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Attributed quotes — Wilhelm von Humboldt

1767–1835 Germany

← All quotes by Wilhelm von Humboldt

96 quotes

That government is the best which makes government unnecessary.

Attributed Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1893)

How a person masters his fate is more important than what his fate is.

Attributed

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.

Attributed

Friendship and love require the deepest and most entire confidence, but souls of a high character demand not communications of a familiar nature.

Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)

A man must seek his happiness and inward peace from objects which cannot be taken away from him.

Attributed Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1893)

If the mind loves solitude, it has thereby acquired a loftier character, and it becomes still more noble when the taste is indulged in.

Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)

The sorrow which calls for help and comfort is not the greatest, nor does it come from the depths of the heart.

Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)

Man is apt to judge of things not so much by their intrinsic worth, as by their agreement with his own preconceived ideas.

Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)

I have, besides, a great love for the past. Only what refers to it is eternal and unchangeable like death, and at the same time warm and gladsome like life.

Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)

True enjoyment comes from activity of the mind and exercise of the body; the two are ever united.

Attributed

We must wait for the future, and enjoy or bear the present.

Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)

The most beautiful, perhaps the only true, philosophical song existing in any known tongue.

Attributed

It is a characteristic of old age to find that time passes on with accelerated pace. The less one accomplishes in a given time, the shorter does the retrospect appear.

Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)

All merit ceases the moment we perform an act for the sake of its consequences. Truly in this respect "we have our reward."

Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)

A letter is a conversation between the present and the absent. Its fate is that it cannot last, but must pass away like the sound of the voice.

Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)

What lies in the nature of things and is dependent on fate, it would be silly and unmanly to lose one’s rest and inward equilibrium in thinking of it.

Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)

Providence certainly does not attend merely to the interests of individuals, but the profound wisdom of its counsels extends to the right ordering and betterment of all.

Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)

It is a beautiful thought, that however far one shore may be from another, the wave that ripples over my foot will in a short time be on the opposite strand.

Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)

Our evangelical churches are too much regarded as places for preaching, and too little thought as intended for the religious elevation of the mind by prayer and meditation.

Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)

Death is but a word to us. Our own experience alone can teach us the real meaning of the word.

Attributed Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1893)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Wilhelm von Humboldt (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.