About no subject is there less philosophizing than about philosophy. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel More Quotes by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel More Quotes From Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel A classification is a definition comprising a system of definitions. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel classification definitions The highest good and solely useful is liberal education. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel liberal-education highest education Set religion free, and a new humanity will begin. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel literature humanity religion What is lost in the good or excellent translation is precisely the best. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel excellent language literature Combine the extremes, and you will have the true center. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel two-extremes extremes literature Irony is a clear consciousness of an eternal agility, of the infinitely abundant chaos. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel agility irony chaos Separate religion from morality, and you have the true energy for evil within man, the terrible, cruel, devastating, and inhuman principle which naturally lies in his spirit. Here the division of the indivisible punishes itself most awfully. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel evil-within men lying He who has religion will speak poetry. But philosophy is the tool with which to seek and discover religion. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel tools philosophy religion In order to be able to write well upon a subject, one must have ceased to be interested in it; the thought which is to be soberlyexpressed must already be entirely past and no longer be one's actual concern. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel writing order past The French Revolution, Fichte's Theory of Knowledge, and Goethe's Wilhelm Meister are the three greatest tendencies of the age. Whoever takes offence at this combination, and whoever does not consider a revolution important unless it is blatant and palpable, has not yet risen to the lofty and broad vantage point of the history of mankind. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel important age history Wit is an explosion of the compound spirit. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel explosions literature spirit Where there is politics or economics, there is no morality. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel ethics politics literature Beauty is that which is simultaneously attractive and sublime. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel sublime literature beauty Some speak of the public as if it were someone with whom they have had dinner at the Leipzig Fair in the Hotel de Saxe. Who is this public? The public is not a thing, but rather an idea, a postulate, like the Church. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel dinner church ideas Gracefulness is a correct life: sensuality which contemplates and forms itself. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel decorum sensuality form God the father, and even more often the devil himself, appears at times in the place of fate in the modern tragedy. Why is it thatthis has not induced any scholar to develop a theory of the diabolical genre? Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel fate tragedy father The essential point of view of Christianity is sin. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel essentials literature views An artist is he who has his center within himself. He who lacks this must choose a particular leader and mediator outside of himself, not forever, however, but only at first. For man cannot exist without a living center, and if he does not have it within himself, he may seek it only in a human being. Only a human being and his center can stimulate and awaken that of another. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel leader artist men Is it not superfluous to write more than one novel if the writer has not become, say, a new man? Obviously, all the novels of an author not infrequently belong together and are to a certain degree only one novel. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel together writing men Since poetry is infinitely valuable, I do not understand why it should be more valuable than this or that which is also infinitelyvaluable. There are artists who perhaps do not think art to be too great, for this is impossible, and yet they are not free enough to be able to rise above their own best accomplishments. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel accomplishment art thinking