John Herschel quotes

John Herschel was an English polymath, astronomer, mathematician, and chemist, known for his extensive contributions to astronomy and the development of photographic processes. His work helped catalog thousands of stars, nebulae, and other celestial objects, and he also coined many scientific terms still in use. He made significant advances in both science and technology throughout his life. Here are 16 of his quotes:

God knows how ardently I wish I had ten lives.

John Herschel

What God sends is welcome.

John Herschel

Man is constituted as a speculative being; he contemplates the world, and the objects around him, not with a passive indifferent eye, but as a system disposed with order and design.

John Herschel

A mind which has once imbibed a taste for scientific inquiry, and has learnt the habit of applying its principles readily to the cases which occur, has within itself an inexhaustible source of pure and exciting contemplations.

John Herschel

To the natural philosopher there is no natural object unimportant or trifling. From the least of nature's works he may learn the greatest lessons.

John Herschel

Time! Time! Time! - we must not impugn the Scripture Chronology, but we must interpret it in accordance with whatever shall appear on fair enquiry to be the truth for there cannot be two truths. And really there is scope enough: for the lives of the Patriarchs may as reasonably be extended to 5000 or 50000 years apiece as the days of Creation to as many thousand millions of years.

John Herschel

The question "cui bono" to what practical end and advantage do your researches tend? is one which the speculative philosopher who loves knowledge for its own sake, and enjoys, as a rational being should enjoy, the mere contemplation of harmonious and mutually dependent truths, can seldom hear without a sense of humiliation. He feels that there is a lofty and disinterested pleasure in his speculations which ought to exempt them from such questioning; communicating as they do to his own mind the purest happiness (after the exercise of the benevolent and moral feelings) of which human nature is susceptible, and tending to the injury of no one, he might surely allege this as a sufficient and direct reply to those who, having themselves little capacity, and less relish for intellectual pursuits, are constantly repeating upon him this enquiry.

John Herschel

Of the splendid constellation of great names... we admire the living and revere dead far too warmly and too deeply to suffer us sit in judgment on their respective claims to in this or that particular discovery; to balance mathematical skill of one against the experimental dexterity of another, or the philosophical acumen a third. So long as "one star differs from another in glory,"-so long as there shall exist varieties, or even incompatibilities of excellence,-so long will the admiration of mankind be found sufficient for all who merit it.

John Herschel

Unfortunately... the philosophy of Aristotle laid it down as a principle, that the celestial motions were regulated by laws proper to themselves, and bearing no affinity to those which prevail on earth. By thus drawing a broad and impassable line of separation between celestial and terrestrial mechanics, it placed the former altogether out of the pale of experimental research, while it at the same time impeded the progress of the latter by the assumption of principles respecting natural and unnatural motions, hastily adopted from the most superficial and cursory and remark, undeserving even the name of observation. Astronomy therefore continued for ages a science of mere record, in which theory had no part, except in so far as it attempted to conciliate the inequalities of the celestial motions with that assumed law of uniform circular revolution which was alone considered consistent with the perfection of the heavenly mechanism.

John Herschel

In whatever state of knowledge we may conceive man to be placed, his progress towards a yet higher state need never fear a check, but must continue till the last existence of society.

John Herschel

Were I to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me during life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss and the world frown upon me, it would be a taste for reading... Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making him a happy man; unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse selection of books. You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history,-with the wisest, the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all ages. The world has been created for him.

John Herschel

I hope we shall never allow ourselves to forget the infinitely higher and more important circumstance, that it is the great truths of science, that it is the interpretation of God's great book of nature, and not the men who interpret these pages, that are the ultimate objects of all this praise.

John Herschel

We must never forget that it is principles, not phenomena, - laws not insulated independent facts, - which are the objects of inquiry to the natural philosopher.

John Herschel

To ascend to the origin of things and speculate on the creation, is not the business of the natural philosopher.

John Herschel