199 Quotes by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

If you want to penetrate into the heart of physics, then let yourself be initiated into the mysteries of poetry.

Life is writing. The sole purpose of mankind is to engrave the thoughts of divinity onto the tablets of nature.

The whole history of modern poetry is a continuous commentary on the short text of philosophy: every art should become science, and every science should become art; poetry and philosophy should be united.

Poetry can be criticized only through poetry. A critique which itself is not a work of art, either in content as representation ofthe necessary impression in the process of creation, or through its beautiful form and in its liberal tone in the spirit of the old Roman satire, has no right of citizenship in the realm of art.

Separate religion from morality, and you have the true energy for evil within man, the terrible, cruel, devastating, and inhuman principle which naturally lies in his spirit. Here the division of the indivisible punishes itself most awfully.

Only through religion can logic develop into philosophy, only from this source stems that which makes philosophy more than science. And without religion we will have only novels, or the triviality today called belles lettres instead of an eternally rich and infinite poetry.

Honor is the mysticism of legality.

Nothing is more piquant than when a man of genius possesses mannerisms; not so when they possess him – this leads to spiritual petrification.

Like Leibniz’s possible worlds, most men are only equally entitled pretenders to existence. There are few existences.