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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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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
Probably
Favorite
Literature
Object
Nations
Criticism
Less
Subject
History
National
Character
Subjects
German
Objects
Mature
Nation
Experts

More quotes by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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A classification is a definition comprising a system of definitions.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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In order to be able to write well upon a subject, one must have ceased to be interested in it the thought which is to be soberlyexpressed must already be entirely past and no longer be one's actual concern.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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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
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Just as the Romans were the only nation that was truly a nation, so our age is the first genuine age.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Man is free whenever he produces or manifests God, and through this he becomes immortal.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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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
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The obsession with moderation is the spirit of castrated narrow-mindedness.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Eternal life and the invisible world are only to be sought in God. Only within Him do all spirits dwell. He is an abyss of individuality, the only infinite plenitude.
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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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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Kant introduced the concept of the negative into philosophy. Would it not also be worthwhile to try to introduce the concept of the positive into philosophy?
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Set religion free, and a new humanity will begin.
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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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.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Wit is absolutely sociable spirit or aphoristic genius.
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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In many a poetic work, one gets here and there, instead of representation merely a title indicating that this or that was supposedto be represented here, that the artist has been prevented from doing it and most humbly asks to be kindly excused.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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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.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel