Literary Birthday – 2 May – Novalis

Novalis was born on 2 May 1772 and died on 25 March 1801.

Novalis Quotes

1. Learning is pleasurable, but doing is the height of enjoyment.
2. Life must not be a novel that is given to us, but one that is made by us.
3. No one will ever achieve excellence as an artist who cannot depict anything other than his own experiences, his favourite objects, who cannot bring himself to study assiduously even a quite strange object, which does not interest him at all, and to depict it at leisure. An artist must be able and willing to depict everything.
4. Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.
5. Many books are longer than they seem. They have indeed no end. The boredom that they cause is truly absolute and infinite.
6. Philosophy is really homesickness: the urge to be at home everywhere.
7. The letter is only an aid to philosophical communication, the actual essence of which consists in arousing a particular train of thought. Someone speaking thinks and produces—someone listening reflects—and reproduces. Words are a deceptive medium for what is already though—unreliable vehicles of a particular, specific stimulus.
8. A hero is one who knows how to hang on one minute longer.
9. Humanity is a comic role.

Novalis was the pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg. He was a German romantic poet and theorist who greatly influenced later Romantic thought. He is the author of Hymns to the Night.

Source for Image: Franz Gareis, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Novalis-1.jpg

by Amanda Patterson

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