“What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.”
Society
“Form your life humanly, and you have done enough: but you will never reach the height of art and the depth of science without something divine.”
ArtAll 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.”
Poetry“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.”
History“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?”
Poetry“Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. The feminine ones are not idealistic, and the idealistic not feminine.”
Poetry“Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry.”
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.”
Religion“Strictly speaking, the idea of a scientific poem is probably as nonsensical as that of a poetic science.”
Science“One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.”
Poetry“From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become from what the ancients did, what poetry must be.”
Poetry“There is no self-knowledge but an historical one. No one knows what he himself is who does not know his fellow men, especially the most prominent one of the community, the master's master, the genius of the age.”
Age“Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form.”
Wisdom“Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.”
Imagination“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.”
Art“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.”
Religion“Form your life humanly, and you have done enough: but you will never reach the height of art and the depth of science without something divine.”
Art“Set religion free, and a new humanity will begin.”
Religion“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.”
Respect“God is each truly and exalted thing, therefore the individual himself to the highest degree. But are not nature and the world individuals?”
Nature“A so-called happy marriage corresponds to love as a correct poem to an improvised song.”
Marriage