Friedrich Schiller - Nature Quotes

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Even now, nature is the only flame, on which the poetic spirit feeds; from it alone it draws all its power, to it alone it speaks even in the artificial, in the man engaged in culture.

Friedrich Schiller
Just as nature began gradually to vanish from human life as experience…so we see it emerge in the world of the poet as an idea.

Friedrich Schiller
Everlastingly chained to a single little fragment of the Whole, man himself develops into nothing but a fragment; everlastingly in his ear the monotonous sound of the wheel that he turns, he never develops the harmony of his being, and instead of putting the stamp of humanity upon his own nature, he becomes nothing more than the imprint of his occupation or of his specialized knowledge.

Friedrich Schiller
When man is raised from his slumber in the senses, he feels that he is a man, he surveys his surroundings, and finds that he is in a state. He was introduced into this state, by the power of circumstances, before he could freely select his own position. But as a moral being he cannot possibly rest satisfied with a political condition forced upon him by necessity, and only calculated for that condition; and it would be unfortunate if this did satisfy him. In many cases man shakes off this blind law of necessity, by his free spontaneous action, of which among many others we have an instance, in his ennobling by beauty and suppressing by moral influence the powerful impulse implanted in him by nature in the passion of love.

Friedrich Schiller
I speak with the Eternal through the instrument of nature, — through the world's history: I read the soul of the artist in his Apollo.

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

Friedrich Schiller
Joy, in Nature's wide dominion,
Mightiest cause of all is found;
And 'tis joy that moves the pinion,
When the wheel of time goes round

Friedrich Schiller
Of the Nebulae and planets do not babble so to me; What! is Nature only mighty inasmuch as you can see? Inasmuch as you can measure her immeasurable ways, As she renders world on world, sun and system to your gaze? Though through space your object be the Sublimest to embrace, Never the Sublime abideth - where you vainly search - in space!

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
Just because thou readest in Nature what thou hast written, Just because thine eye all her phenomena marks, Reckoning on the bonds which man upon Nature imposes, Does thy mind presume infinite Nature to know?

Friedrich Schiller
Tell me no more, I pray, of your suns and nebulous hazes; Think you Nature is vast only to set you a sum? Nothing in infinite space is so august as your object, But there is nought august, friend, in indefinite space.

Friedrich Schiller