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True love should be, according to its origin, entirely arbitrary and entirely accidental at the same time it should seem both necessary and free in keeping with its nature, however, it should be both destiny and virtue and appear as a mystery and a miracle.

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
Free
According
True
Miracle
Nature
Destiny
Accidental
Seems
However
Arbitrary
Time
Necessary
Origin
Love
Mystery
Entirely
Seem
Keeping
Virtue
Appear

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Beauty is that which is simultaneously attractive and sublime.
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It is as deadly for a mind to have a system as to have none. Therefore it will have to decide to combine both.
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When reason and unreason come into contact, an electrical shock occurs. This is called polemics.
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Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.
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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.
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A classification is a definition comprising a system of definitions.
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If one writes or reads novels from the point of view of psychology, it is very inconsistent and petty to want to shy away from even the slowest and most detailed analysis of the most unnatural lusts, gruesome tortures, shocking infamy, and disgusting sensual or spiritual impotence.
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A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.
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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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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.
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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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Poetry should describe itself, and always be simultaneously poetry and the poetry of poetry.
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Laziness is the one divine fragment of a godlike existence left to man from paradise.
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Life is writing. The sole purpose of mankind is to engrave the thoughts of divinity onto the tablets of nature.
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In the ancients, one sees the accomplished letter of entire poetry: in the moderns, one has the presentiment of the spirit in becoming.
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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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Wit as an instrument of revenge is as infamous as art is as a means of sensual titillation.
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One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.
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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.
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I have expressed some ideas that point to the center I have saluted the dawn in my way, from my point of view. He who knows the way should do the same, in his way, and from his point of view.
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