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
We are citizens of an age, as well as of a State; and if it is held to be unseemly, or even inadmissible, for a man to cut himself off from the customs and manners of the circle in which he lives, why should it be less of a duty, in the choice of his activity, to submit his decision to the needs and the taste of his century?
This is the curse of an evil deed, that it incites and must bring forth more evil.
Nothing, it is true, is more common than for both Science and Art to pay homage to the spirit of the age, and for creative taste to accept the law of critical taste.
What the inner voice says will not disappoint the hoping soul.
Man is an imitative creature.
Even now, nature is the only flame, on which the poetic spirit feeds; from it alone it draws all its power, to it alone it speaks even in the artificial, in the man engaged in culture.
No cause has he to say his doom is harsh, who's made the master of his destiny.
He who has done his best for his own time has lived for all times.
You worthy critics, or whatever you may call yourselves, are ashamed or afraid of the momentary and passing madness which is found in all real creators, the longer or shorter duration of which distinguishes the thinking artist from the dreamer. Hence your complaints of unfruitfulness, for you reject too soon and discriminate too severely.
What shall he fear that does not fear death.
That which is so universal as death must be a benefit.
What reason, like the careful ant, draws laboriously together, the wind of accident sometimes collects in a moment.
No greater grief than to remember days of gladness when sorrow is at hand.
The lamp of genius burns quicker than the lamp of life.