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?

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About Christiaan Huygens

Christiaan Huygens (14 April 1629 – 8 July 1695) was a Dutch mathematician, astronomer, physicist, probabilist and horologist. His 1673 scientific masterpiece was Horologium Oscillatorium, a treatise on the mathematical theory and applications of the isochronous pendulum clock, which led to improved accuracy in the measurement of time. He is also noted for his opposition to the Newtonian corpuscular theory of light, providing a longitudinal wave theory which hypothesized propagation by spherical waves emitted along a wave front.

Biography information from Wikiquote

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Additional quotes by Christiaan Huygens

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.

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. So, like Travellers into other distant countries, we shall be better able to judge of what’s done at home, know how to make a true estimate of, and set its own value upon every thing. 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 adorn’d as well as our own.