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
Tools arm the man. One can well say that man is capable of bringing forth a world; he lacks only the necessary apparatus, the corresponding armature of his sensory tools. The beginning is there. Thus the principle of a warship lies in the idea of the shipbuilder, who is able to incorporate this thought by making himself into a gigantic machine, as it were, through a mass of men and appropriate tools and materials. Thus the idea of a moment often required monstrous organs, monstrous masses of materials, and man is therefore a potential, if not an actual creator.
A certain degree of solitude seems necessary to the full growth and spread of the highest mind; and therefore must a very extensive intercourse with men stifle many a holy germ, and scare away the gods, who shun the restless tumult of noisy companies and the discussion of petty interests.
A God-intoxicated man. [Ger., Gott-trunkener Mensch.]
Man has his being in truth--if he sacrifices truth he sacrifices himself. Whoever betrays truth betrays himself. It is not a question of lying--but of acting against one's conviction.
The highest purpose of intellectual cultivation is to give a man a perfect knowledge and mastery of his own inner self.
Christianity is the root of all democracy, the highest fact in the rights of men.
Man is lyrical, woman epic, marriage dramatic.
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.
Man is a sun, his senses are the planets.
Only as far as a man is happily married to himself is he fit for married life and family life in general.
The history of every individual man should be a Bible.
There is but one temple in the universe, and that is the body of man.
The Bible begins gloriously with Paradise, the symbol of youth, and ends with the everlasting kingdom, with the holy city. The history of every man should be a Bible.
If the world is a precipitation of human nature, so to speak, then the divine world is a sublimation of the same. Both occur in one act. No precipitation without sublimation. What goes lost there in agility, is won here.