John Herschel Quotes
...Nature builds up her refined and invisible architecture, with a delicacy eluding our conception, yet with a symmetry and beauty which we are never weary of admiring.
The besetting evil of our age is the temptation to squander and dilute thought on a thousand different lines of inquiry.
Occurrences which according to received theories ought not to happen, are the facts which serve as clues to new discoveries
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.
Geology, in the magnitude and sublimity of the objects of which it treats, undoubtedly ranks, in the scale of the sciences, next to astronomy.
All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more strongly the truths come from on high, and contained in the sacred writings.
The novel, in its best form, I regard as one of the most powerful engines of civilization ever invented.
Every student who enters upon a scientific pursuit, especially if at a somewhat advanced period of life, will find not only that he has much to learn, but much also to unlearn.
Speculations apparently the most unprofitable have almost invariably been those from which the greatest practical applications have emanated.
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.
