Quote

Coercion may prevent many transgressions but it robs even actions which are legal of a part of their beauty. Freedom may lead to many transgressions, but it lends even to vices a less ignoble form.

Wilhelm von Humboldt

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Wilhelm von Humboldt
Age: 67 †
Born: 1767
Born: June 22
Died: 1835
Died: April 8
Anthropologist
Diplomat
Historian
Linguist
Philosopher
Politician
Teacher
Writer
Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand Freiherr von Humboldt
Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt
Karl Wilhelm von Humboldt
Action
Legal
Form
Prevent
Part
Vices
Transgressions
May
Actions
Robs
Many
Lead
Ignoble
Even
Beauty
Transgression
Freedom
Lends
Less
Coercion

More quotes by Wilhelm von Humboldt

Image
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.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Image
The state should avoid all solicitude for the positive welfare of its citizens, and not proceed a step further than is necessary for their mutual security and their protection against foreign enemies. It should impose restrictions on freedom for no other purpose.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Image
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.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Image
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
Image
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
Image
It is usually more important how a man meets his fate than what it is.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Image
A man must seek his happiness and inward peace from objects which cannot be taken away from him.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Image
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.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Image
Happiness is so nonsynonymous with joy or pleasure that it is not infrequently sought and felt in grief and deprivation.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Image
If we reason that we want happiness for others, not for ourselves, then we ought justly to be suspected of failing to recognize human nature for what it is and of wishing to turn men into machines.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Image
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.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Image
The price of apparent happiness and enjoyment is the neglect of the spontaneous active energies of the acting members.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Image
Even by means of our sorrows we belong to the eternal plan.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Image
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.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Image
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
Image
The sorrow which calls for help and comfort is not the greatest, nor does it come from the depths of the heart.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
All situations in which the interrelationships between extremes are involved are the most interesting and instructive.
Wilhelm von Humboldt