Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Quotes

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

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

"Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself."

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

"Witty inspirations are the proverbs of the educated."

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

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

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

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

"Beauty is that which is simultaneously attractive and sublime."

"Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy."

"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."

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

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

"Wit is an explosion of the compound spirit."

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

"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."

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

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

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

"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?"

"Mysteries are feminine; they like to veil themselves but still want to be seen and divined."

"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?"

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

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

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

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

"What men are among the other formations of the earth, artists are among men."

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

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