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“Every disease is a musical problem; every cure is a musical solution.”
― Novalis

“Life must not be a novel that is given to us, but one that is made by us. ”
― Novalis, Philosophical Writings

“Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.”
― Novalis

“To romanticize the world is to make us aware of the magic, mystery and wonder of the world; it is to educate the senses to see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite.”
― Novalis

“Where are we really going? Always home.”
― Novalis

“In a work of art, chaos must shimmer through the veil of order.”
― Novalis

“A hero is one who knows how to hang on one minute longer.”
― Novalis

“Philosophy is really homesickness: the urge to be at home everywhere.”
― Novalis

“Novels arise out of the shortcomings of history.”
― Novalis, Fragmente und Studien. Die Christenheit oder Europa

“I turn away from the light to the holy, inexpressible, mysterious night. Far away lies the world − sunk into a
deep vault, its place waste and lonely. Across my heart strings a low melancholy plays. I will fall in drops of dew and merge with the ashes. Distant memories, the wishes of youth, the dreams of childhood, the brief joys and vain hopes of a long life – all arise dressed in grey, like evening mist after sunset. In other lands light has
pitched its merry tents. And if it never returned to its children, who would await its dawning with the innocence of faith?”
― Novalis, Hymns to the Night

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.”
― Blaise Pascal

“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter."

(Letter 16, 1657)”
― Blaise Pascal, The Provincial Letters

“When one does not love too much, one does not love enough.”
― Blaise Pascal

“Il n'est pas certain que tout soit incertain.
(Translation: It is not certain that everything is uncertain.)”
― Blaise Pascal, Pascal's Pensees

“Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed.”
― Blaise Pascal

“The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference between men.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Few men speak humbly of humility, chastely of chastity, skeptically of skepticism.”
― Blaise Pascal

“Man's greatness comes from knowing that he is wretched: a tree does not know it is wretched. Thus it is wretched to know that one is wretched, but there is greatness in knowing one is wretched.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Be humble, impotent reason! Be silent, feeble nature! Learn that man infinitely transcends man, hear from your master your true condition, which is unknown to you.”
― Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.”
― Blaise Pascal

“Beer is made by men, wine by God.”
― Martin Luther

“Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly.”
― Martin Luther

“God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars.”
― Martin Luther

“You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say”
― Martin Luther

“Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles. We are conquered if we try too conscientiously not to sin at all. So when the devil says to you: do not drink, answer him: I will drink, and right freely, just because you tell me not to.”
― Martin Luther

“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.”
― Martin Luther

“A person who...does not regard music as a marvelous creation of God, must be a clodhopper indeed and does not deserve to be called a human being; he should be permitted to hear nothing but the braying of asses and the grunting of hogs."

[Foreward to Georg Rhau's (1488-1548) Collection Symphoniae iucundae, 1538]”
― Martin Luther

“The devil, the originator of sorrowful anxieties and restless troubles, flees before the sound of music almost as much as before the Word of God....Music is a gift and grace of God, not an invention of men. Thus it drives out the devil and makes people cheerful. Then one forgets all wrath, impurity, and other devices.”
― Martin Luther

“You cannot keep birds from flying over your head
but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair”
― Martin Luther