Wilhelm von Humboldt Quotes

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

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.

Language is the spiritual exhalation of the nation.

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.

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

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

Language makes infinite use of finite media.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Providence certainly does not favor just certain individuals, but the deep wisdom of its counsel, instruction and ennoblement extends to all.

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.

Freedom is but the possibility of a various and indefinite activity; while government, or the exercise of dominion, is a single, yet real activity. The longing for freedom, therefore, is at first only too frequently suggested by the deep-felt consciousness of its absence.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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