“I often feel, and ever more deeply I realise, that fate and character are the same conception.”
Filter quotes by topic
Famous Novalis Quotes
“Love works magic. It is the final purpose of the world story, the Amen of the universe.”
“Every Englishman is an island.”
Source: Fragments
Source: Hymns to the Night
Source: Philosophical writings
Source: Novalis: Philosophical Writings
Source: Novalis: Philosophical Writings
“The world must be romanticized. In this way the originary meaning may be found again.”
“Only the most perfect human being can design the most perfect philosophy.”
Source: Novalis: Philosophical Writings
“Philosophy ... bears witness to the deepest love of reflection, to absolute delight in wisdom.”
Source: Novalis: Philosophical Writings
“The poem of the understanding is philosophy.”
Source: Novalis: Philosophical Writings
“Friends, the soil is poor, we must sow seeds in plenty for us to garner even modest harvests.”
“Everywhere we seek the Absolute, and always we find only things.”
“We are on a mission: we are called to the cultivation of the earth .”
“Many things are too delicate to be thought; many more, to be spoken.”
Source: Novalis and the poets of pessimism: with an English translation by James Thomson (
“All power appears only in transition. Permanent power is stuff.”
“Prayer is to religion what thinking is to philosophy. To pray is to make religion.”
“The individual soul should seek for an intimate union with the soul of the universe.”
“In cheerful souls there is no wit. Wit shows a disturbance of the equipoise.”
“Doing philosophy is only a threefold or double kind of waking--being awake--consciousness.”
Source: Novalis: Philosophical Writings