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An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.

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
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University Teacher
Writer
Hanover
Germany
Karl Friedrich von Schlegel
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich von Schlegel
Friedrich Karl Wilhelm von Schlegel
World
Complete
Ought
Literature
Hedgehog
Art
Hedgehogs
Littles
Aphorism
Little
Surrounding
Work
Isolated
Like
Entirely

More quotes by 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.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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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
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Poetry and philosophy are, according to how you take them, different spheres, different forms, or factors of religion. Try to really combine both, and you will have nothing but religion.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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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
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Like Leibniz's possible worlds, most men are only equally entitled pretenders to existence. There are few existences.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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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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One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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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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Many a witty inspiration is like the surprising reunion of befriended thoughts after a long separation.
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
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The meanest authors have at least this similarity with the great author of heaven and earth, that they usually say after a completed day of work: And behold, what he had done was good.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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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.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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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
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The surest method of being incomprehensible or, moreover, to be misunderstood is to use words in their original sense especially words from the ancient languages.
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
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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.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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It is individuality which is the original and eternal within man personality doesn't matter so much. To pursue the education and development of this individuality as one's highest vocation would be a divine egoism.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Wit is absolutely sociable spirit or aphoristic genius.
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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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