Charles Lyell Quotes

One had to be a Newton to notice that the moon is falling, when everyone sees that it doesn't fall.

We all know we fall. Newton's discovery was that the moon falls, too-and by the same rule that we do.

We learn geology the morning after the earthquake, on ghastly diagrams of cloven mountains, upheaved plains, and the dry bed of the sea.

If the moon and earth were not retained in their orbits by their animal force or some other equivalent, the earth would mount to the moon by a fifty-fourth part of their distance, and the moon fall towards the earth through the other fifty-three parts, and they would there meet, assuming, however, that the substance of both is of the same density.

'And for my part, Gentlemen,' said I, 'that I may put in for a share, and guess with the rest; not to amuse myself with those curious Notions wherewith you tickle and spur on slow-paced Time; I believe, that the Moon is a World like ours, to which this of ours serves likewise for a Moon.'

Nature gives us all, including Prof. Lorentz, surprises. It was very quickly found that there are many exceptions to the rule of splitting of the lines only into triplets.

To understand the future properly, it's crucial that we listen to geologists as often as we do computer scientists.

Thus it cannot be denied that the masses which today form our highest mountains were originally in a liquid state; for a long time they were covered by waters which did not sustain any life.

The past history of our globe must be explained by what can be seen to be happening now. No powers are to be employed that are not natural to the globe, no action to be admitted except those of which we know the principle.

The moon gravitates towards the earth and by the force of gravity is continually drawn off from a rectilinear motion and retained in its orbit.

Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is not a god, but a great rock, and the sun a hot rock.

Unfortunately, we haven't found many very old rocks on Earth because our planet's surface is constantly renewed by plate tectonics, coupled with erosion.

The true scientist no longer attempts to disprove the pull of gravity, or the rotation of the earth, or the motion of heavenly bodies, or the sequence of the seasons, or man's need of food and water, or the function of the heart.

Physics is about questioning, studying, probing nature. You probe, and, if you're lucky, you get strange clues.

Science is the ultimate tool to reveal the laws of nature, and the one word written on its banner is Truth.

The scientist's inquiry into the causes of things is providing an ever more extensive understanding of nature.

I'm working to bring celestial objects like the sun and moon into the spaces that we inhabit.

People know a planet when they see one, and I think that's a pretty darn good test, in fact, for planethood.

Wind chimes are also earthquake chimes.

The phenomena of nature, especially those that fall under the inspection of the astronomer, are to be viewed, not only with the usual attention to facts as they occur, but with the eye of reason and experience.

Beside the grand history of the glaciers and their own, the mountain streams sing the history of every avalanche or earthquake and of snow, all easily recognized by the human ear, and every word evoked by the falling leaf and drinking deer, beside a thousand other facts so small and spoken by the stream in so low a voice the human ear cannot hear them.

What is there in places empty of matter? and Whence is it that the sun and planets gravitate toward one another without dense matter between them? Whence is it that Nature doth nothing in vain? and Whence arises all that order and beauty which we see in the world? To what end are comets? and Whence is it that planets move all one and the same way in orbs concentrick, while comets move all manner of ways in orbs very excentrick? and What hinders the fixed stars from falling upon one another?

If I were the moon, I know where I would fall down.

I am watching the stars, admiring their complex trajectories through space and time. I am trying to give a name to the force that set them in motion.

And make us as Newton was, who in his garden watching The apple falling towards England, became aware Between himself and her of an eternal tie.