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
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 Poet, Literary Critic