Friedrich von Schiller (1759 – 1805) was a German philosopher, physician, historian, poet, and playwright. While studying medicine at the Karlsschule Stuttgart, he wrote his first play: The Robbers. Although he secured a post as an army doctor in 1780, his love of philosophy and writing led to his appointment as professor of history at the University of Jena in 1789. While perhaps best known as one of Germany’s most important classical playwrights, he also authored many poems and philosophical essays.
Quotes by Friedrich von Schiller…
Nothing leads to good which is not natural.
Individual character is in the right that is in strict consistence with itself. Self-contradiction is the only wrong.
Egotism erects its center in itself; love places it out of itself in the axis of the universal whole. Love aims at unity, egotism at solitude. Love is the citizen ruler of a flourishing republic, egotism is a despot in a devastated land.
The man who fears nothing is as powerful as he who is feared by everybody.
A sublime soul can rise to all kinds of greatness, but by his own effort; it can tear itself loose from all bondage, to all that limits and restrains it, but only by the strength of determination.
Every great mind seeks to labor for eternity. All men are captivated by immediate advantage; great minds alone are excited by the prospect of distant good.
He alone knows what love is who loves without hope.
Not satisfied with the needs of nature, he demands the unnecessary.
Culture, far from giving us freedom, only develops as it advances, new necessities; the fetters of the physical close more tightly around us, so that the fear of loss quenches even the ardent impulse towards improvement, and the maxims of passive obedience are held to be the highest wisdom of life.
Every man stamps his value on himself. The price we set for ourselves is given us… Man is made great or small by his own will.