Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The genuine priest always feels something higher than compassion.

Set religion free, and a new humanity will begin.

Since philosophy now criticizes everything it comes across, a critique of philosophy would be nothing less than a just reprisal.

A critic is a reader who ruminates. Thus, he should have more than one stomach.

Morality without a sense of paradox is mean.

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.

Ideas are infinite, original, and lively divine thoughts.

Virtue is reason which has become energy.

As the ancient commander addressed his soldiers before battle, so should the moralist speak to men in the struggle of the era.

In true prose everything must be underlined.

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

Reason is mechanical, wit chemical, and genius organic spirit.

Considered subjectively, philosophy always begins in the middle, like an epic poem.

Religion is absolutely unfathomable. Always and everywhere one can dig more deeply into infinities.

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

The main thing is to know something and to say it.

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

Think of something finite molded into the infinite, and you think of man.

Mysteries are feminine; they like to veil themselves but still want to be seen and divined.

It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.

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

No idea is isolated, but is only what it is among all ideas.

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.

Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.

Many works of the ancients have become fragments. Many works of the moderns are fragments at the time of their origin.

The subject of history is the gradual realization of all that is practically necessary.

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.

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?

The surest method of being incomprehensible or, moreover, to be misunderstood is to use words in their original sense; especially words from the ancient languages.

The essential point of view of Christianity is sin.

When reason and unreason come into contact, an electrical shock occurs. This is called polemics.

Man is a creative retrospection of nature upon itself.

Plato's philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion.

Religion can emerge in all forms of feeling: here wild anger, there the sweetest pain; here consuming hatred, there the childlike smile of serene humility.

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

Aphorisms are the true form of the universal philosophy.

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.

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.

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.

Duty is for Kant the One and All. Out of the duty of gratitude, he claims, one has to defend and esteem the ancients; and only out of duty has he become a great man.

Kant introduced the concept of the negative into philosophy. Would it not also be worthwhile to try to introduce the concept of the positive into philosophy?

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.

Novels tend to end as the Paternoster begins: with the kingdom of God on earth.

Nothing is more witty and grotesque than ancient mythology and Christianity; that is because they are so mystical.

Every uneducated person is a caricature of himself.

Many a witty inspiration is like the surprising reunion of befriended thoughts after a long separation.

How many authors are there among writers? Author means originator.

A family can develop only with a loving woman as its center.

Irony is a clear consciousness of an eternal agility, of the infinitely abundant chaos.