Novalis Quotes

Fate and temperament are the names of a concept. ~ Novalis

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. ~ Novalis

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. ~ Novalis

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

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. ~ Novalis

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

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. ~ Novalis

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. ~ Novalis

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. ~ Novalis

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. ~ Novalis

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

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. ~ Novalis

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

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

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

Where children are, there is the golden age. ~ Novalis

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

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

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

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. ~ Novalis

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. ~ Novalis

Man is lyrical, woman epic, marriage dramatic. ~ Novalis

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. ~ Novalis

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason. ~ Novalis

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

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

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

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. ~ Novalis

Perceptibility is a kind of attentiveness. ~ Novalis

Flight from the communal spirit is death! ~ Novalis

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

Sonechka, meanwhile, placid soul that she was - cocooned by the thousand volumes of her reading, lulled by the hazy murmurings of the Greek myths, the hypnotically shrill recorder fluting of the Middle Ages, the misty windswept yearning of Ibsen, the minutely detailed tedium of Balzac, the astral music of Dante, the siren song of the piercing voices of Rilke and Novalis, seduced by the moralistic despair of the great Russian writers calling out to the heart of heaven itself - this placid soul had no awareness that her great moment was at hand. ~ Lyudmila Ulitskaya

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

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

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

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

I have found that fate is as liquid and elusive a word as love. Plato thought they were the same ... Novalis wrote that fate and soul are two names for the same principle. ~ Liz Greene

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. ~ Novalis

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. ~ Novalis

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

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. ~ Novalis

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. ~ Novalis

Character is a wish for a perfect education. ~ Novalis

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. ~ Novalis

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. ~ Novalis

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

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. ~ Novalis

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. ~ Novalis

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. ~ Novalis

Accident is simply unforeseen order. ~ Novalis

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

The highest task of education is - to take command of one's transcendental self - to be at once the I of its I. It is all the less to be wondered at that we lack complete insight and understanding for others. Without perfect self-understanding one will never learn to truly understand others. ~ Novalis

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

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. ~ Novalis

Our body is a moulded river ~ Novalis

You are alone with everything you love. ~ Novalis

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. ~ Novalis

Our bodies are molded rivers. ~ Novalis

Everything is seed. ~ Novalis

Every individual is the center of a system of emanation. ~ Novalis

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. ~ Novalis

Apparently, we go forward. ~ Novalis

Character is perfectly educated will. ~ Novalis

The history of every individual man should be a Bible. ~ Novalis

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. ~ Novalis

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. ~ Novalis

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

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. ~ Novalis

Building worlds is not enough for the deeper urging mind; but a loving heart sates the striving spirit. ~ Novalis

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 ~ Novalis

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

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

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. ~ Novalis

Hypotheses are nets: only he who casts will catch. ~ Novalis

Before abstraction everything is one, but one like chaos; after abstraction everything is united again, but this union is a free binding of autonomous, self-determined beings. Out of a mob a society has developed, chaos has been transformed into a manifold world. ~ Novalis

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

We are near waking when we dream we are dreaming. ~ Novalis

Where are we really going? Always home. ~ Novalis

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. ~ Novalis

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

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. ~ Novalis

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. ~ Novalis

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. ~ Novalis

The region belonging to the pure intellect is straitened: the imagination labours to extend its territories, to give it room. She sweeps across the boarders, searching out new lands into which she may guide her plodding brother. The imagination is the light which redeems from the darkness for the eyes of the understanding. Novalis says, 'The imagination is the stuff of the intellect' -affords, that is, the material upon which the intellect works. ~ George MacDonald

I turn away from the light to the holy, inexpressible, mysterious night. Far away lies the world − sunk into a
deep vault, its place waste and lonely. Across my heart strings a low melancholy plays. I will fall in drops of dew and merge with the ashes. Distant memories, the wishes of youth, the dreams of childhood, the brief joys and vain hopes of a long life – all arise dressed in grey, like evening mist after sunset. In other lands light has
pitched its merry tents. And if it never returned to its children, who would await its dawning with the innocence of faith? ~ Novalis

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

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. ~ Novalis

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

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

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. ~ Novalis

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. ~ Novalis

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. ~ Novalis

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

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

Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise. ~ Novalis

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

Humanity is a comic role. ~ Novalis

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. ~ Novalis

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

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