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Home  »  Dictionary of Quotations  »  Novalis

James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.

Novalis

A character is a completely-fashioned will.

A child is a Cupid become visible.

All power appears only in transition.

Character is a perfectly educated will.

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

Every beloved object is the centre of a paradise.

Gott-trunkener Mensch—A god-intoxicated man.Of Spinoza.

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

Is not belief the true God-announcing miracle?

It is a fair and holy office to be a prophet of Nature.

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

Learning is pleasurable, but doing is the height of enjoyment.

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

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.

Man is a sun; his senses are the planets.

Man is the higher sense of our planet, the star which connects it with the upper world, the eye which it turns towards heaven.

Man is the Messiah of Nature.

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

My opinion, my conviction, gains infinitely in strength and sureness the moment a second mind has adopted it.

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

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.

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

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

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.

Plants are children of the earth; we are children of the ether. Our lungs are properly our root; we live when we breathe: we begin our life with breathing.

Religion contains infinite sadness. If we are to love God, he must be in distress (lit. in need of help).See Matt. xxvii. 46

Shame is a feeling of profanation.

Spinoza was a God-intoxicated man (Gott-getrunkener Mensch).

The Christian religion is especially remarkable, as it so decidedly lays claim to mere goodwill in man, to his essential temper, and values this independently of all culture and manifestation. It stands in opposition to science and art, and properly to enjoyment.

The fresh gaze of a child is richer in significance than the forecasting of the most indubitable seer.

The highest problem of literature is the writing of a Bible.

The history of every man should be a Bible.

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

The more sinful a man feels himself, the more Christian he is.

The Muses (daughters of Memory) refresh us in our toilsome course with sweet remembrances.

The spirit of poesy is the morning light, which makes the statue of Memnon sound.

The true philosophical act is annihilation of self; this is the real beginning of all philosophy; all requisites for being a disciple of philosophy point hither.

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.

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 forth with the greater force.

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

We are near awakening when we dream that we dream.

Wenn alle untreu werden, / So bleib’ ich dir doch treu—Though all deny thee, yet will not I ever.