Quotes by Friedrich Schiller

To save all we must risk all.

There are three lessons I would write-Three words, as with a burning pen, In tracings of eternal light,Upon the heart of men.Have hope! though clouds environ round,And gladness hides her face in scorn,Put thou the shadow from thy brow,No night but hath its morn.Have love! not love alone for one, But man as man thy brother call,And scatter like the circling sun,Thy charities on all.

Only through Beautys morning-gate, dost thou penetrate the land of knowledge.

Disappointments are to the soul what a thunderstorm is to the air.

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

Every true genius is bound to be naive.

O friends, no more these sounds!Let us sing more cheerful songs, more full of joy!

When the mechanic has to mend a watch he lets the wheels run out; but the living watchworks of the state have to be repaired while they act, and a wheel has to be exchanged for another during its revolutions.

It seems a bad thing and detrimental to the creative work of the mind if Reason makes to close an examination of the ideas as they come pouring in -at the very gateway, as it were. Looked at in isolation, a thought may seem very trivial or very fantastic; but it may be made important by another thought that comes after it, and in conjunction with other thoughts that may seem equally absurd, it may serve to form a most effective link. Reason cannot form any opinion on all this unless it retains the thought long enough to look at it in connection with the others. On the other hand, where there is a creative mind, Reason -so it seems to me- relaxes its watch upon the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell, and only then does it look them through and examine them in a mass.

In the case of the creative mind, it seems to me, the intellect has withdrawn its watchers from the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell, and only then does it review and inspect the multitude. You worthy critics, or whatever you may call yourselves, are ashamed or afraid of the momentary and passing madness which is found in all real creators, the longer or shorter duration of which distinguishes the thinking artist from the dreamer. Hence your complaints of unfruitfulness, for you reject too soon and discriminate too severely.

While the gods remained more human, the men were more divine.

Grace is the beauty of form under the influence of freedom.

I feel an army in my fist.

Man is not better treated by nature in his first start than her other works are; so long as he is unable to act for himself as an independent intelligence she acts for him. But the very fact that constitutes him a man is that he does not remain stationary, where nature has placed him, that he can pass with his reason, retracing the steps nature had made him anticipate, that he can convert the work of necessity into one of free solution, and elevate physical necessity into a moral law.

The voice of the majority is no proof of justice

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

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

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

The man of courage thinks not of himself. Help the oppressed and put thy trust in God.

The joke loses everything when the joker laughs himself.