Page:Novalis Schriften - Volume 2.djvu/126

★ 116 ★ Most are fleeting, some linger, a few stay. There is a great deal of difference between people here. One has more of a propensity for revelation than another. One has more feeling, another more understanding for them. The latter will always remain in its soft light, while the first has only a shimmering, but more lucid and multifarious, inspiration. This ability is likewise able to induce a disorder, which indicates either an excess of feeling and a lack of understanding or an excess of understanding and a lack of feeling.

23. Shame is certainly a feeling of profanation. Friendship, love, and piety should be treated with secrecy. One should only talk about it in rare, familiar moments, tacitly agreeing to it. Much is too delicate to be thought, even more to be discussed.

24. Self-renunciation is the source of all humiliation, just as, on the contrary, it is the basis of all true elevation. The first step is to look inwards, to examine ourselves in isolation. Whoever stops here is only half turned. The second step must be an effective look outwards, automatic, careful observation of the outside world.

25. One who does not want to portray anything more than his experiences or his favorite objects, he that cannot convince himself to study with diligence and taking the time to characterize a completely foreign uninteresting object, will never achieve anything excellent as an artist. The artist must be able and willing to depict everything. This gives rise to the great style of representation that one rightly admires in Goethe.