Tag: Quote of the Day

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

There are three lessons I would write, —

Three words — as with a burning pen,

In tracings of eternal light

Upon the hearts of men.

Have Hope. Though clouds environ now,

And gladness hides her face in scorn,

Put thou the shadow from thy brow, —

No night but hath its morn.

Have Faith. Where’er thy bark is driven, —

The calm’s disport, the tempest’s mirth, —

Know this: God rules the hosts of heaven,

The habitants of earth.

Have Love. Not love alone for one,

But men, as man, thy brothers call;

And scatter, like the circling sun,

Thy charities on all.

Thus grave these lessons on thy soul, —

Hope, Faith, and Love, — and thou shalt find

Strength when life’s surges rudest roll,

Light when thou else wert blind.

Friedrich Schiller

Wouldst thou know thyself, observe the actions of others.

Wouldst thou other men know, look thou within thine own heart.

Friedrich Schiller

What one refuses in a minute

No eternity will return.

Friedrich Schiller

To save all we must risk all.

Friedrich Schiller

Against stupidity the very gods

Themselves contend in vain.

Friedrich Schiller

He who has done his best for his own time has lived for all times.

Friedrich Schiller