Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Free
Degree
Critically
Form
Instruments
Historically
Able
Ancient
Genuinely
Men
Musical
Convenience
Time
Degrees
Tune
Rhetorically
Absolutely
Tunes
Poetically
Modern
Instrument
Arbitrarily
Education
Educated
Philosophically

More quotes by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Image
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
Image
Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Form your life humanly, and you have done enough: but you will never reach the height of art and the depth of science without something divine.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
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.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
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
Image
Religion is not only a part of education, an element of humanity, but the center of everything else, always the first and the ultimate, the absolutely original.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The essential point of view of Christianity is sin.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
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
Image
Wit as an instrument of revenge is as infamous as art is as a means of sensual titillation.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
Morality without a sense of paradox is mean.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
Can we expect the redemption of the world from scholars? I doubt it. But the time has come for all artists to join together as a confederation in an eternal league.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
In true prose everything must be underlined.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
German writings attain popularity through a great name, or through personalities, or through good connections, or through effort,or through moderate immorality, or through accomplished incomprehensibility, or through harmonious platitude, or through versatile boredom, or through constant striving after the absolute.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
Set religion free, and a new humanity will begin.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Image
The life and vigor of poetry consists of the fact that it steps out of itself, tears out a section of religion, then withdraws into itself to assimilate it. The same is true of philosophy.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel