Novalis > Quotes

“Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.”
― Novalis

“Philosophy is really nostalgia, the desire to be at home.”
― Novalis

“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.”
― Novalis

“Life must not be a novel that is given to us, but one that is made by us. ”
― Novalis, Philosophical Writings

“Where are we really going? Always home.”
― Novalis

“In a work of art, chaos must shimmer through the veil of order.”
― Novalis

“A hero is one who knows how to hang on one minute longer.”
― Novalis

“Philosophy is really homesickness: the urge to be at home everywhere.”
― Novalis

“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.”
― Novalis, Philosophical Writings

“Every disease is a musical problem; every cure is a musical solution.”
― Novalis

“We are close to waking when we dream that we are dreaming.”
― Novalis, Philosophical Writings

“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.”
― Novalis

“Our life is no dream, but it should and will perhaps become one.”
― Novalis

“Knowledge is only one half. Faith is the other.”
― Novalis

“The artist stands on the human being as a statue does on a pedestal. ”
― novalis, Philosophical Writings

“The imagination places the world of the future either far above us, or far below, or in a relation of metempsychosis to ourselves. We dream of traveling through the universe—but is not the universe within ourselves? The depths of our spirit are unknown to us—the mysterious way leads inwards. Eternity with its worlds—the past and future—is in ourselves or nowhere. The external world is the world of shadows—it throws its shadow into the realm of light. At present this realm certainly seems to us so dark inside, lonely, shapeless. But how entirely different it will seem to us—when this gloom is past, and the body of shadows has moved away. We will experience greater enjoyment than ever, for our spirit has been deprived.”
― Novalis, Philosophical Writings

“Oh draw at my heart, love,
Draw till I'm gone,
That, fallen asleep, I
Still may love on.
I feel the flow of
Death's youth-giving flood
To balsam and ether
Transform my blood --
I live all the daytime
In faith and in might
And in holy fire
I die every night.”
― Novalis, Hymns to the Night

“Humanity is a comic role. ”
― Novalis , Philosophical Writings

“The world must be romanticized. Only in that way will one rediscover its original senses. Romanticization is nothing less than a qualitative raising of the power of a thing . . . I romanticize something when I give the commonplace a higher meaning, the known the dignity of the unknown, and the finite the appearance of the infinite.”
― Novalis

“And now I awaken, for I am both yours and mine.”
― Novalis, Hymns to the Night

“Play is experimenting with chance.”
― Novalis

“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, Pollen and Fragments: Selected Poetry and Prose

“One can not understand language because language cannot understand itself; does not want to understand”
― Novalis

“Every individual is the center of a system of emanation.”
― Novalis, Philosophical Writings

“But even more heavenly than the flashing
stars are those infinite eyes which the night opens within us, and which see further even than the palest of those
innumerable hosts.”
― Novalis, Hymns to the Night

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

“To philosophize means to make vivid.”
― Novalis

“How can a person have a sense of something if he does not have the germ of it within himself. What I am to understand must develop organically within me--and what I seem to learn is only nourishment--stimulation of the organism.”
― Novalis

“I turn away from the light to the holy, inexpressible, mysterious night. Far away lies the world − sunk into a
deep vault, its place waste and lonely. Across my heart strings a low melancholy plays. I will fall in drops of dew and merge with the ashes. Distant memories, the wishes of youth, the dreams of childhood, the brief joys and vain hopes of a long life – all arise dressed in grey, like evening mist after sunset. In other lands light has
pitched its merry tents. And if it never returned to its children, who would await its dawning with the innocence of faith?”
― Novalis, Hymns to the Night

“Love works magic.
It is the final purpose
of the world story,
the Amen of the universe.”
― Novalis