xy

@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023

Favourite quotes (21448)

“The present age has witnessed an extraordinary increase of a thinking public, by the facilities afforded to the diffusion of reading; the former happy resignation to ignorance begins to make way for a state of half-enlightenment, and few persons are willing to remain in the condition in which their birth has placed then.”

Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright

Prefatory Remarks
The Philosophical Letters

“Joy from truth's own glass of fire
Sweetly on the searcher smiles;
Lest on virtue's steeps he tire,
Joy the tedious path beguiles.
High on faith's bright hill before us,
See her banner proudly wave!
Joy, too, swells the angels' chorus,—
Bursts the bondage of the grave!”

Friedrich Schiller Ode to Joy

Stanza 5
An die Freude (Ode to Joy; or Hymn to Joy) (1785)

“We are citizens of an age, as well as of a State; and if it is held to be unseemly, or even inadmissable, 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?”

Friedrich Schiller book On the Aesthetic Education of Man

Letter 2
On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

“The strong man is strongest when alone.”

Friedrich Schiller William Tell

Tell, Act I, sc. iii, as translated by Sir Thomas Martin
Wilhelm Tell (1803)

“When man is raised from his slumber in the senses, he feels that he is a man, he surveys his surroundings, and finds that he is in a state. He was introduced into this state, by the power of circumstances, before he could freely select his own position. But as a moral being he cannot possibly rest satisfied with a political condition forced upon him by necessity, and only calculated for that condition; and it would be unfortunate if this did satisfy him. In many cases man shakes off this blind law of necessity, by his free spontaneous action, of which among many others we have an instance, in his ennobling by beauty and suppressing by moral influence the powerful impulse implanted in him by nature in the passion of love.”

Friedrich Schiller book On the Aesthetic Education of Man

Letter 3
On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

“Pain is short, and joy is eternal.”

Friedrich Schiller The Maid of Orleans

The Maid of Orleans (1801), last line

“Only through Beauty's morning gate, dost thou enter the land of Knowledge.”

Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright

Die Künstler (The Artists)

“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 heavens journey still, and adjourn not.”

Friedrich Schiller Wallenstein

Act I, sc. i
Wallenstein (1798), Part II - Wallensteins Tod (The Death of Wallenstein)

“Threefold the stride of Time, from first to last!
Loitering slow, the Future creepeth —
Arrow-swift, the Present sweepeth —
And motionless forever stands the Past.”

Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright

Sentences of Confucius

“Joy, in Nature's wide dominion,
Mightiest cause of all is found;
And 'tis joy that moves the pinion,
When the wheel of time goes round”

Friedrich Schiller Ode to Joy

Stanza 4
An die Freude (Ode to Joy; or Hymn to Joy) (1785)

“A moment lived in paradise
Is not atoned for too dearly by death.”

Friedrich Schiller Don Carlos

Act I, sc. v
Don Carlos (1787)

“The hat is the pride of man; for he who cannot keep his hat on before kings and emperors is no free man.”

Friedrich Schiller Wallenstein

Act IV, sc. v, Kellermeister (Master of the Cellar)
Wallenstein (1798), Part I - Die Piccolomini (The Piccolomini)

“Who reflects too much will accomplish little.”

Friedrich Schiller William Tell

Act III, sc. i
Wilhelm Tell (1803)

“Great souls endure in silence.”

Friedrich Schiller Don Carlos

Act I, sc. iv ; as translated by R. D. Boylan and Joseph Mellish (1902)
Variant: ""Great spirits suffer patiently""; as translated by A. Leslie and Jeanne R. Willson (1983)
Don Carlos (1787)

“Even the Strongest Minds Cannot, with impunity, defy the prejudices of the age.”

Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright

The Thirty Years War

“He, that noble prize possessing—
He that boasts a friend that's true,
He whom woman's love is blessing,
Let him join the chorus too!”

Friedrich Schiller Ode to Joy

Stanza 3
An die Freude (Ode to Joy; or Hymn to Joy) (1785)

“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.”

Friedrich Schiller book On the Aesthetic Education of Man

Letter 8
On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

“What is not abandoned is never completely lost.”

Friedrich Schiller Mary Stuart

Was man nicht aufgibt, hat man nie verloren.
Maria Stuart, Act II, sc. v (1800)

“One cannot prevent people from thinking what they please.”

Friedrich Schiller Mary Stuart

Man kann den Menschen nicht verwehren, Zu denken, was sie wollen.
Maria Stuart, Act I, sc. viii (1800)

“O who knows what slumbers in the background of the times?”

Friedrich Schiller Don Carlos

Act I, sc. i
Don Carlos (1787)