Friedrich Schiller
Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schillerwas a German poet, philosopher, physician, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life, Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with the already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. They frequently discussed issues concerning aesthetics, and Schiller encouraged Goethe to finish works he left as sketches. This relationship and these discussions led to a period now referred to as Weimar Classicism. They also worked together on Xenien, a collection of...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth10 November 1759
CountryGermany
Love is only known by him who hopelessly persists in love.
O tender yearning, sweet hoping! The golden time of first love! The eye sees the open heaven, The heart is intoxicated with bliss; O that the beautiful time of young love Could remain green forever.
The dictates of the heart are the voice of fate.
Thus Arm in Arm with thee I dare defy my century into the lists.
Ah, to that far distant strand Bridge there was not to convey, Not a bark was near at hand, Yet true love soon found the way.
O that it might remain eternally green, The beautiful time of youthful love.
I have enjoyed earthly happiness, I have lived and loved.
Truth exists for the wise, beauty for the feeling heart.
To one, science is an exalted goddess; to another it is a cow which provides him with butter.
Secrecy is for the happy,--misery, hopeless misery, needs no veil; under a thousand suns it dares act openly.
In the ardor of pursuit men soon forget the goal from which they start.
The empire of Saturnus is gone by; Lord of the secret birth of things is he; Within the lap of earth, and in the depths Of the imagination dominates; And his are all things that eschew the light. The time is o'er of brooding and contrivance, For Jupiter, the lustrous, lordeth now, And the dark work, complete of preparation, He draws by force into the realm of light. Now must we hasten on to action, ere The scheme, and most auspicious positure Parts o'er my head, and takes once more its flight, For the heaven's journey still, and adjourn not.
Man is made of ordinary things, and habit is his nurse.
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.