Quote

When reason and unreason come into contact, an electrical shock occurs. This is called polemics.

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Contact
Called
Reason
Come
Unreason
Polemics
Electrical
Occurs
Shock

More quotes by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Image
We should never invoke the spirit of antiquity as our authority. Spirits are peculiar things they cannot be grasped with the hands and be held up before others. Spirits reveal themselves only to spirits. The most direct and concise method would be, in this case as well, to prove the possession of the only redeeming faith by good works.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
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.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
Nothing truly convincing - which would possess thoroughness, vigor, and skill - has been written against the ancients as yet especially not against their poetry.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
God the father, and even more often the devil himself, appears at times in the place of fate in the modern tragedy. Why is it thatthis has not induced any scholar to develop a theory of the diabolical genre?
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
Whoever could properly characterize Goethe's Meister would have actually expressed what is the timely trend in literature. He would be able, as far as literary criticism is concerned, to rest.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
Combine the extremes, and you will have the true center.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
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
Image
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
Image
If one writes or reads novels from the point of view of psychology, it is very inconsistent and petty to want to shy away from even the slowest and most detailed analysis of the most unnatural lusts, gruesome tortures, shocking infamy, and disgusting sensual or spiritual impotence.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
True love should be, according to its origin, entirely arbitrary and entirely accidental at the same time it should seem both necessary and free in keeping with its nature, however, it should be both destiny and virtue and appear as a mystery and a miracle.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
If you want to see mankind fully, look at a family. Within the family minds become organically one, and for this reason the family is total poetry.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
Is it not superfluous to write more than one novel if the writer has not become, say, a new man? Obviously, all the novels of an author not infrequently belong together and are to a certain degree only one novel.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
The symmetry and organization of history teaches us that mankind, during its existence and development, genuinely was and became an individual, a person. In this great personality of mankind, God became man.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
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
Image
Every form of life is in its origin not natural, but divine and human for it must spring from love, just as there can be no reason without spirit.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
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
Image
Wit is absolutely sociable spirit or aphoristic genius.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
I have expressed some ideas that point to the center I have saluted the dawn in my way, from my point of view. He who knows the way should do the same, in his way, and from his point of view.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
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