To read a book, to think it over, and to write out notes is a useful exercise; a book which will not repay some hard thought is not worth publishing.
I made observations for three hours last night, and am almost ill today from fatigue; still I have worked all day, trying to reduce the places, and mean to work hard again tonight.
Altogether, St. Louis is a growing place, and the West has a large hand and a strong grasp.
In my younger days, when I was painted by the half-educated, loose and inaccurate ways women had, I used to say, “How much women need exact science” But since I have known some workers in science, I have now said, “How much science needs women”
An English village could never be mistaken for an American one: the outline against the sky differs; a thatched cottage makes a very wavy line on the blue above.
Let us secure not such books as people want, but books just above their wants, and they will reach up to take what is put out for them.
I had only ordinary capacity but extraordinary persistency.
Women, more than men, are bound by tradition and authority. What the father, the brother, the doctor, and the minister have said has been received undoubtingly. Until women throw off this reverence for authority they will not develop.
There is something of the same pleasure in noticing the hues of the stars that there is in looking at a flower garden in autumn.
A sphere is made up of not one, but an infinite number of circles; women have diverse gifts, and to say that women’s sphere is the family circle is a mathematical absurdity.
Nothing comes out more clearly in astronomical observations than the immense activity of the universe.
I have worn myself thin trying to find out about this comet, and I know very little now in the matter.
The best that can be said of my life so far is that it has been industrious and the best that can be said of me is that I have not pretended to what I was not.
I saw, in looking over Cooper, elements of a comet of 1825 which resemble what I get out for this, from my own observations, but I cannot rely upon my own.
That knowledge which is popular is not scientific.
A traveller, lost on a desert plain, feels that the recognition of one star, the Pole star, is of itself a great acquisition.
The phrase ‘popular science’ has in itself a touch of absurdity. That knowledge which is popular is not scientific.
A young sailor boy came to see me to-day. It pleases me to have these lads seek me on their return from their first voyage, and tell me how much they have learned about navigation.
As a general rule, people disappoint you as you know them.
How strange that some people cannot believe in both the Book of Nature and the Book of God.
But why look back at all? Why turn your eyes to your shadow, when, by looking upward, you see your rainbow in the same direction?