Authors
Alexander von Humboldt
1769 – 1859
Alexander von Humboldt was a Prussian naturalist and explorer who traveled through Latin America measuring mountains, mapping rivers, and studying plants, animals, and volcanoes — including a record-setting climb of Ecuador's Chimborazo higher than anyone had climbed before. His careful observations connected climate, geography, and living things in ways that helped inspire the modern science of ecology. Charles Darwin called him one of the greatest scientific travelers who ever lived, and more places and species are reportedly named after Humboldt than after anyone else in history.
Quotes
“I had said that a knowledge of nature is not absolutely necessary to enjoy it, but that it increases the enjoyment.”
“Thus, too, descriptions of nature affect us more or less powerfully, in proportion as they harmonize with the condition of our own feelings. For the physical world is reflected with truth and animation on the inner susceptible world of the mind.”
“Whatever marks the character of a landscape: the profile of mountains, which in the far and hazy distance bound the horizon; the deep gloom of pine forests; the mountain torrent, which rushes headlong to its fall through overhanging cliffs: all stand alike in an ancient and mysterious communion with the spiritual life of man.”
“Vegetable forms, on the other hand, act on the imagination by their enduring magnitude—for here massive size is indicative of age, and in the vegetable kingdom alone are age and the manifestation of an ever-renewed vigour linked together.”
“Like a limitless expanse of waters, the Steppe fills the mind with a sense of the infinite, and the soul, freed from the sensuous impressions of space, expands with spiritual emotions of a higher order.”
“The desire which we feel to behold certain objects is not excited solely by their grandeur, their beauty, or their importance. In each individual this desire is interwoven with pleasing impressions of youth, with early predilections for particular pursuits, with the inclination for travelling, and the love of an active life.”
“He, therefore, who amid the discordant strife of nations, would seek intellectual repose, turns with delight to contemplate the silent life of plants, and to study the hidden forces of nature in her sacred sanctuaries; or yielding to that inherent impulse, which for thousands of years has glowed in the breast of man, directs his mind, by a mysterious presentiment of his destiny, towards the celestial orbs, which, in undisturbed harmony, pursue their ancient and eternal course.”
“The distant aspect of the Steppe is the more striking when the traveller emerges from dense forests, where his eye has been familiarised to a limited prospect and luxuriant natural scenery.”
“Our imagination is struck only by what is great; but the lover of natural philosophy should reflect equally on little things.”
“A book on nature should produce an impression like nature itself.”
“The glittering stars fill us with joy and inspiration, yet in the canopy of heaven all bodies revolve in mathematical figures.”
“Simplicity is the essential, vital element of description.”