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Comets encountering these precincts must be perplexed to decide between the two potentates claiming their allegiance, and perhaps on occasions pay their court to each in turns, throwing out tails, as they do so, in all sorts of anomalous and contradictory directions.
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The astronomer has become, in the highest sense of the term, a physicist; while the physicist is bound to be something of an astronomer.
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Thus, not merely what it can do, but the rate at which it can do it, has to be considered in estimating the value of photography as an ally in astronomy.
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Cosmology is the elder sister of cosmogony.
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Knowledge will appear in turn the merest ignorance to those who come after us. Yet it is not to be despised, since by it we reach up groping fingers to touch the hem of the garment of the Most High.
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Progress, then, is the law of the universe. From its present state we can obscurely argue a "has been" and a "shall be."
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The planets revolved in circles because it was in their nature to do so, just as laudanum sends to sleep because it possesses a virtus dormitiva.
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Access to the nebular heavens can be gained only by making the very most of the little light they send us.
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Is it not reasonable to think that by far the greater part is solid and dark, and that this immense globe is encompassed with a thin covering of that resplendent substance from which the sun would seem to derive the whole of his vivifying heat and energy?
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Observation... is the pitiless critic of theory; it detects weak points, and provokes reforms which may be the beginnings of discovery.