Novalis
The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist.Collection: Art
Knowledge is only one half. Faith is the other.Collection: Knowledge
We are near waking when we dream we are dreaming.Collection: Dreams
Nature is a petrified magic city.Collection: Nature
Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.Collection: Poetry
Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.Collection: Life
Learning is pleasurable but doing is the height of enjoyment.Collection: Learning
A hero is one who knows how to hang on one minute longer.
Where no gods are, spectres rule.
To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.
Christianity is the root of all democracy, the highest fact in the rights of men.
Philosophy is properly home-sickness; the wish to be everywhere at home.
Where children are, there is the golden age.
Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise.
We never completely comprehend ourselves, but we can do far more than comprehend.
Character and fate are two words for the same thing.
We are more closely connected to the invisible than to the visible.
I often feel, and ever more deeply I realize, that fate and character are the same conception.
A character is a completely fashioned will.
Nothing is more indispensable to true religiosity than a mediator that links us with divinity.
Only as far as a man is happily married to himself is he fit for married life and family life in general.
To romanticize the world is to make us aware of the magic, mystery and wonder of the world; it is to educate the senses to see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite.Collection: Magic
Where are we really going? Always home.Collection: Home
The mysterious path goes inward. It is in us, and not anywhere else, where the eternity of the worlds, the past and the future are found.Collection: Past
In a work of art, chaos must shimmer through the veil of order.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Perfect
Love is the final end of the world's history, the Amen of the universe.Collection: Life
Life must not be a novel that is given to us, but one that is made by us.Collection: Made
There is but one temple in the universe, and that is the body of man.Collection: Inspirational
When you understand how to love one thing, then you also understand how to love everything.Collection: Inspirational
Accident is simply unforeseen order.Collection: Order
Nature is an aeolian harp, a musical instrument whose tones are the re-echo of higher strings within us.Collection: Echoes
Imagination places the future world for us either above or below or in reincarnation. We dream of travels throughout the universe: is not the universe within us? We do not know the depths of our spirit. The mysterious path leads within. In us, or nowhere, lies eternity with its worlds, the past and the future.Collection: Dream
All the events of our life are materials of which we can make what we will.Collection: Events
There is but one temple in the world, and that is the body of man. Nothing is holier than this high form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this revelation in the flesh. We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body.Collection: Men
In cheerful souls there is no wit. Wit shows a disturbance of the equipoise.Collection: Soul
Philosophy can bake no bread; but she can procure for us God, Freedom, Immortality. Which, then, is more practical, Philosophy or Economy?Collection: Philosophy
Man is lyrical, woman epic, marriage dramatic.Collection: Epic
Every stage of education begins with childhood. That is why the most educated person on earth so much resembles a child.Collection: Children
Philosophy is really nostalgia, the desire to be at home.Collection: Philosophy
The true Poet is all-knowing; he is an actual world in miniature.Collection: Knowing
Hypotheses are nets: only he who casts will catch.Collection: Hypothesis
Building worlds is not enough for the deeper urging mind; but a loving heart sates the striving spirit.Collection: Heart
We are near awakening when we dream that we dream.Collection: Love
A complete need should not exist... love, life in common with loved ones?Collection: Love
Many books are longer than they seem. They have indeed no end. The boredom that they cause is truly absolute and infinite.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Philosophical
The poem of the understanding is philosophy.Collection: Philosophy
It is not merely the multiplicity of tints, the gladness of tone, or the balminess of the air which delight in the spring; it is the still consecrated spirit of hope, the prophecy of happy days yet to come; the endless variety of nature, with presentiments of eternal flowers which never shall fade, and sympathy with the blessedness of the ever-developing world.Collection: Spring