The two basic maxims of the so-called historical criticism are the postulate of the common and the axiom of the ordinary. Postulate of the common: everything really great, good, and beautiful, is improbable, since it is extraordinary and therefore at least suspect. Axiom of the ordinary: our conditions and environment must have existed everywhere, for they are really so natural.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich SchlegelWomen are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. The feminine ones are not idealistic, and the idealistic not feminine.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich SchlegelJust as a child is really a thing that wants to become a man, so is the poem an object of nature that wants to become an object ofart.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich SchlegelWhen the author has no idea of what to reply to a critic, he then likes to say: you could not do it better anyway. This is the same as if a dogmatic philosopher reproached a skeptic for not being able to devise a system.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel