Wilhelm von Humboldt
If it were not somewhat fanciful to suppose that every human excellence is presented, as it were, in one kind of being, we might believe that the whole treasure of morality and order is enshrined in the female character.Collection: Women
However benevolent may be the intentions of Providence, they do not always advance the happiness of the individual. Providence has always higher ends in view, and works in a pre-eminent degree on the inner feelings and disposition.Collection: Views
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.Collection: Men
When we ... devote ourselves to the strict and unsparing performance of duty, ihen happiness comes of itself.Collection: Duty
Possession, it is true, crowns exertion with rest; but it is only in the illusions of fancy that it has power to charm us.Collection: Power
Reason cannot desire for man any condition other than that in which not only every individual enjoys the most absolute, unbounded freedom to develop himself out of himself, in true individuality, but in which physical nature, as well, need receive no other shaping by human hands than that which is given to her voluntarily by each individual, according to the measure of his wants and his inclinations, restricted only by the limits of his energy and his rights.Collection: Men
Life, in all ranks and situations, is an outward occupation, an actual and active work.Collection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Spring
The State is not in itself an end, but is only a means towards human development.Collection: Mean
One must not consider a language as a product dead, and formed but once; it is an animate being, and ever creative. Human thought elaborates itself with the progress of intelligence; and of this thought language is a manifestation. An idiom cannot therefore remain stationary; it walks, it develops, it grows up, it fortifies itself, it becomes old, and it reaches decrepitude.Collection: Growing Up
The finest fruit earth holds up to its Maker is a finished man.Collection: Men
Man is more disposed to domination than freedom; and a structure of dominion not only gladdens the eye of the master who rears and protects it, but even its servants are uplifted by the thought that they are members of a whole, which rises high above the life and strength of single generations.Collection: Life
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.Collection: Beautiful
Work is as much a necessity to man as eating and sleeping. Even those who do nothing that can be called work still imagine they are doing something. The world has not a man who is an idler in his own eyes.Collection: Inspirational
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.Collection: Death
Among men who are really free, every form of industry becomes more rapidly improved - all the arts flourish more gracefully - all the sciences extend their range.Collection: Art
Faith can be interested in results only, for a truth once recognized as such puts an end to the believer's thinking.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Numbers
The things of the world are ever rising and falling, and in perpetual change; and this change must be according to the will of God, as He has bestowed upon man neither the wisdom nor the power to enable him to check it. The great lesson in these things is, that man must strengthen himself doubly at such times to fulfill his duty and to do what is right, and must seek his happiness and inward peace from objects which cannot be taken away from him.Collection: Fall
All situations in which the interrelationships between extremes are involved are the most interesting and instructive.Collection: Interesting
We cannot assume the injustice of any actions which only create offense, and especially as regards religion and morals. He who utters or does anything to wound the conscience and moral sense of others, may indeed act immorally; but, so long as he is not guilty of being importunate, he violates no right.Collection: Long
Samskrit is the unsurpassed zenith in the whole development of languages yet known to us.Collection: Development
If it were possible to make an accurate calculation of the evils which police regulations occasion, and of those which they prevent, the number of the former would, in all cases, exceed that of the latter.Collection: Numbers
Government, religion, property, books, are nothing but the scaffolding to build men. Earth holds up to her master no fruit like the finished man.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Grief
The price of apparent happiness and enjoyment is the neglect of the spontaneous active energies of the acting members.Collection: Acting
Fancy brings us as many vain hopes as idle fears.Collection: Fancy
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.Collection: Men
The very variety arising from the union of numbers of individuals is the highest good which social life can confer, and this variety is undoubtedly lost in proportion to the degree of State interference.Collection: Numbers
When we are not too anxious about happiness and unhappiness, but devote ourselves to the strict and unsparing performance of duty, then happiness comes of itself - nay, even springs from the midst of a life of troubles and anxieties and privations.Collection: Happiness
The sea has been called deceitful and treacherous, but there lies in this trait only the character of a great natural power, which, to speak according to our own feelings, renews its strength, and, without reference to joy or sorrow, follows eternal laws which are imposed by a higher Power.Collection: Lying
Real inward devotion knows no prayer but that arising from the depths of its own feelings.Collection: Prayer
Man is naturally more disposed to beneficent than selfish actions. This we learn even from the history of savages. The domestic virtues have something in them so inviting and genial, and the public virtues of the citizen something so grand and inspiring, that even he who is barely uncorrupted, is seldom able to resist their charm.Collection: Selfish
The mere reality of life would be inconceivably poor without the charm of fancy, which brings in its bosom, no doubt, as many vain fears as idle hopes, but lends much oftener to the illusions it calls up a gay flattering hue than one which inspires terror.Collection: Gay