Friedrich Schleiermacher Quotes

#1. My heart is properly cultivated ... and is not left to wither under the burden of cold erudition, and my religious feelings are not deadened by theological inquiries.

Friedrich Schleiermacher

#2. The essence of religion consists in the feeling of an absolute dependence.

Friedrich Schleiermacher

#3. Whenever I find a spark of that hidden fire that will sooner or later consume the old and create the new, I am drawn to it with love and hope, regarding it as a sign of my future home.

Friedrich Schleiermacher

#4. Either the translator leaves the author in peace, as much as is possible, and moves the reader towards him: or he leaves the reader in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author towards him.

Friedrich Schleiermacher

#5. The first, that their pretensions to this possession of an art properly so called in their art of speaking are entirely unfounded; and the second, that they are involved in a profound mistake in their confusion of the good with the pleasant.

Friedrich Schleiermacher

#6. No God without a world, and no world without God.

Friedrich Schleiermacher

#7. And, moreover, it is art in its most general and comprehensive form that is here discussed, for the dialogue embraces everything connected with it, from its greatest object, the state, to its least, the embellishment of sensuous existence.

Friedrich Schleiermacher

#8. Belief must be something different from a mixture of opinions about God and the world, and of precepts for one life or for two. Piety cannot be an instinct craving for a mess of metaphysical and ethical crumbs.

Friedrich Schleiermacher

#9. Now the relation which, in the sphere of nature, being and semblance or sensation bear to one another in this antithesis, is the same as that which in ethics exists between good and pleasure or feeling.

Friedrich Schleiermacher

#10. Women are certainly more happy in this than we men: their employments occupy a smaller portion of their thoughts, and the earnest longing of the heart, the beautiful inner life of the fancy, always commands the greater part.

Friedrich Schleiermacher

#11. Like Chaos, before the world was created

Friedrich Schleiermacher

#12. Since each person, as an individual, is the not-being of the other, it is never possible to eliminate non-understanding completely.

Friedrich Schleiermacher

#13. For when it is the good that is under consideration, and the ethical object is predominant, truth must be considered more in reference to art than science, if, that is, unity is to be preserved in the work generally.

Friedrich Schleiermacher

#14. Virtue is only a conflict by which we get the mastery of our failings; that, by which every man proves his peculiar power of understanding the will and spirit of God, is only a silent working of the inner man.

Friedrich Schleiermacher

#15. If we look into the matter of how Christian theology rose in the beginning, the Christian Church was always already earlier, and thus even now for each individual the Christian Church is earlier than theology.

Friedrich Schleiermacher