Humphry Davy Quotes

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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
In natural science there is one language universally intelligible, — the language of facts; it belongs to nature, and it is permanent as the objects of nature; it is the same to the citizen of Paris and of London.

Humphry Davy
Man is formed for pure enjoyment; his duties are high, his destination is lofty; and he must, then, be most accused of ignorance and folly when he grovels in the dust, having wings which can carry him to the skies.

Humphry Davy
The men who begin with speculation and end with facts, begin at the wrong end; the firmest materials should be in the foundations; the embellishments should be made after the structure is completed.

Humphry Davy
Theories ought to be made for time, and be considered capable of improvement.

Humphry Davy
In all cases in science, it is our business to analyse every principle, and to ascertain to what expressions of facts it relates, or to what simpler laws it may be referred. It is our duty to separate propositions from human passions, and to reason on them as mere representations of things.

Humphry Davy
Human beings have been created for happiness, and a principal means of obtaining it is by the exercise of the intellectual faculties, by an exertion of reason and imagination, by imitating nature and modifying her operations. And knowledge is no less necessary to supply the wants of the mind than food is to support the functions of the body.

Humphry Davy
In this advanced age of the world there ought to be no question concerning the importance of natural knowledge, of discoveries of the powers of nature, and of the wise laws by which they are governed.

Humphry Davy
There will always be enigmas for us in nature as in philosophy, which will keep alive the faculty of research, and the active power of investigation. And it is much wiser to rejoice that something has been discovered, than to regret that so much is still concealed from us.

Humphry Davy
To me there never has been a higher source of honour or distinction than that connected with advances in science. I have not possessed enough of the eagle in my character to make a direct flight to the loftiest altitudes in the social world; and I certainly never endeavored to reach those heights by using the creeping powers of the reptile, who in ascending, generally chooses the dirtiest path, because it is the easiest.

Humphry Davy
Chemistry relates to those operations by which the intimate nature of bodies is changed, or by which they acquire new properties. This definition will not only apply to the effects of mixture, but to the phenomena of electricity, and in short to all the changes which do not merely depend upon the motion or division of masses of matter.

Humphry Davy
Complexity almost always belongs to the early epochs of every science; and the grandest results are usually obtained by the most simple means.

Humphry Davy
Upon all occasions, when I venture upon a conjecture, you will, I trust, have the goodness to consider it has brought forward, not as an opinion which it would be painful to relinquish, but as a hint which may lead to inquiry.

Humphry Davy
Philosophy is simple and intelligible. We owe confused systems to men of vague and obscure ideas.

Humphry Davy
To be attached to mere speculation is to be directed by a dream.

Humphry Davy
The love of knowledge and of intellectual power is a faculty belonging to the human mind in every state of society; and it is one by which it is most justly characterized — one the most worthy of being cultivated and extended.

Humphry Davy