John Pipkin Quotes

#1. Wisdom tolerates blustered opinions, the better to dismiss them later with discovery.

John Pipkin

#2. Here the sky is wrapped in silk. The breathings of so many men and animals, and the smoke of your coal, and the fog, oh, it is too much. The Paris sky is perfect. A man must see clearly, to see something new.

John Pipkin

#3. The quiet brings to mind the multitude of men and women living out their days in solitude - each convinced that their fears and wants are unique to themselves - and she longs to press herself into their fold and be counted among those whose lives are meshed with the turning of the world.

John Pipkin

#4. ...but at night when he turns the awkward [telescope] skyward, he catches his breath at the clarity of the image and the vast populations of stars unknown to him until then, the riotous glittering in the dark crevices between constellations, a convocation of bright spirits waiting to be found.

John Pipkin

#5. The heavens are too immense, too beautiful and varied, to fit into the mind of any one deity; the murmured creeds of fathers and sons are no match for the astronomer's gasp.

John Pipkin

#6. It is one of the great blessings of youth, this guiltlessness, the source of gentle sleep and peaceful days.

John Pipkin

#7. The same ratios that govern music give laws to optics and to the movement of the heavens as well. Simple. Elegant. Predictable.

John Pipkin

#8. The basis of English law is as simple as this: If you would know the future's shape, look to the past.

John Pipkin

#9. It is only the sudden and unpredictable appearance of comets that spoils the immutable celestial sphere.

John Pipkin

#10. He tracks the rise and fall of the glittering darkness thronged with specks and tendrils of luminous secrets. Falling stars crackle in the cold air and prickle his skin. They flash in the corner of his vision where the eye's discernment of light and shadow is most acute.

John Pipkin

#11. As the eclipse progresses, a confusion of chattering birds sweeps low in search of dusk and their shadows skip over the water's surface and it makes perfect sense that these small creatures should be so moved by events beyond their reckoning.

John Pipkin

#12. Each new scientific fact gives rise to new uncertainties, and every pattern of starlight holds both a record and a prophecy.

John Pipkin

#13. Nothing in heaven or earth is content to be alone, and so there must always be something more. The universe is governed by a principle no more complicated than this: that a solitary body will forever attract another to itself.

John Pipkin

#14. So we will cover every possibility. We will take turns at the telescope. I will keep watch in the day, and at night you will take my place, and together we will see to it that no part of the sky goes unobserved.

John Pipkin

#15. Her calculations have always held the utmost accuracy, but mathematics alone will not be enough to guide her; she must learn to trust in chance and, if need be, in accident.

John Pipkin