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

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

But if watching the sky is to be his duty, how should he begin? Now and then he has spotted one of the five bright planets or recognized a constellation, but he knows little about the turning of the heavens. When he contemplates the great distances between this and that, and the vast multitude of solitary objects spread over the celestial dome, he cannot fathom how one goes about searching for what is yet unknown.