Quotes By Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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

Reason is mechanical, wit chemical, and genius organic spirit.

Nothing truly convincing - which would possess thoroughness, vigor, and skill - has been written against the ancients as yet; especially not against their poetry.

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.

Every complete man has his genius. True virtue is genius.

A so-called happy marriage corresponds to love as a correct poem to an improvised song.

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.

Wit as an instrument of revenge is as infamous as art is as a means of sensual titillation.

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.

Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself.

Religion must completely encircle the spirit of ethical man like his element, and this luminous chaos of divine thoughts and feelings is called enthusiasm.

Publication is to thinking as childbirth is to the first kiss.

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

Nothing is more witty and grotesque than ancient mythology and Christianity; that is because they are so mystical.

Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a sophist.

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

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

Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.

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

What is lost in the good or excellent translation is precisely the best.

How many authors are there among writers? Author means originator.

He who has religion will speak poetry. But philosophy is the tool with which to seek and discover religion.

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

One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.

Novels tend to end as the Paternoster begins: with the kingdom of God on earth.

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

Wit is an explosion of the compound spirit.

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