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The obsession with moderation is the spirit of castrated narrow-mindedness.

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
Obsession
Spirit
Castrated
Mindedness
Moderation
Narrow
Excess

More quotes by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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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.
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As the ancient commander addressed his soldiers before battle, so should the moralist speak to men in the struggle of the era.
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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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In order to be able to write well upon a subject, one must have ceased to be interested in it the thought which is to be soberlyexpressed must already be entirely past and no longer be one's actual concern.
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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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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.
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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 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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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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One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.
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No idea is isolated, but is only what it is among all ideas.
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A classification is a definition comprising a system of definitions.
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When reason and unreason come into contact, an electrical shock occurs. This is called polemics.
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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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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.
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Religion is absolutely unfathomable. Always and everywhere one can dig more deeply into infinities.
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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.
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Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.
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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.
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A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.
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