Hermann Hesse Quotes
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A tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me!... Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
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A father can pass on his nose and eyes and even his intelligence to his child, but not his soul. In every human being the soul is new
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For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers.
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Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.
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And some day there will be nothing left of everything that has twisted my life and grieved it and filled me so often with such anguish. Some day, with the last exhaustion, peace will come and the motherly earth will gather me back home. It won't be the end of things, only a way of being born again, a bathing and a slumbering where the old and the withered sink down, where the young and new begin to breathe. Then, with other thoughts, I will walk along streets like these, and listen to streams, and overhear what the sky says in the evening, over and over and over.
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Was it not his Self, his small, fearful and proud Self, with which he had wrestled for so many years, but which had always conquered him again, which appeared each time again and again, which robbed him of happiness and filled him with fear?
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Yes, I am going into the woods; I am going into the unity of all things.
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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 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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The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people — eternal life.
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A person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful.
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It is remarkable, all that men can swallow. For a good ten minutes I read a newspaper. I allowed the spirit of an irresponsible man who chews and munches another's words in his mouth, and gives them out again undigested, to enter into me through my eyes.
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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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To be able to throw one's self away for the sake of a moment, to be able to sacrifice years for a woman's smile - that is happiness.
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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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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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All interpretation, all psychology, all attempts to make things comprehensible, require the medium of theories, mythologies, and lies.
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Abraxas was the god who was both god and devil.
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His way had therefore come full circle, or rather had taken the form of an ellipse or a spiral, following as ever no straight unbroken line, for the rectilinear belongs only to Geometry and not to Nature and Life.
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Beauty does not bring happiness to the one who possesses it, but to the one who loves and admires it.
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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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To nobody can you communicate in words and teachings, what happened to you in your hour of enlightenment.
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Things are going downhill with you!' he said to himself, and laughed about it, and as he was saying it, he happened to glance at the river, and he also saw the river going downhill, always moving on downhill, and singing and being happy through it all.
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The truth is lived, not taught.