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
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.
Measure not by the scale of perfection the meager product of reality.
Our safety is not in blindness, but in facing our dangers.
Sentimental poetry differs from naive poetry in that it relates the real state at which the latter stops to ideas and applies ideas to that reality.
Appearance should never attain reality, And if nature conquers, then must art retire.
I know that we often tremble at an empty terror; yet the false fancy brings a real misery.
False fancy brings real misery.
Disappointments are to the soul what the thunder-storm is to the air
Have hope. Though clouds environs now,And gladness hides her face in scorn,Put thou the shadow from my brow --No night but hath its morn.
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
With stupidity the gods themselves struggle in vain.
If you want to know yourself, Just look how others do it; If you want to understand others, Look into your own heart. What is life without the radiance of love?
Man ever talks, and Man ever dreams Of better days that are yet to be, After glittering goal, that distant gleams, Running and racing untiringly. The worldly may grow old and young as it will, But the Hope of man is Improvement still. Hope bears him into life in her arms, She flutters around the boy's young bloom, The soul of youth with her magic warms, Nor rests with age in the silent tomb; For ends man his weary course at the grave, There plants he Hope o'er his ashes to wave.