Marinus Quotes

“The soul is a verb." He impales a lit candle on a spike. "Not a noun.”
― David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

“Linnaeus's last lesson, of which he himself was unaware, was that professorships kill philosophers. Oh, I'm vain enough to want my burgeoning Flora Japonica to be published one day--as a votive offering to human knowledge--but a seat at Uppsala, or Leiden, or Cambridge, holds no allure. My heart is the East's in this lifetime. This is my third year in Nagasaki, and I have work enough for another three, or six. During the court embassy I can see landscapes no European botanist ever saw. My seminarians are keen young men--with one young woman--and visiting scholars bring me specimens from all over the empire.”
― David Mitchell, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet