Schlegel Quotes & Sayings

Morality without a sense of paradox is mean. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The few existing writings against Kantian philosophy are the most important documents in the case history of sound common sense. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

In the ancients, one sees the accomplished letter of entire poetry: in the moderns, one has the presentiment of the spirit in becoming. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

An artist is he who has his center within himself. He who lacks this must choose a particular leader and mediator outside of himself, not forever, however, but only at first. For man cannot exist without a living center, and if he does not have it within himself, he may seek it only in a human being. Only a human being and his center can stimulate and awaken that of another. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Wit is absolutely sociable spirit or aphoristic genius. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

What do the few existing mystics still do?
They more or less mold the raw chaos of already existing religion. But only in an isolated, insignificant manner, through feeble attempts. Do it in a grand manner from all aspects with unified efforts, and let us awaken all religions from their graves, newly revivify and form the immortal ones through the omnipotence of art and science. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

What men are among the other formations of the earth, artists are among men. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

All the classical genres are now ridiculous in their rigorous purity. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The following are the universally fundamental laws of literary communication: 1. one must have something to communicate; 2. one must have someone to whom to communicate it; 3. one must really communicate it, not merely express it for oneself alone. Otherwise it would be more to the point to remain silent. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Nothing is more witty and grotesque than ancient mythology and Christianity; that is because they are so mystical. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

When the author has no idea of what to reply to a critic, he then likes to say: you could not do it better anyway. This is the same as if a dogmatic philosopher reproached a skeptic for not being able to devise a system. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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

Through artists mankind becomes an individual, in that they unite the past and the future in the present. They are the higher organ of the soul, where the life spirits of entire external mankind meet and in which inner mankind first acts. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Some speak of the public as if it were someone with whom they have had dinner at the Leipzig Fair in the Hotel de Saxe. Who is this public? The public is not a thing, but rather an idea, a postulate, like the Church. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

With respect to ingenious subconsciousness, I think, philosophers might well rival poets. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

An artist is he for whom the goal and center of life is to form his mind. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

If you want to see mankind fully, look at a family. Within the family minds become organically one, and for this reason the family is total poetry. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The most important thing in love is the sense for one another, and the highest thing the faith in one another. Devotion is the expression of that faith, and pleasure can revive and enhance that sense, even if not create it, as is commonly thought. Therefore, sensuality can delude bad persons for a short time into thinking they could love each other. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a sophist. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Whoever has not arrived at the clear insight that there might be greatness entirely outside his own sphere for which he has no understanding, whoever does not have at least a dim inkling in which area of the human spirit this greatness might be situated: he is within his own sphere either without genius, or he has not educated himself up to the point of the classical attitude. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Religion must completely encircle the spirit of ethical man like his element, and this luminous chaos of divine thoughts and feelings is called enthusiasm. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

In true prose everything must be underlined. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Mysteries are feminine; they like to veil themselves but still want to be seen and divined. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Most thoughts are only profiles of thoughts. They must be inverted and synthesized with their antipodes. Thus many philosophical writings become very interesting which would not have been so otherwise. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

It is individuality which is the original and eternal within man; personality doesn't matter so much. To pursue the education anddevelopment of this individuality as one's highest vocation would be a divine egoism. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Authorship is, according to the spirit in which it is pursued, an infamy, a pastime, a day-labor, a handicraft, an art, a science, a virtue. — August Wilhelm Von Schlegel

Strictly speaking, the idea of a scientific poem is probably as nonsensical as that of a poetic science. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Set religion free, and a new humanity will begin. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Wit is an explosion of the compound spirit. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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

Because Christianity is a religion of death, it could be treated with the utmost realism, and it could have its orgies, just likethe old religion of nature and life. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

When ideas become gods, consciousness of harmony becomes devotion, humility, and hope. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

And our desire to know
Each other and desert
Each other for new
Centers of meaning so that
The boundaries may reign
And in doing so be undone. — Rob Schlegel

A good preface must be the root and the square of the book at the same time. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. The feminine ones are not idealistic, and the idealistic not feminine. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Irony is a clear consciousness of an eternal agility, of the infinitely abundant chaos. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

In the world of language, or in other words in the world of art and liberal education, religion necessarily appears as mythology or as Bible. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

A classical work doesn't ever have to be understood entirely. But those who are educated and who are still educating themselves must desire to learn more and more from it. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

If the mystical lovers of the arts, who consider all criticism dissection and all dissection destruction of enjoyment, thought logically, an exclamation like "Goodness alive!" would be the best criticism of the most deserving work of art. There are critiques which say nothing but that, only they do so more extensively. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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

That which reminds us of nature and thus stimulates a feeling for the infinite abundance of life is beautiful. Nature is organic,and therefore the highest beauty is forever vegetative; and the same is true for morality and love. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Poetry should forever be becoming and never perfected. — Friedrich Schlegel

There is no self-knowledge except historical self-knowledge. No one knows what he is if he doesn't know what his contemporaries are. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

I have expressed some ideas that point to the center; I have saluted the dawn in my way, from my point of view. He who knows the way should do the same, in his way, and from his point of view. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The French Revolution, Fichte's Theory of Knowledge, and Goethe's Wilhelm Meister are the three greatest tendencies of the age. Whoever takes offence at this combination, and whoever does not consider a revolution important unless it is blatant and palpable, has not yet risen to the lofty and broad vantage point of the history of mankind. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

To disrespect the masses is moral; to honor them, lawful. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Only he who possesses a personal religion, an original view of infinity, can be an artist. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

I can smell the street air and say that the market has changed. It smells also sharply as smells the fresh bread from a bakery in the frost. — Anna Schlegel

The naive is what is or appears to be natural, individual, or classical to the point of irony or to the point of continuous alternation of self-creation and self-destruction. If it is only instinct, then it is childlike, childish, or silly; if it is only intention, it becomes affectation. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

All the great truths are basically trivial and so we have to find new ways, preferably paradoxical ways, of expressing them, in order to keep them from falling into oblivion. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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

Combine the extremes, and you will have the true center. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

He who does not become familiar with nature through love will never know her. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

A genuinely free and educated man should be able to tune himself, as one tunes a musical instrument, absolutely arbitrarily, at his convenience at any time and to any degree, philosophically or philologically, critically or poetically, historically or rhetorically, in ancient or modern form. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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

The life and vigor of poetry consists of the fact that it steps out of itself, tears out a section of religion, then withdraws into itself to assimilate it. The same is true of philosophy. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Only through religion can logic develop into philosophy, only from this source stems that which makes philosophy more than science. And without religion we will have only novels, or the triviality today called belles lettres instead of an eternally rich and infinite poetry. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Art and works of art do not make an artist; sense and enthusiasm and instinct do. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

A so-called happy marriage corresponds to love as a correct poem to an improvised song. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Poetry and philosophy are, according to how you take them, different spheres, different forms, or factors of religion. Try to really combine both, and you will have nothing but religion. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The naive which is simultaneously beautiful, poetic, and idealistic, must be both intention and instinct. The essence of intention, in this sense, is freedom. Consciousness is far from intention. There is a certain enamoured contemplation of one's own naturalness or silliness which itself is unspeakably silly. Intention does not necessarily require a profound calculation or plan. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

In actual life, every great enterprise begins with and takes its first step forward in faith. — August Wilhelm Von Schlegel

True love should be, according to its origin, entirely arbitrary and entirely accidental at the same time; it should seem both necessary and free; in keeping with its nature, however, it should be both destiny and virtue and appear as a mystery and a miracle. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Philosophy still moves too much straight ahead, and is not yet cyclical enough. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Honor is the mysticism of legality — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Many a witty inspiration is like the surprising reunion of befriended thoughts after a long separation. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

All thinking of the religious man is etymological, a reduction of all concepts to the original intuition, to the characteristic. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Life is writing. The sole purpose of mankind is to engrave the thoughts of divinity onto the tablets of nature. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The difference between religion and morality lies simply in the classical division of things into the divine and the human, if one only interprets this correctly. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is; otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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

Is it not superfluous to write more than one novel if the writer has not become, say, a new man? Obviously, all the novels of an author not infrequently belong together and are to a certain degree only one novel. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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

Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

One mentions many artists who are actually art works of nature. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

In England, wit is at least a profession, if not an art. everything becomes professional there, and even the rogues of that islandare pedants. So are the "wits" there too. They introduce into reality absolute freedom whose reflection lends a romantic and piquant air to wit, and thus they live wittily; hence their talent for madness. They die for their principles. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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

All artists are self-sacrificing human beings, and to become an artist is nothing but to devote oneself to the subterranean gods. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The meanest authors have at least this similarity with the great author of heaven and earth, that they usually say after a completed day of work: And behold, what he had done was good. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Publication is to thinking as childbirth is to the first kiss. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Good drama must be drastic. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

If one writes or reads novels from the point of view of psychology, it is very inconsistent and petty to want to shy away from even the slowest and most detailed analysis of the most unnatural lusts, gruesome tortures, shocking infamy, and disgusting sensual or spiritual impotence. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

One of the two is almost always a prevailing tendency of every author: either not to say some things which certainly should be said, or to say many things which did not need to be said. The first is the original sin of synthetic natures, the latter of analytical natures. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Ideas are infinite, original, and lively divine thoughts. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The German national character is a favorite subject of character experts, probably because the less mature a nation, the more she is an object of criticism and not of history. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The main thing is to know something and to say it. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

A classification is a definition comprising a system of definitions. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

There are ancient and modern poems which breathe, in their entirety and in every detail, the divine breath of irony. In such poemsthere lives a real transcendental buffoonery. Their interior is permeated by the mood which surveys everything and rises infinitely above everything limited, even above the poet's own art, virtue, and genius; and their exterior form by the histrionic style of an ordinary good Italian buffo. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Philosophy is the true home of irony, which might be defined as logical beauty: for wherever men are philosophizing in spoken or written dialogues, and provided they are not entirely systematic, irony ought to be produced and postulated; even the Stoics regarded urbanity as a virtue. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

When reason and unreason come into contact, an electrical shock occurs. This is called polemics. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The historian is a prophet looking backwards. — Friedrich Von Schlegel

There is so much poetry, and yet nothing is more rare than a poetic work. This is what the masses make out of poetical sketches, studies, aphorisms, trends, ruins, and raw material. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Witty inspirations are the proverbs of the educated. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Just as a child is really a thing that wants to become a man, so is the poem an object of nature that wants to become an object ofart. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The whole history of modern poetry is a continuous commentary on the short text of philosophy: every art should become science, and every science should become art; poetry and philosophy should be united. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Since poetry is infinitely valuable, I do not understand why it should be more valuable than this or that which is also infinitelyvaluable. There are artists who perhaps do not think art to be too great, for this is impossible, and yet they are not free enough to be able to rise above their own best accomplishments. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The obsession with moderation is the spirit of castrated narrow-mindedness. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel