Friedrich Schiller

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.

Live with your century, but do not be its creature.

Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.

The voice of the majority is no proof of justice.

You could be happy without me - but not become unhappy through me. This I felt alive in me - and thereupon I built my hopes. You could give yourself to another, but none could love you more purely or more completely than I did. To none could your happiness be holier, as it was to me, and always will be. My whole existence, everything that lives within me, everything, my most precious, I devote to you, and if I try to ennoble myself, that is done, in order to become ever worthier of you, to make you ever happier.

Man, one may say, was never in such a completely animal condition; but he has, on the other hand, never escaped from it.

Ein einziger Tropfen Hass, der im Becher des Glücks bleibt, verwandelt das glücklichste Getränk in Gift.

When the mechanic has to mend a watch he lets the wheels run out; but the living watchworks of the state have to be repaired while they act, and a wheel has to be exchanged for another during its revolutions.

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.

Hard is this art, its praise is transitory;
For mimes, posterity entwines no garlands.
Therefore they must be greedy of the present
And fill the moment which is theirs, completely . . .

What one refuses in a minute
No eternity will return.

Oh how can we, scarce mastering our passions, expect that youth should keep itself in check?

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.

There are three lessons I would write, — Three words — as with a burning pen,
In tracings of eternal light
Upon the hearts of men. <p> Have Hope. Though clouds environ now, And gladness hides her face in scorn, Put thou the shadow from thy brow, — No night but hath its morn. <p> Have Faith. Where'er thy bark is driven, — The calm's disport, the tempest's mirth, — Know this: God rules the hosts of heaven, The habitants of earth. <p> Have Love. Not love alone for one, But men, as man, thy brothers call; And scatter, like the circling sun, Thy charities on all. <p> Thus grave these lessons on thy soul, — Hope, Faith, and Love, — and thou shalt find Strength when life's surges rudest roll, Light when thou else wert blind.

Любовта, в ръцете с прежда,
и от лабиринт извежда.