Simplicity is the essential, vital element of description.
In plain words
The simplest words often describe things best.
Where these words come from
- 95% sureThese words were traced back to where they first appeared. That source is listed below.
- Letters of Alexander von Humboldt to Varnhagen von Ense, trans. Friedrich Kapp (Rudd & Carleton, 1860; Gutenberg #67420). Letter 61, Humboldt to Varnhagen, Dec. 7, 1841.
- Letters to Varnhagen von Ense
- 1841 · praising a friend's biography of the soldier Schwerin
More from Alexander von Humboldt
See allI had said that a knowledge of nature is not absolutely necessary to enjoy it, but that it increases the enjoyment.
Alexander von HumboldtThus, 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.Alexander von HumboldtWhatever 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.Alexander von HumboldtVegetable 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.Alexander von HumboldtLike 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.Alexander von HumboldtThe 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.Alexander von Humboldt
Alexander von HumboldtThus, 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.Alexander von HumboldtWhatever 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.Alexander von HumboldtVegetable 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.Alexander von HumboldtLike 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.Alexander von HumboldtThe 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.Alexander von HumboldtMore on wisdom
Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.
William MorrisFine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.
John RuskinWe answer: To inquire into what God has made is the main function of the imagination.George MacDonaldThe imagination is that faculty which gives form to thought—not necessarily uttered form, but form capable of being uttered in shape or in sound, or in any mode upon which the senses can lay hold.George MacDonaldIt is, therefore, that faculty in man which is likest to the prime operation of the power of God, and has, therefore, been called the creative faculty, and its exercise creation.George MacDonaldIt is better to keep the word creation for that calling out of nothing which is the imagination of God; except it be as an occasional symbolic expression, whose daring is fully recognized, of the likeness of man’s work to the work of his maker.George MacDonald
William MorrisFine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together.John RuskinWe answer: To inquire into what God has made is the main function of the imagination.George MacDonaldThe imagination is that faculty which gives form to thought—not necessarily uttered form, but form capable of being uttered in shape or in sound, or in any mode upon which the senses can lay hold.George MacDonaldIt is, therefore, that faculty in man which is likest to the prime operation of the power of God, and has, therefore, been called the creative faculty, and its exercise creation.George MacDonaldIt is better to keep the word creation for that calling out of nothing which is the imagination of God; except it be as an occasional symbolic expression, whose daring is fully recognized, of the likeness of man’s work to the work of his maker.George MacDonald