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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.

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
Doe
Especially
Wounds
Importunate
Anything
Create
Injustice
Violates
May
Moral
Assuming
Blasphemy
Right
Religion
Guilty
Regards
Long
Sense
Actions
Morals
Action
Indeed
Wound
Others
Conscience
Offense
Cannot
Regard
Assume
Utters

More quotes by Wilhelm von Humboldt

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It is usually more important how a man meets his fate than what it is.
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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The more a man acts on his own, the more he develops himself. In large associations he is too prone to become merely an instrument.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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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
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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.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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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.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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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
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All translating seems to me to be simply an attempt to accomplish an impossible task.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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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.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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Language is the spiritual exhalation of the nation.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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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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Government, religion, property, books, are nothing but the scaffolding to build men. Earth holds up to her master no fruit like the finished man.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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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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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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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
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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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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.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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A man must seek his happiness and inward peace from objects which cannot be taken away from him.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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Freedom is but the possibility of a various and indefinite activity while government, or the exercise of dominion, is a single, yet real activity. The longing for freedom, therefore, is at first only too frequently suggested by the deep-felt consciousness of its absence.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
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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