"[Languages that lacked inflection, he claimed, were barren and uncreative] only something like a heap of atoms, which the winds of chance can easily drive apart or push back together; the relationship [between them] is nothing but a purely mechanical one made by external attaching. These languages lack in their original form a germ from which life can unfold; the derivations always remain lacking, and when afterwards their artificiality has increased so much because of the appending of more and more affixes, the difficulty of achieving true, simple beauty and lightness is exacerbated even more. What appears to be richness is in fact poverty..."
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Poets from GermanyPlaywrights from GermanyNovelists from GermanyPhilologistsPhilosophers from Germany
Original Language: English
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quoted from Suzanne L. Marchand - German Orientalism in the Age of Empire_ Religion, Race, and Scholarship-Cambridge University Press (2009)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Friedrich_Schlegel
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Friedrich Schlegel
1772 – 1829
deutscher Philosoph und Dichter
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