I lay very little stress either upon asking or giving advice. Generally speaking, they who ask advice know what they wish to do, and remain firm to their intentions. A man may allow himself to be enlightened on various points, even upon matters of expediency and duty; but, after all, he must determine his course of action, for himself.
Wilhelm von HumboldtSamskrit is the unsurpassed zenith in the whole development of languages yet known to us.
Wilhelm von HumboldtIn the moral world there is nothing impossible if we can bring a thorough will to it. Man can do everything with himself, but he must not attempt to do too much with others.
Wilhelm von HumboldtResults are nothing; the energies which produce them and which again spring from them are everything.
Wilhelm von HumboldtIt is an absolutely vain endeavor to attempt to reconstruct or even comprehend the nature of a human being by simply knowing the forces which have acted upon him. However deeply we should like to penetrate, however close we seem to be drawing to truth, one unknown quantity eludes us: man's primordial energy, his original self, that personality which was given him with the gift of life itself. On it rests man's true freedom; it alone determines his real character.
Wilhelm von HumboldtIf 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.
Wilhelm von HumboldtThe sensual and spiritual are linked together by a mysterious bond, sensed by our emotions, though hidden from our eyes. To this double nature of the visible and invisible world - to the profound longing for the latter, coupled with the feeling of the sweet necessity for the former, we owe all sound and logical systems of philosophy, truly based on the immutable principles of our nature, just as from the same source arise the most senseless enthusiasms.
Wilhelm von Humboldt