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.
Law cannot stand aside from the social changes around it.
Enlightenment is ego's ultimate disappointment.
And the end of the fight is tombstone white with the name of the late deceased, and the epitaph drear, "A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East."
In the secular view, suffering is never seen as a meaningful part of life but only as an interruption.
Through this atmosphere of torrid splendor moved wan beings as richly upholstered as the furniture, beings without definite pursuits or permanent relations, who drifted on a languid tide of curiosity... Somewhere behind them, in the background of their lives there was doubtless a real past, yet they had no more real existence than the poet's shades in limbo.
The majority represent a mass of cowards, willing to accept him who mirror its own soul and mind poverty.
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