Humphry Davy Quotes

94 Sourced Quotes

I will say a few words of the intellectual qualities necessary for discovery or for the advancement of the science. Amongst them patience, industry, and neatness in manipulation, and accuracy and minuteness in observing and registering the phenomena which occur, are essential. A steady hand and a quick eye are most useful auxiliaries.

Humphry Davy
Chemistry is that part of Natural Philosophy which relates to those intimate actions of bodies upon each other, by which their appearances are altered, and their individuality destroyed.

Humphry Davy
We cannot be too grateful for that wonderful constitution of the external universe, by which it is rendered an inexhaustible source of interest to the inexhaustible human mind.

Humphry Davy
In the early stages of discovery, the imagination is often dazzled by the brilliancy of the new facts, and trusts to weak or remote analogies.

Humphry Davy
Discoveries are like blessings of heaven, permanent and universal, applying to all ages and all conditions of society.

Humphry Davy
I have come to [the] conclusion... that water is the basis of all the gases, and that oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, ammonia, nitrous acid, &c., are merely electrical forms of water..

Humphry Davy
Every discovery opens a new field for investigation of facts, shows us the imperfection of our theories. It has justly been said, that the greater the circle of light, the greater the boundary of darkness by which it is surrounded.

Humphry Davy
The progression of physical science is much more connected with your prosperity than is usually imagined. You owe to experimental philosophy some of the most important and peculiar of your advantages. It is not by foreign conquests chiefly that you are become great, but by a conquest of nature in your own country.

Humphry Davy
Gay-Lussac was quick, lively, ingenious and profound, with great activity of mind and great facility of manipulation. I should place him at the head of all the living chemists in France.

Humphry Davy
But if the two countries or governments are at war, the men of science are not. That would, indeed be a civil war of the worst description: we should rather, through the instrumentality of the men of science soften the asperities of national hostility. Davy's remarks to Thomas Poole on accepting Napoleon's prize for the best experiment on Galvanism.

Humphry Davy
The man who labours to produce effect, can never have the highest degree of genius. That polish of style, that smoothness of versification, and that harmony of periods, which demand labour, and labour only, are incompatible with the strong and rapid combinations of genius.

Humphry Davy
Fortunately science, like that nature to which it belongs, is neither limited by time nor by space. It belongs to the world, and is of no country and of no age. The more we know, the more we feel our ignorance; the more we feel how much remains unknown; and in philosophy, the sentiment of the Macedonian hero can never apply, — there are always new worlds to conquer.

Humphry Davy
An alarm-bell to experimenters in every part of Europe.
On Volta's battery

Humphry Davy
There are very few persons who pursue science with true dignity.

Humphry Davy
I envy no quality of the mind or intellect in others; not genius, power, wit, nor fancy; but, if I could choose what would be most delightful, and, I believe, most useful to me, I should prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing.

Humphry Davy
Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose that our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete, and that there are no new worlds to conquer.

Humphry Davy
Nothing tends so much to the advancement of knowledge as the application of a new instrument.

Humphry Davy
Geology, perhaps more than any other department of natural philosophy, is a science of contemplation. It requires no experience or complicated apparatus, no minute processes upon the unknown processes of matter. It demands only an enquiring mind and senses alive to the facts almost everywhere presented in nature. And as it may be acquired without much difficulty, so it may be improved without much painful exertion.

Humphry Davy
Nature is beautiful, and you are in her bosom. That voice of comfort which speaks in the breezes of morning, may visit your mind, that the delightful influences which the green leaves, the blue sky, the moonbeams and clouds of the evening diffuse over the universe, may in their powers of soul-healing, visit your day visions, is my desire and hope.

Humphry Davy
When he saw the minute globules of potassium burst through the crust of potash, and take fire as they entered the atmosphere, he could not contain his joy—he actually bounded about the room in ecstatic delight.

Humphry Davy
Oh, most magnificent and noble Nature!
Have I not worshipped thee with such a love
As never mortal man before displayed?
Adored thee in thy majesty of visible creation,
And searched into thy hidden and mysterious ways
As Poet, as Philosopher, as Sage?

Humphry Davy
Knowledge can only be acquired by the senses: nature has no archetype in the human imagination; her empire is given only to industry and action, guided and governed by experience.

Humphry Davy
Time... which purifies, and as it were sanctifies the mind, destroys and brings into utter decay the body; and, even in nature, its influence seems always degrading. She is represented by the poets as eternal in her youth, but amongst these ruins she appears to me eternal in her age, and here no traces of renovation appear in the ancient of days.

Humphry Davy
We ought to reason from effects alone. False philosophy has uniformly depended upon making use of words which signify no definite ideas.

Humphry Davy
We can trace back our existence almost to a point. Former time presents us with trains of thoughts gradually diminishing to nothing. But our ideas of futurity are perpetually expanding. Our desires and our hopes, even when modified by our fears, seem to grasp at immensity. This alone would be sufficient to prove the progressiveness of our nature, and that this little earth is but a point from which we start toward a perfection of being.

Humphry Davy