“History is not the soil of happiness. The periods of happiness are blank pages in it.”

—  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel , book Lectures on the Philosophy of History

Variant, as translated by H. B. Nisbet (1975): History is not the soil in which happiness grows. The periods of happiness in it are the blank pages of history.
Die Weltgeschichte ist nicht der Boden des Glücks. Die Perioden des Glücks sind leere Blätter in ihr.
General Introduction to the Philosophy of History
Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832), Volume 1

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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel photo
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 106
German philosopher 1770–1831

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