Top 300 Friedrich Schiller Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “Historians are prophets with their face turned backward.”

— Friedrich Schiller

202. “I am called The richest monarch in the Christian world; The sun in my dominion never sets.”

— Friedrich Schiller

203. “Thus Arm in Arm with thee I dare defy my century into the lists.”

— Friedrich Schiller

204. “The gentlest man cannot live in peace if it does not please his wicked neighbor.”

— Friedrich Schiller

205. “A pity about the people! they are brave enough comrades, but they have heads like a soapboiler’s.”

— Friedrich Schiller

206. “Alas! When duty grows thy law, enjoyment fades away.”

— Friedrich Schiller

207. “No cause has he to say his doom is harsh, who’s made the master of his destiny.”

— Friedrich Schiller

208. “Accursed be he who plays with the devil.”

— Friedrich Schiller

209. “In love, Jealousy is the great exaggerator.”

— Friedrich Schiller

210. “Illusion is brief, but repentance is long.”

— Friedrich Schiller

211. “Stern is the visage of necessity.”

— Friedrich Schiller

212. “The mind is the eyesight of the soul.”

— Friedrich Schiller

213. “It is well for a man when he has learned to endure what he cannot change, and to give up with dignity what he cannot retain.”

— Friedrich Schiller

214. “Utility is the great idol of the age, to which all powers must do service and all talents swear allegiance. In this great balance of utility, the spiritual service of art has no weight, and, deprived of all encouragement, it vanishes from the noisy Vanity Fair of our time.”

— Friedrich Schiller

215. “For the world is only governed by self-interest.”

— Friedrich Schiller

216. “O the eye’s light is a noble gift of Heaven! All beings live from light, each fair created thing; the very plants turn with a joyful transport to the light.”

— Friedrich Schiller

217. “While the womanly god demands our veneration, the godlike woman kindles our love; but while we allow ourselves to melt in the celestial loveliness, the celestial self-sufficiency holds us back in awe.”

— Friedrich Schiller

218. “Around, around, Companions all, take your ground, And name the bell with joy profound! CONCORDIA is the word we’ve found Most meet to express the harmonious sound, That calls to those in friendship bound.”

— Friedrich Schiller

219. “Cowards have done good and kind actions, but a coward never pardoned.”

— Friedrich Schiller

220. “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

221. “Genuine morality is preserved only in the school of adversity; a state of continuous prosperity may easily prove a quick sand to virtue.”

— Friedrich Schiller

222. “Utility is the great idol of the age, to which all powers must do service and all talents swear allegiance.”

— Friedrich Schiller

223. “When the gods were more manlike, Men were more godlike.”

— Friedrich Schiller

224. “Even in a righteous cause force is a fearful thing.”

— Friedrich Schiller

225. “The storm is master. Man, as a ball, is tossed twixt winds and billows.”

— Friedrich Schiller

226. “Art is difficult, transient is her reward.”

— Friedrich Schiller

227. “Virtue has her heroes too As well as Fame and Fortune.”

— Friedrich Schiller

228. “One can give advice comfortably from a safe port.”

— Friedrich Schiller

229. “When the measured dance of the hours brings back the happy smile of spring, the buried dead is born again in the life-glance of the sun. The germs which perished to the eye within the cold breast of the earth spring up with joy in the bright realm of day.”

— Friedrich Schiller

230. “Emulation is a noble and just passion, full of appreciation.”

— Friedrich Schiller

231. “Death is a mighty mediator. There all the flames of rage are extinguished, hatred is appeased, and angelic pity, like a weeping sister, bends with gentle and close embrace over the funeral urn.”

— Friedrich Schiller

232. “Worthless is the nation that does not gladly stake its all on its honor.”

— Friedrich Schiller

233. “Strange customs do not thrive in foreign soil.”

— Friedrich Schiller

234. “Sorrow is brief but joy is endless.”

— Friedrich Schiller

235. “Weep, for the light is dead.”

— Friedrich Schiller

236. “Fate hath no voice but the heart’s impulse.”

— Friedrich Schiller

237. “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 toward improvement, and the maxims of passive obedience are held to be the highest wisdom of life.”

— Friedrich Schiller

238. “The game of life looks cheerful when one carries a treasure safe in his heart.”

— Friedrich Schiller

239. “Opposition always inflames the enthusiast, never converts him.”

— Friedrich Schiller

240. “It is difficult to discriminate the voice of truth from amid the clamor raised by heated partisans.”

— Friedrich Schiller

241. “As freely as the firmament embraces the world, or the sun pours forth impartially his beams, so mercy must encircle both friend and foe.”

— Friedrich Schiller

242. “Uncommon men require no common trust; give him but scope and he will set the bounds.”

— Friedrich Schiller

243. “Cling to thy native land, for it is the land of thy fathers?”

— Friedrich Schiller

244. “Not without a shudder may the human hand reach into the mysterious urn of destiny.”

— Friedrich Schiller

245. “Love guides the stars towards each other, the world plan endures only through love.”

— Friedrich Schiller

246. “Futurity is impregnable to mortal ken: no prayer pierces through heaven’s adamantine walls. Whether the birds fly right or left, whatever be the aspect of the stars, the book of nature is a maze, dreams are a lie, and every sign a falsehood.”

— Friedrich Schiller

247. “He cannot complain of a hard sentence, who is made master of his own fate.”

— Friedrich Schiller

248. “Where there is much freedom there is much error.”

— Friedrich Schiller

249. “The mountain cannot frighten one who was born on it.”

— Friedrich Schiller

250. “I speak with the Eternal through the instrument of nature, through the world’s history: I read the soul of the artist in his Apollo.”

— Friedrich Schiller