Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Quotes - Page 4

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

Wit is an explosion of the compound spirit.

Set religion free, and a new humanity will begin.

The French Revolution, Fichte's Theory of Knowledge, and Goethe's Wilhelm Meister are the three greatest tendencies of the age. Whoever takes offence at this combination, and whoever does not consider a revolution important unless it is blatant and palpable, has not yet risen to the lofty and broad vantage point of the history of mankind.

Is it not superfluous to write more than one novel if the writer has not become, say, a new man? Obviously, all the novels of an author not infrequently belong together and are to a certain degree only one novel.

Sense (for a particular art, science, human being, and so forth) is divided spirit; self-restraint is consequently the result of self-creation and self-destruction.

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

Where philosophy ends, poetry must commence. There should not be a common point of view, a natural manner of thinking which standsin contrast to art and liberal education, or mere living; that is, one should not conceive of a realm of crudeness beyond the boundaries of education. Every conscious link of an organism should not perceive its limits without a feeling for its unity in relation to the whole. For example, philosophy should not only be contrasted to non-philosophy, but also to poetry.

An artist is he who has his center within himself. He who lacks this must choose a particular leader and mediator outside of himself, not forever, however, but only at first. For man cannot exist without a living center, and if he does not have it within himself, he may seek it only in a human being. Only a human being and his center can stimulate and awaken that of another.

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

Through artists mankind becomes an individual, in that they unite the past and the future in the present. They are the higher organ of the soul, where the life spirits of entire external mankind meet and in which inner mankind first acts.

What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.

In the ancients, one sees the accomplished letter of entire poetry: in the moderns, one has the presentiment of the spirit in becoming.

An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.

Just as a child is really a thing that wants to become a man, so is the poem an object of nature that wants to become an object ofart.

If the essence of cynicism consists in preferring nature to art, virtue to beauty and science; in not bothering about the letter of things -- to which the Stoic strictly adheres -- but in looking up to the spirit of things; in absolute contempt of all economic values and political splendor, and in courageous defence of the rights of independent freedom; then Christianity would be nothing but universal cynicism.

All thinking of the religious man is etymological, a reduction of all concepts to the original intuition, to the characteristic.

A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.

I have expressed some ideas that point to the center; I have saluted the dawn in my way, from my point of view. He who knows the way should do the same, in his way, and from his point of view.

Without poetry, religion becomes obscure, false, and malignant; without philosophy, licentious in all wantonness, and lascivious to the point of self-castration.

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

If one believes philosophers, then what we call religion is only a deliberately popularized or an instinctively artless philosophy. Poets seem to consider religion rather as a variation of poetry which by misjudging its proper beautiful game takes itself too seriously and one-sidedly. Philosophy, however, admits and recognizes that it can begin and complete itself only with religion. Poetry seeks only to strive for the infinite and despises worldly utility and culture, which are the true antitheses of religion. Eternal peace among artists is thus not far away.

Genius is, to be sure, not a matter of arbitrariness, but rather of freedom, just as wit, love, and faith, which once shall become arts and disciplines. We should demand genius from everybody, without, however, expecting it.

With respect to ingenious subconsciousness, I think, philosophers might well rival poets.

Even a friendly conversation which cannot be at any given moment be broken off voluntarily with complete arbitrariness has something illiberal about it. An artist, however, who is able and wants to express himself completely, who keeps nothing to himself and would wish to say everything he knows, is very much to be pitied.