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All political arrangements, in that they have to bring a variety of widely-discordant interests into unity and harmony, necessarily occasion manifold collisions. From these collisions spring misproportions between men's desires and their powers and from these, transgressions. The more active the State is, the greater is the number of these.

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
Greater
Interests
Widely
State
Necessarily
Arrangements
Interest
Active
Occasion
Discordant
Desire
Harmony
Occasions
Collisions
Political
Spring
Desires
Transgressions
States
Number
Powers
Transgression
Men
Numbers
Variety
Manifold
Bring
Unity
Collision

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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.
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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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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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All situations in which the interrelationships between extremes are involved are the most interesting and instructive.
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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.
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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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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.
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Results are nothing the energies which produce them and which again spring from them are everything.
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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.
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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.
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The finest fruit earth holds up to its Maker is a finished man.
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All situations in which the interrelationships between extremes are involved are the most interesting and instructive.
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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.
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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.
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The State is not in itself an end, but is only a means towards human development.
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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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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.
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Providence certainly does not favor just certain individuals, but the deep wisdom of its counsel, instruction and ennoblement extends to all.
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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.
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