Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel - Lucinde (1799)

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

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Whoever hasn't yet arrived at the clear realization that there might be a greatness existing entirely outside his own sphere and for which he might have absolutely no feeling; whoever hasn't at least felt obscure intimations concerning the approximate location of this greatness in the geography of the human spirit: that person either has no genius in his own sphere, or else he hasn't been educated to the level of the classic.

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
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
An artist is someone who carries his center within himself. Whoever lacks such a center has to choose some particular leader and mediator outside of himself.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
The artist should have as little desire to rule as to serve. He can only create, do nothing but create, and so help the state only by … exalting politicians and economists into artists.

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

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Like the Roman senators, true artists are a nation of kings.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Novels are the Socratic dialogs of our time. This free form has become the refuge of common sense in its flight from pedantry.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
The Kantians' conception of duty relates to the commandment of honor, the voice of God and one's calling in us, as the dried plant to the fresh flower on the living stem.

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
At the words "his philosophy, my philosophy," one is always reminded of that line in Nathan: … "What kind of God is it who belongs to a man?"

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Take playfulness seriously, and you will apprehend what is at the center and rediscover you revered art in a more sublime light.

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

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
To give the community of artists a particular purpose would mean … debasing the community of saints into a state.

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

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
What am I proud of, and what can I be proud of as an artist? Of the decision that separated and isolated me forever from everything ordinary.

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

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Only by being cultivated does a human being … become altogether human and permeated by humanity.

Karl Wilhelm 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
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