Friedrich Schiller Quotes

“Dare to err and to dream. Deep meaning often lies in childish play.”

— Friedrich Schiller

“Curious,' the Prince continued, after a deep silence, 'is it possible never to have known something, never to have missed it in its absence
and a few moments later to live in and for that single experience alone? Can a single moment make a man so different from himself? It would be just as impossible for me to return to the joys and wishes of yesterday morning as it would for me to return to the games of childhood, now that I have seen that object, now that her image dwells here
and I have this living, overpowering feeling within me: from now on you can love nothing other than her, and in this world nothing else will ever have any effect on you.”

— Friedrich Schiller

“Live with your century, but do not be its creature.”

— Friedrich Schiller

“Truth exists for the wise, beauty for the feeling heart.”

— Friedrich Schiller

“Art is the daughter of freedom.”

— Friedrich Schiller

“Power is the most persuasive rhetoric.”

— Friedrich Schiller

“Art is the right hand of Nature. The latter has only given us being, the former has made us men.”

— Friedrich Schiller

Against stupidity the very gods themselves contend in vain.

— Friedrich Schiller

“The rich become richer and the poor become poorer is a cry heard throughout the whole civilized world.”

— Friedrich Schiller

Oh how can we, scarce mastering our passions, expect that youth should keep itself in check?

— 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 a ring that makes a marriage and it is from rings that chains are made.

— Friedrich Schiller

“Man is only fully human when he plays!”

— Friedrich Schiller

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

— Friedrich Schiller

No emperor has the power to dictate to the heart.

— Friedrich Schiller

“It is easy to give advice from a port of safety.”

— Friedrich Schiller

“Culture, far from giving us freedom, only develops, as it advances, new necessities; the fetters of the physical close more tightly around us, so that the fear of loss quenches even the ardent impulse toward improvement, and the maxims of passive obedience are held to be the highest wisdom of life.”

— Friedrich Schiller

Secrecy is for the happy,
misery, hopeless misery, needs no veil; under a thousand suns it dares act openly.

— Friedrich Schiller

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

— Friedrich Schiller

“Have faith! where'er thy bark is driven, 'The calm's disport, the tempest's mirth, Know this! God rules the host of heaven, The inhabitants of earth.”

— Friedrich Schiller

“In the ardor of pursuit men soon forget the goal from which they start.”

— Friedrich Schiller

“Time is a blooming field: nature is ever teeming with life: and all is seed, and all is fruit.”

— Friedrich Schiller

Like a dart the present glances,
Silent stands the past sublime.

— Friedrich Schiller

“In love, Jealousy is the great exaggerator.”

— Friedrich Schiller

Forgiveness is the finding again of a lost possession.

— Friedrich Schiller

“It is well for a man when he has learned to endure what he cannot change, and to give up with dignity what he cannot retain.”

— Friedrich Schiller

Futurity is impregnable to mortal ken: no prayer pierces through heaven's adamantine walls. Whether the birds fly right or left, whatever be the aspect of the stars, the book of nature is a maze, dreams are a lie, and every sign a falsehood.

— Friedrich Schiller

“No, no! I do nature injustice. She gave us inventive faculty, and set us naked, and helpless on the shore of this great ocean,
the world; swim those who can, the heavy may go to the bottom.”

— Friedrich Schiller

Vast, colossal destiny, which raises man to fame, though it may also grind him to powder!

— Friedrich Schiller

“Individual character is in the right that is in strict consistence with itself. Self-contradiction is the only wrong.”

— Friedrich Schiller

“I have enjoyed earthly happiness,
I have lived and loved.”

— Friedrich Schiller

“His saying was: live and let live.”

— Friedrich Schiller

“O tender yearning, sweet hoping!
The golden time of first love!
The eye sees the open heaven,
The heart is intoxicated with bliss;
O that the beautiful time of young love
Could remain green forever.”

— Friedrich Schiller

“What shall he fear that does not fear death.”

— Friedrich Schiller

“Have Love. Not love alone for one, but man as man they brother call; and scatter like the circling sun thy charities on all.”

— Friedrich Schiller

“To one, science is an exalted goddess; to another it is a cow which provides him with butter.”

— Friedrich Schiller

“Far must thy researches go
Wouldst thou learn the world to know;
Thou must tempt the dark abyss
Wouldst thou prove what Being is;
Naught but firmness gains the prize,
Naught but fullness makes us wise,
Buried deep truth e'er lies.”

— Friedrich Schiller

Time flies on restless pinions - constant never.

— Friedrich Schiller

“Doch zittre vor der langsamen,
Der stillen Macht der Zeit.
Yet tremble at the slow, silent power of time.”

— Friedrich Schiller

“A brave man hazards life, but not his conscience.”

— Friedrich Schiller

“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

“We are citizens of an age, as well as of a State; and if it is held to be unseemly, or even inadmissible, for a man to cut himself off from the customs and manners of the circle in which he lives, why should it be less of a duty, in the choice of his activity, to submit his decision to the needs and the taste of his century?”

— Friedrich Schiller

The universe is a thought of God.

— Friedrich Schiller

“Have hope. Though clouds environs now, And gladness hides her face in scorn, Put thou the shadow from thy brow - No night but hath its morn.”

— Friedrich Schiller

“This is the curse of an evil deed, that it incites and must bring forth more evil.”

— Friedrich Schiller

“The reason for you complaint lies, it seems to me, in the constraint which your intellect imposes upon your imagination. Here I will make an observation, and illustrate it by an allegory. Apparently, it is not good-and indeed it hinders the creative work of the mind-if the if the intellect examines too closely the ideas pouring in, as it were, at the gates.”

— Friedrich Schiller

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

— 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

The hat is the pride of man; for he who cannot keep his hat on before kings and emperors is no free man.

— Friedrich Schiller

“O jealousy! thou magnifier of trifles.”

— Friedrich Schiller