Ptolemy's Almagest Quotes

“I know that I am mortal by nature, and ephemeral; but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies I no longer touch the earth with my feet: I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia”
― Ptolemy, Ptolemy's Almagest

“From all this we concluded that the first two divisions of theoretical philosophy should
rather be called guesswork than knowledge, theology because of its completely invisible
and ungraspable nature, physics because of the unstable and unclear nature of the matter;
hence there is no hope that philosophers will ever be agreed about them; and that only
mathematics can provide sure and unshakable knowledge to its devotees, provided one
approaches it rigorously. For its kind of proof proceeds by indisputable methods, namely
arithmetic and geometry (tr. Toomer, p. 6).”
― Ptolemy, The Almagest: Introduction to the Mathematics of the Heavens

“For almost every peculiar attribute of material nature becomes apparent from the peculiarities of its motion from place to place. [Thus one can distinguish] the corruptible from the incorruptible by [whether it undergoes] motion in a straight line or in a circle, and heavy from light, and passive from active, by [whether it moves] towards the centre or move away from the centre.”
― Ptolemy, Ptolemy's Almagest