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• Again, our observations of the stars make it evident, not only that the earth is circular, but also that it is a circle of no great size.
  For quite a small change of position to south or north causes a manifest alteration of the horizon....
• But Aristarchus of Samos brought out a book consisting of certain hypotheses, in which the premises lead to the conclusion that the universe is many times greater than that now so called.
  His hypotheses are that the fixed stars and the sun remain motionless, that the earth revolves about the sun in the circumference of a circle, the sun lying in the middle of the orbit, and that the sphere of the fixed stars, situated about the same center as the sun, is so great that the circle in which he supposes the earth to revolve bears such a proportion to the distance of the fixed stars as the center of the sphere bears to its surface....
• The Syracusan Hicetas, as Theophrastus asserts, holds the view that the heave
  un, moon, stars, and in short all of the things on high are stationary, and that nothing in the world is in motion except the earth, which by revolving and twisting round its axis with extreme velocity produces all the same results as would be produced if the earth were stationary and the heaven in motion....
• Some think that the earth remains at rest. But Philolaus the Pythagorean believes that, like the sun and moon, it revolves around the fire in an oblique circle.
  Heraclides of Pontus and Ecphantus the Pythagorean make the earth move, not in a progressive motion, but like a wheel in rotation from west to east around its own center....
• A well known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy.
  He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy....
• Spake full well, in language quaint and olden, One who dwelleth by the castled Rhine, When he called the flowers, so blue and golden, Stars, that in earth's firmament do shine.
  -- Henry W. Longfellow (1807-1882) -- Flowe...
• Nevertheless, in the system of Copernicus there are found many and great inconvenience
  for both the loading of the earth with a triple motion is very incommodious, and the separation of the sun from the company of the planets, with which it has so many passions in common, is likewise a difficulty, and the introduction of so much immobility in nature, by representing the sun and stars as immoveable, especially being of all bodies the highest and most radiant, and making the moon revolve about the earth in an epicycle, and some other assumptions of his, are the speculations of one who cares not what fictions he introduces into nature, provided his calculations answer....
• Flowers are the poetry of earth, as stars are the poetry of heaven.
• For a long time then, I reflected on this confusion in the astronomical traditions concerning the derivation of the motions of the universe's spheres.
  I began to be annoyed that the movements of the world machine, created for our sake by the best and most systematic Artisan of all, were not understood with greater certainty by the philosophers, who otherwise examined so precisely the most insignificant trifles of this world....