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Considered subjectively, philosophy always begins in the middle, like an epic poem.

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
Like
Subjectively
Epic
Poem
Considered
Begins
Philosophy
Middle
Always

More quotes by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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Nothing truly convincing - which would possess thoroughness, vigor, and skill - has been written against the ancients as yet especially not against their poetry.
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There is so much poetry, and yet nothing is more rare than a poetic work. This is what the masses make out of poetical sketches, studies, aphorisms, trends, ruins, and raw material.
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Art and works of art do not make an artist sense and enthusiasm and instinct do.
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Original love never appears in pure form, but in manifold veils and shapes, such as confidence, humility, reverence, serenity, asfaithfulness and modesty, as gratefulness but primarily as longing and wistful melancholy.
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If you want to penetrate into the heart of physics, then let yourself be initiated into the mysteries of poetry.
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The subject of history is the gradual realization of all that is practically necessary.
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Those works whose ideal has not as much living reality and, as it were, personality as the beloved one or a friend had better remain unwritten. They would at least never become works of art.
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All artists are self-sacrificing human beings, and to become an artist is nothing but to devote oneself to the subterranean gods.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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If the mystical lovers of the arts, who consider all criticism dissection and all dissection destruction of enjoyment, thought logically, an exclamation like Goodness alive! would be the best criticism of the most deserving work of art. There are critiques which say nothing but that, only they do so more extensively.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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When the author has no idea of what to reply to a critic, he then likes to say: you could not do it better anyway. This is the same as if a dogmatic philosopher reproached a skeptic for not being able to devise a system.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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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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From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become from what the ancients did, what poetry must be.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Even a friendly conversation which cannot be at any given moment be broken off voluntarily with complete arbitrariness has something illiberal about it. An artist, however, who is able and wants to express himself completely, who keeps nothing to himself and would wish to say everything he knows, is very much to be pitied.
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Religion is not only a part of education, an element of humanity, but the center of everything else, always the first and the ultimate, the absolutely original.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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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.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Many a witty inspiration is like the surprising reunion of befriended thoughts after a long separation.
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Just as a child is really a thing that wants to become a man, so is the poem an object of nature that wants to become an object ofart.
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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.
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Laziness is the one divine fragment of a godlike existence left to man from paradise.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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German writings attain popularity through a great name, or through personalities, or through good connections, or through effort,or through moderate immorality, or through accomplished incomprehensibility, or through harmonious platitude, or through versatile boredom, or through constant striving after the absolute.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel