Tag: Friedrich Schiller

Did you think the lion was sleeping because he didn’t roar?

Friedrich Schiller

(Ode to Joy)

Thou radiance sprung from God Himself,

Thou daughter of Elysium, Joy,

Thy shrine we tread, Thou Maid Divine,

Though light’s excess our sense destroy.

What harsh world-use has rent apart,

Thy healing spells restore again;

Where’er Thy gentle wings may rest,

Brothers we find our fellow-men.

…

Friedrich Schiller

There’s no such thing as chance;

And what to us seems merest accident

Springs from the deepest source of destiny.

Friedrich Schiller

World history is the world’s court.

Friedrich Schiller

The universe is one of God’s thoughts.

Friedrich Schiller

Whatever is not forbidden is permitted.

Friedrich Schiller

The dictates of the heart are the voice of fate.

Friedrich Schiller

You saw his weakness, and he will never forgive you.

Friedrich Schiller

What’s old collapses, times change,

And new life blossoms in the ruins.

Friedrich Schiller

The universe is a thought of God. After this ideal thought-fabric passed out into reality, and the new-born world fulfilled the plan of its Creator—permit me to use this human simile—the first duty of all thinking beings has been to retrace the original design in this great reality; to find the principle in the mechanism, the unity in the compound, the law in the phenomenon, and to pass back from the structure to its primitive foundation. Accordingly to me there is only one appearance in nature—the thinking being. The great compound called the world is only remarkable to me because it is present to shadow forth symbolically the manifold expressions of that being. All in me and out of me is only the hieroglyph of a power which is like to me. The laws of nature are the cyphers which the thinking mind adds on to make itself understandable to intelligence—the alphabet by means of which all spirits communicate with the most perfect Spirit and with one another. Harmony, truth, order, beauty, excellence, give me joy, because they transport me into the active state of their author, of their possessor, because they betray the presence of a rational and feeling Being, and let me perceive my relationship with that Being.

Friedrich Schiller