Pupils at Sais (1799)
Contesto: Common Logic is the Grammar of the higher Speech, that is, of Thought; it examines merely the relations of ideas to one another, the Mechanics of Thought, the pure Physiology of ideas. Now logical ideas stand related to one another, like words without thoughts. Logic occupies itself with the mere dead Body of the Science of Thinking. — Metaphysics, again, is the Dynamics of Thought; treats of the primary Powers of Thought; occupies itself with the mere Soul of the Science of Thinking. Metaphysical ideas stand related to one another, like thoughts without words. Men often wondered at the stubborn Incompletibility of these two Sciences; each followed its own business by itself; there was a want everywhere, nothing would suit rightly with either. From the very first, attempts were made to unite them, as everything about them indicated relationship; but every attempt failed; the one or the other Science still suffered in these attempts, and lost its essential character. We had to abide by metaphysical Logic, and logical Metaphysic, but neither of them was as it should be.
Novalis: Frasi in inglese (pagina 3)
Novalis era poeta e teologo tedesco. Frasi in inglese.
“I was still blind, but twinkling stars did dance
Throughout my being's limitless expanse”
As quoted in Romantic Vision, Ethical Context: Novalis and Artistic Autonomy (1987) by Géza von Molnár, p. 2
Contesto: 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.
Novalis (1829)
Contesto: When we speak of the aim and Art observable in Shakespeare's works, we must not forget that Art belongs to Nature; that it is, so to speak, self-viewing, self-imitating, self-fashioning Nature. The Art of a well-developed genius is far different from the Artfulness of the Understanding, of the merely reasoning mind. Shakspeare was no calculator, no learned thinker; he was a mighty, many-gifted soul, whose feelings and works, like products of Nature, bear the stamp of the same spirit; and in which the last and deepest of observers will still find new harmonies with the infinite structure of the Universe; concurrences with later ideas, affinities with the higher powers and senses of man. They are emblematic, have many meanings, are simple and inexhaustible, like products of Nature; and nothing more unsuitable could be said of them than that they are works of Art, in that narrow mechanical acceptation of the word.
“Life must not be a novel that is given to us, but one that is made by us.”
Origine: Novalis: Philosophical Writings
As quoted in "Bildung in Early German Romanticism" by Frederick C. Beiser, in Philosophers on Education : Historical Perspectives (1998) by Amélie Rorty, p. 294
“We are close to waking when we dream that we are dreaming.”
Variants:
Novalis (1829)
Variante: We are near awakening when we dream that we dream.
Origine: Novalis: Philosophical Writings
“The artist stands on the human being as a statue does on a pedestal.”
Origine: Novalis: Philosophical Writings
“Philosophy is properly Home-sickness; the wish to be everywhere at home.”
Philosophie ist eigentlich Heimweh - Trieb überall zu Hause zu sein.
Novalis (1829)
Variante: Philosophy is really nostalgia, the desire to be at home.
Origine: Novalis: Philosophical Writings
Fragment No. 104; on Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).
Blüthenstaub (1798)
As quoted in the Fourth Leaflet of the White Rose (1942)
“To get to know a truth properly, one must polemicize it.”
Quoted in The Viking Book of Aphorisms by Wystan Hugh Auden (1962) p. 323