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.
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.
3
Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself.
4
A family can develop only with a loving woman as its center.
5
What men are among the other formations of the earth, artists are among men.
6
About no subject is there less philosophizing than about philosophy.
7
Set religion free, and a new humanity will begin.
8
Think of something finite molded into the infinite, and you think of man.
9
An artist is he for whom the goal and center of life is to form his mind.
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.
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.
12
When reason and unreason come into contact, an electrical shock occurs. This is called polemics.
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.
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.
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.
16
Every good man progressively becomes God. To become God, to be man, and to educate oneself, are expressions that are synonymous.
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.
18
The historian is a prophet looking backward.
19
Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.
20
Since philosophy now criticizes everything it comes across, a critique of philosophy would be nothing less than a just reprisal.
21
Publication is to thinking as childbirth is to the first kiss.
22
Mysteries are feminine; they like to veil themselves but still want to be seen and divined.
23
One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.
24
It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.
25
Nothing is more witty and grotesque than ancient mythology and Christianity; that is because they are so mystical.
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.
27
Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form.
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?
29
God is each truly and exalted thing, therefore the individual himself to the highest degree. But are not nature and the world individuals?
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.
31
The subject of history is the gradual realization of all that is practically necessary.
32
He who does not become familiar with nature through love will never know her.
33
He who has religion will speak poetry. But philosophy is the tool with which to seek and discover religion.
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.
35
Like Leibniz’s possible worlds, most men are only equally entitled pretenders to existence. There are few existences.
36
Considered subjectively, philosophy always begins in the middle, like an epic poem.
37
The main thing is to know something and to say it.
38
Reason is mechanical, wit chemical, and genius organic spirit.
39
Witty inspirations are the proverbs of the educated.
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.
41
Mathematics is, as it were, a sensuous logic, and relates to philosophy as do the arts, music, and plastic art to poetry.
42
What is lost in the good or excellent translation is precisely the best.
43
Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.
44
Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself.
45
Plato’s philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion.
46
Wit as an instrument of revenge is as infamous as art is as a means of sensual titillation.
47
Art and works of art do not make an artist; sense and enthusiasm and instinct do.
48
All the classical genres are now ridiculous in their rigorous purity.
49
Religion is absolutely unfathomable. Always and everywhere one can dig more deeply into infinities.
50
Where there is politics or economics, there is no morality.
51
A so-called happy marriage corresponds to love as a correct poem to an improvised song.
52
Man is free whenever he produces or manifests God, and through this he becomes immortal.
53
Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a sophist.
54
The genuine priest always feels something higher than compassion.
55
How many authors are there among writers? Author means originator.
56
As the ancient commander addressed his soldiers before battle, so should the moralist speak to men in the struggle of the era.
57
Every complete man has his genius. True virtue is genius.
58
Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry.
59
Beauty is that which is simultaneously attractive and sublime.
60
One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.
