Wilhelm von Humboldt Short Quotes

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

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

Wilhelm von Humboldt
Real inward devotion knows no prayer but that arising from the depths of its own feelings.

Wilhelm von Humboldt
True enjoyment comes from activity of the mind and exercise of the body; the two are ever united.

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 sickness.

Wilhelm von Humboldt
Wherever the citizen becomes indifferent to his fellows, so will the husband be to his wife, and the father of a family toward the members of his household.

Wilhelm von Humboldt
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
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
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
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.

Wilhelm von Humboldt
The inquiry into the proper aims and limits of State agency must be of the highest importance—nay, that it is perhaps more vitally momentous than any other political question.

Wilhelm von Humboldt
If we glance at the most important revolutions in history, we are at no loss to perceive that the greatest number of these originated in the periodical revolutions of the human mind.

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 outside himself, instead of formulating his own.

Wilhelm von Humboldt
The legislator should keep two things constantly before his eyes:—1. The pure theory developed to its minutest details; 2. The particular condition of actual things which he designs to reform.

Wilhelm von Humboldt
In order to bring about the transition from the condition of the present to another newly resolved on, every reform should be allowed to proceed as much as possible from men's minds and thoughts.

Wilhelm von Humboldt