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Friedrich Schlegel

86 quotes

“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 (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.
“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.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.
“India is pre-eminently distinguished for the many traits of original grandeur of thought and of the wonderful remains of immediate knowledge.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.
“The doctrine of the transmigration of souls was indigenous to India and was brought into Greece by Pythagoras.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.
“It cannot be denied that the early Indians possessed knowledge of God. All their writings are replete with sentiments and expressions, noble, clear, severely grand, as deeply conceived in any human language in which men have spoken of their God.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Knapp, Stephen Proof of Vedic Culture s Global Existence. Published byThe World Relief Network Detroit 2000. p. vii as quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continent…
“Everything, absolutely everything, comes from India.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Arvidsson, Stefan (2006), Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, translated by Sonia Wichmann, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
“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).”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Leon Poliakov in The Aryan Myth, quoted from Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 1.
“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 (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Ram Swarup (2000). On Hinduism: Reviews and reflections. Ch. 4.
“The greatness of this people was attested by "the gigantic grandeur and durability of Egyptian and Indian architecture in contradistinction to the fragile littleness of modem buildings. This consideration will enable us," he continued, "by analogy to grasp the idea . . . that all these famous nations sprang from one stock, and that their colonies were all one people directly or indirectly, of Indian origin....”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Schlegel, in Poliakov, L. (1974). The Aryan myth : a history of racist and nationalist ideas in Europe p 191-2
“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....”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Friedrich Schlegel, Essay on the Language and Wisdom of the Indians, quoted by Roger-Pol Droit in L’Oubli de I’Inde, Paris Presses Universitaires de France, 1989, p. 129. Quoted in A Look at India From the Views of Othe…
“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 (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Friedrich Schlegel,source: Arise, O India, François Gautier. Quoted from Gewali, Salil (2013). Great Minds on India. New Delhi: Penguin Random House.
“The Indians possessed a knowledge of the true God, conceived and expressed in noble, clear and grand language … Even the loftiest philosophy of the Europeans, the idealization of reason, as set forth by the Greeks, appears in comparison with the abundant light and vigor of oriental idealism, like a feeble spark in the full flood of the noonday sun.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Friedrich Schlegel, source: Philosophy, Qabbala and Vedanta, Maurice Fluegel. Quoted from Gewali, Salil (2013). Great Minds on India. New Delhi: Penguin Random House.
“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.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Friedrich Schlegel, Indian Language, Literature, and Philosophy, p. 471, quoted in Max Müller, Three Lectures on the Vedanta Philosophy (1894), p. 11
“It is true that the Indian is almost entirely a philosophical or rather a religious language, and perhaps none, not even excepting the Greek, is so philosophically clear and sharply defined: It has no variable or arbitrary combination of abstractions, but is formed on It permanent system, in which the deep symbolic signification of words and expressions reciprocally explain, elucidate, and support each other.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Arvidsson, Stefan (2006), Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, translated by Sonia Wichmann, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.(29-30)
“Already from the beginning possessed the brightest and most sincere clarity [and that it had] in its first and most fundamental parts the highest concepts from the world of pure thought, just as it expresses the whole foundation of consciousness not through image, but with immediate clarity.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: as quoted in Arvidsson, Stefan (2006), Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, translated by Sonia Wichmann, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. (30)
“If, in the last decades, an overly one-sided and simply frivolous preoccupation with the Greeks has distanced us too much from the solemnity of the ancient world, or even from the sources of all higher truth, the totally new knowledge and appreciation of oriental antiquity is able, the more deeply we immerse ourselves in it, to lead us back to the knowledge of the divine and to that power of conviction, which first gave life to all art and all wisdom.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted from Suzanne L. Marchand - German Orientalism in the Age of Empire_ Religion, Race, and Scholarship-Cambridge University Press (2009)
“One presupposition, which in this matter has been of great harm and continues to do harm, is the separation between oriental and Greek studies and [the Greek and oriental} mind; [this] is increasingly concocted and arbitrarily applied, as if this grand difference had foundations in reality. In the history of humankind the inhabitants of Asia and the Europeans are to be seen as members of one family, whose history ought never to be divided, if one wants to understand the whole.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted from Suzanne L. Marchand - German Orientalism in the Age of Empire_ Religion, Race, and Scholarship-Cambridge University Press (2009)
“Der Historiker ist ein rückwärtsgekehrter Prophet.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Der Satan der italienischen und englischen Dichter mag poetischer sein; aber der deutsche Satan ist satanischer; und insofern könnte man sagen, der Satan sei eine deutsche Erfindung.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) first seen 1798 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #31
“One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) first seen 1798 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #54
“Jeder ungebildete Mensch ist die Karikatur von sich selbst.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) first seen 1798 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #63
“Moderation is the spirit of castrated narrow-mindedness.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) first seen 1798 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #64
“Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a sophist.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) first seen 1798 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #96
“Als vorübergehender Zustand ist der Skeptizismus logische Insurrektion; als System ist er Anarchie. Skeptische Methode wäre also ungefähr wie insurgente Regierung.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: #97, as translated in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings (1996), vol. 1, p. 136
“Religion is usually nothing but a supplement to or even a substitute for education, and nothing is religious in the strict sense which is not a product of freedom.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) first seen 1798 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #233
“Fragmente, sagen Sie, wären die eigentliche Form der Universalphilosophie.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) first seen 1798 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A” in “Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #259
“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.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To point out historically... the progress of this restoration in the various periods of the world, constitutes the object of the "Philosophy of History.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This perception—this comprehension—this right discernment of the great events and general results of universal history, is what might be termed a science of history; and I would have here preferred that term, were it not liable to much misconception, and might have been understood as referring more to special and learned inquiries, than the other name I have adopted...”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[A]ll those countless battles—those endless, and... for the greater part, useless wars, of which... fills up for so many thousand years... are but little atoms compared with the great whole of human destiny.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The divine origin of man, as taught by Vedanta, IS continually inculcated, to stimulate his efforts to return, to animate him in the struggle, and incite him to consider a reunion and reincorporation with Divinity as the one primary object of every action and reaction. Even the loftiest philosophy of the European, the idealism of reason as it is set forth by the Greek philosophers, appears in comparison with the abundant light and vigor 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.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.
“Germany had no material interests and responded spiritually to India. Friedrich Schlegel, hailed as “the inventor of the Oriental Renaissance,” wrote in 1803, “Everything, yes, everything without exception has its origin in India.” He proclaimed India with Greece and Germany, the most philosophical of nations. “If one considers,” he said, “the superior conception which is at the basis of the truly universal Indian culture and which, itself divine, knows how to embrace in its universality everything that is divine without distinction, then, what we in Europe call religion or what we used to call such, no longer seems to deserve that name. And one would like to advice everyone who wants to see religion, he should, just as one goes to Italy to study art, go to India for that purpose where he may be certain to find at least fragments for which he will surely look in vain in Europe.” Friedrich Schlegel’s The Language and Wisdom of the Indians (1808) was the first German contribution to Indology. Friedrich wrote, “May Indic studies find as many disciples and protectors as Germany and Italy saw spring up in such great numbers for Greek studies in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and may they be able to do as many things in as short a time. The Renaissance of antiquity promptly transformed and rejuvenated all the sciences; we might add that it rejuvenated and transformed the world. We could even say that the effects of Indic studies, if these enterprises were taken up and introduced into learned circles with the same energy today, would be no less great or far-reaching.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Jain, S., & Jain, M. (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts. New Delhi: Ocean Books. vol 4. Introduction
“[Languages that lacked inflection, he claimed, were barren and uncreative] only something like a heap of atoms, which the winds of chance can easily drive apart or push back together; the relationship [between them] is nothing but a purely mechanical one made by external attaching. These languages lack in their original form a germ from which life can unfold; the derivations always remain lacking, and when afterwards their artificiality has increased so much because of the appending of more and more affixes, the difficulty of achieving true, simple beauty and lightness is exacerbated even more. What appears to be richness is in fact poverty...”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted from Suzanne L. Marchand - German Orientalism in the Age of Empire_ Religion, Race, and Scholarship-Cambridge University Press (2009)
“Giebts eine unsichtbare Kirche, so ist es die jener grossen Paradoxie, die von der Sittlichkeit unzertrennlich ist, und von der bloss philosophischen noch sehr unterschieden werden muss. Menschen, die so ekzentrisch sind, im vollen Ernst tugendhaft zu seyn und zu werden, verstehn sich überall, finden sich leicht, und bilden eine stille Opposizion gegen die herrschende Unsittlichkeit, die eben für Sittlichkeit gilt. Ein gewisser Mystizismus des Ausdrucks, der bey einer romantischen Fantasie und mit grammatischem Sinn verbunden, etwas sehr Reizendes und etwas sehr Gutes seyn kann, dient ihnen oft als Symbol ihrer schönen Geheimnisse.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Philosophical Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 414
“The first fundamental rule of historical science and research, when by these is sought a knowledge of the general destinies of mankind, is to keep these, and every object connected with them, steadily in view, without losing ourselves in the details of special inquiries and particular facts, for the multitude and variety of these subjects is absolutely boundless; and on the ocean of historical science the main subject easily vanishes from the eye. ...In the higher grades of academic instruction, the lessons on history must vary with each one's calling and pursuits ...[T]he archives of many a state would alone furnish occupation for more than a man's life. ...The first fundamental rule ...to keep the attention fixed on the main subject, and not to let it be distracted or dissipated by a number of minute details—concerned more the method of historical science. The second rule regards the subject and purport of history... [W]e should not wish to explain every thing. Historical tradition must never be abandoned in the —otherwise we lose all firm ground and footing... [W]e have nothing to do but to record, as it is given, the best and safest testimony which tradition, so far as we have it, can afford... Extremely hazardous is the desire to explain every thing, and to supply whatever appears a gap in history—for in this propensity lies the first cause and germ of all those violent and arbitrary hypotheses which perplex and pervert the science of history far more than the open avowal of our ignorance, or the uncertainty of our knowledge: hypotheses which give an oblique direction, or an exaggerated and false extension to a view of the subject originally not incorrect. And even if there are points which appear not very clear to us, or which we leave unexplained—this will not prevent us from comprehending, so far... as the limited conception of man is able, the great outline of human history, though here and there a gap should remain.”
Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) said by 1829 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source