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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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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
Artist
Distinguished
Self
Deliberate
Even
External
Life
Habits
People
However
Ennobled
Birth
Brahmins
Habit
Caste
Higher
Initiation

More quotes by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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Considered subjectively, philosophy always begins in the middle, like an epic poem.
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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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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.
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Laziness is the one divine fragment of a godlike existence left to man from paradise.
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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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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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Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. The feminine ones are not idealistic, and the idealistic not feminine.
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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 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.
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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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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.
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What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Reason is mechanical, wit chemical, and genius organic spirit.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Honor is the mysticism of legality
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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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
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With respect to ingenious subconsciousness, I think, philosophers might well rival poets.
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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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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
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Plato's philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Like Leibniz's possible worlds, most men are only equally entitled pretenders to existence. There are few existences.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel