Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Life is portrayed as a restless spiritual condition driven by passion, whereas true rest belongs only to the spirit itself.
In plain terms
Living involves restless passion; true peace is spiritual.
What can you take from it?
Peace is found in the spirit, not in active life.

Where it applies

  • philosophical reflection
  • spiritual contemplation
  • existential inquiry

Putting it to work

  • meditation
  • spiritual practice
  • self-reflection

Questions to consider

  • Can life exist without passion?
  • Where does true rest come from?

Another view

It dismisses the value of active living too harshly.

More from Novalis

  1. Man is the higher Sense of our Planet; the star which connects it with the upper world; the eye which it turns towards Heaven.

    Permalink to quote #51
  2. Our life is no Dream, but it may and will perhaps become one.

    Permalink to quote #53
  3. To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.

    Permalink to quote #50

Related quotes

  1. There is one living spirit, prevalent over this world ... which assumes a multitude of forms according to subordinate laws. There is one thinking sensible prin…

    Charles DarwinCharles Darwin quote #1
  2. Death is an eternal sleep.

    Joseph FoucheJoseph Fouche quote #2
  3. Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtu…

    H. P. LovecraftH. P. Lovecraft quote #8