Schiller Friedrich Quotes & Sayings

As freely as the firmament embraces the world, or the sun pours forth impartially his beams, so mercy must encircle both friend and foe. — Friedrich Schiller

Man is made of ordinary things, and habit is his nurse. — Friedrich Schiller

Every great mind seeks to labor for eternity. All men are captivated by immediate advantages; great minds alone are excited by the prospect of distant good. — Friedrich Schiller

Courage, ne'er by sorrow broken! Aid where tears of virtue flow; Faith to keep each promise spoken! Truth alike to friend and foe! — Friedrich Schiller

Sentimental poetry differs from naive poetry in that it relates the real state at which the latter stops to ideas and applies ideas to that reality. — Friedrich Schiller

His saying was: live and let live. — Friedrich Schiller

Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly will acquire the skill to do difficult things easily. — Friedrich Schiller

He who considers too much will perform little. — Friedrich Schiller

If you would attain to your highest, go look upon a flower;what the flower does willessly, that do willingly. — Friedrich Schiller

Opposition always inflames the enthusiast, never converts him. — Friedrich Schiller

Nothing, it is true, is more common than for both Science and Art to pay homage to the spirit of the age, and for creative taste to accept the law of critical taste. — Friedrich Schiller

Truth lives on in the midst of deception ... — Friedrich Schiller

In the case of a creative mind, it seems to me, the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell and only then does it review and inspect the multitudes. — Friedrich Schiller

Joy is the mainspring in the whole
Of endless Nature's calm rotation.
Joy moves the dazzling wheels that roll
In the great Time-piece of Creation. — Friedrich Schiller

Without a home must the soldier go, a changeful wanderer, and can warm himself at no home-lit hearth. — Friedrich Schiller

They would need to be already wise, in order to love wisdom. — Friedrich Schiller

To rankling poison hast thou turned in me the milk of human kindness. — Friedrich Schiller

As 'twas in the times of old 'tis now, The sword is the sceptre, and all must bow. — Friedrich Schiller

The first great law is to obey. — Friedrich Schiller

If you want to study yourself, look into the hearts of other people. If you want to study other people, look into your own heart. — Friedrich Schiller

Time is a blooming field: nature is ever teeming with life: and all is seed, and all is fruit. — Friedrich Schiller

Heaven and earth fight in vain against a dunce! — Friedrich Schiller

To save all we must risk all. — Friedrich Schiller

If the art of gardening is at last to turn back from her extravagances and rest with her other sisters, it is, above everything, necessary to have clearly before you what you require ... It is certainly tasteless and inconsistent to desire to encompass the world with a garden-wall, but very practicable and reasonable to make a garden ... into a characteristic whole to the eye, heart, and nderstanding alike. — Friedrich Schiller

Soon is the struggle past, and to the earth,
To the eternal sun, I render back
These atoms, joined in me for pain and pleasure. — Friedrich Schiller

A gloomy guest fits not a wedding feast. — Friedrich Schiller

Power is the most persuasive rhetoric. — Friedrich Schiller

Even weak men when united are powerful. — Friedrich Schiller

Only through Beauty's morning-gate, dost thou penetrate the land of knowledge. — Friedrich Schiller

The future comes slowly, the present flies and the past stands still forever. — Friedrich Schiller

To know thyself
in others self-concern;
Would'st thou know others? read thyself
and learn! — Friedrich Schiller

Be true, and thou shalt fetter time with everlasting chain. — Friedrich Schiller

Truth exists for the wise, beauty for the feeling heart. — Friedrich Schiller

Foster the beautiful, and every hour thou tallest new flowers to birth. — Friedrich Schiller

Mankind is made great or little by its own will. — Friedrich Schiller

The world is ruled only by consideration of advantages. — Friedrich Schiller

Men show no mercy and expect no mercy, when honor calls, or when they fight for their idols or their gods. — Friedrich Schiller

You saw his weakness, and he will never forgive you. — Friedrich Schiller

It is at the approach of extreme danger when a hollow puppet can accomplish nothing, that power falls into the mighty hands of nature, of the spirit giant-born, who listens only to himself, and knows nothing of compacts. — Friedrich Schiller

The happy man does not notice the flight of time. — Friedrich Schiller

We are too prone to find fault; let us look for some of the perfections. — Friedrich Schiller

What else is chance but the rude stone which receives its life from the sculptor's hand? Providence gives us chance, and man must mould it to his own designs. — Friedrich Schiller

From the moment fear begins I have ceased to fear. — Friedrich Schiller

History, insofar as it accustoms human beings to comprehend the whole of the past and to hasten forward with its conclusions into the far future, conceals the boundaries of birth and death, which enclose the life of the human being so narrowly and oppressively, and with a kind of optical illusion, expands his short existence into endless space, leading the individual imperceptibly over into humanity. — Friedrich Schiller

If thou art something bring thy soul and interchange with mine. - Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller. — Friedrich Schiller

Be noble minded! Our own heart, and not other men's opinions of us, forms our true honor. — Friedrich Schiller

Life did not present its sunny side to thee. — Friedrich Schiller

I know that we often tremble at an empty terror; yet the false fancy brings a real misery. — Friedrich Schiller

Man is not better treated by nature in his first start than her other works are; so long as he is unable to act for himself as an independent intelligence she acts for him. But the very fact that constitutes him a man is that he does not remain stationary, where nature has placed him, that he can pass with his reason, retracing the steps nature had made him anticipate, that he can convert the work of necessity into one of free solution, and elevate physical necessity into a moral law. — Friedrich Schiller

When I hate I rob myself of something; but when I love I become richer by the object I love. — Friedrich Schiller

It is through beauty that we arrive at freedom. — Friedrich Schiller

Genuine art . . . does not have as its object a mere transitory game. Its serious purpose is not merely to translate the human being into a momentary dream of freedom, but actually to MAKE him free. — Friedrich Schiller

Aesthetic matters are fundamental for the harmonious development of both society and the individual. — Friedrich Schiller

No doubt the artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favorite. — Friedrich Schiller

Seraphs share with thee Knowledge; but Art, O Man, is thine alone! — Friedrich Schiller

In the society, where people are just parts in a larger machine, individuals are unable to develop fully. — Friedrich Schiller

All things must; man is the only creature that wills. — Friedrich Schiller

Every man stamps his value on himself ... man is made great or small by his own will. — Friedrich Schiller

Will it, and set to work briskly. — Friedrich Schiller

Stubbornness is not firmness. — Friedrich Schiller

One can give advice comfortably from a safe port. — Friedrich Schiller

Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain. — Friedrich Schiller

But how is the artist to protect himself against the corruption of the age which besets him on all sides? — Friedrich Schiller

World history is the world's court — Friedrich Schiller

Folly, thou conquerest, and I must yield!
Against stupidity the very gods
Themselves contend in vain. Exalted reason,
Resplendent daughter of the head divine,
Wise foundress of the system of the world,
Guide of the stars, who are thou then, if thou,
Bound to the tail of folly's uncurb'd steed,
Must, vainly shrieking, with the drunken crowd,
Eyes open, plunge down headlong in the abyss. — Friedrich Schiller

Life is earnest, art is gay. — Friedrich Schiller

Dear is my friend
yet from my foe, as from my friend, comes good:
My friend shows what I can do, and my foe what I should. — Friedrich Schiller

Every true genius is bound to be naive. — Friedrich Schiller

We shall be free, just as our fathers were. — Friedrich Schiller

Modest humility is beauty's crown. — Friedrich Schiller

Physical beauty is the sign of an interior beauty, a spiritual and moral beauty which is the basis, the principle, and the unity of the beautiful. — Friedrich Schiller

Where there is much freedom there is much error. — Friedrich Schiller

O the eye's light is a noble gift of Heaven! All beings live from light, each fair created thing; the very plants turn with a joyful transport to the light. — Friedrich Schiller

Of all the possessions of this life fame is the noblest; when the body has sunk into the dust the great name still lives. — Friedrich Schiller

Grace is the beauty of form under the influence of freedom. — Friedrich Schiller

Obedience is the Christian's crown. — Friedrich Schiller

Satisfy a few to please many is bad. — Friedrich Schiller

The universe is one of God's thoughts. — Friedrich Schiller

Arrow-swift the present sweepeth, and motionless forever stands the past. — Friedrich Schiller

The average estimate themselves by what they do, the above average by what they are. — Friedrich Schiller

The great happiness of life, I find, after all, to consist in the regular discharge of some mechanical duty. — Friedrich Schiller

I am my own heaven and hell! — Friedrich Schiller

He that is over-cautious will accomplish but very little. — Friedrich Schiller

Wouldst thou know thyself, observe the actions of others.
Wouldst thou other men know, look thou within thine own heart. — Friedrich Schiller

Innocence has a friend in heaven. — Friedrich Schiller

The mind is the eyesight of the soul. — Friedrich Schiller

There is a nobility in the world of manners. — Friedrich Schiller

Yet have I ever heard it said that spies and tale-bearers have done more mischief in this world than poisoned bowl or the assassin's dagger. — Friedrich Schiller

A deep meaning often lies in old customs. — Friedrich Schiller

The Greeks put us to shame not only by their simplicity, which is foreign to our age; they are at the same time our rivals, nay, frequently our models, in those very points of superiority from which we seek comfort when regretting the unnatural character of our manners. We see that remarkable people uniting at once fullness of form and fullness of substance, both philosophising and creating, both tender and energetic, uniting a youthful fancy to the virility of reason in a glorious humanity. — Friedrich Schiller

Our age is enlightened ... How is it, then, that we still remain barbarians? — Friedrich Schiller

Keep true to the dreams of your youth. — Friedrich Schiller

The empire of Saturnus is gone by; Lord of the secret birth of things is he; Within the lap of earth, and in the depths Of the imagination dominates; And his are all things that eschew the light. The time is o'er of brooding and contrivance, For Jupiter, the lustrous, lordeth now, And the dark work, complete of preparation, He draws by force into the realm of light. Now must we hasten on to action, ere The scheme, and most auspicious positure Parts o'er my head, and takes once more its flight, For the heaven's journey still, and adjourn not. — Friedrich Schiller

Appearance should never attain reality, And if nature conquers, then must art retire. — Friedrich Schiller

Emulation is a noble and just passion, full of appreciation. — Friedrich Schiller

The dictates of the heart are the voice of fate. — Friedrich Schiller

The adoption of the required attitude of mind towards ideas that seem to emerge "of their own free will" and the abandonment of the critical function that is normally in operation against them seem to be hard of achievement for some people. The "involuntary thoughts" are liable to release a most violent resistance, which seeks to prevent their emergence. If we may trust that great poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller, however, poetic creation must demand an exactly similar attitude. — Sigmund Freud

It is easy to give advice from a port of safety. — Friedrich Schiller

Chains of iron or of silk-both are chains. — Friedrich Schiller

Genuine morality is preserved only in the school of adversity; a state of continuous prosperity may easily prove a quick sand to virtue — Friedrich Schiller