Novalis Quotes

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.

Where are we really going? Always home.

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Accident is simply unforeseen order.

You are alone with everything you love.

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

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

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

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.

Learning is pleasurable but doing is the height of enjoyment.

To get to know a truth properly, one must polemicize it.

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

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

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.

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 badge of honesty is simplicity.