The strongest affection and utmost zeal should, I think, promote the studies concerned with the most beautiful objects, most deserving to be known.
Nicolaus CopernicusAmong the authorities it is generally agreed that the Earth is at rest in the middle of the universe, and they regard it as inconceivable and even ridiculous to hold the opposite opinion. However, if we consider it more closely the question will be seen to be still unsettled, and so decidedly not to be despised. For every apparent change in respect of position is due to motion of the object observed, or of the observer, or indeed to an unequal change of both.
Nicolaus CopernicusPouring forth its seas everywhere, then, the ocean envelops the earth and fills its deeper chasms.
Nicolaus CopernicusFor I am not so enamoured of my own opinions that I disregard what others may think of them.
Nicolaus CopernicusTherefore, when I considered this carefully, the contempt which I had to fear because of the novelty and apparent absurdity of my view, nearly induced me to abandon utterly the work I had begun.
Nicolaus CopernicusIn the center of all rests the sun. For who would place this lamp of a very beautiful temple in another or better place that this wherefrom it can illuminate everything at the same time? As a matter of fact, not unhappily do some call it the lantern; others, the mind and still others, the pilot of the world. Trismegistus calls it a "visible God"; Sophocles' Electra, "that which gazes upon all things." And so the sun, as if resting on a kingly throne, governs the family of stars which wheel around.
Nicolaus Copernicus