Novalis Quotes - Page 2

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.

Man is lyrical, woman epic, marriage dramatic.

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

Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise.

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

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.

Character and fate are two words for the same thing

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

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

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

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.

We are near waking when we dream we are dreaming.

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.

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.

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.

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

Many things are too delicate to be thought; many more, to be spoken.

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

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.

Sometimes with the most intense pain a paralysis of sensibility occurs. The soul disintegrates--hence the deadly frost--the free power of the mind--the shattering, ceaseless wit of this kind of despair. There is no inclination for anything any more--the person is alone, like a baleful power--as he has no connection with the rest of the world he consumes himself gradually--and in accordance with his own principle he is--misanthropic and misotheos.

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.

Not only England, but every Englishman is an island.

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.

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.