Novalis

Nothing is more indispensable to true religiosity than a mediator that links us with divinity.

Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise.

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.

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.

Learning is pleasurable but doing is the height of enjoyment.

The highest purpose of intellectual cultivation is to give a man a perfect knowledge and mastery of his own inner self.

How do we see physically? No differently that we do in our consciousness - by means of the productive power of imagination. Consciousness is the eye and ear, the sense for inner and outer meaning.

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.

Sometimes with the most intense pain a paralysis of sensibility occurs. The soul disintegrates--hence the deadly frost--the free power of the mind--the shattering, ceaseless wit of this kind of despair. There is no inclination for anything any more--the person is alone, like a baleful power--as he has no connection with the rest of the world he consumes himself gradually--and in accordance with his own principle he is--misanthropic and misotheos.

When one begins to reflect on philosophy—then philosophy seems to us to be everything, like God, and love. It is a mystical, highly potent, penetrating idea—which ceaselessly drives us inward in all directions. The decision to do philosophy—to seek philosophy is the act of self-liberation—the thrust toward ourselves.

The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet. Where they overlap, it is in every point of the overlap.

What delights, what pleasures does your life offer you that outweigh the raptures of death?

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.

Genius in general is poetic. Where genius has been active it has been poetically active. The truly moral person is a poet.

Where children are, there is the golden age.

Only as far as a man is happily married to himself is he fit for married life and family life in general.

Love is the final end of the world's history, the Amen of the universe.

Where are we really going? Always home.