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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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Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Age: 57 †
Born: 1772
Born: January 1
Died: 1829
Died: January 11
Art Theorist
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Literary Critic
Literary Theorist
Novelist
Philosopher
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Hanover
Germany
Karl Friedrich von Schlegel
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich von Schlegel
Friedrich Karl Wilhelm von Schlegel
Absolutely
Tunes
Poetically
Modern
Instrument
Arbitrarily
Education
Educated
Philosophically
Free
Degree
Critically
Form
Instruments
Historically
Able
Ancient
Genuinely
Men
Musical
Convenience
Time
Degrees
Tune
Rhetorically

More quotes by 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.
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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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A classification is a definition comprising a system of definitions.
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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.
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Combine the extremes, and you will have the true center.
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.
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In true prose everything must be underlined.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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I can no longer say my love and your love they are both alike in their perfect mutuality.
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Every form of life is in its origin not natural, but divine and human for it must spring from love, just as there can be no reason without spirit.
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The genuine priest always feels something higher than compassion.
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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The few existing writings against Kantian philosophy are the most important documents in the case history of sound common sense.
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Every complete man has his genius. True virtue is genius.
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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.
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One should have wit, but not wish to have it otherwise there will be witticism, the Alexandrian style of wit.
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.
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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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Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry.
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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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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