Friedrich von Schiller (1759 – 1805)
Usually known as Friedrich Schiller, was a German poet, historian, dramatist, and playwright.
Threefold the stride of Time, from first to last!
Loitering slow, the Future creepeth —
Arrow-swift, the Present sweepeth —
And motionless forever stands the Past.
Man kann den Menschen nicht verwehren, Zu denken, was sie wollen.
What's old collapses, times change,
And new life blossoms in the ruins.
Bow before him, all creation!
Mortals, own the God of love!
Seek him high the stars above,—
Yonder is his habitation!
He who has done his best for his own time has lived for all times.
The mountain cannot frighten one who was born on it.
To save all we must risk all.
The empire of Saturnus is gone by;
Lord of the secret birth of things is he;
Within the lap of earth, and in the depths
Of the imagination dominates;
And his are all things that eschew the light.
The time is o'er of brooding and contrivance,
For Jupiter, the lustrous, lordeth now,
And the dark work, complete of preparation,
He draws by force into the realm of light.
Now must we hasten on to action, ere
The scheme, and most auspicious positure
Parts o'er my head, and takes once more its flight,
For the heaven's journey still, and adjourn not.
What are hopes, what are plans?
Welcome, all ye myriad creatures!
Brethren, take the kiss of love!
The reason passes, like the heart, through certain epochs and transitions, but its development is not so often portrayed. Men seem to have been satisfied with unfolding the passions in their extremes, their aberration, and their results, without considering how closely they are bound up with the intellectual constitution of the individual.
When man is raised from his slumber in the senses, he feels that he is a man, he surveys his surroundings, and finds that he is in a state. He was introduced into this state, by the power of circumstances, before he could freely select his own position. But as a moral being he cannot possibly rest satisfied with a political condition forced upon him by necessity, and only calculated for that condition; and it would be unfortunate if this did satisfy him. In many cases man shakes off this blind law of necessity, by his free spontaneous action, of which among many others we have an instance, in his ennobling by beauty and suppressing by moral influence the powerful impulse implanted in him by nature in the passion of love.
The hat is the pride of man; for he who cannot keep his hat on before kings and emperors is no free man.
I am called
The richest monarch in the Christian world;
The sun in my dominion never sets.
Did you think the lion was sleeping because he didn't roar?
Sense of wrongs forget to treasure—
Brethren, live in perfect love!
In the starry realms above,
God will mete as we may measure.
There's no such thing as chance;
And what to us seems merest accident
Springs from the deepest source of destiny.
The present age has witnessed an extraordinary increase of a thinking public, by the facilities afforded to the diffusion of reading; the former happy resignation to ignorance begins to make way for a state of half-enlightenment, and few persons are willing to remain in the condition in which their birth has placed then.