Friedrich von Schiller (1759 – 1805)
Usually known as Friedrich Schiller, was a German poet, historian, dramatist, and playwright.
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.
As noble Art has survived noble nature, so too she marches ahead of it, fashioning and awakening by her inspiration. Before Truth sends her triumphant light into the depths of the heart, imagination catches its rays, and the peaks of humanity will be glowing when humid night still lingers in the valleys.
I am better than my reputation.
On the mountains there is freedom!
The world is perfect everywhere,
Save where man comes with his torment.
While the womanly god demands our veneration, the godlike woman kindles our love; but while we allow ourselves to melt in the celestial loveliness, the celestial self-sufficiency holds us back in awe.
Each state of the human mind has some parable in the physical creation by which it is shadowed forth; nor is it only artists and poets, but even the most abstract thinkers that have drawn from this source. Lively activity we name fire; time is a stream that rolls on, sweeping all before it; eternity is a circle; a mystery is hid in midnight gloom, and truth dwells in the sun. Nay, I begin to believe that even the future destiny of the human race is prefigured in the dark oracular utterances of bodily creation.
There are three lessons I would write, —
Three words — as with a burning pen,
In tracings of eternal light
Upon the hearts of men.
Don't let your heart depend on things
That ornament life in a fleeting way!
He who possesses, let him learn to lose,
He who is fortunate, let him learn pain.
My son, there's nothing insignificant,
Nothing! But yet in every earthly thing
First and most principal is place and time.
The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,
The power, the beauty, and the majesty
That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,
Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and watery depths, — all these have vanished;
They live no longer in the faith of reason.
Joy, thou spark from Heav'n immortal,
Daughter of Elysium!
Drunk with fire, toward Heaven advancing
Goddess, to thy shrine we come.
Thy sweet magic brings together
What stern Custom spreads afar;
All men become brothers
Where thy happy wing-beats are.
A gloomy guest fits not a wedding feast.