Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling > Quotes

“That which Dante saw written on the door of the inferno must be written in a different sense also at the entrance to philosophy: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Those who look for true philosophy must be bereft of all hope, all desire, all longing. They must not wish for anything, not know anything, must feel completely bare and impoverished.”
― Friedrich Schelling

“To achieve great things we must be self-confined...mastery is revealed in limitation.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

“There is no greatness without a continual solicitation to madness which, while it must be overcome, must never be completely lacking. One might profit by classifying men in this respect. The one kind are those in whom there is no madness at all ... and are so-called men of intellect whose works and deeds are nothing but cold works and deeds of the intellect.... But where there is no madness, there is, to be sure, also no real, active, living intellect. For wherein is intellect to prove itself but in the conquest, mastery, and ordering of madness?”
― Friedrich Schelling

“Those, then, who want to find themselves at the starting point of a truly free philosophy, have to depart even from God. Here the motto is: whoever wants to preserve it will lose it, and whoever abandons it will find it. Only those have reached the ground in themselves and have become aware of the depths of life, who have at one time abandoned everything and have themselves been abandoned by everything, for whom everything has been lost, and who have found themselves alone, face-to-face with the infinite: a decisive step which Plato compared with death. That which Dante saw written on the door of the inferno must be written in a different sense also at the entrance to philosophy: ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’ Those who look for true philosophy must be bereft of all hope, all desire, all longing. They must not wish anything, not know anything, must feel completely bare and impoverished, must give everything away in order to gain everything. It is a grim step to take, it is grim to have to depart from the final shore.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

“The I think, I am, is, since Descartes, the basic mistake of all knowledge; thinking is not my thinking, and being is not my being, for everything is only of God or of the totality.”
― Friedrich Schelling

“Without contradiction, there would be no life, no movement, no progress, a deadly slumber of all forces.”
― Schelling

“Nothing upsets the philosophical mind more than when he hears that from now on all philosophy is supposed to lie caught in the shackles of one system. Never has he felt greater than when he sees before him the infinitude of knowledge. The entire dignity of his science consists in the fact that it will never be completed. In that moment in which he would believe to have completed his system, he would become unbearable to himself. He would, in that moment, cease to be a creator, and would instead descend to being an instrument of his creation.”
― Friedrich Schelling

“Nature shall be the visible spirit, and spirit, invisible nature.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

“This is not the time to reawaken old oppositions, but rather to seek what lies above and beyond all opposition.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

“1."All rules for study are summed up in this one: learn only in order to create."

2"The human brain is the highest bloom of the whole organic metamorphosis of the earth."

3 "The failure to invest in civil justice is directly related to the increase in criminal disorder. The more people feel there is injustice the more it becomes part of their psyche."

4."Architecture in general is frozen music."

~ Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

“Far from it being true that man and his activity makes the world comprehensible, he is himself the most incomprehensible of all, and drives me relentlessly to the view of the accursedness of all being, a view manifested in so many painful signs in ancient and modern times. It is precisely man who drives me to the final despairing question: Why is there something? Why not nothing?”
― Friedrich Schelling

“Man has been placed on that summit where he contains within him the source of self-impulsion toward good and evil in equal measure; the nexus of the principles within him is not a bond of necessity but of freedom. He stands at the dividing line; whatever he chooses will be his act, but he cannot remain in indecision because God must necessarily reveal himself and because nothing at all in creation can remain ambiguous.”
― Friedrich Schelling

“Following the eternal act of self-revelation, the world as we now behold it, is all rule, order and form; but the unruly lies ever in the depths as though it might again break through, and order and form nowhere appear to have been original, but it seems as though what had initially been unruly had been brought to order. This is the incomprehensible basis of reality in things, the irreducible remainder which cannot be resolved into reason by the greatest exertion but always remains in the depths. Out of this which is unreasonable, reason in the true sense is born. Without this preceding gloom, creation would have no reality; darkness is its necessary heritage.”
― Friedrich Schelling

“man’s being is essentially his own deed.”
― Friedrich Schelling

“The past is known, the present is recognized, the future is divined.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

“Learn only in order that you yourself may create. Only this divine ability to create makes a true human being; without it one is simply a cleverly constructed machine [...]",”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Vorlesungen Uber Die Methode Des Academischen Studium, Dritte Ausgabe

“Die Natur soll der sichtbare Geist, der Geist die unsichtbare Natur sein. Hier also, in der absoluten Identität des Geistes in uns und der Natur außer uns, muß sich das Problem, wie eine Natur außer uns möglich sei, auflösen.”
― Friedrich Schelling

“Как е изобщо мислима една история, ако всичко, което е, се поражда за всеки само от неговото съзнание, също и цялата минала история може да се породи за всеки само от неговото съзнание?”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

“Dead matter has no external world – it is absolutely identical with its world.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature

“Изобщо всичко, което става според един определен механизъм или има своя теория априори, не е обект на историята. Теорията и историята са напълно противополoжни. Човекът има история само защото това, което ще извърши, не може да се пресметне предварително според никоя теория. Дотолкова произволът е богът на историята. Митологията ни кара да започнем историята с първата крачка от господството на инстинкта към сферата на свободата, със загубата на златния век или с грехопадението, т.е. с първата изява на произвола. В идеите на философите историята завършва с царството на разума, т.е. със златния век на правото, когато всеки произвол ще е изчезнал от земята и човекът ще се е върнал свободно в същата точка, в която първоначално го е поставила природата и която той е напуснал, когато е започнала историята.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

“Не всичко, което се случва, е обект на история­та, например природните събития дължат историческия си характер, когато го получават, само на влиянието, което са имали върху действията на хората; но още по-малко се смята за исторически обект това, което става според едно познато правило, повтаря се периодично, или изобщо един успех, който може да се пресметне априори.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

“Die Seele alles Hasses, ist Liebe, und im heftigsten Zorn zeigt sich nur die im innersten Zentrum angegriffene und aufgereizte Stille.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

“(..) und kein einzelner Ton für sich macht eine Disharmonie aus.”
― F.W.J. von Schelling, The Abyss of Freedom/Ages of the World

“Es ist im strengsten Verstande wahr, daß, wie der Mensch überhaupt beschaffen ist, nicht er selbst, sondern entweder der gute oder der böse Geist in ihm handelt; und dennoch tut dies der Freiheit keinen Eintrag. Denn eben das In-sich-handeln-Lassen des guten oder bösen Prinzips ist die Folge der intelligiblen Tat, wodurch sein Wesen und Leben bestimmt ist.”
― F.W.J. von Schelling, The Abyss of Freedom/Ages of the World

“Die Natur schlägt im Menschen die Augen auf und bemerkt, dass sie da ist.”
― F.W.J SCHELLING

“All life is founded upon something independent from itself.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

“Poison does not attack the body, but the body attacks the poison.”
― Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature