A Quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Of all tools, an observatory is the most sublime. . . . What is so good in a college as an observatory? The sublime attaches to the door and to the first stair you ascent, that this is the road to the stars.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Quote Topics

Ascent College Door First Good Most Observatory Road Stars Sublime Tools

Quote Author

Ralph Waldo Emerson
American - Philosopher
May 25, 1803 - April 27, 1882

In 1957, I was studying the Pleiades star cluster at Harvard University's radio observatory. On one occasion, we saw an added feature in the data. It turned out to be an amateur radio enthusiast near the observatory, but at the time, I thought we had detected clear evidence of another civilisation.

Frank Drake

What interests me in [Lincoln in the Bardo] is a slight perverse balance between the sublime and the grotesque. Like you could have landed only on the sublime. But my argument is that the sublime couldn't exist without this other half.

Zadie Smith

There's only a step from the sublime to the ridiculous, but there's no road leading from the ridiculous to the sublime.

Lion Feuchtwanger

I keep thinking of Robert Stone making the distinction between the word sublime and the word beautiful. He described being in a battle as sublime. Because even though people were dying, it was such a huge sensory experience that it became sublime.

George Saunders

The narrow sectarian cannot read astronomy with impunity. The creeds of his church shrivel like dried leaves at the door of the observatory.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

His system of morality was the most benevolent and sublime probably that has been ever taught, and consequently more perfect than those of any of the ancient philosophers... He was the most innocent, the most benevolent, the most eloquent and sublime character that ever has been exhibited to man.

Thomas Jefferson

Regularly, customers asked for a book on Greenwich, and there was none. After all, Elizabeth I was born there. The Observatory is known all over the world; the Royal Naval College is there. So I decided to do it.

Nigel Hamilton

Sublime upon sublime scarcely presents a contrast, and we need a little rest from everything, even the beautiful.

Victor Hugo

I listen to a lot of Sublime. Dude, I'm obsessed with Sublime. You have no idea.

Behati Prinsloo

By analyzing data from Greenwich Observatory in the period 1836-1953, John A. Eddy [Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and High Altitude Observatory in Boulder] and Aram A. Boornazian [mathematician with S. Ross and Co. in Boston] have found evidence that the sun has been contracting about 0.1% per century during that time, corresponding to a shrinkage rate of about 5 feet per hour. And digging deep into historical records, Eddy has found 400-year-old eclipse observations that are consistent with such a shrinkage.

Jonathan Sarfati

Anything which elevates the mind is sublime. Greatness of matter, space, power, virtue or beauty, are all sublime.

John Ruskin

If you start out with a little telescope observing the stars and you keep at it over the years, as I have, it's kind of a dream to one day have an observatory where you can always go and use the telescope conveniently.

Tim Ferriss

The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.

Thomas Paine

Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt