100+ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Quotes

source: - "Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms" by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, translated by Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, Pennsylvania University Press, 1968.

Topics: Artist, Goal, Mind

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

Topics: Essence, Needs, Poetry Is

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

Topics: Agility, Irony, Chaos

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

source: - "Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms" by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, translated by Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, 1968.

Topics: Literature, Politics, Ethics

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

Topics: Literature, Language, Excellent

How many authors are there among writers? Author means originator.

Topics: Mean, Literature

Poetry should describe itself, and always be simultaneously poetry and the poetry of poetry.

Topics: Poetry, Literature, Should

One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.

Topics: Philosophy, Motherhood, Morality

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.

Topics: Would Be, Literature, Definitions, Concise

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.

Topics: Desire, Literature, Classic, Desire To Learn

There is no self-knowledge but an historical one. No one knows what he himself is who does not know his fellow men, especially the most prominent one of the community, the master's master, the genius of the age.

Topics: Birthday, Men, Self

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.

Topics: Misunderstood, Use, Literature

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.

Topics: Smile, Pain, Anger, Childlike

There are writers in Germany who drink the Absolute like water; and there are books in which even the dogs make references to the Infinite.

Topics: Dog, Book, Water

The poetry of this one is called philosophical, of that one philological, of a third rhetorical, and so on. Which is then the poetic poetry?

Topics: Philosophical, Poetic, Rhetorical

The essential point of view of Christianity is sin.

Topics: Views, Essentials, Literature

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

Topics: Ideas, Poetic, Nonsensical

Imagination must first be filled to the point of saturation with life of every kind before the moment arrives when the friction of free sociability electrifies it to such an extent that the most gentle stimulus of friendly or hostile contact elicits from it lightning sparks, luminous flashes, or shattering blows.

Topics: Spiritual, Blow, Imagination, Shattering, Saturation Point

Both in their origins and effects, boredom and stuffy air resemble each other. They are usually generated whenever a large number of people gather together in a closed room.

Topics: Air, Numbers, Bored

Laziness is the one divine fragment of a godlike existence left to man from paradise.

Topics: Men, Laziness, Paradise

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

Topics: Sacrifice, Artist, Self

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

Topics: Art, Philosophy, Two

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.

Topics: Mind, Looks, Want

God is each truly and exalted thing, therefore the individual himself to the highest degree. But are not nature and the world individuals?

Topics: Degrees, World, Individual

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

Topics: Philosophy, Would Be, Criticize, Reprisal

Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.

Topics: Philosophy, Aphorism, Form

About no subject is there less philosophizing than about philosophy.

Topics: Philosophy, Subjects

Set religion free, and a new humanity will begin.

Topics: Humanity, Religion

Every complete man has his genius. True virtue is genius.

Topics: Men, Genius, Virtue

Religion is not only a part of education, an element of humanity, but the center of everything else, always the first and the ultimate, the absolutely original.

Topics: Education, Humanity, Elements

If you want to penetrate into the heart of physics, then let yourself be initiated into the mysteries of poetry.

Topics: Heart, Want, Mystery, Penetrate

Prudishness is pretense of innocence without innocence. Women have to remain prudish as long as men are sentimental, dense, and evil enough to demand of them eternal innocence and lack of education. For innocence is the only thing which can ennoble lack of education.

Topics: Men, Long, Evil, Lack Of Education, Prudishness

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

Topics: Men, Feelings, Enthusiasm, Luminous

Ideas are infinite, original, and lively divine thoughts.

Topics: Ideas, Infinite, Divine

Plato's philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion.

Topics: Plato, Philosophy, Plato S

Virtue is reason which has become energy.

Topics: Energy, Virtue, Reason

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

Topics: Society, Mosaics, Caricatures, Polished

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

Topics: Religion, Literature, Infinity, Unfathomable

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

Topics: Education, Men, Expression

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

Topics: Art, Revenge, Mean, Exacting Revenge

Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.

Topics: Witty, Character, Imagination, External Appearance

A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.

Topics: Criticism, Should, Stomach

A so-called happy marriage corresponds to love as a correct poem to an improvised song.

Topics: Wedding, Song, Happy Marriage

Considered subjectively, philosophy always begins in the middle, like an epic poem.

Topics: Philosophy, Epic, Epic Poems

He who does not become familiar with nature through love will never know her.

Topics: Doe, Familiar

Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself.

Topics: Men, Creative, Literature

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

Topics: Reason, Polemics, Shock, Electrical

Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a sophist.

Topics: Philosophy, Mean, Doe

All the classical genres are now ridiculous in their rigorous purity.

Topics: Ridiculous, Purity, Genre

The historian is a prophet looking backward.

Topics: Literature, Prophet, Historian

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

source: - "Athenaeum" magazine, #366, 1798.

Topics: Genius, Spirit, Reason

Many a witty inspiration is like the surprising reunion of befriended thoughts after a long separation.

Topics: Witty, Inspiration, Long

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.

Topics: Invisible, Priests, Realms, Allegory

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

Topics: Art, Enthusiasm, Instinct, Folk Art

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

Topics: Struggle, Men, Soldier, Moralist

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

Topics: Ironic, Literature, Irony

Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself.

source: - "Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms" by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, translated by Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, Pennsylvania University Press, 1968.

Topics: Learning, Literature, Caricatures, Educated And Uneducated, Uneducated

Morality without a sense of paradox is mean.

Topics: Mean, Literature, Morality

He who has religion will speak poetry. But philosophy is the tool with which to seek and discover religion.

Topics: Philosophy, Religion, Tools

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

Topics: Men, Produce, Immortal

Mathematics is, as it were, a sensuous logic, and relates to philosophy as do the arts, music, and plastic art to poetry.

Topics: Art, Philosophy, Sensual

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

Topics: Art, Littles, Literature, Hedgehogs

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

Topics: Kissing, Thinking, First Kiss, Childbirth, Publication

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

Topics: Ideas, Isolated

Like Leibniz's possible worlds, most men are only equally entitled pretenders to existence. There are few existences.

Topics: Men, World, Existence

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

Topics: Peculiar, Literature, Mankind

In true prose everything must be underlined.

Topics: Literature, Prose

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.

Topics: Education, Art, World, Liberal Education

From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become; from what the ancients did, what poetry must be.

Topics: Want, Should

Form your life humanly, and you have done enough: but you will never reach the height of art and the depth of science without something divine.

Topics: Art, Height, Depth

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

Topics: Witty, Literature, Good Christian

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

Topics: Wisdom, School, Form, Socratic

Novels tend to end as the Paternoster begins: with the kingdom of God on earth.

Topics: Literature, Earth, Kingdoms

One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.

Topics: Believe, Literature, Philosopher

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

Topics: Literature, Fragments

The subject of history is the gradual realization of all that is practically necessary.

Topics: Realization, Literature, Subjects

Think of something finite molded into the infinite, and you think of man.

source: - "Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms" by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, translated by Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, 1968.

Topics: Men, Thinking, Infinite

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

Topics: Education, Depth, Literature, Best Poetry, Versatility

Witty inspirations are the proverbs of the educated.

Topics: Witty, Inspiration, Engagement

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.

Topics: Lying, Differences, Religion

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

Topics: Skills, Vigor, Literature, Thoroughness

Kant introduced the concept of the negative into philosophy. Would it not also be worthwhile to try to introduce the concept of the positive into philosophy?

Topics: Positive, Philosophy, Trying

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.

Topics: Love, Art, Discipline, Faith And Love, Prudishness

Good drama must be drastic.

Topics: Drama, Good Drama, Drastic

It is as deadly for a mind to have a system as to have none. Therefore it will have to decide to combine both.

Topics: Mind, Reincarnation

Eternal life and the invisible world are only to be sought in God. Only within Him do all spirits dwell. He is an abyss of individuality, the only infinite plenitude.

Topics: Individuality, World, Spirit, Plenitude

Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. The feminine ones are not idealistic, and the idealistic not feminine.

Topics: Literature, Feminine, Treated, Idealistic

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.

Topics: Character, Criticism, Experts, Favorite Subject

Life is writing. The sole purpose of mankind is to engrave the thoughts of divinity onto the tablets of nature.

source: - "Theory as Practice (On Philosophy: To Dorothea)". Book by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, 1997.

Topics: Writing, Divinity, Tablets, Engrave

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.

Topics: Destiny, Miracle, Arbitrary

Original love never appears in pure form, but in manifold veils and shapes, such as confidence, humility, reverence, serenity, asfaithfulness and modesty, as gratefulness; but primarily as longing and wistful melancholy.

Topics: Humility, Serenity, Veils, Manifold

Religion and morals are symmetrically opposed, just like poetry and philosophy.

Topics: Philosophy, Religion, Moral

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.

Topics: Fall, Order, Way

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.

Topics: Love Is, Thinking, Expression

As long as the artist invents and is inspired, he remains in a constrained state of mind, at least for the purpose of communication. He then wants to say everything, which is the wrong tendency of young geniuses or the right prejudice of old bunglers. Thus, he fails to recognize the value and dignity of self-restraint, which is indeed for both the artist and the man the first and the last, the most necessary and the highest goal.

Topics: Communication, Men, Artist

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.

Topics: Beautiful, Silly, Essence

The highest good and solely useful is liberal education.

Topics: Education, Liberal Education, Highest

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.

Topics: Creativity, Heaven, Done, Great Author

One should have wit, but not wish to have it; otherwise there will be witticism, the Alexandrian style of wit.

Topics: Should Have, Style, Wish

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.

Topics: Attitude, Greatness, Understanding

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

Topics: Decorum, Form, Sensuality, Gracefulness

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

source: - "Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms" by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, translated by Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, Pennsylvania University Press, 1968.

Topics: Men, Personality, Individuality

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

source: - "Selected Ideas (1799-1800)". "Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms", translated by Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, 1968.

Topics: Artist, Views, Individuality

When ideas become gods, consciousness of harmony becomes devotion, humility, and hope.

Topics: Humility, Ideas, Religion

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.

Topics: Education, Men, Musical, Educated Man

Can we expect the redemption of the world from scholars? I doubt it. But the time has come for all artists to join together as a confederation in an eternal league.

Topics: Artist, League, Doubt, Confederation

You wanted to destroy philosophy and poetry in order to make room for religion and morality which you misunderstood: but you wereable to destroy only yourself.

Topics: Philosophy, Order, Poetry

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.

source: - "Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms" by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, translated by Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, Pennsylvania University Press, 1968.

Topics: Artist, Self, People, Brahmins

Honor is the mysticism of legality

Topics: Honor, Legality, Mysticism

A classification is a definition comprising a system of definitions.

Topics: Definitions, Classification

It is a thoughtless and immodest presumption to learn anything about art from philosophy. Some do begin as if they hoped to learnsomething new here, since philosophy cannot and should not do anything further than develop the given art experiences and the existing art concepts into a science, improve the views of art, and promote them with the help of a thoroughly scholarly art history, and produce that logical mood about these subjects too which unites absolute liberalism with absolute rigor.

Topics: Art, Philosophy, Philosophical

The analytical writer observes the reader as he is; accordingly, he makes his calculation, sets his machine to make the appropriate effect on him. The synthetic writer constructs and creates his own reader; he does not imagine him as resting and dead, but lively and advancing toward him. He makes that which he had invented gradually take shape before the reader's eyes, or he tempts him to do the inventing for himself. He does not want to make a particular effect on him, but rather enters into a solemn relationship of innermost symphilosophy or sympoetry.

Topics: Eye, Doe, Machines, Advancing

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.

Topics: Communication, Law, Would Be

We do not see God, but everywhere we see something divine; first and most typically in the center of a reasonable man, in the depth of a living human product. You can directly feel and think nature, the universe, but not the Godhead. Only the man among men can poetize and think divinely and live with religion.

Topics: God, Men, Thinking, Reasonable Man

A good preface must be the root and the square of the book at the same time.

Topics: Book, Squares, Roots

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.

Topics: Writing, Past, Order

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.

Topics: Ideas, Church, Dinner, Leipzig

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.

Topics: Artist, Men, Leader

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.

Topics: Writing, Men, Together

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.

Topics: History, Important, Age, Offence, Lofty

Sense (for a particular art, science, human being, and so forth) is divided spirit; self-restraint is consequently the result of self-creation and self-destruction.

Topics: Art, Self, Spirit, Self Restraint

Where philosophy ends, poetry must commence. There should not be a common point of view, a natural manner of thinking which standsin contrast to art and liberal education, or mere living; that is, one should not conceive of a realm of crudeness beyond the boundaries of education. Every conscious link of an organism should not perceive its limits without a feeling for its unity in relation to the whole. For example, philosophy should not only be contrasted to non-philosophy, but also to poetry.

Topics: Art, Philosophy, Philosophical, Liberal Education

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.

source: - "Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms" by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, translated by Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, Pennsylvania University Press, 1968.

Topics: Past, Artist, Soul

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.

Topics: Poetry, Raw Materials, Trends

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.

Topics: Two, Needs, Firsts

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.

Topics: Ideas, Criticism, Able, Dogmatic

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.

Topics: Children, Men, Poetry

In the ancients, one sees the accomplished letter of entire poetry: in the moderns, one has the presentiment of the spirit in becoming.

Topics: Poetry, Letters, Becoming

If one believes philosophers, then what we call religion is only a deliberately popularized or an instinctively artless philosophy. Poets seem to consider religion rather as a variation of poetry which by misjudging its proper beautiful game takes itself too seriously and one-sidedly. Philosophy, however, admits and recognizes that it can begin and complete itself only with religion. Poetry seeks only to strive for the infinite and despises worldly utility and culture, which are the true antitheses of religion. Eternal peace among artists is thus not far away.

Topics: Beautiful, Philosophy, Believe, Eternal Peace

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.

Topics: Views, Ideas, Dawn

All thinking of the religious man is etymological, a reduction of all concepts to the original intuition, to the characteristic.

Topics: Religious, Men, Thinking

If the essence of cynicism consists in preferring nature to art, virtue to beauty and science; in not bothering about the letter of things -- to which the Stoic strictly adheres -- but in looking up to the spirit of things; in absolute contempt of all economic values and political splendor, and in courageous defence of the rights of independent freedom; then Christianity would be nothing but universal cynicism.

Topics: Art, Independent, Rights, Economic Value, Stoic

Without poetry, religion becomes obscure, false, and malignant; without philosophy, licentious in all wantonness, and lascivious to the point of self-castration.

Topics: Philosophy, Philosophical, Self, Castration

With respect to ingenious subconsciousness, I think, philosophers might well rival poets.

source: - "Athenaeum Fragments". Book by Friedrich Schlegel (1798), translated by Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, 1968.

Topics: Philosophical, Thinking, Rivals

Even a friendly conversation which cannot be at any given moment be broken off voluntarily with complete arbitrariness has something illiberal about it. An artist, however, who is able and wants to express himself completely, who keeps nothing to himself and would wish to say everything he knows, is very much to be pitied.

Topics: Artist, Broken, Wish

I can no longer say my love and your love; they are both alike in their perfect mutuality.

Topics: Perfect, I Can

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.

Topics: Spiritual, Writing, Views

In every good poem everything must be both deliberate and instinctive. That is how the poem becomes ideal.

Topics: Poetry, Very Good, Ideals

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

source: - "Lucinde and the Fragments" by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, translated by P. Firchow, (§ 139), 1991.

Topics: Self, Historical, Knows

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.

Topics: Christianity, Christian Life, Realism, Nature And Life

Wit is absolutely sociable spirit or aphoristic genius.

Topics: Genius, Spirit, Wit, Sociable

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.

Topics: Silly, Self, Irony

There are three kinds of explanation in science: explanations which throw a light upon, or give a hint at a matter; explanations which do not explain anything; and explanations which obscure everything.

Topics: Science, Light, Giving

The obsession with moderation is the spirit of castrated narrow-mindedness.

Topics: Excess, Spirit, Obsession, Narrow Mindedness

Separate religion from morality, and you have the true energy for evil within man, the terrible, cruel, devastating, and inhuman principle which naturally lies in his spirit. Here the division of the indivisible punishes itself most awfully.

Topics: Lying, Men, Evil Within

The symmetry and organization of history teaches us that mankind, during its existence and development, genuinely was and became an individual, a person. In this great personality of mankind, God became man.

Topics: God, Men, Organization, Great Person, Great Personality

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.

Topics: Art, Reflection, Reality, Absolute Freedom

The need to raise itself above humanity is humanity's main characteristic.

Topics: Humanity, Needs, Characteristics

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

Topics: Philosophy, Writing, Common Sense

German writings attain popularity through a great name, or through personalities, or through good connections, or through effort,or through moderate immorality, or through accomplished incomprehensibility, or through harmonious platitude, or through versatile boredom, or through constant striving after the absolute.

Topics: Writing, Names, Boredom

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.

Topics: Philosophy, Home, Men, True Home

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.

Topics: Art, Real, Italian, Histrionic

Just as the Romans were the only nation that was truly a nation, so our age is the first genuine age.

Topics: Time, Age, Eras

Nothing is more piquant than when a man of genius possesses mannerisms; not so when they possess him -- this leads to spiritual petrification.

Topics: Spiritual, Men, Genius, Mannerisms

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.

Topics: Philosophical, Writing, Thoughtful, Inverted, Antipodes

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?

Topics: Father, Fate, Tragedy, Modern Tragedy, Diabolical

In many a poetic work, one gets here and there, instead of representation merely a title indicating that this or that was supposedto be represented here, that the artist has been prevented from doing it and most humbly asks to be kindly excused.

Topics: Artist, Poetry, Here And There

One mentions many artists who are actually art works of nature.

Topics: Art, Nature, Work

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.

Topics: Art, Omnipotence, Effort, Unified

Those works whose ideal has not as much living reality and, as it were, personality as the beloved one or a friend had better remain unwritten. They would at least never become works of art.

Topics: Art, Reality, Personality, Living Reality

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.

Topics: Philosophy, Religion, Today

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.

Topics: Philosophy, Poetry, Tears

Every relationship of man to the infinite is religion, namely of a man in the full abundance of his humanity. Whenever a mathematician calculates infinity, that, to be sure, is not religion. Infinity conceived in this abundance is the Godhead.

Topics: Men, Humanity, Religion

To disrespect the masses is moral; to honor them, lawful.

source: - "Lucinde and the Fragments (Athenaeum Fragments, § 211)". Book by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel translated by P. Firchow, 1991.

Topics: Law, Disrespect, Honor

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.

Topics: Art, Philosophy, Philosophical, Modern Poetry, Commentary

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.

Topics: Philosophy, Philosophical, Poetry

Poetry can be criticized only through poetry. A critique which itself is not a work of art, either in content as representation of the necessary impression in the process of creation, or through its beautiful form and in its liberal tone in the spirit of the old Roman satire, has no right of citizenship in the realm of art.

source: - "Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms" by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, translated by Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, Pennsylvania University Press, 1968.

Topics: Beautiful, Art, Poetry

Religion is usually nothing but a supplement to or even a substitute for education, and nothing is religious in the strict sense which is not a product of freedom. Thus one can say: The freer, the more religious; and the more education, the less religion.

source: - "Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)". Translated in "Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms" by Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, 1968.

Topics: Education, Religious, Religion, Supplements

Every philosophical review ought to be a philosophy of reviews at the same time.

Topics: Time, Philosophy, Philosophical

Every form of life is in its origin not natural, but divine and human; for it must spring from love, just as there can be no reason without spirit.

Topics: Spring, Divinity, Spirit

The two basic maxims of the so-called historical criticism are the postulate of the common and the axiom of the ordinary. Postulate of the common: everything really great, good, and beautiful, is improbable, since it is extraordinary and therefore at least suspect. Axiom of the ordinary: our conditions and environment must have existed everywhere, for they are really so natural.

Topics: Beautiful, Two, History, Axioms

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.

Topics: Art, Thinking, Accomplishment

Philosophy still moves too much straight ahead, and is not yet cyclical enough.

Topics: Philosophy, Moving, Philosophical

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.