Wilhelm von Humboldt

Fancy brings us as many vain hopes as idle fears.

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

Language makes infinite use of finite media.

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

“All growth toward perfection is but a returning to original existence.”

— Wilhelm Von Humboldt

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

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

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

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

The finest fruit earth holds up to its Maker is a finished man.

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

Language is the spiritual exhalation of the nation.

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

The government is best which makes itself unnecessary.

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

To judge a man means nothing more than to ask: What content does he give to the form of humanity? What concept…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

War seems to be one of the most salutary phenomena for the culture of human nature; and it is not without regret…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

If we glance at the most important revolutions in history, we see at once that the greatest number of these originated in…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

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

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

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

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

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

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

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

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

The most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known tongue …perhaps the deepest and loftiest thing the world…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

If we reason that we want happiness for others, not for ourselves, then we ought justly to be suspected of failing to…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

All political arrangements, in that they have to bring a variety of widely-discordant interests into unity and harmony, necessarily occasion manifold collisions.…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

Every man, however good he may be, has a yet better man dwelling in him, which is properly himself, but to whom…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

The mere reality of life would be inconceivably poor without the charm of fancy, which brings in its bosom, no doubt, as…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

When we are not too anxious about happiness and unhappiness, but devote ourselves to the strict and unsparing performance of duty, then…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

To behold, is not necessary to observe, and the power of comparing and combining is only to be obtained by education. It…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

Map reconciles himself to almost any event, however trying, if it happens in the ordinary course of nature. It is the extraordinary…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

Governmental regulations all carry coercion to some degree, and even where they don't, they habituate man to expect teaching, guidance and help…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

The sensual and spiritual are linked together by a mysterious bond, sensed by our emotions, though hidden from our eyes. To this…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

In every remodelling of the present, the existing condition of things must be supplanted by a new one. Now every variety of…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

One must not consider a language as a product dead, and formed but once; it is an animate being, and ever creative.…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

Reason cannot desire for man any condition other than that in which not only every individual enjoys the most absolute, unbounded freedom…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

Death is but a word to us. One's own experience alone can teach us the real meaning of the word. The sight…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

It is an absolutely vain endeavor to attempt to reconstruct or even comprehend the nature of a human being by simply knowing…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

Trees have about them something beautiful and attractive even to the fancy, since they cannot change their places, are witnesses of all…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

It is resignation and contentment that are best calculated to lead us safely through life. Whoever has not sufficient power to endure…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

“Language is deeply entwined in the intellectual development of humanity itself, it accompanies the latter upon every step of its localized progression…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

“…man never regards what he possesses as so much his own, as what he does; and the labourer who tends a garden…

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

“The sum of the knowable, that soil which the human spirit must till, lies between all the languages and independent of them,…

— Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Life, in all ranks and situations, is an outward occupation, an actual and active work.

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

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

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

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

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

Even by means of our sorrows we belong to the eternal plan.

— Wilhelm von Humboldt

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

— Wilhelm von Humboldt