Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Quotes
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What is lost in the good or excellent translation is precisely the best.
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The German national character is a favorite subject of character experts, probably because the less mature a nation, the more she is an object of criticism and not of history.
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Combine the extremes, and you will have the true center.
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How many authors are there among writers? Author means originator.
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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?
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Where there is politics or economics, there is no morality.
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Many works of the ancients have become fragments. Many works of the moderns are fragments at the time of their origin.
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Virtue is reason which has become energy.
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Reason is mechanical, wit chemical, and genius organic spirit.
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Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself.
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There are writers in Germany who drink the Absolute like water; and there are books in which even the dogs make references to the Infinite.
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The essential point of view of Christianity is sin.
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One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.
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Als vorübergehender Zustand ist der Skeptizismus logische Insurrektion; als System ist er Anarchie. Skeptische Methode wäre also ungefähr wie insurgente Regierung.
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Beauty is that which is simultaneously attractive and sublime.
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Kant introduced the concept of the negative into philosophy. Would it not also be worthwhile to try to introduce the concept of the positive into philosophy?
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Morality without a sense of paradox is mean.
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Nothing is more witty and grotesque than ancient mythology and Christianity; that is because they are so mystical.
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One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.
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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.
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The artist should have as little desire to rule as to serve. He can only create, do nothing but create, and so help the state only by … exalting politicians and economists into artists.
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Ein Mittler ist derjenige, der Göttliches in sich wahrnimmt, und sich selbst vernichtend Preis giebt, um dieses Göttliche zu verkündigen, mitzutheilen, und darzustellen allen Menschen in Sitten und Thaten, in Worten und Werken.
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Think of something finite molded into the infinite, and you think of man.
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Romantic poetry … recognizes as its first commandment that the will of the poet can tolerate no law above itself.