Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805) was a German dramatist, historian, and philosopher. One of the most influential playwrights of German literature, he is best known for his historical plays.
Born in Marbach, Württemberg, Schiller started writing plays while still a student at a military academy. His first play Die Räuber (The Robbers, 1781) caused a sensation. It featured a nobleman who withdraws from society to join a band of criminals.
Schiller then turned to historical studies and, for the next ten years, wrote two major works, The Revolt of the Netherlands (1788) and A History of the Thirty Years War (1793.) He also wrote Wallenstein (1799,) his famed trilogy of dramas based loosely on actual historical events during the Thirty Years War. It consists of Wallensteins Lager (Wallenstein’s Camp,) Die Piccolomini (The Piccolomini,) and Wallensteins Tod (Wallenstein’s Death.)
In 1785, Schiller wrote the hymn “An die Freude” (“Ode to Joy,”) which Beethoven later used as the basis for the fourth movement for the choral movement of his Ninth Symphony. Beethoven’s tune (but not Schiller’s words) was adopted as the Anthem of Europe by the Council of Europe and later by the European Union.
During the next several years, Schiller produced his most mature works, including Maria Stuart (Mary Stuart, 1800,) Die Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans, 1801,) and Wilhelm Tell (William Tell, 1804.) William Tell sets the legendary hero against the backdrop of the Swiss War of Independence against the Austrians. A favorite in revolutionary situations, it was most memorably produced by the German Expressionist theater producer Leopold Jessner after World War I.
Schiller also published academic essays of great consequence about the theatre, including The Stage Regarded as a Moral Institution (1784.) This manuscript helped raise the theatre to an essential element in German culture.
As a philosopher, Schiller is remembered for his influential assertion of aesthetics. He was influenced by Immanuel Kant’s idealism. Schiller’s most important philosophical works are Briefeüber die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen (1794–95; Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Mankind, 1844) and Über naive und sentimentalische Dichtung (1795; On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry, 1861.)
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Sorrow is brief but joy is endless
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Sorrow
He who considers too much will perform little.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Action
Intellect is brain force.
—Friedrich Schiller
It is not flesh and blood but the heart, which makes us fathers and sons.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Father, Heart, Family
They would need to be already wise, in order to love wisdom.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Wisdom
Will it, and set to work briskly.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Will Power, Will, Willpower
The average estimate themselves by what they do, the above average by what they are.
—Friedrich Schiller
Power is the most persuasive rhetoric.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Power
The world is ruled only by consideration of advantages.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Power
The ridiculous rage for innovation, which only increases the weight of the chains it cannot break, shall never fire my blood!
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Innovation
Fear of death is worse than dying.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Anxiety, Fear
Utility is the great idol of the age, to which all powers must do service and all talents swear allegiance.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Purpose
Not without a shudder may the human hand reach into the mysterious urn of destiny.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Destiny
It is from prayer that the spirit’s victory springs.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Prayer
Let us live today.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: The Present
To save all we must risk all.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Risk
It is easy to give advice from a port of safety.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Safety, Advice
History, insofar as it accustoms human beings to comprehend the whole of the past and to hasten forward with its conclusions into the far future, conceals the boundaries of birth and death, which enclose the life of the human being so narrowly and oppressively, and with a kind of optical illusion, expands his short existence into endless space, leading the individual imperceptibly over into humanity.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: History
Without a home must the soldier go, a changeful wanderer, and can warm himself at no home-lit hearth.
—Friedrich Schiller
Truth lives on in the midst of deception.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Truth
Man, living, feeling man, is the easy sport of the over-mastering present.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Present
The sin lessens in the guilty one’s estimation, only as the guilt increases.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Guilt
Great souls endure in silence.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Soul
Nothing, it is true, is more common than for both Science and Art to pay homage to the spirit of the age, and for creative taste to accept the law of critical taste.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Religion
It is base to filch a purse, daring to embezzle a million, but it is great beyond measure to steal a crown. The sin lessens as the guilt increases.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Guilt
Keep true to the dreams of thy youth.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Dreams, Youth
To gain a crown by fighting is great, to reject it divine.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Power
Historians are prophets with their face turned backward.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: History, Historians
Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.
—Friedrich Schiller
What the inner voice says will not disappoint the hoping soul.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Soul
As freely as the firmament embraces the world, or the sun pours forth impartially his beams, so mercy must encircle both friend and foe.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Forgiveness, Mercy
The voice of the majority is no proof of justice.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Justice
He that is overcautious will accomplish but very little.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Doubt, Courage, Caution, Procrastination, Risk, Safety, Inaction, Getting Going, Success, Prudence
No emperor has the power to dictate to the heart.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Power
That nation is worthless that will not, with pleasure, venture all for its honor.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Honor
What reason, like the careful ant, draws laboriously together, the wind of accident sometimes collects in a moment.
—Friedrich Schiller
Why should I deem myself to be a chisel, when I could be the artist?
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Goals, Aspirations
Every true genius is bound to be naive.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Genius, Ignorance
Man is an imitative creature, and whoever is foremost leads the herd.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Imitation
Emulation is a noble and just passion, full of appreciation.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Role models, Imitation
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