The best excuse ever made for astrology was that offered by the great astronomer, Kepler, himself an unwilling practiser of the art.

He had many applications from his friends to cast nativities for them, and generally gave a positive refusal to such as he was not afraid of offending by his frankness. In other cases he accommodated himself to the prevailing delusion. In sending a copy of his Ephemerides to Professor Gerlach, he wrote, that they were nothing but worthless conjectures; but he was obliged to devote himself to them, or he would have starved. "Ye overwise philosophers," he exclaimed, in his Tertius Interveniens; "ye censure this daughter of astronomy beyond her deserts! Know ye not that she must support her mother by her charms? The scanty reward of an astronomer would not provide him with bread, if men did not entertain hopes of reading the future in the heavens."

 - Charles Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

见者落泪，闻者心酸（。