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Whoever could properly characterize Goethe's Meister would have actually expressed what is the timely trend in literature. He would be able, as far as literary criticism is concerned, to rest.

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
Able
Literary
Would
Properly
Whoever
Goethe
Criticism
Characterize
Concerned
Timely
Rest
Trend
Literature
Expressed
Actually
Trends

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.
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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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All artists are self-sacrificing human beings, and to become an artist is nothing but to devote oneself to the subterranean gods.
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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.
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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
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The subject of history is the gradual realization of all that is practically necessary.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Virtue is reason which has become energy.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Plato's philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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A genuinely free and educated man should be able to tune himself, as one tunes a musical instrument, absolutely arbitrarily, at his convenience at any time and to any degree, philosophically or philologically, critically or poetically, historically or rhetorically, in ancient or modern form.
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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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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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
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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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The essential point of view of Christianity is sin.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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The few existing writings against Kantian philosophy are the most important documents in the case history of sound common sense.
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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If the mystical lovers of the arts, who consider all criticism dissection and all dissection destruction of enjoyment, thought logically, an exclamation like Goodness alive! would be the best criticism of the most deserving work of art. There are critiques which say nothing but that, only they do so more extensively.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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When the author has no idea of what to reply to a critic, he then likes to say: you could not do it better anyway. This is the same as if a dogmatic philosopher reproached a skeptic for not being able to devise a system.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Reason is mechanical, wit chemical, and genius organic spirit.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel