Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

German Playwright, Poet, Historian

"It is easy to give advice from a port of safety. "

"Knowledge, the object of knowledge and the knower are the three factors which motivate action; the senses, the work and the doer comprise the threefold basis of action."

"Not without a shudder may the human hand reach into the mysterious urn of destiny. "

"Power is the most persuasive rhetoric. "

"The key to education is the experience of beauty. "

"The world is ruled only by consideration of advantages. "

"They would need to be already wise, in order to love wisdom. "

"A beautiful soul has no other merit but it's existence."

"Deeper meaning resides in the fairy tales told to me in my childhood than in any truth that is taught in life."

"Great souls endure in silence."

"Happy he who learns to bear what he cannot change."

"It is often wise to reveal that which cannot be concealed for long."

"Man is made of ordinary things, and habit is his nurse."

"My friend shows what I can do, and my foe what I should."

"No emperor has the power to dictate to the heart."

"Pain is short, and joy is eternal."

"Posterity weaves no garlands for imitators."

"Revenge is barren of itself: it is the dreadful food it feeds on; its delight is murder, and its end is despair."

"Satisfied if they themselves can escape from the hard labour of thought, they willingly abandon to others the guardianship of their thoughts."

"That which is so universal as death must be a benefit."

"The greater part of humanity is too much harassed and fatigued by the struggle with want, to rally itself for a new and sterner struggle with error."

"The victor is often vanquished by his own success."

"There's no such thing as chance; And what to us seems merest accident springs from the deepest source of destiny."

"War nourishes war."

"What is life without the radiance of love?"

"What's old collapses, times change,and new life blossoms in the ruins."

"Who reflects too much will accomplish little."

"Will it, and set to work briskly."

"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."