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The world delights to tarnish shining names,
And to trample the sublime in the dust.

— Friedrich Schiller Das Mädchen von Orleans; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922)

Es liebt die Welt, das Stralende zu schwärzen
Und das Erhabne in den Staub zu ziehn.

Original text (German)

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More quotes by Friedrich Schiller

No cause has he to say his doom is harsh,
Who's made the master of his destiny.

Wilhelm Tell (1803)

Have Love. Not love alone for one,
But men, as man, thy brothers call;
And scatter, like the circling sun,
Thy charities on all.

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

Wallenstein (1798)

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.

Love is only known by him who hopelessly persists in love.

Don Carlos (1787)

All Friedrich Schiller quotes →

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All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.

William Shakespeare As You Like It (1599)

One country, one constitution, one destiny.

Daniel Webster

Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring — not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive.

Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Friedrich Schiller (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.