C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Novalis
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.
Accident is simply unforeseen order.
All power appears only in transition. Permanent power is stuff.
Character is a perfectly educated will.
Darwin remarks that we are less dazzled by the light at waking, if we have been dreaming of visible objects. Happy are those who have here dreamt of a higher vision! They will the sooner be able to endure the glories of the world to come.
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.
In cheerful souls there is no wit. Wit shows a disturbance of the equipoise.
It is certain my belief gains quite infinitely the very moment I can convince another mind thereof.
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.
Nature is an Æolian harp, a musical instrument whose tones are the re-echo of higher strings within us.
Only so far as a man is happily married to himself is he fit for married life, and family life generally.
Prayer is to religion what thinking is to philosophy. To pray is to make religion.
Shame is a feeling of profanation. Friendships, 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.
The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist.
The badge of honesty is simplicity.
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.
The highest purpose of intellectual cultivation is to give a man a perfect knowledge and mastery of his own inner self; to render our consciousness its own light and its own mirror.
The history of every man should be a Bible.
The ideal of morality has no more dangerous rival than the ideal of highest strength, of most powerful life. It is the maximum of the savage.
The individual soul should seek for an intimate union with the soul of the universe.
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.
We are near waking when we dream that we dream.
We touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human body!
Where children are, there is the golden age.