Novalis

A certain degree of solitude seems necessary to the full growth and spread of the highest mind; and therefore must a very…

— Novalis

One can not understand language because language cannot understand itself; does not want to understand

— Novalis

The world must be romanticized. In this way the originary meaning may be found again.

— Novalis

“Though the heroes and their fates are inventions, yet the spirit in which they are composed is true and natural.”

— Novalis

“The more narrow-minded a system is the more it will please worldly-wise people. Thus the system of the materialists, the doctrine of…

— Novalis

“And now I awaken, for I am both yours and mine.”

— Novalis

Man is lyrical, woman epic, marriage dramatic.

— Novalis

Accident is simply unforeseen order.

— Novalis

A character is a completely fashioned will.

— Novalis

Genius in general is poetic. Where genius has been active it has been poetically active. The truly moral person is a poet.

— Novalis

Before abstraction everything is one, but one like chaos; after abstraction everything is united again, but this union is a free binding…

— Novalis

One should, when overwhelmed by the shadow of a giant, move aside and see if the colossal shadow isn't merely that of…

— Novalis

The poem of the understanding is philosophy.

— Novalis

Where no gods are, spectres rule.

— Novalis

How do we see physically? No differently that we do in our consciousness - by means of the productive power of imagination.…

— Novalis

“Almost all genius up to now was one-sided—the result of a sickly constitution. One type had too much sense of the external,…

— Novalis

“Apparently, we go forward.”

— Novalis

The art of writing books is not yet invented. But it is at the point of being invented. Fragments of this nature…

— Novalis

“Light had its allotted time; but timeless and infinite is the reign of the night − the duration of sleep eternal.”

— Novalis

Friendship, love, and piety ought to be handled with a sort of mysterious secrecy; they ought to be spoken of only in…

— Novalis

Play is experimenting with chance.

— Novalis

Character and fate are two words for the same thing

— Novalis

“Sacrifice of the self is the source of all humiliation, as also on the contrary is the foundation of all true exaltation.…

— Novalis

“Aside I turn to the holy, unspeakable, mysterious Night. Afar lies the world -- sunk in a deep grave -- waste and…

— Novalis

Most observers of the French Revolution, especially the clever and noble ones, have explained it as a life-threatening and contagious illness. They…

— Novalis