you stumble on them

Everywhere we seek the Absolute, and always we find only things.

—Novalis
Fragment No. 1; Variant: We seek the absolute everywhere and only ever find things. - Blüthenstaub (1798).

a life's work and then some

At the time of his death at 29, the poet and philosopher Novalis was working on an ‘Encyclopedia of Universal Knowledge’. So much like a poet, to think such a project possible, even had he lived a long time.

world in miniature

The genuine poet is all-knowing—he is an actual world in miniature.

—Novalis, Pollen and Fragments, translated by Arthur Versluis (Phanes Press, 1989), p.124