Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Quotes About Literature
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Set religion free, and a new humanity will begin.
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Publication is to thinking as childbirth is to the first kiss.
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Morality without a sense of paradox is mean.
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One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.
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An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.
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Religion is not only a part of education, an element of humanity, but the center of everything else, always the first and the ultimate, the absolutely original.
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God is each truly and exalted thing, therefore the individual himself to the highest degree. But are not nature and the world individuals?
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Beauty is that which is simultaneously attractive and sublime.
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Many a witty inspiration is like the surprising reunion of befriended thoughts after a long separation.
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The history of imitation of the older literature, particularly abroad, has among other advantages this one, that the important concepts of unintentional parody and passive wit can be deduced from it most easily and comprehensively.
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The subject of history is the gradual realization of all that is practically necessary.
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Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.
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It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.
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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.
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The historian is a prophet looking backward.
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Witty inspirations are the proverbs of the educated.
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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.
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Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.
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Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a sophist.
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Novels tend to end as the Paternoster begins: with the kingdom of God on earth.
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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.
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The following are the universally fundamental laws of literary communication: 1. one must have something to communicate; 2. one must have someone to whom to communicate it; 3. one must really communicate it, not merely express it for oneself alone. Otherwise it would be more to the point to remain silent.
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Whoever could properly characterize Goethe's Meister would have actually expressed what is the timely trend in literature. He would be able, as far as literary criticism is concerned, to rest.
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Wit is an explosion of the compound spirit.
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What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.
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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.
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If you want to see mankind fully, look at a family. Within the family minds become organically one, and for this reason the family is total poetry.
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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.
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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.
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Since philosophy now criticizes everything it comes across, a critique of philosophy would be nothing less than a just reprisal.
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Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
- Born: d. January 12, 1829
- Died: January 12, 1829
- Occupation: Poet