Inspirational Quotes by Novalis (German Romantic Poet)

Inspirational Quotations by Novalis (German Romantic Poet)

Novalis (1772–1801,) pseudonym of Friedrich Leopold, Freiherr von (baron of) Hardenberg, was an early German Romantic poet and novelist. This “Prophet of Romanticism” was the leading poet and imaginative writer of the early German Romantic Movement. His poetry, along with his prose writings, voices a mystical fervor in the symbolic meaning and unity of life.

Born of an aristocratic Moravian family in Wiederstedt, Saxony, Novalis was educated at the universities of Jena, Leipzig (where he made friends with the British philosopher Friedrich Schiller and the aesthetician Friedrich Schlegel,) and Wittenberg. Novalis was engaged to 13-year-old Sophie von Kühn, who died of tuberculosis in 1797. Her death distressed him deeply, and, in her memory, he wrote the prose lyrics of Hymnen an die Nacht (1800; Hymns to the Night, 1948.)

Novalis also published Geistliche lieder (1799; Devotional Songs, 1910.) He left two philosophical romances, both unfinished, Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1802) and Die Lehrlinge zu Sais (1802, ‘The Apprentices at Sais.’)

Novalis’s essay Die Christenheit oder Europa (1799, ‘Christendom or Europe’) appeals for a universal Christian church to reinstate a Europe whose medieval cultural, social, and intellectual unity had been damaged by the Reformation and the Enlightenment.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Novalis

To know a truth well, one must have fought it out.
—Novalis

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

Where children are, there is the golden age.
—Novalis
Topics: Children

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

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

My opinion, my conviction, gains immensely in strength and sureness the minute a second mind as adopted it.
—Novalis
Topics: Opinions, Agreement

Nature is an AEolian harp, a musical instrument, whose tones are the reecho of higher strings within us.
—Novalis
Topics: Nature

The highest purpose of intellectual cultivation is to give a man a perfect knowledge and mastery of his own inner self.
—Novalis
Topics: Knowledge

A character is a completely fashioned will.
—Novalis
Topics: Character

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: The Body, Humanity

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: One liners, Marriage, Meditation

Christianity is the root of all democracy, the highest fact in the rights of men.
—Novalis
Topics: Christianity, Christians

The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist.
—Novalis
Topics: The Artist

Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.
—Novalis
Topics: Artists, Arts, Art

Character is a perfectly educated will.
—Novalis

Learning is pleasurable but doing is the height of enjoyment.
—Novalis
Topics: Enjoyment, Learning

I often feel, and ever more deeply I realize, that fate and character are the same conception.
—Novalis
Topics: Fate

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

We are near waking when we dream we are dreaming.
—Novalis
Topics: Dreams

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.
—Novalis
Topics: Poetry

Character is perfectly educated will.
—Novalis
Topics: Character

No one who has not a complete knowledge of himself will ever have a true understanding of another.
—Novalis
Topics: Self-Knowledge