An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.
Interpretation
An aphorism should be self-contained and distinct, much like a work of art.
This quote by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel suggests that an aphorism should stand alone, free from the influences of its context, akin to a small piece of art that conveys its message completely on its own. The comparison to a hedgehog implies that just as a hedgehog is self-sufficient and unique, an aphorism should encapsulate its truth without needing external elaboration or support.
In practice
During a philosophy lecture, a professor might use this quote to emphasize the importance of self-contained ideas.
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.
With the strength of his spiritual sight and insight the distance, and as it were the space, around man continually expands: his world grows deeper, ever new stars, ever new images and enigmas come into view.
It is true that men themselves made this world of nations... but this world without doubt has issued from a mind often diverse, at times quite contrary, and always superior to the particular ends that men had proposed to themselves.
If we had helped a hundred children it would have all been worthwhile.
If you stare at a wall from four in the morning till nine at night and you do that for a week, you are getting pretty close to nothingness.
I'm opposed to a lot of the time that we as a civilization have come to spend looking at screens. For my money, life is much delicious damn near everyplace but inside that screen.
So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You'd better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can't rearrange the universe.
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