KARL WILHELM FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL

What men are among the other formations of the earth, artists are among men.

Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form.

Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.

Every complete man has his genius. True virtue is genius.

Versatility of education can be found in our best poetry, but the depth of mankind should be found in the philosopher.

Many a witty inspiration is like the surprising reunion of befriended thoughts after a long separation.

An artist is he for whom the goal and center of life is to form his mind.

As the ancient commander addressed his soldiers before battle, so should the moralist speak to men in the struggle of the era.

Religion is absolutely unfathomable. Always and everywhere one can dig more deeply into infinities.

Wit is an explosion of the compound spirit.

What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.

Mathematics is, as it were, a sensuous logic, and relates to philosophy as do the arts, music, and plastic art to poetry.

Man is free whenever he produces or manifests God, and through this he becomes immortal.

God is each truly and exalted thing, therefore the individual himself to the highest degree. But are not nature and the world individuals?

One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.

Novels tend to end as the Paternoster begins: with the kingdom of God on earth.

A family can develop only with a loving woman as its center.

Beauty is that which is simultaneously attractive and sublime.

Religion can emerge in all forms of feeling: here wild anger, there the sweetest pain; here consuming hatred, there the childlike smile of serene humility.

Witty inspirations are the proverbs of the educated.

Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. The feminine ones are not idealistic, and the idealistic not feminine.

Irony is a clear consciousness of an eternal agility, of the infinitely abundant chaos.

Duty is for Kant the One and All. Out of the duty of gratitude, he claims, one has to defend and esteem the ancients; and only out of duty has he become a great man.

In true prose everything must be underlined.

Reason is mechanical, wit chemical, and genius organic spirit.