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"Humboldt's early biographer, F.A. Schwarzenberg, subtitled his life of Humboldt What May Be Accomplished in a Lifetime. He summarised the areas of his subject's extraordinary curiosity as follows: '1) The knowledge of the Earth and its inhabitants. 2) The discovery of the higher laws of nature, which govern the universe, men, animals, plants, minerals. 3) The discovery of new forms of life. 4) The discovery of territories hitherto but imperfectly known, and their various productions. 5)The acquaintance with new species of the human race--- their manners, their language and the historical traces of their culture.' What may be accomplished in a lifetime---and seldom or never is."
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"Almost all paleontologists recognize that the discovery of a complete transition is in any case unlikely."
"She didn't want to be the savior of humanity. She never had. She didn't want to be the vanguard-of destruction or salvation. What she had really wanted was to be a girl whose father lived to show her the stars.Instead she had been left to wander them alone. Until she discovered someone who saw the stars as she did."
"But I'm an adventurer. I like invention, I like discovery."
"There is no scientific discoverer, no poet, no painter, no musician, who will not tell you that he found ready made his discovery or poem or picture - that it came to him from outside, and that he did not consciously create it from within."
"We had avoided discovery by the Sioux scouts, and we were confident of giving them a complete surprise."
"It's always great to discover a new star of tomorrow."
Explore more quotes by Alain de Botton
"We never envy another's achievement more than when we know very little about how it was attained."
"We are properly ready for marriage when we are strong enough to embrace a life of frustration."
"The materialistic view of happiness of our age starkly revealed in our understanding of the word "luxury."
"Instead of bringing back 1600 plants, we might return from our journeys with a collection of small unfAated but life-enhancing thoughts."
"He was a volatile mixture of confidence and vulnerability. He could deliver extended monologues on professional matters, then promptly stop in his tracks to peer inquisitively into his guest's eyes for signs of boredom or mockery, being intelligent enough to be unable fully to believe in his own claims to significance. He might, in a past life, have been a particularly canny and sharp-tongued royal advisor."
"What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects and places that touch us through their beauty."
"A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one's life. There is an urge to say, 'I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me."
"Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for making money."
"Blessed with riches and possibilities far beyond anything imagined by ancestors who tilled the unpredictable soil of medieval Europe, modern populations have nonetheless shown a remarkable capacity to feel that neither who they are nor what they have is quite enough."
"Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains."
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