Alexander von Humboldt Quotes

I think writers, by nature, are more observers instead of participators.

Dreaming by the river, I dedicated my imagination to water, to clear, green water, the water that makes the meadows green.

Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder.

Travelers are fantasists, conjurers, seers - and what they finally discover is that every round object everywhere is a crystal ball: stone, teapot, the marvelous globe of the human eye.

Wherever I go I need a period of incubation so that I may learn the essence of nature, which never wishes to be understood or yield herself.

Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience; to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder upon it, and dwell upon it.

Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world.

It's not a big thing, but I guess it's true--big things are often just small things that are noticed.

Our present work sets forth mathematical principles of philosophy. For the basic problem of philosophy seems to be to discover the forces of nature from the phenomena of motions and then to demonstrate the other phenomena from these forces. It is to these ends that the general propositions in books 1 and 2 are directed, while in book 3 our explanation of the system of the world illustrates these propositions.

It should not be hard for you to stop sometimes and look into the stains of walls, or ashes of a fire, or clouds, or mud or like places, in which...you may find really marvellous ideas.

It is the close observation of little things which is the secret of success in business, in art, in science, and in every pursuit of life.

I go too fast to see much, only the tops of everything. I've got to prowl slow some time through this country.

Rivers and the inhabitants of the watery element were made for wise men to contemplate, and fools to pass by without consideration.

A town, a landscape are when seen from afar a town and a landscape; but as one gets nearer, there are houses, trees, tiles leaves, grasses, ants, legs of ants and so on to infinity. All this is subsumed under the name of landscape.

A need to concentrate on each sound, so that every blade of grass would be as important as a flower.

In Philosophy, the contemplations of man do either penetrate unto God, or are circumferred to Nature, or are reflected and reverted upon himself. Out of which several inquiries there do arise three knowledges, Divine Philosophy, Natural Philosophy, and Human Philosophy or Humanity. For all things are marked and stamped with this triple character of the power of God, the difference of Nature and the use of Man.

Another thing all writers have in common is we're all observers. We pay attention to detail.

Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!

Watch the clouds. They will teach you about the world of form.

Imagination applied to the whole world is vapid in comparison to imagination applied to a detail.

My ability to notice that kind of thing, the sanctity of the bubble that you create, has not been so good in a way, in that I notice it concurrently with actually doing the thing. I always notice it in retrospect.

We must reason in natural philosophy not from what we hope, or even expect, but from what we perceive.

He who can take no interest in what is small will take false interest in what is great.

You must look at facts, because they look at you.