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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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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
Nature
Engrave
Writing
Tablets
Life
Divinity
Sole
Onto
Thoughts
Mankind
Purpose

More quotes by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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The highest good and solely useful is liberal education.
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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Morality without a sense of paradox is mean.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Art and works of art do not make an artist sense and enthusiasm and instinct do.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Wit as an instrument of revenge is as infamous as art is as a means of sensual titillation.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. The feminine ones are not idealistic, and the idealistic not feminine.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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To disrespect the masses is moral to honor them, lawful.
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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Many a witty inspiration is like the surprising reunion of befriended thoughts after a long separation.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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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
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A family can develop only with a loving woman as its center.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Religion is absolutely unfathomable. Always and everywhere one can dig more deeply into infinities.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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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
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Virtue is reason which has become energy.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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We do not see God, but everywhere we see something divine first and most typically in the center of a reasonable man, in the depth of a living human product. You can directly feel and think nature, the universe, but not the Godhead. Only the man among men can poetize and think divinely and live with religion.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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All artists are self-sacrificing human beings, and to become an artist is nothing but to devote oneself to the subterranean gods.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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The following are the universally fundamental laws of literary communication: 1. one must have something to communicate 2. one must have someone to whom to communicate it 3. one must really communicate it, not merely express it for oneself alone. Otherwise it would be more to the point to remain silent.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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About no subject is there less philosophizing than about philosophy.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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The history of imitation of the older literature, particularly abroad, has among other advantages this one, that the important concepts of unintentional parody and passive wit can be deduced from it most easily and comprehensively.
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