Novalis Quotes

95 Sourced Quotes

The life of the Gods is mathematics. All divine messengers must be mathematicians. Pure mathematics is religion. Mathematicians are the only fortunate ones. The mathematician is naturally an enthusiast. Without enthusiasm no mathematics.

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All heavenly messengers must be mathematicians.

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Life is the beginning of death. Life is for the sake of death. Death is at once the end and the beginning—at once separation and closer union of the self. Through death the reduction is complete.

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Miracles, as unnatural facts, are unmathematical; but there are no miracles of this kind, and what passes by that name is exactly that which becomes comprehensible through mathematics, tor nothing is wonderful to mathematics.

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The brains -the thinking organs- are the world producers -nature's genitals.

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Theories are like fishing: it is only by casting into unknown waters that you may catch something.

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What seasoning is to food, paradox is to problem.

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Doing philosophy is only a threefold or double kind of waking--being awake--consciousness.

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Plants are Children of the Earth; we are Children of the aether. Our Lungs are properly our Root; we live, when we breathe; we begin our life with breathing.

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The idea of philosophy is a mysterious tradition. Philosophy is, in all, the problem of knowing. It is an undefined Science of the Sciences, a mysticism of the desire for knowledge; it is the very Spirit of the Sciences, and consequently unrepresentable, either in form or application, in the perfect representation of a special science.

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The plants... are the plainest speech of the earth; every new leaf, every remarkable flower is some mystery which is trying to reveal itself, and which remains motionless and dumb only because from very joy and love it can neither move nor speak.

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Was not America discovered through Hypothesis. Long live Hypothesis!

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In music, mathematics appears formally, as revelation, as creative idealism. All enjoyment is musical, consequently mathematical. The highest life is mathematics.

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Many books are longer than they seem. They have indeed no end. The boredom that they cause is truly absolute and infinite.

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There may be mathematicians of the first order who cannot make calculations. A man may be a great calculator, and yet never dream of mathematics.

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The idea of mathematics is the idea of science in general.

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The mathematicians are the only happy ones. He who does not reach for a mathematical book with devotion and read it as the word of God does not understand it.

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Flowers exactly correspond to children... like children they are found lowest down, nearest the earth.

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To get to know a truth properly, one must polemicize it.

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Humanity is the higher meaning of our planet, the nerve that connects this part of it with the upper world, the eye it raises to heaven.

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Over his own heart and his own thoughts he watched attentively. He knew not whither his longing was carrying him.

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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.

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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.

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Goethe is an altogether practical Poet. He is in his works what the English are in their wares: highly simple, neat, convenient and durable. He has done in German Literature what Wedgwood did in English Manufacture. He has, like the English, a natural turn for Economy, and a noble Taste acquired by Understanding. Both these are very compatible, and have a near affinity in the chemical sense.

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There is, properly speaking, no Misfortune in the world. Happiness and Misfortune stand in continual balance. Every Misfortune is, as it were, the obstruction of a stream, which, after overcoming this obstruction, but bursts through with the greater force.

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Man is the higher Sense of our Planet; the star which connects it with the upper world; the eye which it turns towards Heaven.

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We are on a mission: we are called to the cultivation of the earth.

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Denotation by means of sounds and markings is a remarkable abstraction. Three letters designate God for me; several lines a million things. How easy becomes the manipulation of the universe here, how evident the concentration of the intellectual world! Language is the dynamics of the spiritual realm. One word of command moves armies; the word Liberty entire nations.

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I was still blind, but twinkling stars did dance
Throughout my being's limitless expanse,
Nothing had yet drawn close, only at distant stages
I found myself, a mere suggestion sensed in past and future ages.

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The division of Philosopher and Poet is only apparent, and to the disadvantage of both. It is a sign of disease, and of a sickly constitution.

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