Hermann Hesse Quotes
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Those who direct the maximum force of their desires toward the center, toward true being, toward perfection, seem quieter than the passionate souls because the flame of their fervor cannot always be seen.
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Solitude is independence.
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Painting is marvelous; it makes you happier and more patient. Afterwards you do not have black fingers as with writing, but blue and red ones.
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The world, Govinda my friend, is not imperfect, not to be seen as on a slow path toward perfection: No, it is perfect in every moment, all transgression already bears grace within itself, all little children already have the aged in themselves, all the sucklings death, all the dying eternal life.
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For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.
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The mind is international and supra-national ... it ought to serve not war and annihilation, but peace and reconciliation.
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A person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful.
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Good that you ask. You should always ask, always have doubts.
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Alas, Siddhartha, I see you suffering, but you're suffering a pain at which one would like to laugh, at which you'll soon laugh for yourself.
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Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.
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He saw that the water continually flowed and flowed and yet it was always there; it was always the same and yet every moment it was new.
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They slept profoundly, desperately, greedily, as though for the last time, as though they had been condemned to stay awake forever and had to drink in all the sleep in the world during these last hours.
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Yes, I am going into the woods; I am going into the unity of all things.
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People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.
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All interpretation, all psychology, all attempts to make things comprehensible, require the medium of theories, mythologies, and lies.
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God does not send us despair in order to kill us; he sends it in order to awaken us to new life.
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For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers.
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I was given the freedom to discover my own inclination and talents, to fashion my inmost pleasures and sorrows myself and to regard the future not as an alien higher power but as the hope and product of my own strength.
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A girl had bidden me eat and drink and sleep, and had shown me friendship and had laughed at me and had called me a silly little boy. And this wonderful friend had talked to me of the saints and shown me that even when I had outdone myself in absurdity I was not alone.
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What should I possibly have to tell you, oh venerable one? Perhaps that you're searching far too much? That in all that searching, you don't find the time for finding?
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So you can't dance? Not at all? Not even one step? How can you say that you've taken any trouble to live when you won't even dance?
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Knowledge can be conveyed, but not wisdom. It can be found, it can be lived, it is possible to be carried by it, miracles can be performed with it, but it cannot be expressed in words and taught.
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In any case, the most lively young people become the best old people, not those who pretend to be as wise as grandfathers while they are still at school.
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Look: We hate nothing that exists, not even death, suffering and dying, does not horrify our souls, as long as we learn more deeply to love.