Quotes from Novalis

While the poets were above all interested in the fluid and fugitive aspects of Nature, others desired, by slogging away with a hatchet and pickax, to discover the interior structure of Nature and the relationship between the separate morsels. The spirit of our friend Nature dissolved in their hands, leaving nothing but throbbing or dead parts.

Up to now our thinking was either purely mechanical - discursive - atomistic - or purely intuitive - dynamic. Perhaps now the time for union has come?

he who has tasted it, who has stood at the watershed of this world and looked across into the new land, into the dwelling of the night ? truly, he will never return to the labours of the world, to the land where the light is housed in ceaseless unrest.

I live all the daytime In faith and in might And in holy fire I die every night.

There are ideal series of events which run parallel with the real ones. They rarely coincide.

Our body is a moulded river

The most intimate community of all knowledge—the republic of learning is the high purpose of scholars.

Life is the beginning of death. Life is for the sake of death. Death is at once the end and the beginning—at once separation and closer union of the self. Through death the reduction is complete.

What is nature? An encyclopedic systematic index or plan of our spirit. Why should we be content with the mere catalogue of our treasures—let us examine them for ourselves—and work with them and use them in diverse ways.

That which the external world perceives as quite motionless has the appearance of being quite at rest. However much it may change, in relation to the external world it always stays at rest. This principle governs all self-modifications. That is why the beautiful appears so much at rest. Everything beautiful is a self-illuminated, perfect individual.

All the chance events of our lives are materials from which we can make what we like. Whoever is rich in spirit makes much of his life. Every acquaintance, every incident would be for the thoroughly spiritual person—the first element in an endless series—the beginning of an endless novel.

Everything that we experience is a communication . In fact, so is the world too a communication -- the revelation of spirit. The time is gone when the spirit of God was comprehensible to us. The meaning of the world has been lost to us. We have seen only its letters. We have lost that which is appearing behind the appearance.

True anarchy is the generative element of religion. Out of the annihilation of all existing institutions she raises her glorious head, as the new foundress of the world.

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

There is more truth in their romances than in learned chronicles.

Though the heroes and their fates are inventions, yet the spirit in which they are composed is true and natural.

In most religious systems we are regarded as parts of the godhead which, if they do not obey the impulses of the whole, and even if they do not intentionally act against the laws of the whole, but only go their own way and do not want to be parts of it, are medically treated by the godhead—and either endure a painful cure or even are cut off.

Flight from the communal spirit is death!

Novels arise out of the shortcoings of history.

Toda enfermedad puede llamarse enfermedad del alma.

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

Doing philosophy is only a threefold or double kind of waking--being awake--consciousness.

Who does not love to wander at twilight, when the light of day and the deep shades of night mingle together in deep coloring?

The greatest of sorcerers would be the one who would cast a spell on himself to the degree of taking his own phantasmagoria for autonomous apparitions. Might that not be our case?