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All situations in which the interrelationships between extremes are involved are the most interesting and instructive.

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
Involved
Situation
Interesting
Interrelationships
Instructive
Situations
Extremes

More quotes by Wilhelm von Humboldt

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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
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Only what we have wrought into our character during life can we take with us.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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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
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Life, in all ranks and situations, is an outward occupation, an actual and active work.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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Map reconciles himself to almost any event, however trying, if it happens in the ordinary course of nature. It is the extraordinary alone that he rebels against. There is a moral idea associated with this feeling for the extraordinary appears to be something like an injustice of heaven.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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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
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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
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Samskrit is the unsurpassed zenith in the whole development of languages yet known to us.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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Even by means of our sorrows we belong to the eternal plan.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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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!
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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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.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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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.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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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.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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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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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.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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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.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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Absolutely nothing is so important for a nation's culture as its language.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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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.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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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
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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