Friedrich Schiller Quotes

Death is not too high a price for this — This taste of heaven —

One people will we be, — a band of brothers; No danger, no distress shall sunder us. We will be freemen as our fathers were, And sooner welcome death than live as slaves. We will rely on God's almighty arm, And never quail before the power of man.

Die Menschheit hat ihre Würde verloren, aber die Kunst hat sie gerettet und aufbewahrt in bedeutenden Steinen; die Wahrheit lebt in der Täuschung fort, und aus dem Nachbilde wird das Urbild wieder hergestellt werden.

The voice of our age seems by no means favorable to art, at all events to that kind of art to which my inquiry is directed. The course of events has given a direction to the genius of the time that threatens to remove it continually further from the ideal of art. For art has to leave reality, it has to raise itself bodily above necessity and neediness; for art is the daughter of freedom, and it requires its prescriptions and rules to be furnished by the necessity of spirits and not by that of matter. But in our day it is necessity, neediness, that prevails, and bends a degraded humanity under its iron yoke. Utility is the great idol of the time, to which all powers do homage and all subjects are subservient. In this great balance of utility, the spiritual service of art has no weight, and, deprived of all encouragement, it vanishes from the noisy Vanity Fair of our time. The very spirit of philosophical inquiry itself robs the imagination of one promise after another, and the frontiers of art are narrowed, in proportion as the limits of science are enlarged.

Der Mensch braucht wenig, und an Leben reich
Ist die Natur.

Alles wiederholt sich nur im Leben,
Ewig jung ist nur die Phantasie;
Was sich nie und nirgends hat begeben,
Das allein veraltet nie!

Lo, the dead shall rise to heaven!
Brethren hail the blest decree;
Every sin shall be forgiven,
Hell forever cease to be!

Ihr wißt nicht, schwache Seelen,
Was ein beleidigt Mutterherz vermag.
Ich liebe, wer mir gutes tut und hasse
Wer mich verletzt, und ist's der eigene Sohn,
Den ich geboren, desto hassenswerter.

No doubt the artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favorite.

"Erhob sich nicht in meinem Parlamente
Die reine Stimme der Gerechtigkeit?"
"Sie ist verstummt vor der Parteien Wut."

What's old collapses, times change,
And new life blossoms in the ruins.

It is through beauty that we arrive at freedom.

Be noble minded! Our own heart, and not other men's opinions of us, forms our true honor.

Wer tränen ernten will, muss Liebe säen.

Drum prüfe, wer sich ewig bindet, ob sich das Herz zum Herzen findet! Der Wahn ist kurz, die Reu ist lang.