Hermann Hesse Quotes
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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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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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For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers.
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We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.
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Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross.
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A person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful.
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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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I can think. I can wait. I can fast.
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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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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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How beautiful the world was when one looked at it, without searching... just looked, simply and innocently.
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To nobody can you communicate in words and teachings, what happened to you in your hour of enlightenment.
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How absurd these words are, such as beast and beast of prey. One should not speak of animals in that way. They may be terrible sometimes, but they're much more right than men...They're never in any embarrassment. They always know what to do and how to behave themselves. They don't flatter and they don't intrude. They don't pretend. They are as they are, like stones or flowers or stars in the sky.
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At that time two opposing concepts of the Game called forth commentary and discussion. The foremost players distinguished two principal types of Game, the formal and the psychological.
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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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I hope death will be a great happiness, a happiness as great as that of love, fulfilled love.
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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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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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One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.
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You must find your dream, then the way becomes easy.
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Our friendship has no other purpose, no other reason, than to show you how utterly unlike me you are.
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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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Art is the contemplation of the world in a state of grace.
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Faith is stronger than so-called reality.