The nature of finite things is to have the seed of their passing-away as their essential being: the hour of their birth is the hour of their death.
Interpretation
Finite things are inherently destined to exist temporarily, and their beginning signifies their eventual end.
In this quote, Hegel suggests that everything that comes into existence carries within it the inevitability of its own demise. He emphasizes the paradox of finite beings: as they are born, the process of decay and death is already embedded in their nature, highlighting the transient quality of life and the continual interplay between existence and non-existence.
In practice
During a philosophical debate about existence and mortality, this quote could emphasize the nature of life.
The true courage of civilized nations is readiness for sacrifice in the service of the state, so that the individual counts as only one amongst many. The important thing here is not personal mettle but aligning oneself with the universal.
The East knew and to the present day knows only that One is Free; the Greek and the Roman world, that some are free; the German World knows that All are free. The first political form therefore which we observe in History, is Despotism, the second Democracy and Aristocracy, the third, Monarchy.
Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.
Every idea, extended into infinity, becomes its own opposite.
If we go on to cast a look at the fate of these World-Historical persons, whose vocation it was to be the agents of the World-Spirit, we shall find it to have been no happy one. They attained no calm enjoyment; their whole life was labour and trouble; their whole nature was nought else but their master—passion. When their object is attained they fall off like empty hulls from the kernel. They die early, like Alexander; they are murdered, like Caesar.
When individuals and nations have once got in their heads the abstract concept of full-blown liberty, there is nothing like it in its uncontrollable strength.
Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear.
We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn't think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre.
Time is not a thing, thus nothing which is, and yet it remains constant in its passing away without being something temporal like the beings in time.
More and more people work on Sundays as a consequence of the competitiveness imposed by a consumer society.
Idealists are people who believe in the potential of human nature for transformation. . . . The most essential attribute of human nature is its mutability and freedom from instinct . . . it is always within our power to change our nature. So it is actually the idealists who are on the mark and the realists who are off base.
Not to get what you have set your heart on is almost as bad as getting nothing at all.
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