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Gustave Flaubert
A German polymath (an expert in many subjects) who traveled in South America from 1799 until 1804 and wrote thirty volumes about the broad range of scientific discoveries he made there. From an early age, Humboldt was captivated by massive questions about the human and natural worlds—for instance, he was curious about why different things grew in different places, and he spent much of the rest of his life paying close attention to where certain species could be found. For de Botton, the curiosity about the unknown that drove Humboldt’s trip to South America is largely unavailable to contemporary travelers, who generally travel to destinations where there is nothing more to be discovered. But Humboldt’s tireless efforts to improve science demonstrate both travelers’ timeless fascination with nature and how the things they become curious about during travel often reflect their underlying commitments, character, and sense of personal purpose.
Alexander von Humboldt Quotes in The Art of Travel
The The Art of Travel quotes below are all either spoken by Alexander von Humboldt or refer to Alexander von Humboldt. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 4 Quotes
The guidebook might have added, “and where there must be something wrong with the traveller who cannot agree.”
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Chapter 9 Quotes
In an autobiographical note written in 1801 in South America, Alexander von Humboldt specified his motive for traveling: “I was spurred on by an uncertain longing to be transported from a boring daily life to a marvellous world.” It was this very dichotomy, “boring daily life” pitted against “marvellous world,” that de Maistre had tried to redraw with greater subtlety.
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Alexander von Humboldt Character Timeline in The Art of Travel
The timeline below shows where the character Alexander von Humboldt appears in The Art of Travel. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 4: On Curiosity
The German Alexander von Humboldt sailed from Spain to South America in 1799. Well-educated in the sciences and history, Humboldt...
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When Humboldt set out for South America, Europeans knew little about the continent. Humboldt collected hundreds of...
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...anxiously wonders, “What am I supposed to do here? What am I supposed to think?” Humboldt, on the other hand, undertook an “unambiguous” quest to learn as much as possible and...
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...are useful, so others take an interest when a traveler learns them for the first time—Humboldt was “besieged and feted by interested parties” when he returned to Europe, and he gave...
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...as well have added, “there must be something wrong with the traveler who cannot agree.” Humboldt never had to deal with this kind of pretension, for nobody told him what mattered...
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...Mount Chimborazo in Peru, which at the time Europeans thought was the world’s highest peak, Humboldt noticed seemingly minute features of the landscape, like the heights where he found lichens, moss,...
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...people start to care about smaller ones, like how high on mountains flies can live. Humboldt’s big question was “Why don’t the same things grow everywhere?” and he had investigated it...
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Humboldt’s example demonstrates “the importance of having the right question to ask in the world”—but most...
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Later in his life, Humboldt lamented that people complained he was “curious about too many things.” De Botton lauds this...
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Chapter 9: On Habit
Nine years before Alexander von Humboldt set out for South America in 1799, the French writer Xavier de Maistre published a...
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...he thinks, people might find their home places just as interesting as exotic destinations like Humboldt’s South America.
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...traveller in the classic sense”—he fought military campaigns in Italy and Russia. Whereas Alexander von Humboldt traveled to escape his “boring daily life” and discover a “marvellous world” overseas, de Maistre...
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