Aphorisms by Friedrich Schlegel, 1772-1829
Channel: Craig Campbell
Date: 2014-01-12

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel founded The Athenaeum literary magazine along with his brother, August Wilhelm Schlegel, in 1797 and the magazine folded in 1800. The Schlegels were interested in promoting their own ideas related to German Romanticism. They were sons of a Lutheran minister, Johann Adolf Schlegel (1721-1793).

This is an article was translated from the German into English by Louis H Gray in 1914.  They are the Aphorisms of Friedrich Schlegel. 

A short sampling:

The historian is a prophet looking backward.

There are people whose entire activity consists in saying "No." It would be no small thing always to be able rightly to say "No," but he who can do nothing more, surely cannot do it rightly. The taste of these negationists is an admirable shears to cleanse the extremities of genius; their enlightenment a great snuffer for the flame of enthusiasm; and their reason a mild laxative for immoderate passion and love.

Every great philosopher has always so explained his predecessors—often unintentionally—that it seemed as though they had not in the least been understood before him.

As a transitory condition skepticism is logical insurrection; as a system it is anarchy; skeptical method would thus be approximately like insurgent government.