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.
In a word, to grow old in heaven is to grow young.
True terror is a language and a vision. There is a deep narrative structure to terrorist acts, and they infiltrate and alter consciousness in ways that writers used to aspire to.
The knife of historical relativism... which has cut to pieces all metaphysics and religion must also bring about healing.
If we must accept fate we are not less compelled to affirm liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of character.
I was amazed as people must be who are seized and kidnapped, and who realize that in the strange world of their captors they have a value absolutely unconnected with anything they know about themselves.
My job is not to save 'The Wheel of Time', to fix 'The Wheel of Time', or anything like that. My job is not to screw it up.
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