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.)

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Wise to resolve, patient to perform.
Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Performance, Patience, Effort

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

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

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

Appearance rules the world.
Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Appearance

Dare to err and to dream. Deep meaning often lies in childish plays.
Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Discovery, Meaning

Without a home must the soldier go, a changeful wanderer, and can warm himself at no home-lit hearth.
Friedrich Schiller

Great souls endure in silence.
Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Soul

Think with awe on the slow and quiet power of time.
Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Time

No cause has he to say his doom is harsh, who’s made the master of his destiny.
Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Destiny

Emulation is a noble and just passion, full of appreciation.
Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Imitation, Role models

Speech is always bolder than action.
Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Conversation, Speech

All things must; man is the only creature that wills.
Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Willpower, Will, Will Power

Love therefore
Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Love

Modest humility is beauty’s crown.
Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Humility

Secrecy is for the happy; misery, hopeless misery needs no veil; under a thousand suns it dares act openly.
Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Secrecy

It is wise to disclose what cannot be concealed.
Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Secrets

A noble heart will always capitulate to reason.
Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Reason

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

Historians are prophets with their face turned backward.
Friedrich Schiller
Topics: History, Historians

In what he leaves unsaid I discover a master of style.
Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Style

Utility is the great idol of the age, to which all powers must do service and all talents swear allegiance.
Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Purpose

I follow my heart, for I can trust it.
Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Instincts

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

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

He who considers too much will perform little.
Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Action

It is rascally to steal a purse, daring to steal a million, and a proof of greatness to steal a crown. The blame diminishes as the guilt increases.
Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Blame

Honesty prospers in every condition of life.
Friedrich Schiller
Topics: Honesty

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

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

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