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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In today already walks tomorrow.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Live-now, Past and Present
Ever building to the clouds, and never reflecting that the poor narrow basis cannot sustain the giddy, tottering column.
—Friedrich Schiller
Speech is always bolder than action.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Speech, Conversation
A childlike mind, in its simplicity, practices that science of good to which the wise may be blind.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Simplicity
He who reflects too much will achieve little.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Decisions
A deep meaning often lies in old customs.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Habits
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
Of all the possessions of this life, fame is the noblest; when the body has sunk into the dust the great name still lives.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Fame
The strong man is strongest when alone.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Solitude, One liners
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
Topics: Defects, Conformity
Our safety is not in blindness, but in facing our danger.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Risk, Danger
The world is governed only by self-interest.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Selfishness
An axe at home saves hiring a carpenter.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Confidence, Self-reliance
What the reason of the ant laboriously drags into a heap, the wind of accident will collect in one breath.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Fortune, Luck
The worm of conscience is the companion of the owl.—The light is shunned by sinners and evil spirits only.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Night
Power is the most persuasive rhetoric.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Power
Will it, and set to work briskly.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Will, Willpower, Will Power
The lamp of genius burns quicker than the lamp of life.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Genius
It is often wise to reveal that which cannot be concealed for long.
—Friedrich Schiller
Time flies on restless pinions – constant never.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Time
The rich become richer and the poor become poorer is a cry heard throughout the whole civilized world.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Poverty
I have enjoyed the happiness of the world; I have lived and loved.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Love
Sorrow is brief but joy is endless
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Sorrow
He who has done his best for his own time has lived for all times.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Legacy, Success
The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Morals, Morality
As inclination changes; thus ebbs and flows the unstable tide of public judgment.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Popularity
He who considers too much will perform little.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Action
Folly, thou conquerest, and I must yield!
Against stupidity the very gods
Themselves contend in vain. Exalted reason,
Resplendent daughter of the head divine,
Wise foundress of the system of the world,
Guide of the stars, who are thou then, if thou,
Bound to the tail of folly’s uncurb’d steed,
Must, vainly shrieking, with the drunken crowd,
Eyes open, plunge down headlong in the abyss.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Death
We often tremble at an empty terror, yet the false fancy brings a real misery.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Anticipation
To gain a crown by fighting is great, to reject it divine.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Power
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