Friedrich Schiller Quotes

143 Sourced Quotes

Life is only error,
And death is knowledge.

Friedrich Schiller
The storm is master. Man, as a ball, is tossed twixt winds and billows.

Friedrich Schiller
The dignity of mankind is in your hands; protect it! It sinks with you! With you it will ascend.

Friedrich Schiller
Be embraced, ye millions!
This kiss is for the whole world!
Brothers, above the arch of stars
A loving Father surely dwells.

Friedrich Schiller
He, that noble prize possessing—
He that boasts a friend that's true,
He whom woman's love is blessing,
Let him join the chorus too!

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

Friedrich Schiller
As noble Art has survived noble nature, so too she marches ahead of it, fashioning and awakening by her inspiration. Before Truth sends her triumphant light into the depths of the heart, imagination catches its rays, and the peaks of humanity will be glowing when humid night still lingers in the valleys.

Friedrich Schiller
To the Gods we ne'er can render
Praise for every good they grant;
Let us, with devotion tender,
Minister to grief and want.
Quenched be hate and wrath forever,
Pardoned be our mortal foe—
May our tears upbraid him never,
No repentance bring him low!

Friedrich Schiller
Revenge is barren. Of itself it makes
The dreadful food it feeds on; its delight
Is murder—its satiety despair.

Friedrich Schiller
The present age has witnessed an extraordinary increase of a thinking public, by the facilities afforded to the diffusion of reading; the former happy resignation to ignorance begins to make way for a state of half-enlightenment, and few persons are willing to remain in the condition in which their birth has placed then.

Friedrich Schiller
Each state of the human mind has some parable in the physical creation by which it is shadowed forth; nor is it only artists and poets, but even the most abstract thinkers that have drawn from this source. Lively activity we name fire; time is a stream that rolls on, sweeping all before it; eternity is a circle; a mystery is hid in midnight gloom, and truth dwells in the sun. Nay, I begin to believe that even the future destiny of the human race is prefigured in the dark oracular utterances of bodily creation.

Friedrich Schiller
One cannot prevent people from thinking what they please.

Friedrich Schiller
The richest monarch in the Christian world;
The sun in my own dominions never sets.

Friedrich Schiller
Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.

Friedrich Schiller
The most perfect of all works of art is true political freedom.

Friedrich Schiller
While the womanly god demands our veneration, the godlike woman kindles our love; but while we allow ourselves to melt in the celestial loveliness, the celestial self-sufficiency holds us back in awe.

Friedrich Schiller
Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators.

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

Friedrich Schiller
Life is but a moment. Death is but a moment, too.

Friedrich Schiller
Yet tremble at the slow,
silent power of time.

Friedrich Schiller
It is not flesh and blood, but the heart which makes us fathers and sons.

Friedrich Schiller
What the reason of the ant laboriously drags into a heap, the wind of accident will collect in one breadth.

Friedrich Schiller
If man is ever to solve that problem of politics in practice he will have to approach it through the problem of the aesthetic, because it is only through Beauty that man makes his way to Freedom.

Friedrich Schiller
Joy, beautiful radiance of the gods, daughter of Elysium, we set foot in your heavenly shrine dazzled by your brilliance.

Friedrich Schiller
Rarely do we arrive at the summit of truth without running into extremes; we have frequently to exhaust the part of error, and even of folly, before we work our way up to the noble goal of tranquil wisdom.

Friedrich Schiller
Deeper meaning resides in the fairytales told to me in my childhood than in any truth that is taught in life.

Friedrich Schiller
A gracious sovereign throws his portals wide,
Admitting every guest, excluding none;
As freely as the firmament the world,
So mercy must encircle friend and foe.

Friedrich Schiller
Threefold the stride of Time, from first to last!
Loitering slow, the Future creepeth —
Arrow-swift, the Present sweepeth —
And motionless forever stands the Past.

Friedrich Schiller
What the inner voice says
Will not disappoint the hoping soul.

Friedrich Schiller
One drop of hatred left in the cup of joy turns the most blissful draught into poison.

Friedrich Schiller