Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Quotes

An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.

Irony is a clear consciousness of an eternal agility,
of the infinitely abundant chaos.

Versatility of education can be found in our best poetry,
but the depth of mankind should be found in the philosopher.

Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.

Nothing truly convincing - which would possess thoroughness,
vigor,
and skill - has been written against the ancients as yet;
especially not against their poetry.

Strictly speaking,
the idea of a scientific poem is probably as nonsensical as that of a poetic science.

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.

Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time.
Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form.

Wit as an instrument of revenge is as infamous as art is as a means of sensual titillation.

The main thing is to know something and to say it.

Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself.

When reason and unreason come into contact,
an electrical shock occurs.
This is called polemics.

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.

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.

Publication is to thinking as childbirth is to the first kiss.

A family can develop only with a loving woman as its center.

The genuine priest always feels something higher than compassion.

Man is free whenever he produces or manifests God,
and through this he becomes immortal.

Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry.

An artist is he for whom the goal and center of life is to form his mind.

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.

Mysteries are feminine;
they like to veil themselves but still want to be seen and divined.

Where there is politics or economics,
there is no morality.

Nothing is more witty and grotesque than ancient mythology and Christianity;
that is because they are so mystical.

Morality without a sense of paradox is mean.

Gracefulness is a correct life: sensuality which contemplates and forms itself.

Wit is an explosion of the compound spirit.

Combine the extremes,
and you will have the true center.

Beauty is that which is simultaneously attractive and sublime.

As the ancient commander addressed his soldiers before battle,
so should the moralist speak to men in the struggle of the era.

Religion is absolutely unfathomable.
Always and everywhere one can dig more deeply into infinities.

What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.

One of two things is usually lacking in the so-called Philosophy of Art: either philosophy or art.

Set religion free,
and a new humanity will begin.

Only he who possesses a personal religion,
an original view of infinity,
can be an artist.

Art and works of art do not make an artist;
sense and enthusiasm and instinct do.

What is lost in the good or excellent translation is precisely the best.

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.

A classification is a definition comprising a system of definitions.

Many works of the ancients have become fragments.
Many works of the moderns are fragments at the time of their origin.

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.

Since philosophy now criticizes everything it comes across,
a critique of philosophy would be nothing less than a just reprisal.

Reason is mechanical,
wit chemical,
and genius organic spirit.

Every good man progressively becomes God.
To become God,
to be man,
and to educate oneself,
are expressions that are synonymous.

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?

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.

Wit is the appearance,
the external flash,
of fantasy.
Hence its divinity and the similarity to the wit of mysticism.

Irony is the form of paradox.
Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.

No idea is isolated,
but is only what it is among all ideas.

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.