Novalis

Where children are, there is the golden age.

— Novalis

A hero is one who knows how to hang on one minute longer.

— Novalis

Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise.

— Novalis

Learning is pleasurable but doing is the height of enjoyment.

— Novalis

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.

— Novalis

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

— Novalis

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

— Novalis

Where children are, there is the golden age.

— Novalis

Character and fate are two words for the same thing.

— Novalis

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

— Novalis

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

— Novalis

Knowledge is only one half. Faith is the other.

— Novalis

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

— Novalis

Nature is a petrified magic city.

— Novalis

We are more closely connected to the invisible than to the visible.

— Novalis

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

— Novalis

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

— Novalis

A character is a completely fashioned will.

— Novalis

We are near waking when we dream we are dreaming.

— Novalis

Where no gods are, spectres rule.

— Novalis

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

— Novalis

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

— Novalis

Knowledge is only one half. Faith is the other.

— Novalis

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.

— 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

Learning is pleasurable but doing is the height of enjoyment.

— Novalis

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

— Novalis

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

— Novalis

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

— Novalis

A hero is one who knows how to hang on one minute longer.

— Novalis

There are ideal series of events which run parallel with the real ones. They rarely coincide. Men and circumstances generally modify the ideal train of events, so that it seems imperfect, and its consequences are equally imperfect. Thus with the Reformation; instead of Protestantism came Lutheranism.

— Novalis

Fate and temperament are the names of a concept.

— Novalis

I was still blind, but twinkling stars did dance I found myself, a mere suggestion sensed in past and future ages.

— Novalis

Blood will stream over Europe until the nations become aware of the frightful madness which drives them in circles. And then, struck by celestial music and made gentle, they approach their former altars all together, hear about the works of peace, and hold a great celebration of peace with fervent tears before the smoking altars.

— Novalis

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.

— Novalis

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

— Novalis

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.

— Novalis

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.

— Novalis

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

— Novalis

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

— Novalis

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

— Novalis

The poem of the understanding is philosophy.

— Novalis

Friends, the soil is poor, we must sow seeds in plenty for us to garner even modest harvests.

— Novalis

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

— 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

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.

— Novalis

Self-alienation is the source of all degradation as well as, on the contrary, the basis of all true elevation. The first step will be a look inward, an isolating contemplation of our self. Whoever remains standing here proceeds only halfway. The second step must be an active look outward, an autonomous, determined observation of the outer world.

— Novalis

We are on a mission: we are called to the cultivation of the earth.

— Novalis

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

— Novalis

Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise.

— 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

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

— Novalis

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

— 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

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

Where children are, there is a golden age.

— Novalis

Many counterrevolutionary books have been written in favor of the Revolution. But Burke has written a revolutionary book against the Revolution.

— 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

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

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!

— Novalis

Man is a sun and his senses are the planets.

— 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

No explanation is required for Holy Writing. Whoso speaks truly is full of eternal life, and wonderfully related to genuine mysteries does his Writing appear to us, for it is a Concord from the Symphony of the Universe.

— Novalis

Surely this voice meant our Teacher; for it is he that can collect the indications which lie scattered on all sides. A singular light kindles in his looks, when at length the high Rune lies before us, and he watches in our eyes whether the star has yet risen upon us, which is to make the Figure visible and intelligible.

— Novalis

I shall in no time forget that moment. We felt as if we had had in our souls a clear passing glimpse into this wondrous World.

— Novalis

Nature too remains, so far as we have yet come, ever a frightful Machine of Death: everywhere monstrous revolution, inexplicable vortices of movement; a kingdom of Devouring, of the maddest tyranny; a baleful Immense: the few light-points disclose but a so much the more appalling Night, and terrors of all sorts must palsy every observer.

— Novalis

Someone arrived there — who lifted the veil of the goddess, at Sais. — But what did he see? He saw — wonder of wonders — himself.

— Novalis

Philosophy can bake no bread; but she can procure for us God, Freedom, Immortality. Which, then, is more practical, Philosophy or Economy?

— Novalis

We are near awakening when we dream that we dream.

— Novalis

We are near waking when we dream we are dreaming.

— Novalis

The true philosophical Act is annihilation of self (Selbsttodtung); this is the real beginning of all Philosophy; all requisites for being a Disciple of Philosophy point hither. This Act alone corresponds to all the conditions and characteristics of transcendental conduct.

— Novalis

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

— Novalis

Man is the higher Sense of our Planet; the star which connects it with the upper world; the eye which it turns towards Heaven.

— Novalis

Life is a disease of the spirit; a working incited by Passion. Rest is peculiar to the spirit.

— Novalis

Our life is no Dream, but it may and will perhaps become one.

— Novalis

What is Nature? An encyclopedical, systematic Index or Plan of our Spirit. Why will we content us with the mere catalogue of our Treasures? Let us contemplate them ourselves, and in all ways elaborate and use them.

— Novalis

If our Bodily Life is a burning, our Spiritual Life is a being burnt, a Combustion (or, is precisely the inverse the case?); Death, therefore, perhaps a Change of Capacity.

— Novalis

Sleep is for the inhabitants of Planets only. In another time, Man will sleep and wake continually at once. The greater part of our Body, of our Humanity itself, yet sleeps a deep sleep.

— 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

Man is a Sun; his Senses are the Planets.

— Novalis

Man has ever expressed some symbolical Philosophy of his Being in his Works and Conduct; he announces himself and his Gospel of Nature; he is the Messiah of Nature.

— Novalis

Plants are Children of the Earth; we are Children of the Æther. Our Lungs are properly our Root; we live, when we breathe; we begin our life with breathing.

— Novalis

Nature is an Æolian Harp, a musical instrument; whose tones again are keys to higher strings in us.

— Novalis

The first Man is the first Spirit-seer; all appears to him as Spirit. What are children, but first men? The fresh gaze of the Child is richer in significance than the forecasting of the most indubitable Seer.

— Novalis

It depends only on the weakness of our organs and of our self-excitement (Selbstberuhrung), that we do not see ourselves in a Fairy-world. All Fabulous Tales (Mahrchen) are merely dreams of that home world, which is everywhere and nowhere. The higher powers in us, which one day as Genies, shall fulfil our will, are, for the present, Muses, which refresh us on our toilsome course with sweet remembrances.

— Novalis

Man consists in Truth. If he exposes Truth, he exposes himself. If he betrays Truth, he betrays himself. We speak not here of lies, but of acting against Conviction.

— Novalis

A character is a completely fashioned will. (vollkommen gebildeter Wille).

— Novalis

There is, properly speaking, no Misfortune in the world. Happiness and Misfortune stand in continual balance. Every Misfortune is, as it were, the obstruction of a stream, which, after overcoming this obstruction, but bursts through with the greater force.

— Novalis

The ideal of Morality has no more dangerous rival than the ideal of highest Strength, of most powerful life; which also has been named (very falsely as it was there meant) the ideal of poetic greatness. It is the maximum of the savage; and has, in these times, gained, precisely among the greatest weaklings, very many proselytes. By this ideal, man becomes a Beast-Spirit, a Mixture; whose brutal wit has, for weaklings, a brutal power of attraction.

— Novalis

The spirit of Poesy is the morning light, which makes the Statue of Memnon sound.

— Novalis

The division of Philosopher and Poet is only apparent, and to the disadvantage of both. It is a sign of disease, and of a sickly constitution.

— Novalis

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

— Novalis

Goethe is an altogether practical Poet. He is in his works what the English are in their wares: highly simple, neat, convenient and durable. He has done in German Literature what Wedgwood did in English Manufacture. He has, like the English, a natural turn for Economy, and a noble Taste acquired by Understanding. Both these are very compatible, and have a near affinity in the chemical sense.

— Novalis

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

— Novalis

Knowledge is only one half. Faith is the other.

— Novalis