Friedrich Schiller Quotes

So it has reached this pass? Obedience and fear take flight together?

Glaube mir, man kann das für Stärke des Geistes halten, was doch am Ende Verzweiflung ist [...].

"Basely indeed they may behave to us,
But they cannot debase us."

Mary Stuart by Friedrich Schiller
Act 1, Scene 2

El artista es hijo de sus tiempos, pero desdichado de él si, a la vez, es su alumno o incluso su favorito.

Bei uns wird nur selten eine Mariage geschlossen, wo nicht wenigstens ein halb Dutzend der Gäste - oder der Aufwärter- das Paradies des Bräutigams geometrisch ermessen kann.

¡Quita! Abajo con este débil siglo de castrati que no sirve más que para rumiar las hazañas del pasado y para desollar a los héroes de la Antigüedad con ediciones comentadas y echarlos a perder con tragedias. La fuerza de su simiente se ha secado y ahora hay que ayudar a los hombres a multiplicarse con levadura de cerveza.

Even the beautiful must perish! That which overcomes gods and men
Moves not the armored heart of the Stygian Zeus.
Only once did love come to soften the Lord of the Shadows,
And just at the threshold he sternly took back his gift.
Neither can Aphrodite heal the wounds of the beautiful youth
That the boar had savagely torn in his delicate body.
Nor can the deathless mother rescue the divine hero
When, at the Scaean gate now falling, he fulfills his fate.
But she ascends from the sea with all the daughters of Nereus,
And she raises a plaint here for her glorious son.
Behold! The gods weep, all the goddesses weep,
That the beautiful perishes, that the most perfect passes away.
But a lament on the lips of loved ones is glorious,
For the ignoble goes down to Orcus in silence.

Nänie

Orang yang tidak berani berbuat apa-apa tidak boleh mengharapkan apa-apa.

Das Weib ist nicht schwach. ich will in meinem Beisein nichts von der Schwäche des [weiblichen] Geschlechts hören.
Elisabeth, II, 3

The child of nature, when he breaks loose, becomes a madman; but the art scholar, when he breaks loose, becomes a debased character.

life is earnest, art is gay

The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle.

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 . . .

It seems a bad thing and detrimental to the creative work of the mind if Reason makes to close an examination of the ideas as they come pouring in -at the very gateway, as it were. Looked at in isolation, a thought may seem very trivial or very fantastic; but it may be made important by another thought that comes after it, and in conjunction with other thoughts that may seem equally absurd, it may serve to form a most effective link. Reason cannot form any opinion on all this unless it retains the thought long enough to look at it in connection with the others. On the other hand, where there is a creative mind, Reason -so it seems to me- relaxes its watch upon the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell, and only then does it look them through and examine them in a mass.

Und Hochmut ist's, wodurch die Engel fielen,