A biography for Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegelhasn’t been written yet.
“The genuine priest always feels something higher than compassion.”
“The surest method of being incomprehensible or, moreover, to be misunderstood is to use words in their original sense; especially words from the ancient languages.”
“Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a sophist.”
“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.”
“The essential point of view of Christianity is sin.”
“Ideas are infinite, original, and lively divine thoughts.”
“Nothing truly convincing - which would possess thoroughness, vigor, and skill - has been written against the ancients as yet; especially not against their poetry.”
“The poetry of this one is called philosophical, of that one philological, of a third rhetorical, and so on. Which is then the poetic poetry?”
“The historian is a prophet looking backward.”
“Combine the extremes, and you will have the true center.”
“As the ancient commander addressed his soldiers before battle, so should the moralist speak to men in the struggle of the era.”
“Like Leibniz's possible worlds, most men are only equally entitled pretenders to existence. There are few existences.”
“No idea is isolated, but is only what it is among all ideas.”
“All the classical genres are now ridiculous in their rigorous purity.”
“What is lost in the good or excellent translation is precisely the best.”
“Religion must completely encircle the spirit of ethical man like his element, and this luminous chaos of divine thoughts and feelings is called enthusiasm.”
“One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.”
“There are writers in Germany who drink the Absolute like water; and there are books in which even the dogs make references to the Infinite.”
“Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form.”
“Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.”