Novalis Quotes

One should, when overwhelmed by the shadow of a giant, move aside and see if the colossal shadow isn't merely that of a pygmy blocking out the sun.

Philosophy is properly home-sickness; the wish to be everywhere at home.

Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise.

The artist stands on the human being as a statue does on a pedestal.

All the events of our life are materials of which we can make what we will.

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

Imagination places the future world for us either above or below or in reincarnation. We dream of travels throughout the universe: is not the universe within us? We do not know the depths of our spirit. The mysterious path leads within. In us, or nowhere, lies eternity with its worlds, the past and the future.

The mysterious path goes inward. It is in us, and not anywhere else, where the eternity of the worlds, the past and the future are found.

Character is a wish for a perfect education.

A complete need should not exist... love, life in common with loved ones?

Life must not be a novel that is given to us, but one that is made by us.

Most observers of the French Revolution, especially the clever and noble ones, have explained it as a life-threatening and contagious illness. They have remained standing with the symptoms and have interpreted these in manifold and contrary ways. Some have regarded it as a merely local ill. The most ingenious opponents have pressed for castration. They well noticed that this alleged illness is nothing other than the crisis of beginning puberty.

Darwin remarks that we are less dazzled by the light at waking, if we have been dreaming of visible objects. Happy are those who have here dreamt of a higher vision! They will the sooner be able to endure the glories of the world to come.

Man has his being in truth--if he sacrifices truth he sacrifices himself. Whoever betrays truth betrays himself. It is not a question of lying--but of acting against one's conviction.

Knowledge is only one half. Faith is the other.

Our bodies are molded rivers.

Every disease is a musical problem. Its cure a musical solution. The more rapid and complete the solution, the greater the musical talent of the doctor.

Nature is a petrified magic city.

The true Poet is all-knowing; he is an actual world in miniature.

Accident is simply unforeseen order.

To know a truth well, one must have fought it out.

You are alone with everything you love.

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.

There is an energy which springs from sickness and debility: it has a more powerful effect than the real, but, sadly, expires in an even greater infirmity.

In cheerful souls there is no wit. Wit shows a disturbance of the equipoise.

I often feel, and ever more deeply I realize, that fate and character are the same conception.

Man is a sun and his senses are the planets.

Perceptibility is a kind of attentiveness.

One can not understand language because language cannot understand itself; does not want to understand

Denotation by means of sounds and markings is a remarkable abstraction. Three letters designate God for me; several lines a million things. How easy becomes the manipulation of the universe here, how evident the concentration of the intellectual world! Language is the dynamics of the spiritual realm. One word of command moves armies; the word liberty entire nations.

Tools arm the man. One can well say that man is capable of bringing forth a world; he lacks only the necessary apparatus, the corresponding armature of his sensory tools. The beginning is there. Thus the principle of a warship lies in the idea of the shipbuilder, who is able to incorporate this thought by making himself into a gigantic machine, as it were, through a mass of men and appropriate tools and materials. Thus the idea of a moment often required monstrous organs, monstrous masses of materials, and man is therefore a potential, if not an actual creator.

To romanticize the world is to make us aware of the magic, mystery and wonder of the world; it is to educate the senses to see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite.

Humanity is the higher meaning of our planet, the nerve that connects this part of it with the upper world, the eye it raises to heaven.

To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.

All power appears only in transition. Permanent power is stuff.

When you understand how to love one thing, then you also understand how to love everything.

There is but one temple in the universe, and that is the body of man.

Character and fate are two words for the same thing

Learning is pleasurable but doing is the height of enjoyment.

The art of writing books is not yet invented. But it is at the point of being invented. Fragments of this nature are literary seeds. There may be many an infertile grain among them: nevertheless, if only some come up!

Only as far as a man is happily married to himself is he fit for married life and family life in general.

The Bible begins gloriously with Paradise, the symbol of youth, and ends with the everlasting kingdom, with the holy city. The history of every man should be a Bible.

The highest purpose of intellectual cultivation is to give a man a perfect knowledge and mastery of his own inner self.

Man is lyrical, woman epic, marriage dramatic.

Character is perfectly educated will.

It is certain my belief gains quite infinitely the very moment I can convince another mind thereof

Friendship, love, and piety ought to be handled with a sort of mysterious secrecy; they ought to be spoken of only in the rare moments of perfect confidence, to be mutually understood in silence. Many things are too delicate to be thought; many more, to be spoken.

Many books are longer than they seem. They have indeed no end. The boredom that they cause is truly absolute and infinite.