Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotes by Friedrich Schiller (German Poet)

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.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Friedrich Schiller

Every true genius is bound to be naive.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Genius, Ignorance

Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Imitation, Being Ourselves

As inclination changes; thus ebbs and flows the unstable tide of public judgment.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Popularity

Every one stamps his own value on himself.—The price we challenge for ourselves is given us.—Man is made great or little by his own will.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Humanity, Humankind, Self-respect, Will

Disappointments are to the soul what a thunder-storm is to the air.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Disappointment, Failures, Mistakes

Not without a shudder may the human hand reach into the mysterious urn of destiny.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Destiny

Love, therefore, the most beautiful and most noble force in the human soul, the great chain of sentient nature, is nothing but the exchange of myself with the being of a fellow human being.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Love

He cannot complain of a hard sentence, who is made master of his own fate.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Complaining, Fate, Complaints, Pessimism

The world is governed only by self-interest.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Selfishness

Jealousy is the great exaggerator.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Jealousy

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

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: Conformity, Defects

Votes should be weighed, not counted.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Voting, Elections

When faced with a mountain, I will not quit! I will keep on striving until I climb over, find a pass through, tunnel underneath – or simply stay and turn the mountain into a gold mine, with God’s help!
—Friedrich Schiller

It is not flesh and blood but the heart, which makes us fathers and sons.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Father, Heart, Family

Stern is the on-look of necessity,
Not without shudder may a human hand
Grasp the mysterious urn of destiny.
—Friedrich Schiller

A healthy nature needs no God or immortality.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Immortality

Full of wisdom are the ordinations of fate.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: One liners, Fate

Power is the most persuasive rhetoric.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Power

Fear of death is worse than dying.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Anxiety, Fear

The man who fears nothing is as powerful as he who is feared by everybody.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Anxiety, Fear

Lose not yourself in a far off time, seize the moment that is thine.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Focus

The blind, unwieldy monster, which, at first, rattles its bones, threatening to swallow high and low, the near and distant, with its gaping jaws, at last stumbles over a thread.
—Friedrich Schiller

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

A deep meaning often lies in old customs.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Habits

To save all we must risk all.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Risk

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.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Death

The will of man is his happiness.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Willpower, Happiness, Will Power, Will

Sorrow is brief but joy is endless.
—Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Sorrow

Ever building to the clouds, and never reflecting that the poor narrow basis cannot sustain the giddy, tottering column.
—Friedrich Schiller

Wondering Whom to Read Next?

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *