Friedrich Schlegel Quotes

Whether directly or indirectly all nations are originally nothing but Indian colonies... the oriental antiquity could, if we consented to deepen it, bring us back more safely towards the divine....

In India lay the real source of all tongues, of all thoughts and utterances of the human mind. Everything - yes, everything without exception - has it origin in India." and "The primary source of all intellectual development - in a word the whole human culture - is unquestionably to be found in the tradItions of the East.

Even the loftiest philosophy of the Europeans, the idealism of reason, as it is set forth by Greek philosophers, appears, in comparison with the abundant light and vigour of Oriental idealism, like a feeble Promethean spark in the full flood of heavenly glory of the noonday sun—faltering and feeble, and ever ready to be extinguished.

A year later, the influential Friedrich von Schlegel argued that "the Northwest of India must be considered the central point from which all of these nations had their origin" (505).

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

Novels are the Socratic dialogs of our time. This free form has become the refuge of common sense in its flight from pedantry.

An artist is he for whom the goal and center of life is to form his mind.

Der Historiker ist ein rückwärtsgekehrter Prophet.

Moralität ohne Sinn für Paradoxie ist gemein.

It is equally fatal for the spirit to have a system and to have none. One must thus decide to join the two.

The Satan of the Italian and English poets may be poetic; but the German Satan is satanic; and thus one could say that Satan is a German invention.

The most important subject, and the first problem of philosophy, is the restoration in man of the lost image of God; so far as this relates to science.
Should this restoration in the internal consciousness be fully understood, and really brought about, the object of pure philosophy is attained.

Romantic poetry … recognizes as its first commandment that the will of the poet can tolerate no law above itself.

Prudishness is pretense of innocence without innocence. Women have to remain prudish as long as men are sentimental, dense, and evil enough to demand of them eternal innocence and lack of education. For innocence is the only thing which can ennoble lack of education.

Man hat nur so viel Moral, als man Philosophie und Poesie hat.