Novalis Quotes (102 quotes, page 2) | Quotes of famous people

“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

Fichte Studies § 556

Heart

“Everywhere we seek the Absolute, and always we find only things.”

Novalis book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 1; Variant: We seek the absolute everywhere and only ever find things.
Blüthenstaub (1798)

“The division of Philosopher and Poet is only apparent, and to the disadvantage of both. It is a sign of disease, and of a sickly constitution.”

Novalis

Novalis (1829)

Disease

“Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship may be called throughout prosaic and modern. The Romantic sinks to ruin, the Poesy of Nature, the Wonderful. The Book treats merely of common worldly things: Nature and Mysticism are altogether forgotten. It is a poetised civic and household History; the Marvellous is expressly treated therein as imagination and enthusiasm. Artistic Atheism is the spirit of the Book. … It is properly a Candide, directed against Poetry: the Book is highly unpoetical in respect of spirit, poetical as the dress and body of it are.”

Novalis

Ralph Waldo Emerson in "Goethe; or, the Writer" writes of this passage, and quotes a slightly different translation: The ardent and holy Novalis characterized the book as "thoroughly modern and prosaic; the romantic is completely levelled in it; so is the poetry of nature; the wonderful. The book treats only of the ordinary affairs of men: it is a poeticized civic and domestic story. The wonderful in it is expressly treated as fiction and enthusiastic dreaming:" — and yet, what is also characteristic, Novalis soon returned to this book, and it remained his favorite reading to the end of his life.
Novalis (1829)

Books , Imagination , History , Nature

“Pure mathematics is religion.”

Novalis book Blüthenstaub

Reine Mathematik ist Religion.
Blüthenstaub (1798), Unsequenced

Religion , Mathematics

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

Novalis

Novalis here alludes to Plutarch's account of the shrine of the goddess Minerva, identified with Isis, at Sais, which he reports had the inscription "I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be; and my veil no mortal has hitherto raised."
Pupils at Sais (1799)

“We are on a mission: we are called to the cultivation of the earth.”

Novalis book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 32; Variant translations: We are on a mission.We are called to form the earth.
We are on a mission.We are called to educate the earth.
Blüthenstaub (1798)

“Man is a sun and his senses are the planets.”

Novalis book Blüthenstaub

Blüthenstaub (1798), Unsequenced
Variant: Man is a sun and his senses are the planets.

Sense , Sun

“Surely this voice meant our Teacher; for it is he that can collect the indications which lie scattered on all sides. A singular light kindles in his looks, when at length the high Rune lies before us, and he watches in our eyes whether the star has yet risen upon us, which is to make the Figure visible and intelligible.”

Novalis

Pupils at Sais (1799)

Lie , Star , Intelligence , Light

“Where children are, there is a golden age.”

Novalis book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 97
Blüthenstaub (1798)

Children , Age

“Man is the higher Sense of our Planet; the star which connects it with the upper world; the eye which it turns towards Heaven.”

Novalis

Novalis (1829)

World , Star , Sense

“The poem of the understanding is philosophy.”

Novalis

“Logological Fragments,” Philosophical Writings, M. Stolijar, trans. (Albany: 1997) #24

Understanding

“The rude, discursive Thinker is the Scholastic (Schoolman Logician). The true Scholastic is a mystical Subtlist; out of logical Atoms he builds his Universe; he annihilates all living Nature, to put an Artifice of Thoughts (Gedankenkunststuck, literally Conjuror's-trick of Thoughts) in its room. His aim is an infinite Automaton. Opposite to him is the rude, intuitive Poet: this is a mystical Macrologist: he hates rules and fixed form; a wild, violent life reigns instead of it in Nature; all is animate, no law; wilfulness and wonder everywhere. He is merely dynamical. Thus does the Philosophic Spirit arise at first, in altogether separate masses. In the second stage of culture these masses begin to come in contact, multifariously enough; and, as in the union of infinite Extremes, the Finite, the Limited arises, so here also arise "Eclectic Philosophers" without number; the time of misunderstanding begins. The most limited is, in this stage, the most important, the purest Philosopher of the second stage. This class occupies itself wholly with the actual, present world, in the strictest sense. The Philosophers of the first class look down with contempt on those of the second; say, they are a little of everything, and so nothing; hold their views as the results of weakness, as Inconsequentism. On the contrary, the second class, in their turn, pity the first; lay the blame on their visionary enthusiasm, which they say is absurd, even to insanity.”

Novalis

Pupils at Sais (1799)

Life , Hate , World , Law

“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 book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 109
Blüthenstaub (1798)

Past , Future

“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 book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 96
Blüthenstaub (1798)

World , Nature

“Fate and temperament are the names of a concept.”

Novalis

As quoted in Demian (1972) by Hermann Hesse, trans. W.J. Strachan

Fate

“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.”

Novalis

Wahrhafte Anarchie ist das Zeugungselement der Religion. Aus der Vernichtung alles Positiven hebt sie ihr glorreiches Haupt als neue Weltstifterin empor...
English translation as quoted in The Dublin Review Vol. III (July-October 1837); The original German is quoted http://www.jlrweb.com/whiterose/leaffourger.html from the Fourth Leaflet http://www.jlrweb.com/whiterose/leaffoureng.html of the White Rose (1942)
Variant translation: True anarchy is the generative element of religion. Out of the annihilation of every positive element she lifts her gloriously radiant countenance as the founder of a new world.

World , Religion

“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 book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 105
Blüthenstaub (1798)

Life , Way

“Philosophy … bears witness to the deepest love of reflection, to absolute delight in wisdom.”

Novalis

“Logological Fragments,” Philosophical Writings, M. Stolijar, trans. (Albany: 1997) #12

Love , Wisdom

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

Novalis

Novalis (1829)

Truth

“Nature is an Æolian Harp, a musical instrument; whose tones again are keys to higher strings in us.”

Novalis

Novalis (1829)

Music , Nature

“Only the most perfect human being can design the most perfect philosophy.”

Novalis

Fichte Studies § 651

Perfection

“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 book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 62
Blüthenstaub (1798)

Life , Water , Science

“Nature too remains, so far as we have yet come, ever a frightful Machine of Death: everywhere monstrous revolution, inexplicable vortices of movement; a kingdom of Devouring, of the maddest tyranny; a baleful Immense: the few light-points disclose but a so much the more appalling Night, and terrors of all sorts must palsy every observer.”

Novalis

Pupils at Sais (1799)

Death , Nature , Light , Night

“The spirit of Poesy is the morning light, which makes the Statue of Memnon sound.”

Novalis

Novalis (1829)

Light

“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 book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 88
Blüthenstaub (1798)

Men , World , Idea

“The possibility of all philosophy … namely, that the intelligence, by affecting itself, gives itself a movement in accordance with its own law — that is, gives itself a form of activity all its own.”

Novalis

Die Möglichkeit aller Philosophie ... dass sich die Intelligenz durch Selbstberührung eine Selbstgesezmäßige Bewegung - d.i. eine eigne Form der Tätigkeit gibt.
Schriften, p. 63, as translated in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings: Volume 1, 1913-1926 (1996), p. 133

Law , Intelligence

“Common Logic is the Grammar of the higher Speech, that is, of Thought; it examines merely the relations of ideas to one another, the Mechanics of Thought, the pure Physiology of ideas. Now logical ideas stand related to one another, like words without thoughts. Logic occupies itself with the mere dead Body of the Science of Thinking.”

Novalis

Metaphysics, again, is the Dynamics of Thought; treats of the primary Powers of Thought; occupies itself with the mere Soul of the Science of Thinking. Metaphysical ideas stand related to one another, like thoughts without words. Men often wondered at the stubborn Incompletibility of these two Sciences; each followed its own business by itself; there was a want everywhere, nothing would suit rightly with either. From the very first, attempts were made to unite them, as everything about them indicated relationship; but every attempt failed; the one or the other Science still suffered in these attempts, and lost its essential character. We had to abide by metaphysical Logic, and logical Metaphysic, but neither of them was as it should be.
Pupils at Sais (1799)

Dead , Thinking , Relation ships , Idea

“Someone arrived there — who lifted the veil of the goddess, at Sais.”

Novalis

But what did he see? He saw — wonder of wonders — himself.
Novalis here alludes to Plutarch's account of the shrine of the goddess Minerva, identified with Isis, at Sais, which he reports had the inscription "I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be; and my veil no mortal has hitherto raised."
Pupils at Sais (1799)

“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.””

Novalis

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.
Fichte Studies § 556

Heart

“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 book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 71
Blüthenstaub (1798)

Time