Christiaan Huygens Quotes

• I do not believe anything very certainly, but everything very probably.

  Christiaan Huygens

  Believe, Knowledge, Science

  "The Life Sciences in Eighteenth-Century French Thought". Book by Jacques Roger, letter to Pierre Perrault, 1997.

  31 Copy quote

• The world is my country. Science my religion.

  Christiaan Huygens

  Inspirational, Country, World

  31 Copy quote

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

  Christiaan Huygens

  Science, Light, May

  Christiaan Huygens (2015). “Treatise on Light”, p.33, Christiaan Huygens

  23 Copy quote

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

  Christiaan Huygens

  Lying, Exercise, Degrees

  "Cosmotheoros". Book by Christiaan Huygens, Book 1, p. 10; As quoted in the English translation "The Celestial Worlds Discover'd" (1722), 1698.

  17 Copy quote

• 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.

  Christiaan Huygens

  Kings, War, Ambition

  Christiaan Huygens (1722). “The Celestial Worlds Discover'd, Or, Conjectures Concerning the Inhabitants, Plants and Productions of the Worlds in the Planets”, p.142

  22 Copy quote

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

  Christiaan Huygens

  Body, Astronomy, Planets

  28 Copy quote

• 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?

  Christiaan Huygens

  Stars, Distance, Animal

  "Cosmotheoros". Book by Christiaan Huygens, Book 2, pp. 150-151, as quoted in the English translation "The Celestial Worlds Discover'd" (1722), 1695.

  24 Copy quote

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

  Christiaan Huygens

  Design, Scripture, Creation

  Christiaan Huygens (1722). “The Celestial Worlds Discover'd, Or, Conjectures Concerning the Inhabitants, Plants and Productions of the Worlds in the Planets”, p.7

  14 Copy quote

• What a wonderful and amazing Scheme have we here of the magnificent Vastness of the Universe! So many Suns, so many Earths.

  Christiaan Huygens

  Sun, Earth, Vastness

  Christiaan Huygens (1722). “The Celestial Worlds Discover'd, Or, Conjectures Concerning the Inhabitants, Plants and Productions of the Worlds in the Planets”, p.151

  13 Copy quote

• ...great difficulties are felt at first and these cannot be overcome except by starting from experiments .. and then be conceiving certain hypotheses ... But even so, very much hard work remains to be done and one needs not only great perspicacity but often a degree of good fortune.

  Christiaan Huygens

  Hard Work, Science, Luck

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Christiaan Huygens

  Cost, Earth, Dull

  Christiaan Huygens (1722). “The Celestial Worlds Discover'd, Or, Conjectures Concerning the Inhabitants, Plants and Productions of the Worlds in the Planets”, p.10

  10 Copy quote

• The rest of the planets have their dress and furniture, nay and their inhabitants too, as well as this Earth of ours.

  Christiaan Huygens

  Science, Furniture, Dresses

  12 Copy quote

• 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.'

  Christiaan Huygens

  Believe, Writing, Science

  14 Copy quote

• We shall be less apt to admire what this World calls Great, shall nobly despise those Trifles the generality of Men set their Affections on, when we know that there are a multitude of such Earths inhabited and adorned as Well as our own.

  Christiaan Huygens

  Men, World, Earth

  Christiaan Huygens (1722). “The Celestial Worlds Discover'd, Or, Conjectures Concerning the Inhabitants, Plants and Productions of the Worlds in the Planets”, p.13

  7 Copy quote

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

  Christiaan Huygens

  Mind, Doe, Newton

  Letter to Fatio de Duillier, quoted in "René Dugas, Mechanics in the seventeenth century" (1958), p. 440, July 11, 1687.

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Christiaan Huygens

  Men, Gentleman, Too Much

  Christiaan Huygens (1722). “The Celestial Worlds Discover'd”, p.8

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Christiaan Huygens

  Distance, Squares, Gravity

  Quoted in Popular Astronomy, Vol. 56 (1948), pp. 189 - 190, 1691.

  4 Copy quote

• Now since in so many Things they... agree, what can be more probable than that in others they agree too; and that the other Planets are as beautiful and as well stock'd with Inhabitants as the Earth? Or what shadow of Reason can there be why they should not?

  Christiaan Huygens

  Beautiful, Shadow, Earth

  Christiaan Huygens (1722). “The Celestial Worlds Discover'd, Or, Conjectures Concerning the Inhabitants, Plants and Productions of the Worlds in the Planets”, p.18

  8 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Isaac Newton

Galileo Galilei

Rene Descartes

Gottfried Leibniz

Johannes Kepler

Robert Hooke

Thomas Young

Blaise Pascal