22 Quotes by Alexander von Humboldt

"Cruelty to animals is one of the most significant vices of a low and ignoble people."

"Cruelty to animals is one of the most significant vices of a low and ignoble people. Wherever one notices them, they constitute a sign of ignorance and brutality which cannot be painted over even by all the evidence of wealth and luxury."

"Mere communion with nature, mere contact with the free air, exercise a soothing yet comforting and strengthening influence on the wearied mind, calm the storm of passion, and soften the heart when shaken by sorrow to its inmost depths."

"The most dangerous worldviews are the worldviews of those who have never viewed the world."

"The expression of vanity and self-love becomes less offensive, when it retains something of simplicity and frankness."

"What speaks to the soul, escapes our measurements."

"Petroleum is the product of a distillation from great depth and issues from the primitive rocks beneath which the forces of all volcanic action lie."

"Statistical projections which speak to the senses without fatiguing the mind, possess the advantage of fixing the attention on a great number of important facts."

"It is far more difficult to observe correctly than most men imagine; to behold is not necessarily to observe, and the power of comparing and combining is only to be obtained by education. It is much to be regretted that habits of exact observation are not cultivated in our schools; to this deficiency may be traced much of the fallacious reasoning, the false philosophy which prevails."

"In considering the study of physical phenomena, not merely in its bearings on the material wants of life, but in its general influence on the intellectual advancement of mankind, we find its noblest and most important result to be a knowledge of the chain of connection, by which all natural forces are linked together, and made mutually dependent upon each other; and it is the perception of these relations that exalts our views and ennobles our enjoyments."