Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

40 quotes

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel is a German poet, critic, philosopher, and Indologist whose words have traveled far beyond their original audience. Their thinking spans from Poetry to Religion, revealing a mind that refused to stay in one lane. Explore 54 quotes by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel on subjects including Poetry, Religion, Art, Nature, and Education — each one a window into a distinctive way of seeing the world. Perhaps their most recognizable line: "He who does not become familiar with nature through love will never know her."

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

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Poetry

All Quotes by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

“A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Poetry

“A so-called happy marriage corresponds to love as a correct poem to an improvised song.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Marriage

“All men are somewhat ridiculous and grotesque, just because they are men and in this respect artists might well be regarded as man multiplied by two. So it is, was, and shall be.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Respect

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

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Wisdom

“One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Poetry

“The difference between religion and morality lies simply in the classical division of things into the divine and the human, if one only interprets this correctly.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Religion

“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

Art

“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

Family

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

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Society

“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

Art

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

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Religion

“Strictly speaking, the idea of a scientific poem is probably as nonsensical as that of a poetic science.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Science

“Religion is not only a part of education, an element of humanity, but the center of everything else, always the first and the ultimate, the absolutely original.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Education

“He who has religion will speak poetry. But philosophy is the tool with which to seek and discover religion.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Poetry

“Religion must completely encircle the spirit of ethical man like his element, and this luminous chaos of divine thoughts and feelings is called enthusiasm.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Religion

“A priest is he who lives solely in the realm of the invisible, for whom all that is visible has only the truth of an allegory.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Truth

“Nothing truly convincing - which would possess thoroughness, vigor, and skill - has been written against the ancients as yet especially not against their poetry.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Poetry

“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

Art

“He who does not become familiar with nature through love will never know her.”

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Nature

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

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Art