Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Quotes about Literature - Page 2

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

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

Virtue is reason which has become energy.

Morality without a sense of paradox is mean.

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

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.

Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.

In true prose everything must be underlined.

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.

The essential point of view of Christianity is sin.

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.

Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself.

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

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.

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

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.