Best 86 quotes of Novalis on MyQuotes

Accident is simply unforeseen order.

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.

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

A God-intoxicated man. [Ger., Gott-trunkener Mensch.]

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

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.

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.

Character and fate are two words for the same thing

Character is a perfectly educated will.

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.

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.

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

Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise.

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

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.

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

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

Fate and temperament are the names of a concept.

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.

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

Genius in general is poetic. Where genius has been active it has been poetically active. The truly moral person is a poet.

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.

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.

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.

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.

In a work of art, chaos must shimmer through the veil of order.

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.

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

It is not merely the multiplicity of tints, the gladness of tone, or the balminess of the air which delight in the spring; it is the still consecrated spirit of hope, the prophecy of happy days yet to come; the endless variety of nature, with presentiments of eternal flowers which never shall fade, and sympathy with the blessedness of the ever-developing world.

I was still blind, but twinkling stars did dance Throughout my being's limitless expanse, Nothing had yet drawn close, only at distant stages I found myself, a mere suggestion sensed in past and future ages.

Learning is pleasurable but doing is the height of enjoyment.

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.

Love is the final end of the world's history, the Amen of the universe.

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.

Man is a sun and his senses are the planets.

Man is lyrical, woman epic, marriage dramatic.

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

Mathematics is the Life of the 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.

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.

Nature is an aeolian harp, a musical instrument whose tones are the re-echo of higher strings within us.

Nature is a petrified magic city.

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

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.

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

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

Our bodies are molded rivers.

Perceptibility is a kind of attentiveness.

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