Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Quotes - Page 2

All the great truths are basically trivial and so we have to find new ways, preferably paradoxical ways, of expressing them, in order to keep them from falling into oblivion.

Religion is absolutely unfathomable. Always and everywhere one can dig more deeply into infinities.

One of two things is usually lacking in the so-called Philosophy of Art: either philosophy or art.

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

The naive which is simultaneously beautiful, poetic, and idealistic, must be both intention and instinct. The essence of intention, in this sense, is freedom. Consciousness is far from intention. There is a certain enamoured contemplation of one's own naturalness or silliness which itself is unspeakably silly. Intention does not necessarily require a profound calculation or plan.

An artist is he for whom the goal and center of life is to form his mind.

It is individuality which is the original and eternal within man; personality doesn't matter so much. To pursue the education and development of this individuality as one's highest vocation would be a divine egoism.

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

A genuinely free and educated man should be able to tune himself, as one tunes a musical instrument, absolutely arbitrarily, at his convenience at any time and to any degree, philosophically or philologically, critically or poetically, historically or rhetorically, in ancient or modern form.

The most important thing in love is the sense for one another, and the highest thing the faith in one another. Devotion is the expression of that faith, and pleasure can revive and enhance that sense, even if not create it, as is commonly thought. Therefore, sensuality can delude bad persons for a short time into thinking they could love each other.

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

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

All men are somewhat ridiculous and grotesque, just because they are men; and in this respect artists might well be regarded as man multiplied by two. So it is, was, and shall be.

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

Man is free whenever he produces or manifests God, and through this he becomes immortal.

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

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

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

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

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

Can we expect the redemption of the world from scholars? I doubt it. But the time has come for all artists to join together as a confederation in an eternal league.

The life of the artist should be distinguished from that of all other people, even in external habits. They are Brahmins, a higher caste, not ennobled by birth, however, but through deliberate self-initiation.

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.

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?

When ideas become gods, consciousness of harmony becomes devotion, humility, and hope.