Friedrich Schlegel Quotes
1772–1829 Germany
- Germany
- Novelists
- Philosophers
- Playwrights
- Poets
Also known as: Friedrich von Schlegel, Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, Schlegel
Random Friedrich Schlegel quote
77 quotes
In England … everything becomes professional … even the rogues of that island are pedants.
Selected Aphorisms from the Lyceum (1797)
Religion is usually nothing but a supplement to or even a substitute for education, and nothing is religious in the strict sense which is not a product of freedom.
Athenäum (1798)
People who are eccentric enough to be quite seriously virtuous understand each other everywhere, discover each other easily, and form a silent opposition to the ruling immorality that happens to pass for morality.
One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.
Athenäum (1798)
Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.
Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.
Athenäum (1798)
Romantic poetry … recognizes as its first commandment that the will of the poet can tolerate no law above itself.
"Everything, absolutely everything, comes from India."
Honour is the mysticism of legality.
Only a man who is at one with the world can be at one with himself.
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.
A year later, the influential Friedrich von Schlegel argued that "the Northwest of India must be considered the central point from which all of these nations had their origin" (505).
Thou shalt not make unto thee any ideal, neither of an angel in heaven, nor of a hero in a poem or novel, nor one that is dreamed up or imagined: rather shalt thou love a man as he is.
It is equally fatal for the spirit to have a system and to have none. One must thus decide to join the two.
What men are among the other formations of the earth, artists are among men.
Think of something finite molded into the infinite, and you think of man.
Virtue is reason which has become energy.
The historian is a reversed prophet.
Athenäum (1798)
India is not only at the origin of everything, she is superior in everything, intellectually, religiously or politically and even the Greek heritage seems pale in comparison.
The need to raise itself above humanity is humanity’s prime characteristic.