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It is a very wise rule in life not to be too anxious about health, or to be entirely free from the inconveniences and bodily ailments of old age. It is far better to submit with patience to what is merely annoying, but does not altogether confine us, and still better to treat with indifference the uncomfortable feelings which such a state of body calls up.

— Wilhelm von Humboldt Attributed Beautiful Thoughts from German and Spanish Authors (1880)

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More quotes by Wilhelm von Humboldt

The diversity of languages is not a diversity of signs and sounds but a diversity of views of the world.

The finest fruit earth holds up to its Maker is a finished man.

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.

There must be something in it, as yet totally ununderstood by us, perhaps something founded on a totally unknown relationship between body and spirit. 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.

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