Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
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What men are among the other formations of the earth, artists are among men.
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A so-called happy marriage corresponds to love as a correct poem to an improvised song.
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Eternal life and the invisible world are only to be sought in God. Only within Him do all spirits dwell. He is an abyss of individuality, the only infinite plenitude.
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Mathematics is, as it were, a sensuous logic, and relates to philosophy as do the arts, music, and plastic art to poetry.
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It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.
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The historian is a prophet looking backward.
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Plato's philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion.
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In the world of language, or in other words in the world of art and liberal education, religion necessarily appears as mythology or as Bible.
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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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Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.
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Irony is a clear consciousness of an eternal agility, of the infinitely abundant chaos.
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As the ancient commander addressed his soldiers before battle, so should the moralist speak to men in the struggle of the era.
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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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Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself.
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What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.
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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.
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Wit is an explosion of the compound spirit.
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The main thing is to know something and to say it.
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Witty inspirations are the proverbs of the educated.
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The genuine priest always feels something higher than compassion.
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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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Set religion free, and a new humanity will begin.
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Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form.
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Considered subjectively, philosophy always begins in the middle, like an epic poem.