Friedrich Schiller Quotes

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

Time flies on restless pinions - constant never.

It is through beauty that we arrive at freedom.

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.

False fancy brings real misery.

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.

If you cannot please everyone with your deeds and your art, please a few. To please many is bad.

O God, how lovely still is life!

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.

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

I feel that I am a man of destiny.

Did you think the lion was sleeping because he didn't roar?

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.

Freedom can occur only through education.

The worst of me is known, and I can say that I am better than the reputation I bear.

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

Truth suffers no loss if a vehement youth fails in finding it, in the same way that virtue and religion suffer no detriment if a criminal denies them.

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

Whatever is not forbidden is permitted.

Weep, for the light is dead.

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

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

Gray hairs are death's blossoms.

Speech is always bolder than action.

We must bear what Heaven sends.

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

Historians are prophets with their face turned backward.

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

There is more to life than just existing and having a pleasant time.

One can give advice comfortably from a safe port.

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

He who has done his best for his own time has lived for all times.

A noble soul spreads even over a face in which the architectonic beauty is wanting an irresistible grace, and a often even triumphs over the natural disfavor.

In a narrow circle the mind contracts. Man grows with his expanded needs.

Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators.

In a narrow circle the mind grows narrow. The more one expands, the larger their aims.

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

I am my own heaven and hell!

Love is only known by him who hopelessly persists in love.

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

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

We, we live! ours are the hours, and the living have their claims.

Eternity gives nothing back of what one leaves out of the minutes.

The very plants turn with a joyful transport to the light.

When the wine goes in, strange things come out.

Man, living, feeling man, is the easy sport of the over-mastering present.

Power is the most persuasive rhetoric.

There is no solitude in nature.