I also ask you my friends not to condemn me entirely to the mill of mathematical calculations, and allow me time for philosophical speculations, my only pleasures.
Interpretation
Kepler expresses his desire for balance between the rigors of mathematics and the joys of philosophical thought.
In this quote, Johannes Kepler highlights the tension between the demands of mathematical precision and the contemplative nature of philosophical inquiry. He pleads for understanding from his friends, asking them to allow him the freedom to engage in philosophical speculations, which he considers a source of pleasure and fulfillment. Kepler underscores the importance of nurturing one's intellectual and creative pursuits beyond the constraints of rigid calculations.
In practice
In a discussion about the balance between scientific work and creative thinking.
...Those laws are within the grasp of the human mind. God wanted us to recognize them by creating us after his own image so that we could share in his own thoughts... and if piety allow us to say so, our understanding is in this respect of the same kind as the divine, at least as far as we are able to grasp something of it in our mortal life.
A most unfailing experience... of the excitement of sublunary (that is, human) natures by the conjunctions and aspects of the planets has instructed and compelled my unwilling belief.
We find, therefore, under this orderly arrangement, a wonderful symmetry in the universe, and a definite relation of harmony in the motion and magnitude of the orbs, of a kind that is not possible to obtain in any other way.
I am stealing the golden vessels of the Egyptians to build a tabernacle to my God from them, far far away from the boundaries of Egypt. If you forgive me, I shall rejoice; if you are enraged with me, I shall bear it. See, I cast the die, and I write the book. Whether it is to be read by the people of the present or of the future makes no difference: let it await its reader for a hundred years, if God himself has stood ready for six thousand years for one to study him.
Eyesight should learn from reason.
I measured the skies, now the shadows I measure, Sky-bound was the mind, earth-bound the body rests. [Kepler's epitaph]
Do not mistake the rule of force for true power. Men are not shaped by force.
Men would live exceedingly quiet if these two words, mine and thine, were taken away.
This is the mystery of the riches of divine grace for sinners; for by a wonderful exchange our sins are now not ours but Christ's, and Christ's righteousness is not Christ's but ours.
If more Africans had eaten missionaries, the continent would be in better shape.
Shortly, the public will be unable to reason or think for themselves. They'll only be able to parrot the information they've been given on the previous night's news.
What you do not wish upon yourself, extend not to others.
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