Alchemist Quotes (2)
The alchemists in their search for gold discovered other things [of greater value].
With the phrase 'of greater value' in James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 415. The more specific description '—gunpowder, china, medicines, the laws of nature' is given for 'of greater value' in Counsels and Maxims: Being the Second Part of Arthur Schopenhauer's Aphorismen Zur Lebensweisheit translated by Thomas Bailey Saunders (2nd Ed., 1890), 16.
See also: | Discovery (166) | Gold (10) | Gunpowder (6) | Law (134) | Medicine (127) | Nature (243) | Search (10)
The alchemists of past centuries tried hard to make the elixir of life: ... Those efforts were in vain; it is not in our power to obtain the experiences and the views of the future by prolonging our lives forward in this direction. However, it is well possible in a certain sense to prolong our lives backwards by acquiring the experiences of those who existed before us and by learning to know their views as well as if we were their contemporaries. The means for doing this is also an elixir of life.
Foreword to Die Entwicklung der Chemie in der neueren Zeit (1873), trans. W. H. Brock.
