Top 150 Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a sophist.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

2. “Combine the extremes, and you will have the true center.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

3. “About no subject is there less philosophizing than about philosophy.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

4. “The whole history of modern poetry is a continuous commentary on the short text of philosophy: every art should become science, and every science should become art; poetry and philosophy should be united.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

5. “Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

8. “Where there is politics or economics, there is no morality.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

9. “A classification is a definition comprising a system of definitions.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

10. “Mysteries are feminine; they like to veil themselves but still want to be seen and divined.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

11. “Gracefulness is a correct life: sensuality which contemplates and forms itself.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

12. “Honor is the mysticism of legality.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

14. “An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

15. “Wit as an instrument of revenge is as infamous as art is as a means of sensual titillation.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

16. “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

17. “Original love never appears in pure form, but in manifold veils and shapes, such as confidence, humility, reverence, serenity, asfaithfulness and modesty, as gratefulness; but primarily as longing and wistful melancholy.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

18. “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.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

19. “Like Leibniz’s possible worlds, most men are only equally entitled pretenders to existence. There are few existences.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

20. “Wit is an explosion of the compound spirit.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

21. “Poetry should describe itself, and always be simultaneously poetry and the poetry of poetry.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

22. “The need to raise itself above humanity is humanity’s main characteristic.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

23. “Laziness is the one divine fragment of a godlike existence left to man from paradise.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

24. “All the great truths are basically trivial and so we have to find new ways, preferably paradoxical ways, of expressing them, in order to keep them from falling into oblivion.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

25. “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

26. “Ideas are infinite, original, and lively divine thoughts.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

27. “Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

28. “What is lost in the good or excellent translation is precisely the best.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

29. “Reason is mechanical, wit chemical, and genius organic spirit.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

30. “Set religion free, and a new humanity will begin.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

32. “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

33. “Beauty is that which is simultaneously attractive and sublime.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

34. “Philosophy is the true home of irony, which might be defined as logical beauty: for wherever men are philosophizing in spoken or written dialogues, and provided they are not entirely systematic, irony ought to be produced and postulated; even the Stoics regarded urbanity as a virtue.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

35. “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

36. “Every complete man has his genius. True virtue is genius.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

37. “One of two things is usually lacking in the so-called Philosophy of Art: either philosophy or art.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

38. “Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

39. “Morality without a sense of paradox is mean.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

40. “Think of something finite molded into the infinite, and you think of man.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

41. “If you want to see mankind fully, look at a family. Within the family minds become organically one, and for this reason the family is total poetry.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

42. “Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

43. “Prudishness is pretense of innocence without innocence. Women have to remain prudish as long as men are sentimental, dense, and evil enough to demand of them eternal innocence and lack of education. For innocence is the only thing which can ennoble lack of education.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

44. “Only he who possesses a personal religion, an original view of infinity, can be an artist.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

45. “The subject of history is the gradual realization of all that is practically necessary.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

46. “There are three kinds of explanation in science: explanations which throw a light upon, or give a hint at a matter; explanations which do not explain anything; and explanations which obscure everything.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

48. “In the world of language, or in other words in the world of art and liberal education, religion necessarily appears as mythology or as Bible.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

49. “Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

50. “Without poetry, religion becomes obscure, false, and malignant; without philosophy, licentious in all wantonness, and lascivious to the point of self-castration.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel