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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.

Wilhelm von Humboldt

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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
Born
Indescribable
Sense
Winds
Soul
Sweetness
Human
Deepest
Humans
Sadness
Even
Grief
Wind
Unerring
Joy
Mingled

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Even sleep is characteristic. How beautiful are children in their lovely innocence! how angel-like their blooming features! and how painful and anxious is the sleep of the guilty!
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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.
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Language makes infinite use of finite media.
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The State is not in itself an end, but is only a means towards human development.
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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.
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All situations in which the interrelationships between extremes are involved are the most interesting and instructive.
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How a person masters his or her fate is more important than what that fate is.
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Absolutely nothing is so important for a nation's culture as its language.
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The price of apparent happiness and enjoyment is the neglect of the spontaneous active energies of the acting members.
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True resignation, which always brings with it the confidence that unchangeable goodness will make even the disappointment of our hopes, and the contradictions of life, conducive to some benefit, casts a grave but tranquil light over the prospect of even a toilsome and troubled life.
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It is continued temperance which sustains the body for the longest period of time, and which most surely preserves it free from sickness.
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The sorrow which calls for help and comfort is not the greatest, nor does it come from the depths of the heart.
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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.
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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.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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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.
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Samskrit is the unsurpassed zenith in the whole development of languages yet known to us.
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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?
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Prayer is intended to increase the devotion of the individual, but if the individual himself prays he requires no formula he pours himself forth much more naturally in self-chosen and connected thoughts before God, and scarcely requires words at all. Real inward devotion knows no prayer but that arising from the depths of its own feelings.
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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.
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Results are nothing the energies which produce them and which again spring from them are everything.
Wilhelm von Humboldt