Novalis Quotes

Is not our body in itself nothing but a common central effect of our senses - if we have mastery over our senses - if we are able to transform them into activity at will - to center them at a common point, then it only depends on us - to give ourselves the body we want.
Indeed, in our senses are nothing other than modifications of the mental organ - of the absolute element - then with mastery over this element we shall also be able to modify and direct our senses as we please.

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

All the chance events of our lives are materials from which we can make what we like. Whoever is rich in spirit makes much of his life. Every acquaintance, every incident would be for the thoroughly spiritual person - the first element in an endless series - the beginning of an endless novel.

Hypotheses are nets: only he who casts will catch.

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.

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 brains -the thinking organs- are the world producers -nature's genitals.

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.

Character is perfectly educated will.

Where children are, there is the golden age.

Man is lyrical, woman epic, marriage dramatic.

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.

In the earliest times of the discovery of the faculty of judgment, every new judgment was a find. The worth of this find rose, the more practical and fertile the judgment was. Verdicts which now seem to us very common then still demanded an unusual level of intellectual life. One had to bring genius and acuity together in order to find new relations using the new tool. Its application to the most characteristic, interesting, and general aspects of humanity necessarily aroused exceptional admiration and drew the attention of all good minds to itself. In this way those bodies of proverbial sayings came into being that have been valued so highly at all times and among all peoples. It would easily be possible for the discoveries of genius we make today to meet with a similar fate in the course of time. There could easily come a time when all that would be as common as moral precepts are now, and new, more sublime discoveries would occupy the restless spirit of men.

The ideal of morality has no more dangerous rival than the ideal of highest strength, of most powerful life. It is the maximum of the savage.

Humanity is a comic role.

Up to now our thinking was either purely mechanical - discursive - atomistic - or purely intuitive - dynamic. Perhaps now the time for union has come?

But even more heavenly than the flashing
stars are those infinite eyes which the night opens within us, and which see further even than the palest of those
innumerable hosts.

That which the external world perceives as quite motionless has the appearance of being quite at rest. However much it may change, in relation to the external world it always stays at rest. This principle governs all self-modifications. That is why the beautiful appears so much at rest. Everything beautiful is a self-illuminated, perfect individual.

Our life is no dream; but it ought to become one, and perhaps will.

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

Our body is a moulded river

Every individual is the center of a system of emanation.

Mathematics is the Life of the Gods.

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.

Fate and temperament are the names of a concept.

Where are we really going? Always home.

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.

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

Accident is simply unforeseen order.

The imagination places the world of the future either far above us, or far below, or in a relation of metempsychosis to ourselves. We dream of traveling through the universe - but is not the universe within ourselves? The depths of our spirit are unknown to us - the mysterious way leads inwards. Eternity with its worlds - the past and future - is in ourselves or nowhere. The external world is the world of shadows - it throws its shadow into the realm of light. At present this realm certainly seems to us so dark inside, lonely, shapeless. But how entirely different it will seem to us - when this gloom is past, and the body of shadows has moved away. We will experience greater enjoyment than ever, for our spirit has been deprived.

We never completely comprehend ourselves, but we can do far more than comprehend.

There is but one temple in the world, and that is the body of man. Nothing is holier than this high form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this revelation in the flesh. We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body.

Christianity is the root of all democracy, the highest fact in the rights of men.

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.

Everywhere we seek the Absolute, and always we find only things.

The fate which oppresses us is the inertia of our spirit. Through extending and cultivating our activity we shall transform ourselves into fate.
Everything seems to stream inward into us, because we do not stream outward. We are negative because we want to be - the more positive we become, the more negative will the world around us become - until at last there will be no more negation - but instead we are all in all.
God wants there to be gods.

Morality must be the heart of our existence, if it is to be what it wants to be for us ... The highest form of philosophy is ethics. Thus all philosophy begins with "I am." The highest statement of cognition must be an expression of that fact which is the means and ground for all cognition, namely, the goal of the I.

Every disease is a musical problem; every cure is a musical solution.

The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist.

The world must become romanticized, and in that way we find again its original meaning for us.

What is it that wells up so suddenly and menacingly under my heart, swallowing the soft air of melancholy? Are you pleased with us, dark night? What is it you conceal under your mantle, that grabs invisibly and powerfully at my soul? A rich balm drips off your fingers from a bundle of poppies. You raise up the heavy wings of the soul – darkly and inexpressibly we are moved. I see an earnest face startled with joy – softly and reverently it inclines toward me, and under endlessly entangled locks
appears the cherished face of our Mother. How poor and childish the light seems to me now − how welcome and
blessed is the day's departure.

Prayer is to religion what thinking is to philosophy. To pray is to make religion.

Everything at a distance turns into
poetry; distant mountains, distant
people, distant events; all become
Romantic.

The world must be romanticized. Only in that way will one rediscover its original senses. Romanticization is nothing less than a qualitative raising of the power of a thing ... I romanticize something when I give the commonplace a higher meaning, the known the dignity of the unknown, and the finite the appearance of the infinite.

How do we see physically? No differently that we do in our consciousness - by means of the productive power of imagination. Consciousness is the eye and ear, the sense for inner and outer meaning.

mad, were not my perception and reasonings so clear; and this state of mind appears to have brought with it superior knowledge on all subjects.

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.

Every stage of education begins with childhood. That is why the most educated person on earth so much resembles a child.

There are ideal series of events which run parallel with the real ones. They rarely coincide.

The world must be romanticized. In this way the originary meaning may be found again.

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

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

The process of history is combustion.

Love works magic. It is the finalpurpose of the world story, the Amen of the universe.

The normal present connects the past and the future through limitation. Contiguity results, crystallization by means of solidification. There also exists, however, a spiritual present that identifies past and future through dissolution, and this mixture is the element, the atmosphere of the poet.

The individual soul should seek for an intimate union with the soul of the universe.

The true reader must be an extension of the author. He is the higher court that receives the case already prepared by the lower court. The feeling by means of which the author has separated out the materials of his work, during reading separates out again the unformed and the formed aspects of the book - and if the reader were to work through the book according to his own idea, a second reader would refine it still more, with the result that, since the mass that had been worked through would constantly be poured into fresh vessels, the mass would finally become an essential component - a part of the active spirit.

Through impartial rereading of his book the author can refine his book himself. With strangers the particular character is usually lost, because the talent of fully entering into another person's idea is so rare. Often even in the author himself. It is not a sign of superior education and greater powers to justifiably find fault with a book. When receiving new impressions, greater sharpness of mind is quite natural.

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

Everything is seed.

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

The history of every individual man should be a Bible.

Only the most perfect human being can design the most perfect philosophy.

Nothing is more indispensable to true religiosity than a mediator that links us with divinity.

The more narrow-minded a system is the more it will please worldly-wise people. Thus the system of the materialists, the doctrine of Helvetius and also Locke has recieved the most acclaim amongst his class. Thus Kant even now will find more followers than Fichte.

What delights, what pleasures does your life offer you that outweigh the raptures of death?

Everything that we experience is a communication. In fact, so is the world too a communication
the revelation of spirit. The time is gone when the spirit of God was comprehensible to us. The meaning of the world has been lost to us. We have seen only its letters. We have lost that which is appearing behind the appearance.

Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise.

Longing for Death
Down into the womb of the earth,
Out of the kingdom of light,
Anger, pain, and a savage blow
Signal the happy departure.

Centripetal force is the synthetic striving of the spirit - centrifugal force the analytical striving of the spirit. Striving toward unity - striving towards diversity. Through the mutual determination of each by the other - that higher synthesis of unity and diversity itself will be produced - whereby one is in all and all in one.

Holy sleep, do not so seldom bring happiness to the night's beloved in this earthly labour of the day.

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.

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

Philosophy is really nostalgia, the desire to be at home.

The most intimate community of all knowledge - the republic of learning is the high purpose of scholars.

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.

Life is the beginning of death. Life is for the sake of death. Death is at once the end and the beginning - at once separation and closer union of the self. Through death the reduction is complete

Content, our life advancing
To a life that shall abide,
Each flame its worth enhancing,
The soul is glorified.
The starry host shall sink then
To bright and living wine,
The golden draught we drink then,
And stars ourselves shall shine.

Love released, lives woundless,
No separation more;
While life swells free and boundless
As a sea without a shore.
One night of glad elation,
One joy that cannot die,
And the sun of all creation
Is the face of the Most High.

Sacrifice of the self is the source of all humiliation, as also on the contrary is the foundation of all true exaltation. The first step will be an inward gaze - an isolating contemplation of ourselves. Whoever stops here has come only halfway. The second step must be an active outward gaze - autonomous, constant observation of the external world.
No one will ever achieve excellence as an artist who cannot depict anything other than his own experiences, his favorite objects, who cannot bring himself to study assiduously even a quite strange object, which does not interest him at all, and to depict it at leisure. An artist must be able and willing to depict everything. This is how a great artistic style is created, which rightly is so much admired in Goethe.

True anarchy is the generative element of religion. Out of the annihilation of all existing institutions she raises her glorious head, as the new foundress of the world.

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.

Nature is a petrified magic city.

Doing philosophy is only a threefold or double kind of waking
being awake
consciousness.

Character is a wish for a perfect education.

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

The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet. Where they overlap, it is in every point of the overlap.

When one begins to reflect on philosophy - then philosophy seems to us to be everything, like God, and love. It is a mystical, highly potent, penetrating idea - which ceaselessly drives us inward in all directions. The decision to do philosophy - to seek philosophy is the act of self-liberation - the thrust toward ourselves.

We are close to waking when we dream that we are dreaming.

If the world is a precipitation of human nature, so to speak, then the divine world is a sublimation of the same. Both occur in one act. No precipitation without sublimation. What goes lost there in agility, is won here.

Flight from the communal spirit is death!

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

Philosophy ... bears witness to the deepest love of reflection, to absolute delight in wisdom.

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

We are near waking when we dream we are dreaming.

Apparently, we go forward.

A certain degree of solitude seems necessary to the full growth and spread of the highest mind; and therefore must a very extensive intercourse with men stifle many a holy germ, and scare away the gods, who shun the restless tumult of noisy companies and the discussion of petty interests.

The best thing about the sciences is their philosophical ingredient, like life for an organic body. If one dephilosophizes the sciences, what remains left? Earth , air , and [[water.

You are alone with everything you love.

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

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.

What is nature? An encyclopedic systematic index or plan of our spirit. Why should we be content with the mere catalogue of our treasures - let us examine them for ourselves - and work with them and use them in diverse ways.