Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Quotes

Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Quotes. Let’s look at these pieces of wisdom. We definitely have something to learn from them!

1
The essential point of view of Christianity is sin.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
2
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.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
3
Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
4
A family can develop only with a loving woman as its center.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
5
What men are among the other formations of the earth, artists are among men.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
6
About no subject is there less philosophizing than about philosophy.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
7
Set religion free, and a new humanity will begin.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
8
Think of something finite molded into the infinite, and you think of man.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
9
An artist is he for whom the goal and center of life is to form his mind.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
10
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.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
11
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
12
When reason and unreason come into contact, an electrical shock occurs. This is called polemics.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
13
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
14
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
15
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
16
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
17
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
18
The historian is a prophet looking backward.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
19
Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
20
Since philosophy now criticizes everything it comes across, a critique of philosophy would be nothing less than a just reprisal.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
21
Publication is to thinking as childbirth is to the first kiss.
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
One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
24
It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
25
Nothing is more witty and grotesque than ancient mythology and Christianity; that is because they are so mystical.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
26
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
27
Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
28
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?
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
29
God is each truly and exalted thing, therefore the individual himself to the highest degree. But are not nature and the world individuals?
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
30
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
31
The subject of history is the gradual realization of all that is practically necessary.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
32
He who does not become familiar with nature through love will never know her.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
33
He who has religion will speak poetry. But philosophy is the tool with which to seek and discover religion.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
34
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
35
Like Leibniz’s possible worlds, most men are only equally entitled pretenders to existence. There are few existences.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
36
Considered subjectively, philosophy always begins in the middle, like an epic poem.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
37
The main thing is to know something and to say it.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
38
Reason is mechanical, wit chemical, and genius organic spirit.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
39
Witty inspirations are the proverbs of the educated.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
40
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.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
41
Mathematics is, as it were, a sensuous logic, and relates to philosophy as do the arts, music, and plastic art to poetry.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
42
What is lost in the good or excellent translation is precisely the best.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
43
Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
44
Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
45
Plato’s philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
46
Wit as an instrument of revenge is as infamous as art is as a means of sensual titillation.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
47
Art and works of art do not make an artist; sense and enthusiasm and instinct do.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
48
All the classical genres are now ridiculous in their rigorous purity.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
49
Religion is absolutely unfathomable. Always and everywhere one can dig more deeply into infinities.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
50
Where there is politics or economics, there is no morality.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
51
A so-called happy marriage corresponds to love as a correct poem to an improvised song.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
52
Man is free whenever he produces or manifests God, and through this he becomes immortal.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
53
Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a sophist.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
54
The genuine priest always feels something higher than compassion.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
55
How many authors are there among writers? Author means originator.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
56
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
57
Every complete man has his genius. True virtue is genius.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
58
Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
59
Beauty is that which is simultaneously attractive and sublime.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
60
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