August Wilhelm von Schlegel

“In the whole history of art, there is no second example of a genius so universal as that of Shakespeare.”

“The antique is, in a single word, the classical; what is otherwise called great, genuine, masterly.”

“The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain.”

“In tragedy, the freedom of man is recognized; in comedy, his necessity.”

“What is law? It is the sacred and mysterious will which holds the world together, which attaches the present to the past and the future.”

“The external world is to us a language, which we are born with a capacity to understand.”

“Translation is one of the most important and difficult of all literary exercises.”

“The beautiful is the symbolic representation of the infinite.”

“The dramatic art would be the most dishonorable of all arts, if it were not the most moral.”

“All poetry is a reproduction of a world of its own, created by the spirit of man.”

“A work of art must be a world in itself, with its own laws, and its own life.”

“Language is the instrument of the reason, but it is also the expression of the imagination.”