Friedrich Schlegel Quotes (1772-1829)

Poet

About Friedrich Schlegel

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich (later: von) Schlegel (10 March 1772 - 12 January 1829), usually referred to as Friedrich Schlegel, was a German poet, critic and scholar. He was the younger brother of August Wilhelm Schlegel.

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Explore our curated collection of the most famous and impactful Friedrich Schlegel quotes.

“Honour is the mysticism of legality.”
Friedrich Schlegel
“Die wahre Tugend ist Genialität.”
“Tugend ist zur Energie gewordne Vernunft.”
“"Everything, absolutely everything, comes from India."”
“Moralität ohne Sinn für Paradoxie ist gemein.”
“Wo Politik ist oder Oekonomie, da ist keine Moral.”
“Die romantische Poesie ist eine progressive Universalpoesie.”
“Man hat nur so viel Moral, als man Philosophie und Poesie hat.”
Friedrich Schlegel
“Nur wer einig ist mit der Welt kann einig seyn mit sich selbst.”
“Die Menge nicht zu achten, ist sittlich; sie zu ehren, ist rechtlich.”
“Es ist der Menschheit eigen, dass sie sich über die Menschheit erheben muss.”
“Denke dir ein Endliches ins Unendliche gebildet, so denkst du einen Menschen.”
“Wie die Senatoren der Römer sind die wahren Künstler ein Volk von Königen. ”
“There are people with whom everything they consider a means turns mysteriously into an end.”
“In England … everything becomes professional … even the rogues of that island are pedants.”
Friedrich Schlegel
“Künstler ist ein jeder, dem es Ziel und Mitte des Daseyns ist, seinen Sinn zu bilden.”
“Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.”
Friedrich Schlegel
“Was die Menschen unter den andern Bildungen der Erde, das sind die Künstler unter den Menschen.”
“To live classically and to realize antiquity practically within oneself is the summit and goal of philology.”
“The doctrine of the transmigration of souls was indigenous to India and was brought into Greece by Pythagoras.”
Friedrich Schlegel
“Romantic poetry … recognizes as its first commandment that the will of the poet can tolerate no law above itself.”
“Nur durch die Bildung wird der Mensch, der es ganz ist überall menschlich und von Menschheit durchdrungen.”
“Nur derjenige kann ein Künstler seyn, welcher eine eigne Religion, eine originelle Ansicht des Unendlichen hat.”
“It is equally fatal for the spirit to have a system and to have none. One must thus decide to join the two.”
Friedrich Schlegel
“Man lebt nur insofern man nach seinen eignen Ideen lebt. Die Grundsätze sind nur Mittel, der Beruf ist Zweck an sich.”
Friedrich Schlegel

Friedrich Schlegel Quotes by Topic

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Friedrich Schlegel on Philosophy 3 quotes

“Philosophy always begins in the middle, like an epic poem.”
Friedrich Schlegel
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Friedrich Schlegel on Philology 2 quotes

“To live classically and to realize antiquity practically within oneself is the summit and goal of philology.”
Friedrich Schlegel
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Friedrich Schlegel on Morality 2 quotes

“Morality has always had a difficult time of it; utility and legality even begrudge the fact of its existence.”
Friedrich Schlegel
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Friedrich Schlegel on Indomania 2 quotes

“Here is the actual source of all languages, all the thoughts and poems of the human spirit; everything, everything without exception comes from India.”
Friedrich Schlegel
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Friedrich Schlegel on Ancient Greece–Ancient India relations 2 quotes

“There is no language in the world, even Greek, which has the clarity and the philosophical precision of Sanskrit. India is not only at the origin of everything, she is superior in everything, intellectually, religiously or politically and even the Greek heritage seems pale in comparison.”
Friedrich Schlegel
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Friedrich Schlegel on Judges

“Honour is the mysticism of legality.”
Friedrich Schlegel

Friedrich Schlegel on Education

“Every uneducated person is a caricature of themselves.”
Friedrich Schlegel

Friedrich Schlegel on India

“Everything, absolutely everything, is of Indian origin.”
Friedrich Schlegel

Friedrich Schlegel on Law

“To disrespect the masses is moral; to honor them, lawful.”
Friedrich Schlegel

Friedrich Schlegel on Masses

“To disrespect the masses is moral; to honor them, lawful.”
Friedrich Schlegel

Friedrich Schlegel on Classics

“To live classically and to realize antiquity practically within oneself is the summit and goal of philology.”
Friedrich Schlegel

Friedrich Schlegel on Utility

“Morality has always had a difficult time of it; utility and legality even begrudge the fact of its existence.”

What Friedrich Schlegel Said About Others

Discover personal opinions Friedrich Schlegel shared regarding contemporaries.

Friedrich Schlegel on Baruch Spinoza 5 quotes

“Every philosophy of philosophy that excludes Spinoza must be spurious. [Original in German: Jede Philosophie der Philosophie, nach der Spinosa kein Philosoph ist muß verdächtig scheinen.]”
Friedrich Schlegel
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Friedrich Schlegel on Women

“Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. If they’re feminine, they’re not ideal, and if ideal, not feminine.”
Friedrich Schlegel

Friedrich Schlegel on Thucydides

“The characteristics of his method of composing history consist, first, in the interweaving of political speeches, framed in a manner at once clear and elaborate, which introduce us into the secret motives and councils by which the political events of the period were governed, enable us to survey every particular incident exactly from that point of view in which it was regarded by each of the most opposite parties, and lay open the most hidden wiles of contending statesmen, with an acumen superior to what was ever exerted by the craftiest of them all; secondly, in an almost poetical, minute, energetic, and lively representation of battles, and those other external incidents which occupy but too great a space in the history of human affairs; and lastly, in the accumulation of all those highest excellencies of style, which can be embodied in the richest, most ornamented, and most energetic prose.”
Friedrich Schlegel

Quotes About Friedrich Schlegel

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Paul Tillich on Friedrich Schlegel

“In a man like Friedrich von Schlegel the courage to be as an individual self produced complete neglect of participation, but it also produced, in reaction to the emptiness of this self-affirmation, the desire to return to a collective. Schlegel, and with him many extreme individualists in the last hundred years, became Roman Catholics. The courage to be as oneself broke down, and one turned to an institutional embodiment of the courage to be as a part.”
Friedrich Schlegel

Arvidsson on Friedrich Schlegel

“Friedrich Schlegel is one example of a thinker whose reputation has suffered unjustly. Bernal writes about him that he was a racist, ‘even if he never expressed it clearly’.... The fact is that Schlegel maintains that the human being's physique is fairly irrelevant for understanding the events of history...”

About Friedrich Schlegel

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich (later: von) Schlegel (10 March 1772 - 12 January 1829), usually referred to as Friedrich Schlegel, was a German poet, critic and scholar. He was the younger brother of August Wilhelm Schlegel.