Publication is to thinking as childbirth is to the first kiss.
Interpretation
This quote compares the act of sharing thoughts to the profound experience of childbirth, suggesting that true expression is a significant and transformative process.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel's quote draws a parallel between the act of publication, which allows thoughts to reach an audience, and childbirth, a profound and altering experience. Just as childbirth is a culmination of nurturing, love, and pain that leads to new life, publication represents a significant moment where one's thoughts are born into the world, marking a transition from inner contemplation to public engagement. Both processes involve vulnerability, creativity, and the hope of connection, underscoring that true expression requires not only effort but also the courage to share one's innermost ideas with others.
In practice
In a speech on the importance of sharing our ideas, one might say this quote to emphasize the value of publication.
Prudishness is pretense of innocence without innocence. Women have to remain prudish as long as men are sentimental, dense, and evil enough to demand of them eternal innocence and lack of education. For innocence is the only thing which can ennoble lack of education.
A classical work doesn't ever have to be understood entirely. But those who are educated and who are still educating themselves must desire to learn more and more from it.
If you want to see mankind fully, look at a family. Within the family minds become organically one, and for this reason the family is total poetry.
He who does not become familiar with nature through love will never know her.
Religion can emerge in all forms of feeling: here wild anger, there the sweetest pain; here consuming hatred, there the childlike smile of serene humility.
A priest is he who lives solely in the realm of the invisible, for whom all that is visible has only the truth of an allegory.
We who live in quiet places have the opportunity to become acquainted with ourselves, to think our own thoughts and live our own lives in a way that is not possible for those keeping up with the crowd.
The point is the doing of them rather than the accomplishments . There is no actor but the action; there is no experiencer but the experience.
It is not your business to succeed, but to do right. When you have done so the rest lies with god.
Criminals are never very amusing. It's because they're failures. Those who make real money aren't counted as criminals. This is a class distinction, not an ethical problem.
The freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is, I want to argue, one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights.
An eye for beauty locks onto faces that show signs of health and fertility - just as one would predict if it had evolved to help the beholder find the fittest mate.
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