A good preface must be the root and the square of the book at the same time. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Book Copy Share Image
Reason is mechanical, wit chemical, and genius organic spirit. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Genius Copy Share Image
Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Irony Copy Share Image
Combine the extremes, and you will have the true center. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Copy Share Image
Publication is to thinking as childbirth is to the first kiss. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Childbirth Copy Share Image
Wit is absolutely sociable spirit or aphoristic genius. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Genius Copy Share Image
About no subject is there less philosophizing than about philosophy. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Philosophy Copy Share Image
He who does not become familiar with nature through love will never know her. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Copy Share Image
Most thoughts are only profiles of thoughts. They must be inverted and synthesized with their antipodes. Thus many philosophical writings become very… — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Antipodes Copy Share Image
Like Leibniz's possible worlds, most men are only equally entitled pretenders to existence. There are few existences. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Copy Share Image
Many works of the ancients have become fragments. Many works of the moderns are fragments at the time of their origin. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Copy Share Image
Mathematics is, as it were, a sensuous logic, and relates to philosophy as do the arts, music, and plastic art to poetry. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Art Copy Share Image
One should have wit, but not wish to have it; otherwise there will be witticism, the Alexandrian style of wit. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Copy Share Image
There are writers in Germany who drink the Absolute like water; and there are books in which even the dogs make references… — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Books Copy Share 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 Feminine Copy Share Image
Wit is the appearance, the external flash, of fantasy. Hence its divinity and the similarity to the wit of mysticism. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Copy Share Image
If the mystical lovers of the arts, who consider all criticism dissection and all dissection destruction of enjoyment, thought logically, an exclamation… — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Alive Copy Share Image
If the essence of cynicism consists in preferring nature to art, virtue to beauty and science; in not bothering about the letter… — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Absolutes Copy Share Image
When the author has no idea of what to reply to a critic, he then likes to say: you could not do… — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Copy Share Image
The following are the universally fundamental laws of literary communication: 1. one must have something to communicate; 2. one must have someone… — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Copy Share Image
Separate religion from morality, and you have the true energy for evil within man, the terrible, cruel, devastating, and inhuman principle which… — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Character Copy Share Image
The naive is what is or appears to be natural, individual, or classical to the point of irony or to the point… — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Copy Share Image
Genius is, to be sure, not a matter of arbitrariness, but rather of freedom, just as wit, love, and faith, which once… — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Art Copy Share Image
Some speak of the public as if it were someone with whom they have had dinner at the Leipzig Fair in the… — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Church Copy Share Image
When ideas become gods, consciousness of harmony becomes devotion, humility, and hope. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Consciousness Copy Share Image
A classification is a definition comprising a system of definitions. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Classification Copy Share Image
Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Creative Copy Share Image
Ideas are infinite, original, and lively divine thoughts. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Creativity Copy Share Image
One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Copy Share Image
I can no longer say my love and your love; they are both alike in their perfect mutuality. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Copy Share Image
An artist is he for whom the goal and center of life is to form his mind — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Art Copy Share Image
Wit as an instrument of revenge is as infamous as art is as a means of sensual titillation. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Art Copy Share Image
Mysteries are feminine; they like to veil themselves but still want to be seen and divined. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Feminine Copy Share Image
The obsession with moderation is the spirit of castrated narrow-mindedness. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Excess Copy Share Image
He who has religion will speak poetry. But philosophy is the tool with which to seek and discover religion. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Philosophy Copy Share Image
In every good poem everything must be both deliberate and instinctive. That is how the poem becomes ideal. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Deliberate Copy Share Image
With respect to ingenious subconsciousness, I think, philosophers might well rival poets. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Ingenious Copy Share Image
Every philosophical review ought to be a philosophy of reviews at the same time. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Criticism Copy Share Image
Poetry should describe itself, and always be simultaneously poetry and the poetry of poetry. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Literature Copy Share Image
Plato's philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Philosophy Copy Share Image
