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One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.

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
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Literary Theorist
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Philosopher
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Hanover
Germany
Karl Friedrich von Schlegel
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich von Schlegel
Friedrich Karl Wilhelm von Schlegel
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More quotes by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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The life and vigor of poetry consists of the fact that it steps out of itself, tears out a section of religion, then withdraws into itself to assimilate it. The same is true of philosophy.
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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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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As the ancient commander addressed his soldiers before battle, so should the moralist speak to men in the struggle of the era.
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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Combine the extremes, and you will have the true center.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Prudishness is pretense of innocence without innocence. Women have to remain prudish as long as men are sentimental, dense, and evil enough to demand of them eternal innocence and lack of education. For innocence is the only thing which can ennoble lack of education.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Morality without a sense of paradox is mean.
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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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.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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All men are somewhat ridiculous and grotesque, just because they are men and in this respect artists might well be regarded as man multiplied by two. So it is, was, and shall be.
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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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
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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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Form your life humanly, and you have done enough: but you will never reach the height of art and the depth of science without something divine.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Beauty is that which is simultaneously attractive and sublime.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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In the ancients, one sees the accomplished letter of entire poetry: in the moderns, one has the presentiment of the spirit in becoming.
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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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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When reason and unreason come into contact, an electrical shock occurs. This is called polemics.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel