out the squares and the streets within his range of observation, almost as well as the astronomer knows the other lights that shine down upon the sleeping city from the heavens. He could fix the position of a fire by night rather better than by day, because he had the red reflection of the flames on well-known steeples, and high, prominent ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... thought it advisable to describe in detail the various instruments of precision, which we have been called upon to construct from time to time for the scientists in the astronomical as well as other branches of science during the last ten years. As a rule every astronomer is interested in some special line of research, which for a successful investigation requires a special adaptation of the instrument he proposes to use, and in such cases we are confident we can fill the requirements and shall be happy to correspond with interested parties. We are in ...
— Astronomical Instruments and Accessories • Wm. Gaertner & Co.

... Story of the Peasant-Boy Philosopher; or, "A Child gathering Pebbles on the Sea-Shore." (Founded on the Early Life of Ferguson, The Shepherd-Boy Astronomer, and intended to show how a Poor Lad became acquainted with the Principles of Natural Science.) By Henry Mayhew. ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... true that, as expressed by him, these propositions of Laplace are not all beyond dispute. An astronomer of the highest authority, who has favoured me with some criticisms on this essay, alleges that instead of a nebulous ring rupturing at one point, and collapsing into a single mass, "all probability would ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... the balloon an exception to that pretended law of nature. But the real law is, that all heavy bodies tend to fall; and to this there is no exception, not even the sun and moon; for even they, as every astronomer knows, tend towards the earth, with a force exactly equal to that with which the earth tends towards them. The resistance of the atmosphere might, in the particular case of the balloon, from a misapprehension of what the law of ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... in his song-book, the incompetent Lisbon doctors with their stereotyped formulas, the frivolous persons who are bored by three prayers at church but spend nights and days listening to novellas, the parvo, predecessor of the Spanish gracioso, the Lisbon courtier descended from Aeneas, the astronomer, unpractical in daily life as he gazes on the stars, the old man amorous, rose in buttonhole, playing on a viola, the Jewish marriage-brokers, the country bumpkin, the lazy peasant lying by the fire, the poor but happy gardener and his wife, the quarrelsome blacksmith with his wife ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente

... these stanzas was Ormsby McKnight Mitchell, a distinguished astronomer, and major-general of volunteers in the United States service, who was born in Kentucky, August 28, 1810, and died at Beaufort, S. C., October 30, 1862. He was commander of the department of the South, and was making ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... an astronomer and fire-worshipper, somewhat dazzled at present by the nearness and brilliancy ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... The astronomer chalking his figures on the wall, in Hogarth's view of Bedlam, is an admirable exemplification of this idea. See the RAKE'S ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers

... been here twice, without leaving his address. I have advanced as far in the astronomy and chronology of the Chinese as I can without an astronomer. They have begun with the beginning of the Chaldeans. With the language, too, I have reached firm soil and ground, through the 120 words which become particles. More by ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... American Rittenhouse was associated with him. This operation was not only of great contemporary fame, but is still quoted in English books among the data whence we derive our knowledge of the magnitude and figure of the earth. So also the same astronomer (Mason) had but a few years before the War of Independence commenced the tracing of a parallel of latitude from the former line to the westward, thus marking the respective limits of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. With such examples before them ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... of Rome will not cast his tiara and keys at the feet of the "humble presbyter" who now plays the part of pope in Scotland. I do not know whom he means: but perhaps the friends of the presbyter-pope may consider this an ungenerous slur. The best proof of the astronomer is just such "as might have been expected from the merest of blockheads"; but as the giver is of course not a blockhead, this circumstance shows how deeply blinded by prejudice ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... whole of the great trilogy with the same severe sublimity. In America this gentleman is better known by his translation or adaptation (how much more of it is his own than the author's I should like to know if I were Irish) of Omar Khayyam, the astronomer-poet of Persia. Archbishop Trench, in his volume on the life and genius of Calderon, frequently refers to Mr. Fitzgerald's translations, and himself gives a version of Life's a Dream, the excellence of which falls short, however, of his friend's finer dramatic poem ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald

... vex others, for mere groundless conjectures. As for the vulgar who never reason, the arguments of an Atheist are no more fit for them than the systems of a natural philosopher, the observations of an astronomer, the experiments of a chemist, the calculations of a geometrician, the researches of a physician, the plans of an architect, or the pleadings of a lawyer, who all labour for the people without ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach

... at least—the sun was in the sky, and that would guide me—until near the meridian hours. Then I should have to halt, and wait a while; for in that southern latitude, and just at that time of the year, the sun at noon is so near the zenith that a practised astronomer could ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid

... now, as far as the general public is concerned, forgotten. All the volumes you see here are vellum manuscripts copied from the original slabs of baked clay, stone tablets, and engraved sheets of ivory, and among them is an ingenious treatise by one Remeni Adranos, chief astronomer to the then king of Babylonia, setting forth the Atom and Evolution theory with far more clearness and precision than any of your modern professors. All such propositions are old—old as the hills, I assure you; and these days in which you live are more ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... Africa, i. 116, contains my objections to his theory.] who would limit it to the Tenerifans. The same occurs in the Eev. Mr. Delany [Footnote: Notes of a Residence in the Canary Islands, &c. London, 1861.] and in Professor Piazzi Smyth, [Footnote: An Astronomer's Experiment, p. 190. L. Reeve, London, 1868.] who speaks of the 'Guanches of Grand Canary and Teneriffe.' According to popular usage all were right, 'Guanche' being the local and general term for the aborigines ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... as soon think of compassionating the star that shines brightest in the van of night. Compassion looks down; kindness implies an equal ground; admiration looks up with the gaze of the astronomer and the worship of ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... idea of an union of both Protestant confessions was mooted. He also paid a visit to Tycho Brahe on the island of Hveen, which gave him indescribable pleasure: he believed that in his company he fathomed the marvels of the universe, and lauded the astronomer in spirited Latin verse as the friend of Urania, and as the master of the starry world.[301] And a general influence was exercised in Europe both by his alliance with the house of Oldenburg, and the connexion which he formed through it with many of the ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... no mind dared to touch the problem. At length a young astronomer rises, unknown to fame, but with a mind capable of grasping all the difficulties involved in any of these questions. I refer of course to LEVERRIER. He began by taking up the movements of Mercury. He was dissatisfied with the old computations and the old tables; ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies

... Act of Union was placed in the hands of a Committee, consisting of the churchwardens and overseers, and of eight gentlemen for the Hertfordshire side, and three for Cambs. The new local parliament was made up of the following:—For Hertfordshire, George North, churchwarden, Henry Andrews (the astronomer), and Wm. Cockett, the two overseers; Tuttle Sherwood, churchwarden, and Thomas Moule and Thomas Watson, overseers for the Cambs. side; and the following elected members, viz., for Herts., John Phillips, Michael Phillips, Edward Day, Wm. Nash, Samuel ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston

... not the billows, but the calm level of the sea from which all heights and depths are measured. When the storm has passed and the hour of calm settles on the ocean, when the sunlight bathes its peaceful surface, then the astronomer and surveyor take the level from which they measure all ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... Annuaire of the Bureau des Longitudes, recently published in Paris, appears a paper by the distinguished astronomer Arago—'On the Observations which have made known the Physical Constitution of the Sun and of different Stars; and an Inquiry into the Conjectures of the Ancient Philosophers, and of the Positive Ideas of Modern ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various

... In this was a piano. When my wife and I arrived at the top, we found that Gounod, the composer, was there. We stayed a couple of hours, and Gounod sang and played for us. We spent a day at Meudon, an old palace given by the government to Jansen, the astronomer. He occupied three rooms, and there were 300. He had the grand dining-room for his laboratory. He showed me a gyroscope he had got up which made the incredible number of 4000 revolutions in a second. A modification of this was afterward used on the French Atlantic lines for making an artificial ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... sun, and star, and planet, separately and distinctly?" If so, then there must have been just as many Primitive Impulses as there are stars and suns and planets, and there would be according to a certain astronomer's estimate at least 800,000,000 Primitive Impulses, which assumption is altogether opposed to, and violates the ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper

... The astronomer Proctor, in his beautiful book, Flowers of the Sky, says that "light is the first of all that exists in the universe." And we are, told that the action of light was necessary to prepare the way for all life; but this is far too great a subject for us to speak of in this little book. Let us remember ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... were, Mr Green, an astronomer; Mr Banks, a naturalist, who afterwards became Sir Joseph Banks and a celebrated man; Doctor Solander, who was also a naturalist; and two draughtsmen, one of whom was skilled in drawing objects of natural history, the other in taking views ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne

... and in silence. "I know not why it is," said he, "but that story of yours, my friend, brings to my mind a story of a man whom I once knew—a great magician in his time, and a necromancer and a chemist and an alchemist and mathematician and a rhetorician, an astronomer, an astrologer, and ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle

... catch them in his sink-spout. I knew a girl who, being sent to pick huckleberries, picked wild gooseberries by the quart, where no one else knew that there were any, because she was accustomed to pick them up country where she came from. The astronomer knows where to go star-gathering, and sees one clearly in his mind before any have seen it with a glass. The hen scratches and finds her food right under where she stands; but such is not the way ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various

... photograph has been obtained which shows them plainly, so they must have an existence, and cannot be only in the eye of the observer, as the most sceptical people were wont to suggest. But further than this, one astronomer announced that some of these lines appeared to be double, yet when he looked at them again they had grown single. It was like a conjuring trick. Great excitement was aroused by this, for if the canals ...
— The Children's Book of Stars • G.E. Mitton

... An astronomer, seeing these fantastic wobblings and waverings of light and shadow in our firmament, would straightway send a letter or a cable dispatch to the newspapers, declaring that an unheard-of convulsion was shaking the depths of celestial space. And, ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris

... is unfounded. Faith is dearly bought at the cost of knowledge; nor in a better sense has it yet gone from among us. Far more sublime than any known to the barbarian is the faith of the astronomer, who spends the nights in marking the seemingly wayward motions of the stars, or of the anatomist, who studies with unwearied zeal the minute fibres of the organism, each upheld by the unshaken conviction that from least to greatest throughout ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... lovers of impassioned oratory felt the joy which the astronomer knows "when a new comet swims into his ken" in the appearance of a brilliant political orator, of masterly talent and more masterly will. This still young man of Hebraic origin, rather dashing and flashing in manner and dress, had not been thought to ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood

... international boundary line," and the maps, records, and general reports relating to the commission, have been deposited in the Department of State. The official report of the commissioner on the part of the United States, with the report of the chief astronomer of the United States, will be submitted to Congress within ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant

... Huss preached, and John of Rokysan taught; and Tycho Brahe found here the last resting-place which is allotted to mortality. There is a rude monument to him,—a figure in armour, carved in relief, against one of the pillars near the altar; and over it is engraved the astronomer's motto, Esse quam haberi. It is remarkable enough that as in this church the communion was first administered in both elements to the people, so is there still to be found here the single memorial that remains of ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig

... passengers who were personally attractive, and who were more or less worthy of description. There were, among others, a genial and enthusiastic Dutch-African legislator of the Cape; a broad-shouldered but retiring astronomer; also a kindly Cape merchant; and a genial English banker, with their respective wives and families. I had the good fortune to sit in the midst of these at meals, close to Captain Hewat, who is unquestionably, what many of us styled him, a "trump." ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne

... of the bitterness of a "home-mood," imagined himself a Martian astronomer explaining to a friend, with the aid of a powerful telescope, the institutions of the earth. "There are the continents," he indicated; "and up there near the polar cap is a country, frigid and burning and lonely and apart, called Alaska. Now, in other countries and states ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... The astronomer Hamilton "made an expedition to Dublin to substitute a semi-colon for a colon"; but, reports J. E. R., "my wife's brother's brother-in-law's doctor charged him $600 for removing only ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... man I came across. You would have been that man. I know you do not carry much luggage, but you could have taken one or two trifles at least. He wanted a respectable English telescope, I remember, to see the stars with—a bit of an astronomer, you know. Chutney, too—devilish fond of chutney, the old boy was; quite a gastro-maniac. What a nuisance! Now he will be thinking I forgot all about it. And he needed a clothes-press; I was on no account ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... the library any person, without respect to age, color, or condition, if only he possess the key of literacy to unlock knowledge, can travel to the utmost limits of continents and seas, can dig with the geologist below the surface, or soar with the astronomer beyond the limits of aviation, can hob-nob with ancient worthies or sit at the feet of the latest novelist or philosopher, and can learn how to rule empires from as good text-books as kings ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... As an astronomer that satte vpon a tyme in the market place of a certayne towne, and toke vpon him to dyuine and to shewe what theyr fortunes and chaunses shuld be, that came to him: there came a felow and tolde him (as it was in deede) that theues had broken in to his house, and ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown

... over the reins of the German Government after the abdication of the Kaiser; and, on the opposite side, Monsieur Emil Liban, Prince Rostoloff, and Sir John Smith, the respective ambassadors of France, Russia, and Great Britain. The sixth person was Thornton, the astronomer. ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train

... arises in civilized man, at least, from the feeling of awe in the presence of the vast forces of nature. Here science has contributed to religious feeling, for as one looks at the stars, his soul bows in worship mainly because the astronomer, the scientist, has told him that every twinkling point is a great sun surrounded by planets, and that the light from them must travel unimaginable millions of miles to reach him. As the world forces become impersonal they become more majestic, ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... when he explored the heavens, and saw worlds balancing worlds, and other suns enlightening other systems, his senses were ravished with the wisdom, the power, the goodness of the Almighty Architect. On these subjects he often declaimed, with the learning of an astronomer, the simplicity of an apostle, the eloquence of a prophet. He illustrated the moral and religious improvement of the sciences; the views of his students were enlarged; the sciences became brilliant stars to irradiate the hemisphere of Christianity. The ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith

... seared the memory, had faded almost out of recollection. It needed an effort to return to Southampton, Cherbourg and Queenstown, as though returning to some event of last year. I think we all realized that time may be measured more by events than by seconds and minutes: what the astronomer would call "2.20 A.M. April 15th, 1912," the survivors called "the sinking of the Titanic"; the "hours" that followed were designated "being adrift in an open sea," and "4.30 A.M." was "being rescued by the Carpathia." The clock was a ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley

... down went grocer and tailor, under the long staves of the indomitable English Footmen. "A Jenkins! a Jenkins!" roared the Duke, planting a blow which broke the aquiline nose of Major Arago, the celebrated astronomer. "St. George for Mayfair!" shouted his followers, strewing the plain with carcasses. Not a man of the Guard escaped; they fell like ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... do you? Whenever you hear a man talking about the stars you may conclude that he is either an astronomer or a fool. But you and a fine starry night would make ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... Perhaps you were a person of rather minor importance. You are, that is, you were, we will say, an astronomer, or you were a mineralogist, or a former Alderman, or something like that. So you call for a paragraph, with a head. Your virtues (and your vices) have been many. You were three times married. As Mr. Bennett says ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday

... he gave orders to kill a {166} little infant, the son of his deadliest enemy, Count of Calw, his astronomer Crusius having prophesied, that this child would wed the Emperor's daughter and reign after him. The remembrance of this cruelty now torments him, but Gisela consoles her husband, hoping and praying ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... the Hairy Ammophila that Spiders have a nutty flavour, as Lalande asserts; and you will see how coldly your hints are received. (Joseph Jerome Le Francois de Lalande (1732-1807), the astronomer. Even after he had achieved his reputation, he sought means, outside the domain of science, to make himself talked about and found these in the display partly of odd tastes, such as that for eating Spiders and caterpillars, and partly of atheistical ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... which was of conical shape, according to the fashion supposed to have been favored by Guido Fawkes. I wondered what he was looking up at. It couldn't be at the stars; such a desperado was neither astrologer nor astronomer. It must be at the high gallows, and he was going to be hanged presently. Would the executioner come into possession of his conical crowned hat and plume of feathers? I counted the feathers again—three white, ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... is supposed to be moving slowly through space, carrying the earth and all the planets along with him. The great astronomer Herschel assigned the constellation Hercules as that toward which we are moving, and the calculations of more recent astronomers have also ...
— Harper's Young People, February 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various



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