77 quotes
Life is writing. The sole purpose of mankind is to engrave the thoughts of divinity onto the tablets of nature.
Expect nothing more from philosophy than a voice, language and grammar of the instinct for Godliness that lies at its origin, and, essentially, is philosophy itself.
To live classically and to realize antiquity practically within oneself is the summit and goal of philology.
There are people with whom everything they consider a means turns mysteriously into an end.
Morality has always had a difficult time of it; utility and legality even begrudge the fact of its existence.
Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a sophist.
Athenäum (1798)
An artist is he for whom the goal and center of life is to form his mind.
Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.
Only he who possesses a personal religion, an original view of infinity, can be an artist.
The romantic poetry is a progressive universal poetry.
Progressive Universalpoesie (1798)
Poetry can be criticized only through poetry.
Selected Aphorisms from the Lyceum (1797)
The mind understands something only insofar as it absorbs it like a seed into itself, nurtures it, and lets it grow into blossom and fruit. Therefore scatter holy seeds into the soil of the spirit.
Philosophy always begins in the middle, like an epic poem.
Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)
Every uneducated person is a caricature of themselves.
Moderation is the spirit of castrated narrow-mindedness.
Athenäum (1798)
Here is the actual source of all languages, all the thoughts and poems of the human spirit; everything, everything without exception comes from India.
Ram Swarup (2000)
To disrespect the masses is moral; to honor them, lawful.
There is no self-knowledge except historical self-knowledge. No one knows what he is if he doesn’t know what his contemporaries are.
India is pre-eminently distinguished for the many traits of original grandeur of thought and of the wonderful remains of immediate knowledge.
Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. If they’re feminine, they’re not ideal, and if ideal, not feminine.
Athenäums-Fragmente (1798)