Christian Huygens Quotes

Huygens mixes cosmic music with a taste like French or Italian flair, inviting readers to wander through imaginative soundscapes.

15 quotes

  1. 'Since 'tis certain that Earth and Jupiter have their Water and Clouds, there is no reason why the other Planets should be without them. I can't say that they are exactly of the same nature with our Water; but that they should be liquid their use requires, as their beauty does that they be clear. This Water of ours, in Jupiter or Saturn, would be frozen up instantly by reason of the vast distance of the Sun. Every Planet therefore must have its own Waters of such a temper not liable to Frost.'

  2. 'The world is my country, science is my religion.'

  3. 'The taste of music with the inhabitants of Venus and Jupiter is at a high level, similar to that of Frenchmen or Italians'

  4. There are many degrees of Probable, some nearer Truth than others, in the determining of which lies the chief exercise of our Judgment.

  5. One may conceive light to spread successively, by spherical waves.

  6. I believe that we do not know anything for certain, but everything probably.

  7. I do not mind at all that Newton is not a Cartesian provided he does not offer us suppositions like that of attraction.

  8. Here we may mount from this dull Earth, and viewing it from on high, consider whether Nature has laid out all her Cost and Finery upon this small Speck of Dirt.

  9. It's evident God had no design to make a particular Enumeration in the Holy Scriptures, of all the Works of his Creation.

  10. It is surrounded by a thin flat ring, inclined to the ecliptic, and nowhere touches the body of the planet.

  11. How vast those Orbs must be, and how inconsiderable this Earth, the Theatre upon which all our mighty Designs, all our Navigations, and all our Wars are transacted, is when compared to them. A very fit consideration, and matter of Reflection, for those Kings and Princes who sacrifice the Lives of so many People, only to flatter their Ambition in being Masters of some pitiful corner of this small Spot.

  12. These Gentlemen must be told, that they take too much upon themselves when they pretend to appoint how far and no farther Men shall go in their Searches, and to set bounds to other Mens Industry; as if they knew the Marks that God has placed to Knowledge.

  13. What a wonderful and amazing Scheme have we here of the magnificent Vastness of the Universe! So many Suns, so many Earths, and every one of them stock’d with so many Herbs, Trees and Animals, and adorn’d with so many Seas and Mountains! And how must our wonder and admiration be encreased when we consider the prodigious distance and multitude of the Stars?

  14. I esteem his understanding and subtlety highly, but I consider that they have been put to ill use in the greater part of his work, where the author studies things of little use or when he builds on the improbable principle of attraction. Writing about Newton's Principia. Huygens had some time earlier indicated he did not believe the theory of universal gravitation, saying it 'appears to me absurd.'

  15. I had not thought of this regular decrease of gravity, namely that it is as the inverse square of the distance; this is a new and highly remarkable property of gravity.