An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.
Category Archive: Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Many works of the ancients have become fragments. Many works of the moderns are fragments at the time of their origin.
Every complete man has his genius. True virtue is genius.
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.
It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.
What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.
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?
Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.
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.
One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.