Friedrich Schiller Quotes

Virtue is no empty echo.

Fate hath no voice but the heart's impulse.

Historians are prophets with their face turned backward.

Speech is always bolder than action.

The game of life looks cheerful when one carries a treasure safe in his heart.

What is the short meaning of the long speech?

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

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

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

Forgiveness is the divinest of victories.

O who knows what slumbers in the background of the times?

Heaven and earth fight in vain against a dunce!

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!

The dictates of the heart are the voice of fate.

It is only through the morning gate of the beautiful that you can penetrate into the realm of knowledge. That which we feel here as beauty we shall one day know as truth.

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.

Love can sun the realms of night.

It would be necessary that they should be already sages to love wisdom...

Innocence has a friend in heaven.

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

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.

Why should I deem myself to be a chisel, when I could be the artist?

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

There is a nobility in the world of manners.

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

Gray hairs are death's blossoms.

False fancy brings real misery.

Song forbids victorious deeds to die.

Whoever fails to turn aside the ills of life by prudent forethought, must submit to fulfill the course of destiny.

The May of life blooms once and never again.

Ever building, building to the clouds, still building higher, and never reflecting that the poor narrow basis cannot sustain the giddy tottering column.

Truth is more than a dream and a song.

Our safety is not in blindness, but in facing our dangers.

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

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.

Many a crown shines spotless now that yet was deeply sullied in the winning.

There is no solitude in nature.

From the moment fear begins I have ceased to fear.

Weep, for the light is dead.

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.

You have to go the rounds from individual to individual in order to gather the totality of the race.

Rigor pushed too far is sure to miss its aim, however good, as the bow snaps that is bent too stiffly.

Life did not present its sunny side to thee.

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.

What's old collapses, times change, And new life blossoms in the ruins.

The victor is often vanquished by his own success.

The brave person thinks of himself last of all.

Toil of science swells the wealth of art.

Thus Arm in Arm with thee I dare defy my century into the lists.

Stern is the visage of necessity.