Novalis Quotes

Holy sleep, do not so seldom bring happiness to the night’s beloved in this earthly labour of the day.

The waking man looks without fear at this offspring of his lawless Imagination; for he knows that they are but vain Spectres of his weakness. He feels himself lord of the world: his me hovers victorious over the Abyss; and will through Eternities hover aloft above that endless Vicissitude. Harmony is what his spirit strives to promulgate, to extend. He will even to infinitude grow more and more harmonious with himself and with his Creation; and at every step behold the all-efficiency of a high moral Order in the Universe, and what is purest of his Me come forth into brighter and brighter clearness. This significance of the World is Reason; for her sake is the World here; and when it is grown to be the arena of a childlike, expanding Reason, it will one day become the divine Image of her Activity, the scene of a genuine Church. Till then let man honour Nature as the Emblem of his own Spirit; the Emblem ennobling itself, along with him, to unlimited degrees. Let him, therefore, who would arrive at knowledge of Nature, train his moral sense, let him act and conceive in accordance with the noble Essence of his Soul; and as if of herself Nature will become open to him. Moral Action is that great and only Experiment, in which all riddles of the most manifold appearances explain themselves. Whoso understands it, and in rigid sequence of Thought can lay it open, is forever master of Nature.

La esencia de la enfermedad es tan oscura como la de la vida.

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

Someone arrived there — who lifted the veil of the goddess, at Sais. — But what did he see? He saw — wonder of wonders — himself.

من يهرب من الألم ، لن يُحبّ . على العاشق أن يترك الجراحَ مفتوحة.

الفلسفةُ حنينٌ إلى الوطن ، ونزعةٌ إلى أن نكون في كلّ مكانٍ ، كما لو في البيت.

I am a profoundly anti-juridical man. . . . I have neither any sense of law or need for law.

The whole of the visible is incorporated in the invisible and the audible in the inaudible, and the tangible in the intangible. There is no doubt that everything that can be thought about is incorporated into everything that cannot be thought about.

What delights, what pleasures does your life offer you that outweigh the raptures of death?

Wer Schmetterlinge lachen hört, der weiß wie Wolken schmecken.

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.

No explanation is required for Holy Writing. Whoso speaks truly is full of eternal life, and wonderfully related to genuine mysteries does his Writing appear to us, for it is a Concord from the Symphony of the Universe.

Is not our body in itself nothing but a common central effect of our senses — if we have mastery over our senses — if we are able to transform them into activity at will — to center them at a common point, then it only depends on us — to give ourselves the body we want.

Indeed, in our senses are nothing other than modifications of the mental organ — of the absolute element — then with mastery over this element we shall also be able to modify and direct our senses as we please.

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.