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.
Baseball serves as a good model for democracy in action: Every player is equally important and each has a chance to be a hero.
America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.
Envy will merit, as its shade, pursue
His eyes are wild, psychotic slits that bat-dance in your soul looking for good things to crush or bad elements to identify with.
Eating and sleeping are not like loving and breathing. Washing is not like eating and sleeping. Believing is like breathing and loving. Religion can be believing, it can be like breathing, it can be like loving, it can be like eating or sleeping, it can be like washing, it can be something to fill up a place when someone has lost out of them a piece that it was not natural for them to have in them.
Holiness, as taught in the Scriptures, is not based upon knowledge on our part. Rather, it is based upon the resurrected Christ in-dwelling us and changing us into His likeness.
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