Friedrich von Schiller (1759 – 1805)
Usually known as Friedrich Schiller, was a German poet, historian, dramatist, and playwright.
What one refuses in a minute
No eternity will return.
No doubt the artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favorite.
You saw his weakness, and he will never forgive you.
The joke loses everything when the joker laughs himself.
Was man nicht aufgibt, hat man nie verloren.
I speak with the Eternal through the instrument of nature, — through the world's history: I read the soul of the artist in his Apollo.
Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators.
O who knows what slumbers in the background of the times?
World history is the world's court.
In thy breast are the stars of thy fate.
There are three lessons I would write, —
Three words — as with a burning pen,
In tracings of eternal light
Upon the hearts of men.
A moment lived in paradise
Is not atoned for too dearly by death.
Life is earnest, art is gay.
I feel an army in my fist.
Man is created free, and is free,
Though he be born in chains.
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.
Who dares impede my progress? Who presume
The spirit to control which guideth me?
Still must the arrow wing its destined flight!
Where danger is, there must Johanna be;
Nor now, nor here, am I foredoomed to fall;
Our monarch's royal brow I first must see
Invested with the round of sovereignty.
No hostile power can rob me of my life,
Till I've accomplished the commands of God.
The voice of the majority is no proof of justice.
The Greeks put us to shame not only by their simplicity, which is foreign to our age; they are at the same time our rivals, nay, frequently our models, in those very points of superiority from which we seek comfort when regretting the unnatural character of our manners. We see that remarkable people uniting at once fullness of form and fullness of substance, both philosophising and creating, both tender and energetic, uniting a youthful fancy to the virility of reason in a glorious humanity.
The strong man is strongest when alone.