Life & Wisdom Quote by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Virtue, in Schlegel's formulation, isn’t a halo; it’s a power source. “Reason which has become energy” treats ethics less like a rulebook and more like a conversion process: thought has to be metabolized into motion. The line pushes back against two failures Schlegel would have recognized in his own moment, perched between Enlightenment rationalism and early Romantic revolt. Pure reason can get stuck performing itself - elegant arguments, pristine systems, no risk. Pure feeling can burn hot and directionless. Virtue, here, is the rare state where clarity doesn’t just persuade; it propels.

The intent is slyly disciplinary. It flatters the rational mind, but only on the condition that it stops being decorative. Reason becomes morally credible when it generates stamina: the capacity to act consistently, to endure friction, to choose the harder good over the easy alibi. “Energy” signals more than enthusiasm. It suggests force, direction, and persistence - the kind of inner voltage that turns conviction into habit.

The subtext also nudges Romanticism away from self-indulgence. Schlegel was fascinated by irony and the self’s constant revision, but this aphorism insists that character can’t live as perpetual draft. Virtue is the moment the self stops narrating and starts doing.

Contextually, the line reads like a bridge between Kantian duty (reason as moral law) and a Romantic demand for lived intensity. It proposes a modern ethic: not what you think is right, but what your thinking can power.