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Live with your century; but do not be its creature. Work for your contemporaries; but create what they need, not what they praise.

— Friedrich Schiller On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

Lebe mit deinem Jahrhundert, aber sei nicht sein Geschöpf; leiste deinen Zeitgenossen, aber was sie bedürfen, nicht was sie loben.

Original text (German)

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Notes from Wikiquote

Letter 9

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)

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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.