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Novalis
34 quotes
“Unser Leben ist kein Traum, aber es soll und wird vielleicht einer werden.”
Novalis (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Novalis Schriften, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1805) vol. 2, Fragmente, I, p. 188. Translated in George MacDonald, Lilith (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co, 1895) ch. 47, p. 351
“Es giebt eine Reihe idealischer Begebenheiten, die der Wirklichkeit parallel läuft. Selten fallen sie zusammen. Menschen und Zufälle modificiren gewöhnlich die idealische Begebenheit, so dass sie unvollkommen erscheint, und ihre Folgen gleiche falls unvollkommen sind. So bei der Reformation; stat des Protestantismus kam das Lutherthum hervor.”
Novalis (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted as epigraph in Poe's "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" (1842). Adapted from Sarah Austin's Fragments from German Prose Writers (1841)
“Schicksal und Gemüt sind Namen eines Begriffs.”
Novalis (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fate and temperament are two words for one and the same concept." Translated by Michael Roloff and Michael Lebeck (1965).
“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.”
Novalis (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Géza von Molnár, Romantic Vision, Ethical Context: Novalis and Artistic Autonomy (1987) p. 2
“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 (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only the most perfect human being can design the most perfect philosophy.”
Novalis (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every stage of education begins with childhood. That is why the most educated person on earth so much resembles a child.”
Novalis (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Miscellaneous Observations", Philosophical Writings, M. Stolijar, trans. (Albany: 1997) #48
“Philosophy ... bears witness to the deepest love of reflection, to absolute delight in wisdom.”
Novalis (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Logological Fragments", Philosophical Writings, M. Stolijar, trans. (Albany: 1997) #12
“The poem of the understanding is philosophy.”
Novalis (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Logological Fragments", Philosophical Writings, M. Stolijar, trans. (Albany: 1997) #24
“Die Möglichkeit aller Philosophie ... dass sich die Intelligenz durch Selbstberührung eine Selbstgesezmäßige Bewegung - d.i. eine eigne Form der Tätigkeit gibt.”
Novalis (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Schriften, p. 63, as translated by Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings: Volume 1, 1913-1926 (1996), p. 133
“Friends, the soil is poor, we must sow seeds in plenty for us to garner even modest harvests.”
Novalis (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everywhere we seek the Absolute, and always we find only things.”
Novalis (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Frederick C. Beiser, "Bildung in Early German Romanticism", Amélie Rorty (ed.) Philosophers on Education: Historical Perspectives (1998) p. 294
“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 (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are on a mission: we are called to the cultivation of the earth.”
Novalis (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise.”
Novalis (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Thomas Carlyle, "Novalis", Foreign Review, no. 7 (1829)
“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 (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poets and priests were one in the beginning, and they only separated in later times. But the real poet is always a priest, just as the real priest always remains a poet.”
Novalis (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing is more indispensable to true religiosity than a mediator that links us with divinity.”
Novalis (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Building worlds is not enough for the deeper urging mind; but a loving heart sates the striving spirit.”
Novalis (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Where children are, there is a golden age.”
Novalis (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Many counterrevolutionary books have been written in favor of the Revolution. But Burke has written a revolutionary book against the Revolution.”
Novalis (1772–1801) first seen 1790 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
“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 (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Die Liebe wirkt magisch. Sie ist der Endzweck der Weltgeschichte, das Amen des Universums.”
Novalis (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As translated by W. Hastie in Thoughts on Religion, Pt. 1, "Hymns and Thoughts on Religion" (1888), edited by W. Hastie
“Das höchste Leben ist Mathematik.”
Novalis (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reine Mathematik ist Religion.”
Novalis (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man is a sun and his senses are the planets.”
Novalis (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1772–1801) said by 1801 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source