199 Quotes by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

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.

What men are among the other formations of the earth, artists are among men.

It is individuality which is the original and eternal within man; personality doesn't matter so much. To pursue the education anddevelopment of this individuality as one's highest vocation would be a divine egoism.

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.

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?

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.

There is no self-knowledge except historical self-knowledge. No one knows what he is if he doesn't know what his contemporaries are.

A classical work doesn't ever have to be understood entirely. But those who are educated and who are still educating themselves must desire to learn more and more from it.

Because Christianity is a religion of death, it could be treated with the utmost realism, and it could have its orgies, just likethe old religion of nature and life.