Wilhelm von Humboldt, 1804, on fulfillment

"He who can say to himself when he dies: 'I have grasped and made into a part of my humanity as much of the world as I could', that man has reached fulfillment...In the higher sense of the word, he has really lived."

-- Wilhelm von Humboldt, 1804.

(Cited in The German Tradition of Self-Cultivation: 'Bildung from Humboldt to Thomas Mann, W. H. Bruford, p. 24; small extract from a letter from Rome, 9 October 1804, to Karoline, in Wilhelm und Karoline von Humboldt in ihren Breifen, vol. 2, p. 262)