99 Quotes by Wilhelm Von Humboldt

Happiness is so nonsynonymous with joy or pleasure that it is not infrequently sought and felt in grief and deprivation.

Faith can be interested in results only, for a truth once recognized as such puts an end to the believer's thinking.

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

For even if we know very little that is certain about spirit or soul, the true nature of the body, of materiality, is totally unknown and incomprehensible to us.

If something possesses no capacity for activity whatever, it is nothing; it may be wholly penetrated, but it cannot be touched. Therefore passivity and reaction are everywhere equal.

All growth toward perfection is but a returning to original existence.

Human nature must be something which always remains one and the same, but which may be carried out in manifold ways.

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 nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness

To judge a man means nothing other 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?