Maria Mitchell Quotes

Not to be confused with Maia Mitchell, Australian actress and singer.Maria Mitchell [pronounced "mə-RYE-ə"] was an American astronomer, who in 1847 by using a telescope, discovered a comet, which as a result became known as "Miss Mitchell's Comet." She won a gold medal prize for her discovery, which was presented to her by King Frederick VI of Denmark. On the medal was inscribed "Non Frustra Signorum Obitus Speculamur et Ortus" in Latin

✵ 1. August 1818 – 28. June 1889
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Maria Mitchell: 8   quotes 0   likes

Famous Maria Mitchell Quotes

“I know I shall be called heterodox, and that unseen lightning flashes and unheard thunderbolts will be playing around my head, when I say that women will never be profound students in any other department except music while they give four hours a day to the practice of music. I should by all means encourage every woman who is born with musical gifts to study music; but study it as a science and an art, and not as an accomplishment; and to every woman who is not musical, I should say, 'Don't study it at all;' you cannot afford four hours a day, out of some years of your life, just to be agreeable in company upon possible occasions. If for four hours a day you studied, year after year, the science of language, for instance, do you suppose you would not be a linguist? Do you put the mere pleasing of some social party, and the reception of a few compliments, against the mental development of four hours a day of study of something for which you were born? When I see that girls who are required by their parents to go through with the irksome practising really become respectable performers, I wonder what four hours a day at something which they loved, and for which God designed them, would do for them. I should think that to a real scientist in music there would be something mortifying in this rush of all women into music; as there would be to me if I saw every girl learning the constellations, and then thinking she was an astronomer!”

Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters and Journals (illustrated) by Maria Mitchell, 1896, p. 189.

“An English village could never be mistaken for an American one: the outline against the sky differs; a thatched cottage makes a very wavy line on the blue above.”

Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters and Journals (illustrated) by Maria Mitchell, 1896 http://pinetreeweb.com/bp-admiral.htm.

“There is a God, and he is good, I say to myself. I try to increase my trust in this, my only article of creed.”

Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters and Journals http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10202/pg10202.html (1896).

“Study as if you were going to live forever; live as if you were going to die tomorrow.”

The Book of Positive Quotations By John Cook, Leslie Ann Gibson (2nd ed. 2007), p. 283.
Attributed

“Every formula which expresses a law of nature is a hymn of praise to God.”

Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters and Journals http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10202/pg10202.html (1896).

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