Quote

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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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
Becomes
Classical
Point
Irony
Natural
Appears
Alternation
Individual
Silly
Affectation
Self
Intention
Childish
Instinct
Childlike
Destruction
Continuous
Creation
Naive

More quotes by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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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.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Religion is absolutely unfathomable. Always and everywhere one can dig more deeply into infinities.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Morality without a sense of paradox is mean.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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We should never invoke the spirit of antiquity as our authority. Spirits are peculiar things they cannot be grasped with the hands and be held up before others. Spirits reveal themselves only to spirits. The most direct and concise method would be, in this case as well, to prove the possession of the only redeeming faith by good works.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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To disrespect the masses is moral to honor them, lawful.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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The meanest authors have at least this similarity with the great author of heaven and earth, that they usually say after a completed day of work: And behold, what he had done was good.
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Nothing truly convincing - which would possess thoroughness, vigor, and skill - has been written against the ancients as yet especially not against their poetry.
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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Considered subjectively, philosophy always begins in the middle, like an epic poem.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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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
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Only through religion can logic develop into philosophy, only from this source stems that which makes philosophy more than science. And without religion we will have only novels, or the triviality today called belles lettres instead of an eternally rich and infinite poetry.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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A family can develop only with a loving woman as its center.
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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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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There is no self-knowledge except historical self-knowledge. No one knows what he is if he doesn't know what his contemporaries are.
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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Life is writing. The sole purpose of mankind is to engrave the thoughts of divinity onto the tablets of nature.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
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Art and works of art do not make an artist sense and enthusiasm and instinct do.
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