holy the visions holy the hallucinations holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the abyss!

– Allen Ginsberg

I awakened more and more and ardent longing

For deeper and a total intermingling

Grew more intense with every passing moment.

Sweet lust is of my life the fountainhead.

I am the midpoint and the holy spring

Whence every stormy longing gushes forth

And whither every longing, being broken

Returns again to restful quietude.

– Novalis

Then came a voice from heaven saying, Fear not, Thecla, my faithful servant, for I am with you. Look and see the place which is opened for you; there your eternal abode shall be, and there you will receive the beatific vision.

The blessed Thecla looked and saw the rock opened to as large a degree as that a man might enter in. She did as she was commanded, bravely fled from the vile crew, and went into the rock, which instantly closed so that there was not a crack visible where it had opened.

The men stood perfectly astonished at so prodigious a miracle and had no power to detain Thecla, but only caught hold of her veil, or hood, and tore off a piece of it.

And even that was by the permission of God…

– The Acts of Paul and Thecla

To master the irrational, to govern it freely according to its own laws is the ultimate purpose of humanity. This purpose is quite unattainable and must forever remain so if man is not to cease being human and to become divine. But he can and must approach this goal; hence the never-ending approach to this goal is the true destiny of humanity.

– Johann Gottlieb Fichte

The infinite was thus, according to the romantic creed, demanded and mentally encompassed by reason, made finite in poetry, and experienced in love. It was the creed of a yearning which, about to soar into illimitable spaces beyond mere temporal existence, could, nevertheless, find twofold satisfaction in this world: in love and in poetry.

In love and poetry the temporal embraced the eternal, the finite the infinite. The romantic ironist became a prophet and a seer.

– Oskar Walzel