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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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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
Stills
Truly
Guidance
Doe
Results
Perform
Still
Choices
Enter
Exactness
Human
Whatever
Merely
Mechanical
Humans
Free
Result
Energies
Men
Energy
Remains
Alien
True
Spring
Instruction
Nature
Choice
Aliens

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Language makes infinite use of finite media.
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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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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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Samskrit is the unsurpassed zenith in the whole development of languages yet known to us.
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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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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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Faith can be interested in results only, for a truth once recognized as such puts an end to the believer's thinking.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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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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However great an evil immorality may be, we must not forget that it is not without its beneficial consequences. It is only through extremes that men can arrive at the middle path of wisdom and virtue.
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Governmental regulations all carry coercion to some degree, and even where they don't, they habituate man to expect teaching, guidance and help outside himself, instead of formulating his own.
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The State is not in itself an end, but is only a means towards human development.
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Results are nothing the energies which produce them and which again spring from them are everything.
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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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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.
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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?
Wilhelm von Humboldt