Hermann Hesse Quotes
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I believe that I am not responsible for the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of life, but that I am responsible for what I do with the life I've got.
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For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves.
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The greatest threat to our world and its peace comes from those who want war, who prepare for it, and who, by holding out vague promises of future peace or by instilling fear of foreign aggression, try to make us accomplices to their plans.
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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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People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.
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Oh, love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.
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It is good to taste for yourself everything you need to know. That worldly pleasures and wealth are not good things, I learned even as a child. I knew it for a long time, but only now have I experienced it.
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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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A thousand times I was ready to regret and take back my rash statement - yet it had been the truth.
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Faith is stronger than so-called reality.
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The human attitude of which classical music is the expression is always the same; it is always based on the same kind of insight into life and strives for the same kind of victory over blind change. Classical music as gesture signifies knowledge of the tragedy of the human condition, affirmation of human destiny, courage, cheerful serenity.
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Yes, what we are doing is probably mad, and probably it is good and necessary all the same. It is not a good thing when man overstrains his reason and tries to reduce to rational order matters that are susceptible of rational treatment. Then there arise ideals such as those of the Americans or of the Bolsheviks. Both are extraordinarily rational, and both lead to a frightful oppression and impoverishment of life, because they simplify it so crudely. The likeness of man, once a high ideal, is in process of becoming a machine-made article. It is for madmen like us, perhaps, to ennoble it again.
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The world was beautiful when looked at in this way-without any seeking, so simple, so childlike.
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One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.
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Opinions mean nothing; they may be beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish, anyone can embrace or reject them.
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What I am in search of is not so much the gratification of a curiosity or a passion for worldly life, but something far less conditional. I do not wish to go out into the world with an insurance policy in my pocket guaranteeing my return in the event of a disappointment, like some cautious traveller who would be content with a brief glimpse of the world. On the contrary, I desire that there should be hazards, difficulties and dangers to face; I am hungry for reality, for tasks and deeds, and also for privation and suffering.
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He saw all these forms and faces in a thousand relationships become newly born. Each one was mortal, a passionate, painful example of all that is transitory. Yet none of them died, they only changed, were always reborn, continually had a new face: only time stood between one face and another.
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Solitude is independence.
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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.
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All I really wanted was to try and live the life that was spontaneously welling up within me. Why was that so very difficult?
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It was lovely, and tempting, to exert power over men and to shine before others, but power also had its perditions and perils.
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How beautiful the world was when one looked at it, without searching... just looked, simply and innocently.
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A person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful.
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All suicides have the responsibility of fighting against the temptation of suicide. Every one of them knows very well in some corner of his soul that suicide, though a way out, is rather a mean and shabby one, and that it is nobler and finer to be conquered by life than to fall by one's own hand.