Novalis
Novalis
Novaliswas the pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, a poet, author, and philosopher of Early German Romanticism. Hardenberg's professional work and university background, namely his study of mineralogy and management of salt mines in Saxony, was often ignored by his contemporary readers. The first studies showing important relations between his literary and professional works started in the 1960s...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth2 May 1772
CityWiederstedt, Germany
CountryGermany
Philosophy is really nostalgia, the desire to be at home.
Before abstraction everything is one, but one like chaos; after abstraction everything is united again, but this union is a free binding of autonomous, self-determined beings. Out of a mob a society has developed, chaos has been transformed into a manifold world.
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.
We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body!
The badge of honesty is simplicity.
All power appears only in transition. Permanent power is stuff.
Nature is an aeolian harp, a musical instrument whose tones are the re-echo of higher strings within us.
To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.
The world must become romanticized, and in that way we find again its original meaning for us.
Every disease is a musical problem. Its cure a musical solution. The more rapid and complete the solution, the greater the musical talent of the doctor.
We are near waking when we dream we are dreaming.
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.
Doing philosophy is only a threefold or double kind of waking--being awake--consciousness.
Many things are too delicate to be thought; many more, to be spoken.