1.
An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
2.
Irony is a clear consciousness of an eternal agility,
of the infinitely abundant chaos.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
3.
Versatility of education can be found in our best poetry,
but the depth of mankind should be found in the philosopher.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
4.
Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
5.
Nothing truly convincing - which would possess thoroughness,
vigor,
and skill - has been written against the ancients as yet;
especially not against their poetry.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
6.
Strictly speaking,
the idea of a scientific poem is probably as nonsensical as that of a poetic science.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
7.
Genius is,
to be sure,
not a matter of arbitrariness,
but rather of freedom,
just as wit,
love,
and faith,
which once shall become arts and disciplines.
We should demand genius from everybody,
without,
however,
expecting it.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
8.
Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time.
Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
9.
Wit as an instrument of revenge is as infamous as art is as a means of sensual titillation.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
10.
The main thing is to know something and to say it.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
11.
Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
12.
When reason and unreason come into contact,
an electrical shock occurs.
This is called polemics.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
13.
A priest is he who lives solely in the realm of the invisible,
for whom all that is visible has only the truth of an allegory.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
14.
The life of the artist should be distinguished from that of all other people,
even in external habits.
They are Brahmins,
a higher caste,
not ennobled by birth,
however,
but through deliberate self-initiation.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
15.
Publication is to thinking as childbirth is to the first kiss.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
16.
A family can develop only with a loving woman as its center.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
17.
The genuine priest always feels something higher than compassion.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
18.
Man is free whenever he produces or manifests God,
and through this he becomes immortal.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
19.
Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
20.
An artist is he for whom the goal and center of life is to form his mind.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
21.
All men are somewhat ridiculous and grotesque,
just because they are men;
and in this respect artists might well be regarded as man multiplied by two.
So it is,
was,
and shall be.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
22.
Mysteries are feminine;
they like to veil themselves but still want to be seen and divined.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
23.
Where there is politics or economics,
there is no morality.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
24.
Nothing is more witty and grotesque than ancient mythology and Christianity;
that is because they are so mystical.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
25.
Morality without a sense of paradox is mean.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
26.
Gracefulness is a correct life: sensuality which contemplates and forms itself.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
27.
Wit is an explosion of the compound spirit.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
28.
Combine the extremes,
and you will have the true center.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
29.
Beauty is that which is simultaneously attractive and sublime.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
30.
As the ancient commander addressed his soldiers before battle,
so should the moralist speak to men in the struggle of the era.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
31.
Religion is absolutely unfathomable.
Always and everywhere one can dig more deeply into infinities.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
32.
What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
33.
One of two things is usually lacking in the so-called Philosophy of Art: either philosophy or art.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
34.
Set religion free,
and a new humanity will begin.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
35.
Only he who possesses a personal religion,
an original view of infinity,
can be an artist.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
36.
Art and works of art do not make an artist;
sense and enthusiasm and instinct do.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
37.
What is lost in the good or excellent translation is precisely the best.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
38.
The surest method of being incomprehensible or,
moreover,
to be misunderstood is to use words in their original sense;
especially words from the ancient languages.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
39.
A classification is a definition comprising a system of definitions.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
40.
Many works of the ancients have become fragments.
Many works of the moderns are fragments at the time of their origin.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
41.
In order to be able to write well upon a subject,
one must have ceased to be interested in it;
the thought which is to be soberlyexpressed must already be entirely past and no longer be one's actual concern.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
42.
Since philosophy now criticizes everything it comes across,
a critique of philosophy would be nothing less than a just reprisal.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
43.
Reason is mechanical,
wit chemical,
and genius organic spirit.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
44.
Every good man progressively becomes God.
To become God,
to be man,
and to educate oneself,
are expressions that are synonymous.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
45.
God the father,
and even more often the devil himself,
appears at times in the place of fate in the modern tragedy.
Why is it thatthis has not induced any scholar to develop a theory of the diabolical genre?
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
46.
Duty is for Kant the One and All.
Out of the duty of gratitude,
he claims,
one has to defend and esteem the ancients;
and only out of duty has he become a great man.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
47.
Wit is the appearance,
the external flash,
of fantasy.
Hence its divinity and the similarity to the wit of mysticism.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
48.
Irony is the form of paradox.
Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
49.
No idea is isolated,
but is only what it is among all ideas.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
50.
Religion can emerge in all forms of feeling: here wild anger,
there the sweetest pain;
here consuming hatred,
there the childlike smile of serene humility.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
