4 Quotes by Alexander Humboldt

I could not possibly have been placed in circumstances more highly favorable for study and exploration than those which I now enjoy. I am free from the distractions constantly arising in civilized life from social claims. Nature offers unceasingly the most novel and fascinating objects for learning. The only drawbacks to this solitude are the want of information on the progress of scientific discovery in Europe and the lack of all the advantages arising from an interchange of ideas.

This aspect of animated nature, in which man is nothing, has something in it strange and sad....Here, in a fertile country, adorned with eternal verdure, we seek in vain the traces of the power of man; we seem to be transported into a world different from that which gave us birth.

The philosophical study of nature endeavors, in the the vicissitudes of phenomena, to connect the present with the past.

Nature can be so soothing to the tormented mind