Page:Novalis Schriften - Volume 2.djvu/151

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★ 141 ★

when I can interpret and transform him in a variety of ways without detracting from his individuality.

121. We are almost awake when we dream that we are dreaming.

122. Truly sociable wit is without wisecracks. There is a kind of wit that is only the magical play of colors in the higher spheres.

123. Fullness of spirit is that wherein the spirit unceasingly reveals itself, less often still when it reappears in a different form; not just once, as at the beginning, as with many philosophical systems.

124. There are Germans everywhere. Like being Roman, Greek, or British, being German has very little to do with being confined to a particular nation; it is a general human trait, that only here and there has become particularly common. Germanness is true popularity, and therefore an ideal.

125. Death is conquest of the self,— it, like all self-overcoming, provides a new, lighter existence.

126. Is that why perhaps we therefore require so much strength and effort for the ordinary and the common, while for the true person nothing is ordinary, nothing is common, except impoverished ordinariness.

127. Ingenious subtlety is the subtle application of subtlety.


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From the handwriting

128. Schlegel's writings are lyrical philosophemes. His Forster and Lessing are superb minus poetry and resemble Pindaric hymns. The lyrical prosaist