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Reason is mechanical, wit chemical, and genius organic spirit.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Age: 57 †
Born: 1772
Born: January 1
Died: 1829
Died: January 11
Art Theorist
Editor
Historian
Literary Critic
Literary Theorist
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Hanover
Germany
Karl Friedrich von Schlegel
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich von Schlegel
Friedrich Karl Wilhelm von Schlegel
Genius
Spirit
Reason
Mechanical
Chemical
Organic
Chemicals
Wit

More quotes by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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In order to be able to write well upon a subject, one must have ceased to be interested in it the thought which is to be soberlyexpressed must already be entirely past and no longer be one's actual concern.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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The obsession with moderation is the spirit of castrated narrow-mindedness.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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When reason and unreason come into contact, an electrical shock occurs. This is called polemics.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Most thoughts are only profiles of thoughts. They must be inverted and synthesized with their antipodes. Thus many philosophical writings become very interesting which would not have been so otherwise.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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There is no self-knowledge except historical self-knowledge. No one knows what he is if he doesn't know what his contemporaries are.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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A genuinely free and educated man should be able to tune himself, as one tunes a musical instrument, absolutely arbitrarily, at his convenience at any time and to any degree, philosophically or philologically, critically or poetically, historically or rhetorically, in ancient or modern form.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Wit as an instrument of revenge is as infamous as art is as a means of sensual titillation.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Wit is the appearance, the external flash, of fantasy. Hence its divinity and the similarity to the wit of mysticism.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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The whole history of modern poetry is a continuous commentary on the short text of philosophy: every art should become science, and every science should become art poetry and philosophy should be united.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Poetry can be criticized only through poetry. A critique which itself is not a work of art, either in content as representation of the necessary impression in the process of creation, or through its beautiful form and in its liberal tone in the spirit of the old Roman satire, has no right of citizenship in the realm of art.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Life is writing. The sole purpose of mankind is to engrave the thoughts of divinity onto the tablets of nature.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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In true prose everything must be underlined.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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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.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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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. Thus one can say: The freer, the more religious and the more education, the less religion.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Only through religion can logic develop into philosophy, only from this source stems that which makes philosophy more than science. And without religion we will have only novels, or the triviality today called belles lettres instead of an eternally rich and infinite poetry.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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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.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Art and works of art do not make an artist sense and enthusiasm and instinct do.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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To disrespect the masses is moral to honor them, lawful.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel