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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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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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Hanover
Germany
Karl Friedrich von Schlegel
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich von Schlegel
Friedrich Karl Wilhelm von Schlegel
Literature
Moreover
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Originals
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More quotes by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Reason is mechanical, wit chemical, and genius organic spirit.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Versatility of education can be found in our best poetry, but the depth of mankind should be found in the philosopher.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
You wanted to destroy philosophy and poetry in order to make room for religion and morality which you misunderstood: but you wereable to destroy only yourself.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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
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
It is as deadly for a mind to have a system as to have none. Therefore it will have to decide to combine both.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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
Every relationship of man to the infinite is religion, namely of a man in the full abundance of his humanity. Whenever a mathematician calculates infinity, that, to be sure, is not religion. Infinity conceived in this abundance is the Godhead.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
The naive is what is or appears to be natural, individual, or classical to the point of irony or to the point of continuous alternation of self-creation and self-destruction. If it is only instinct, then it is childlike, childish, or silly if it is only intention, it becomes affectation.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
The life of the artist should be distinguished from that of all other people, even in external habits. They are Brahmins, a higher caste, not ennobled by birth, however, but through deliberate self-initiation.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Many a witty inspiration is like the surprising reunion of befriended thoughts after a long separation.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
One should have wit, but not wish to have it otherwise there will be witticism, the Alexandrian style of wit.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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
The obsession with moderation is the spirit of castrated narrow-mindedness.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Combine the extremes, and you will have the true center.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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
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
Art and works of art do not make an artist sense and enthusiasm and instinct do.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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
