Friendship, love, and piety, ought to be handled with a sort of mysterious secrecy.—They ought to be spoken of only in the rare moments of perfect confidence—to be mutually understood in silence.—Many things are too delicate to be thought; many more to be spoken.
—Novalis
No one who has not a complete knowledge of himself will ever have a true understanding of another.
—Novalis
Topics: Self-Knowledge
We are near waking when we dream we are dreaming.
—Novalis
Topics: Dreams
Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.
—Novalis
Topics: Poetry
The highest purpose of intellectual cultivation is to give a man a perfect knowledge and mastery of his own inner self.
—Novalis
Topics: Knowledge
The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist.
—Novalis
Topics: The Artist
I often feel, and ever more deeply I realize, that fate and character are the same conception.
—Novalis
Topics: Fate
Christianity is the root of all democracy, the highest fact in the rights of men.
—Novalis
Topics: Christians, Christianity
To know a truth well, one must have fought it out.
—Novalis
Learning is pleasurable but doing is the height of enjoyment.
—Novalis
Topics: Learning, Enjoyment
Happy those who here on earth have dreamt of a higher vision! They will the sooner be able to endure the glories of the world to come.
—Novalis
My opinion, my conviction, gains immensely in strength and sureness the minute a second mind as adopted it.
—Novalis
Topics: Opinions, Agreement
Character is a perfectly educated will.
—Novalis
Where children are, there is the golden age.
—Novalis
Topics: Children
A certain degree of solitude seems necessary to the full growth and spread of the highest mind; and therefore must a very extensive intercourse with men stifle many a holy germ, and scare away the gods, who shun the restless tumult of noisy companies and the discussion of petty interests.
—Novalis
Topics: Mind
It is certain my belief gains quite infinitely the very moment I can convince another mind thereof.
—Novalis
Topics: Sympathy
There is but one temple in the world, and that is the body of man.—Nothing is holier than this high form.—We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body.
—Novalis
Topics: Humanity, The Body
Nature is an AEolian harp, a musical instrument, whose tones are the reecho of higher strings within us.
—Novalis
Topics: Nature
Only so far as a man is happily married to himself, is he fit for married life to another, and for family life generally.
—Novalis
Topics: Meditation, Marriage, One liners
Character is perfectly educated will.
—Novalis
Topics: Character
A character is a completely fashioned will.
—Novalis
Topics: Character
Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.
—Novalis
Topics: Art, Artists, Arts
Innocence and ignorance are sisters. But there are noble and vulgar sisters. Vulgar innocence and ignorance are mortal, they have pretty faces, but wholly without expression, and of a transient beauty; the noble sisters are immortal, their lofty forms are unchangeable, and their countenances are still radiant with the light of paradise. They dwell in heaven, and visit only the noblest and most severely tried of mankind.
—Novalis
Topics: Innocence
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel German Philosopher
- Friedrich Schiller German Poet
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe German Poet
- Heinrich Heine German Poet, Writer
- August Wilhelm Schlegel German Poet, Critic, Scholar
- Johannes Kepler German Astronomer
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz German Philosopher, Mathematician
- Erich Kastner German Author
- Ernst Moritz Arndt German Writer
- Johann Gottfried Herder German Critic, Poet
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