Wilhelm von Humboldt Quotes

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• Absolutely nothing is so important for a nation's culture as its language.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Important, Culture, Language

  "Language and Identity: An introduction". Book by John Edwards, 2009.

  38 Copy quote

• 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.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Life, Happiness, Attitude

  "Lightning Fast Enlightenment: A Journey to the Secrets of Happiness". Book by Jordan S. Metzger, p. 9, 2000.

  59 Copy quote

• Language is the spiritual exhalation of the nation.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Spiritual, Language, Nations

  3 Copy quote

• Whatever does not spring from a man's free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very being, but still remains alien to his true nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Spring, Men, Choices

  19 Copy quote

• No matter how good or great a man may be, there is yet a better and a greater man within him.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Men, May, Matter

  3 Copy quote

• Language makes infinite use of finite media.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Media, Use, Language

  Wilhelm von Humboldt, Wilhelm Humboldt (Freiherr von) (1972). “Linguistic variability & intellectual development”, Univ of Pennsylvania Pr

  17 Copy quote

• To inquire and to create; these are the grand centres around which all human pursuits revolve, or at least to these objects do they all more or less directly refer.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Pursuit, Centre, Humans

  "The Limits of State Action". Book by David Sidorsky. Chapter 8, 1792.

  17 Copy quote

• How a person masters his or her fate is more important than what that fate is.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Success, Fate, Important

  13 Copy quote

• Governmental regulations all carry coercion to some degree, and even where they don't, they habituate man to expect teaching, guidance and help outside himself, instead of formulating his own.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Teaching, Men, Degrees

  "The Liberal Tradition in European Thought". Book by David Sidorsky, p. 73, 1971.

  21 Copy quote

• The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Government, Unnecessary

  "Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources". Book by James Wood, 1899.

  7 Copy quote

• Every man, however good he may be, has a yet better man dwelling in him, which is properly himself, but to whom nevertheless he is often unfaithful. It is to this interior and less mutable being that we should attach ourselves, not to be changeable, every-day man.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Men, Dwelling, May

  23 Copy quote

• Besides the pleasure derived from acquired knowledge, there lurks in the mind of man, and tinged with a shade of sadness, an unsatisfactory longing for something beyond the present, a striving towards regions yet unknown and unopened.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Sadness, Men, Mind

  10 Copy quote

• The more a man acts on his own, the more he develops himself. In large associations he is too prone to become merely an instrument.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Men, Association, Instruments

  17 Copy quote

• Natural objects themselves, even when they make no claim to beauty, excite the feelings, and occupy the imagination. Nature pleases, attracts, delights, merely because it is nature. We recognize in it an Infinite Power.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Garden, Imagination, Feelings

  13 Copy quote

• Trees have about them something beautiful and attractive even to the fancy,
  since they cannot change their places,
  are witnesses of all the changes that take place around them;
  and as some reach a great age, they become, as it were, historical monuments,
  and like ourselves they have a life, growing and passing away,
  --not being inanimate and unvarying like the fields and rivers.
  One sees them passing through various stages,
  and at last step by step approaching death,
  which makes them look still more like ourselves.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Beautiful, Rivers, Tree

  22 Copy quote

• It is almost more important how a person takes his fate than what it is. And the best way is with gratitude while trying to improve it for the good of others and themselves.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Gratitude, Fate, Important

  5 Copy quote

• If the mind loves solitude, it has thereby acquired a loftier character, and it becomes still more noble when the taste is indulged in.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Character, Mind Love, Solitude

  17 Copy quote

• To behold, is not necessary to observe, and the power of comparing and combining is only to be obtained by education. It is much to be regretted that habits of exact observation are not cultivated in our schools; to this deficiency may be traced much of the fallacious reasoning, the false philosophy which prevails.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Philosophy, School, May

  18 Copy quote

• To judge a man means nothing more 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?

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Mean, Men, Giving

  15 Copy quote

• All translating seems to me to be simply an attempt to accomplish an impossible task.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Tasks, Impossible, Accomplish

  6 Copy quote

• All political arrangements, in that they have to bring a variety of widely-discordant interests into unity and harmony, necessarily occasion manifold collisions. From these collisions spring misproportions between men's desires and their powers; and from these, transgressions. The more active the State is, the greater is the number of these.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Spring, Men, Numbers

  "The Limits of State Action". Book by David Sidorsky. Chapter 8, 1792.

  3 Copy quote

• 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.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Progress, Age, Doe

  10 Copy quote

• The most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known tongue ....perhaps the deepest and loftiest thing the world has to show.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Beautiful, Song, Philosophical

  14 Copy quote

• Faith can be interested in results only, for a truth once recognized as such puts an end to the believer's thinking.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Thinking, Ends, Results

  8 Copy quote

• Death is but a word to us. One's own experience alone can teach us the real meaning of the word. The sight of the dying does little. What one sees of them is merely what precedes death: dull unconsciousness is all we see. Whether this be so,--how and when the spirit wakes to life again,--this is what all wish to know, and what never can be known until it is experienced.

  Wilhelm von Humboldt

  Death, Real, Sight

  9 Copy quote

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