248 quotes
Dear is my friend—yet from my foe, as from my friend, comes good:
My friend shows what I can do, and my foe what I should.
O jealousy! thou magnifier of trifles.
Ich bin der lezte meines Stamms.
Wilhelm Tell (1803)
Ein Schlachten war's, nicht eine Schlacht, zu nennen!
It was a slaughter rather than a battle.
His saying was: live and let live.
Great souls endure in silence.
Don Carlos (1787)
Joy, thou spark from Heav'n immortal,
Daughter of Elysium!
Drunk with fire, toward Heaven advancing
Goddess, to thy shrine we come.
Thy sweet magic brings together
What stern Custom spreads afar;
All men become brothers
Where thy happy wing-beats are.
An die Freude (Ode to Joy; or Hymn to Joy) (1785)
Joy, in Nature's wide dominion,
Mightiest cause of all is found;
And 'tis joy that moves the pinion,
When the wheel of time goes round
An die Freude (Ode to Joy; or Hymn to Joy) (1785)
The dignity of mankind is in your hands; protect it!
It sinks with you! With you it will ascend.
Ihm gehört das Weite
Was sein Pfeil erreicht,
Das ist seine Beute,
Was da kreucht und fleugt.
Wilhelm Tell (1803)
Life is earnest, art is gay.
Wallenstein (1798)
As noble Art has survived noble nature, so too she marches ahead of it, fashioning and awakening by her inspiration. Before Truth sends her triumphant light into the depths of the heart, imagination catches its rays, and the peaks of humanity will be glowing when humid night still lingers in the valleys.
On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)
Wouldst thou wisely, and with pleasure,
Pass the days of life's short measure,
From the slow one counsel take,
But a tool of him ne'er make;
Ne'er as friend the swift one know,
Nor the constant one as foe.
Far must thy researches go
Wouldst thou learn the world to know;
Thou must tempt the dark abyss
Wouldst thou prove what Being is;
Naught but firmness gains the prize,
Naught but fullness makes us wise,
Buried deep truth e'er lies.
Die Axt im Haus erspart den Zimmermann.
Wilhelm Tell (1803)
Das ist [or: war] Tells Geschoß.
Wilhelm Tell (1803)
Der Krieg ernährt den Krieg.
Wallenstein (1798)
I feel an army in my fist.
Once the increase of empirical knowledge, and more exact modes of thought, made sharper divisions between the sciences inevitable, and once the increasingly complex machinery of the state necessitated a more rigorous separation of ranks and occupations, then the inner unity of human nature was severed too.
Everlastingly chained to a single little fragment of the whole, man himself develops into nothing but a fragment; everlastingly in his ear the monotonous sound of the wheel that he turns, he never develops the harmony of his being, and instead of putting the stamp of humanity upon his own nature, he becomes nothing more than the imprint of his occupation or of his specialized knowledge.
The Aesthetic Education of Man (1795)