Quotes from Wilhelm von Humboldt

All situations in which the interrelationships between extremes are involved are the most interesting and instructive.

To judge a man means nothing other than to ask: What content does he give to the form of humanity? What concept should we have of humanity if he were its only representative?

We have not the remotest realistic inkling of a consciousness which is not self-consciousness.

Joy mingled with sadness, even with grief, is the deepest human joy. It winds itself about the soul with indescribable sweetness, with a dim but unerring sense for what will some day be born of it.

Ich finde... dass sich ein Buch gerade vorzugsweise zu einem freundschaftlichen Geschenk eignet, man liest es oft, man kehrt oft dazu zurück, man naht sich ihm aber nur in ausgewählten Momenten, braucht es nicht wie eine Tasse, ein Glas, einen Hausrat in jedem gleichgültigen Augenblick des Lebens und erinnert sich so immer des Freundes im Augenblick eines würdigen Genusses.

Modul în care un om î?i accept? destinul este mai important decît însu?i destinul s?u.

It is usually more important how a man meets his fate than what it is.

Government, religion, property, books, are nothing but the scaffolding to build men. Earth holds up to her master no fruit like the finished man.

In the moral world there is nothing impossible if we can bring a thorough will to it. Man can do everything with himself, but he must not attempt to do too much with others.

I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves.

If we reason that we want happiness for others, not for ourselves, then we ought justly to be suspected of failing to recognize human nature for what it is and of wishing to turn men into machines.

A man must seek his happiness and inward peace from objects which cannot be taken away from him.

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

The price of apparent happiness and enjoyment is the neglect of the spontaneous active energies of the acting members.

When we ... devote ourselves to the strict and unsparing performance of duty, ihen happiness comes of itself.

If we glance at the most important revolutions in history, we see at once that the greatest number of these originated in the periodical revolutions of the human mind.

Possession, it is true, crowns exertion with rest; but it is only in the illusions of fancy that it has power to charm us.

Language is the spiritual exhalation of the nation.

Only what we have wrought into our character during life can we take with us.

How a person masters his fate is more important than what his fate is.

If we glance at the most important revolutions in history, we see at once that the greatest number of these originated in the periodical revolutions on the human mind.

It is a characteristic of old age to find the progress of time accelerated. The less one accomplishes in a given time, the shorter does the retrospect appear.

Women are in this respect more fortunate than men, that most of their employments are of such a nature that they can at the same time be thinking of quite different things.

It is continued temperance which sustains the body for the longest period of time, and which most surely preserves it free from sickness.