A biography for Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegelhasn’t been written yet.
“Think of something finite molded into the infinite, and you think of man.”
“Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.”
“Wit is an explosion of the compound spirit.”
“The main thing is to know something and to say it.”
“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.”
“Virtue is reason which has become energy.”
“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?”
“Irony is a clear consciousness of an eternal agility, of the infinitely abundant chaos.”
“Many works of the ancients have become fragments. Many works of the moderns are fragments at the time of their origin.”
“Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.”
“The subject of history is the gradual realization of all that is practically necessary.”
“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.”
“Since philosophy now criticizes everything it comes across, a critique of philosophy would be nothing less than a just reprisal.”
“Many a witty inspiration is like the surprising reunion of befriended thoughts after a long separation.”
“Considered subjectively, philosophy always begins in the middle, like an epic poem.”
“An artist is he for whom the goal and center of life is to form his mind.”
“Beauty is that which is simultaneously attractive and sublime.”
“In true prose everything must be underlined.”
“Every good man progressively becomes God. To become God, to be man, and to educate oneself, are expressions that are synonymous.”