Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Quotes

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Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself.

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.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Irony is a form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.

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

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
To live classically and to realize antiquity practically within oneself is the summit and goal of philology.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
You wanted to destroy philosophy and poetry in order to make room for religion and morality.

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

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Thou shalt not make unto thee any ideal, neither of an angel in heaven, nor of a hero in a poem or novel, nor one that is dreamed up or imagined: rather shalt thou love a man as he is.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Do not waste your faith and love on the political world, but, in the divine world of science and art, offer up your inmost being in a fiery stream of eternal creation.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
It is in fact wonderful how physics — as soon as it is concerned not with technical purposes but with general results — without knowing it gets into cosmogony, astrology, theosophy, or whatever you wish to call it, in short, into a mystic discipline of the whole.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Whatever can be done while poetry and philosophy are separated has been done and accomplished. So the time has come to unite the two.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
In the same way as philosophy loses sight of its true object and appropriate matter, when either it passes into and merges in theology, or meddles with external politics, so also does it mar its proper form when it attempts to mimic the rigorous method of mathematics.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Expect nothing more from philosophy than a voice, language and grammar of the instinct for Godliness that lies at its origin, and, essentially, is philosophy itself.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
You live only insofar as you live according to your own ideas.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
As a transitional condition, skepticism is logical insurrection; as a system, it is anarchy. Skeptical method would therefore be much the same as rule by insurgents.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
People who are eccentric enough to be quite seriously virtuous understand each other everywhere, discover each other easily, and form a silent opposition to the ruling immorality that happens to pass for morality.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
If there is an invisible church, then it is of the great paradox, which is inseparable from morality, and which must be distinguished from the merely philosophical. People who are so eccentric that they are completely serious in being and becoming virtuous understand one another in everything, find one another easily, and form a silent opposition against the prevailing immorality that pretends to be morality. A certain mysticism of expression, which joined with romantic fantasy and grammatical understanding, can be something charming and good, often serves as a symbol of their beautiful secrets.

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
A mediator is one who perceives the divinity within himself and who self-destructively sacrifices himself in order to reveal, communicate, and represent to all mankind this divinity in his conduct and actions, in his words and works.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Think of something finite molded into the infinite, and you think of man.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
The mind understands something only insofar as it absorbs it like a seed into itself, nurtures it, and lets it grow into blossom and fruit. Therefore scatter holy seeds into the soil of the spirit.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
In a perfect literature all books should be only a single book, and in such an eternally developing book, the gospel of humanity and culture will be revealed.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Only a man who is at one with the world can be at one with himself.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel