Quotes from book
Blüthenstaub

Name: Blüthenstaub
Author: Novalis

Novalis

“Nothing is more indispensable to true religiosity than a mediator that links us with divinity.”

Novalis book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 74
Blüthenstaub (1798)

“Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise.”

Novalis book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 51; Jeder geliebte Gegenstand ist der Mittelpunkt eines Paradieses.
Variant translations:
Every beloved object is the centre of a Paradise.
As quoted by Thomas Carlyle in "Novalis" (1829)
Every beloved object is the midpoint to paradise.
Blüthenstaub (1798)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

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

Novalis book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 97
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.

“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)

“Self-alienation is the source of all degradation as well as, on the contrary, the basis of all true elevation. The first step will be a look inward, an isolating contemplation of our self. Whoever remains standing here proceeds only halfway. The second step must be an active look outward, an autonomous, determined observation of the outer world.”

Novalis book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 24 Variant translation: The first step is to look within, the discriminating contemplation of the self. He who remains at this point only half develops. The second step must be a telling look without, independent, sustained contemplation of the external world.
Blüthenstaub (1798)

“The highest life is mathematics.”

Novalis book Blüthenstaub

Das höchste Leben ist Mathematik.
Blüthenstaub (1798), Unsequenced

“Pure mathematics is religion.”

Novalis book Blüthenstaub

Reine Mathematik ist Religion.
Blüthenstaub (1798), Unsequenced

“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)

“Friends, the soil is poor, we must sow seeds in plenty for us to garner even modest harvests.”

Novalis book Blüthenstaub

Motto
Blüthenstaub (1798)

“Building worlds is not enough for the deeper urging mind; but a loving heart sates the striving spirit.”

Novalis book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 91
Blüthenstaub (1798)

“Many counterrevolutionary books have been written in favor of the Revolution. But Burke has written a revolutionary book against the Revolution.”

Novalis book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 104; on Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).
Blüthenstaub (1798)

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

Novalis book Blüthenstaub

Die Liebe wirkt magisch.
Sie ist der Endzweck
der Weltgeschichte,
das Amen des Universums.
Variant translations:
Love is the final end of the world's history, the Amen of the universe.
As translated by W. Hastie in Thoughts on Religion, Pt. 1, "Hymns and Thoughts on Religion" (1888), edited by W. Hastie
Love is the final purpose of world history — the Amen of the universe.
Love works magically...
Love causes magic...
Blüthenstaub (1798), Unsequenced

“Language is the dynamics of the spiritual realm. One word of command moves armies; the word Liberty entire nations.”

Novalis book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 2
Blüthenstaub (1798)
Context: Denotation by means of sounds and markings is a remarkable abstraction. Three letters designate God for me; several lines a million things. How easy becomes the manipulation of the universe here, how evident the concentration of the intellectual world! Language is the dynamics of the spiritual realm. One word of command moves armies; the word Liberty entire nations.