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Hypotheses are nets: only he who casts will catch.

Novalis

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Novalis
Age: 28 †
Born: 1772
Born: May 2
Died: 1801
Died: March 25
Engineer
Literary Theorist
Lyricist
Philosopher
Poet
Writer
Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg
Friedrich von Hardenberg
Catch
Casts
Nets
Hypotheses
Hypothesis

More quotes by Novalis

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Mathematics is the Life of the Gods.
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Life is the beginning of death. Life is for the sake of death. Death is at once the end and the beginning—at once separation and closer union of the self. Through death the reduction is complete.
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Man is lyrical, woman epic, marriage dramatic.
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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.
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Many books are longer than they seem. They have indeed no end. The boredom that they cause is truly absolute and infinite.
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In cheerful souls there is no wit. Wit shows a disturbance of the equipoise.
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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.
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Philosophy can bake no bread but she can procure for us God, Freedom, Immortality. Which, then, is more practical, Philosophy or Economy?
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Love is the final end of the world's history, the Amen of the universe.
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The individual soul should seek for an intimate union with the soul of the universe.
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Character is a perfectly educated will.
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The highest purpose of intellectual cultivation is to give a man a perfect knowledge and mastery of his own inner self.
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We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body!
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Friendship, love, and piety ought to be handled with a sort of mysterious secrecy they ought to be spoken of only in the rare moments of perfect confidence, to be mutually understood in silence. Many things are too delicate to be thought many more, to be spoken.
Novalis
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The brains -the thinking organs- are the world producers -nature's genitals.
Novalis
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The poem of the understanding is philosophy.
Novalis
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To know a truth well, one must have fought it out.
Novalis
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Nature is a petrified magic city.
Novalis
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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.
Novalis
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A complete need should not exist... love, life in common with loved ones?
Novalis