Publication is to thinking as childbirth is to the first kiss.
— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
About no subject is there less philosophizing than about philosophy.
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.
Mysteries are feminine; they like to veil themselves but still want to be seen and divined.
Wit as an instrument of revenge is as infamous as art is as a means of sensual titillation.
What is called good society is usually nothing but a mosaic of polished caricatures.
Plato's philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion.
Art and works of art do not make an artist; sense and enthusiasm and instinct do.
Irony is a clear consciousness of an eternal agility, of the infinitely abundant chaos.
Witty inspirations are the proverbs of the educated.
There are writers in Germany who drink the Absolute like water; and there are books in which even the dogs make references to the Infinite.
Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a sophist.
It is as deadly for a mind to have a system as to have none. Therefore it will have to decide to combine both.
Religion is absolutely unfathomable. Always and everywhere one can dig more deeply into infinities.
Versatility of education can be found in our best poetry, but the depth of mankind should be found in the philosopher.
He who has religion will speak poetry. But philosophy is the tool with which to seek and discover religion.
It is peculiar to mankind to transcend mankind.
From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become; from what the ancients did, what poetry must be.
One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.
One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.
All the classical genres are now ridiculous in their rigorous purity.
Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. The feminine ones are not idealistic, and the idealistic not feminine.
There is no self-knowledge but an historical one. No one knows what he himself is who does not know his fellow men, especially the most prominent one of the community, the master's master, the genius of the age.
A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is; otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named.
Beauty is that which is simultaneously attractive and sublime.
Considered subjectively, philosophy always begins in the middle, like an epic poem.
What men are among the other formations of the earth, artists are among men.
A so-called happy marriage corresponds to love as a correct poem to an improvised song.
Think of something finite molded into the infinite, and you think of man.
He who does not become familiar with nature through love will never know her.
What is lost in the good or excellent translation is precisely the best.
No idea is isolated, but is only what it is among all ideas.
Nothing is more witty and grotesque than ancient mythology and Christianity; that is because they are so mystical.
Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.
Every complete man has his genius. True virtue is genius.
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?
Novels are the Socratic dialogues of our time. Practical wisdom fled from school wisdom into this liberal form.
