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
Why should I deem myself to be a chisel, when I could be the artist?
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.
But how is the artist to protect himself against the corruption of the age which besets him on all sides?
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.
I speak with the Eternal through the instrument of nature, through the world's history: I read the soul of the artist in his Apollo.
No doubt the artist is the child of his time; but woe to him if he is also its disciple, or even its favorite.
Against stupidity the very Gods themselves toil in vain
The zeal of friends it is that knocks me down, and not the hate of enemies
Disappointments are to the soul what the thunder-storm is to the air
The brave person thinks of themselves last of all.
Philosophers ruin language, poets ruin logic, but with human reasoning alone man will never make it through life.
Only those who have to do simple things perfectly will acquire the skill to do difficult things easily
A beautiful soul has no other merit, but it's existence
He that is over -- cautious will accomplish little.