Alexander von Humboldt Quotes

47 Sourced Quotes

Science only begins for man from the moment his mind lays hold of matter, - when he strives to subject the mass accumulated by experience to rational combinations...

Alexander von Humboldt
It would be a denial of the dignity of human nature and the relative importance of the faculties with which we are endowed, were we to condemn at one time austere reason engaged in investigating causes and their natural connections, and at another that exercise of the imagination which prompts and excites discoveries by its creative powers.

Alexander von Humboldt
True cosmical views are the result of observation and ideal combination, and of a long-continued communion with the external world; nor are they a work of a single people, but the fruits yielded by reciprocal communication, and by a great, if not general, intercourse between different nations.

Alexander von Humboldt
In the sphere of natural investigation, as in poetry and painting, the delineation of that which appeals most strongly to the imagination, derives its collective interest from the vivid truthfulness with which the individual features are portrayed.

Alexander von Humboldt
The phosphorescence of the ocean is one of those splendid phenomena of nature which excite our admiration, even when we behold its recurrence every night for months together.

Alexander von Humboldt
Impressions change with the varying movements of the mind, and we are led by a happy illusion to believe that we receive from the external world that with which we have ourselves invested it.

Alexander von Humboldt
The mere accumulation of unconnected observations of details, devoid of generalization of ideas, may doubtlessly have tended to create and foster the deeply rooted prejudice, that the study of the exact sciences must necessarily chill the feelings, and diminish the nobler enjoyments attendant upon a contemplation of nature.

Alexander von Humboldt
It may seem a rash attempt to endeavor to separate into its different elements the magic power exercised upon our minds by the physical world, since the character of the landscape and of every imposing scene in Nature depends so materially upon the mutual relation of the ideas and sentiments simultaneously excited in the mind of the observer.

Alexander von Humboldt
With the simplest statements of scientific facts there must ever mingle a certain eloquence. Nature herself is sublimely eloquent. The stars as they sparkle in the firmament fill us with delight and ecstasy, and yet they all move in orbits marked out with mathematical precision.

Alexander von Humboldt
Nature, in the manifold signification of the word - whether considered as the universality of all that is and ever will be - as the inner moving force of all phenomena, or as their mysterious prototype - reveals itself to the simple mind and feelings of man as something earthly, and closely allied to himself.

Alexander von Humboldt
Mere communion with nature, mere contact with the free air, exercise a soothing yet comforting and strengthening influence on the wearied mind, calm the storm of passion, and soften the heart when shaken by sorrow to its inmost depths.

Alexander von Humboldt
Besides the pleasure derived from acquired knowledge, there lurks in the mind of man, and tinged with a shade of sadness, an unsatisfied longing for something beyond the present — a striving towards regions yet unknown and unopened.

Alexander von Humboldt
Nature is a free domain ; and the profound conceptions and enjoyments she awakens within us can only be vividly delineated by thought clothed in exalted forms of speech, worthy of bearing witness to the majesty and greatness of the creation.

Alexander von Humboldt
Conclusions based upon analogies may fill up a portion of the vast chasm which separates the certain results of a mathematical natural philosophy from conjectures verging on the extreme, and therefore obscure and barren confines of all scientific development of mind.

Alexander von Humboldt
The higher enjoyments yielded by the study of nature depend upon the correctness and the depth of our views, and upon the extent of the subjects that may be comprehended in a single glance.

Alexander von Humboldt
All that the senses can but imperfectly comprehend, all that is most awful in such romantic scenes of nature, may become a source of enjoyment to man, by opening a wide field to the creative powers of his imagination.

Alexander von Humboldt
Undue conciseness often checks the flow of expression, whilst diffuseness is alike detrimental to a clear and precise exposition of our ideas.

Alexander von Humboldt
Conciseness may produce aridity, whilst too great a multiplicity of objects kept in view at the same time leads to a want of clearness and precision in the sequence of ideas.

Alexander von Humboldt
Nature can only exercise a magical power over us as long as their action is shrouded in mystery and darkness, and does not admit of being classed among the conditions with which experience has made us acquainted.

Alexander von Humboldt
At the limits of circumscribed knowledge, as from some lofty island shore, the eye delights to penetrate to distant regions.

Alexander von Humboldt
We may flee from the crater of a volcano in active eruption, or from the dwelling whose destruction is threatened by the approach of the lava stream; but in an earthquake, direct our flight whithersoever we will, we still feel as if we trod upon the very focus of destruction.

Alexander von Humboldt
The fear of sacrificing the free enjoyment of nature, under the influence of scientific reasoning, is often associated with an apprehension that every mind may not be capable of grasping the truths of the philosophy of nature.

Alexander von Humboldt
The belief in the uncommon and the wonderful lends a definite outline to every manifestation of ideal creation; and the realm of fancy a fairy-land of cosmological, geognostical and magnetic visions becomes thus involuntarily blended with the domain of reality.

Alexander von Humboldt
The great and solemn spirit that pervades the intellectual labor [of science] arises from the sublime consciousness of striving toward the infinite, and of grasping all that is revealed to us amid the boundless and inexhaustible fullness of creation, development, and being.

Alexander von Humboldt
Nothing is stationary in space. Even the fixed stars move.

Alexander von Humboldt
The expression of vanity and self-love becomes less offensive, when it retains something of simplicity and frankness.

Alexander von Humboldt
In order to ameliorate without commotion new institutions must be made, as it were, to rise out of those which the barbarism of centuries has consecrated. It will one day seem incredible that until the year 1826 there existed no law in the Great Antilles to prevent the sale of young infants and their separation from their parents, or to prohibit the degrading custom of marking the negroes with a hot iron, merely to enable these human cattle to be more easily recognized.

Alexander von Humboldt
Our imagination is struck only by what is great; but the lover of natural philosophy should reflect equally on little things.

Alexander von Humboldt
While we maintain the unity of the human species, we at the same time repel the depressing assumption of superior and inferior races of men. There are nations more susceptible of cultivation, more highly civilized, more enobled by mental cultivation than others, but none in themselves nobler than others. All are in like degree designed for freedom; a freedom which, in the ruder conditions of society, belongs only to the individual, but which, in social states enjoying political institutions, appertains as a right to the whole body of the community.

Alexander von Humboldt
Devoted from my earliest youth to the study of nature, feeling with enthusiasm the wild beauties of a country guarded by mountains and shaded by ancient forests, I experienced in my travels, enjoyments which have amply compensated for the privations inseparable from a laborious and often agitated life.

Alexander von Humboldt