Hermann Hesse Quotes
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Were not the gods forms created like me and you, mortal, transient?
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But one thing this doctrine, so clean, so venerable, does not contain: it does nto contain the secret of what the Sublime One himself experienced, he alone among the hundreds of thousands. This is why I am continuing my wanderings not to seek another, better doctrine, because I know there is none, but to leave behind all the teachings and all teachers, and either attain my goal alone or die.
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What he had not learned, however, was this: to find contentment in himself and his own life.
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The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. The God's name is Abraxas.
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That is why we were drawn to one another and why we are brother and sister. I am going to teach you to dance and play and smile, and still not be happy. And you are going to teach me to think and to know and yet not be happy. Do you know that we are both children of the Devil?
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How could I fail to be a lone wolf, and an uncouth hermit, as I did not share one of its aims nor understand one of its pleasures?
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Your soul is the whole world.
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Love must not entreat,' she added, 'or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract.
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Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap.
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Gratitude is not a virtue I believe in, and to me it seems hypocritical to expect it from a child.
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That's the way it is when you love. It makes you suffer, and I have suffered much in the years since. But it matters little that you suffer, so long as you feel alive with a sense of the close bond that connects all living things, so long as love does not die!
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I shall begin my story with an experience I had when I was ten and attended our small town's Latin school.
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He lost his Self a thousand times and for days on end he dwelt in non-being. But although the paths took him away from Self, in the end they always led back to it. Although Siddhartha fled from the Self a thousand times, dwelt in nothing, dwelt in animal and stone, the return was inevitable; the hour was inevitable when he would again find himself in sunshine or in moonlight, in shadow or in rain, and was again Self and Siddhartha, again felt the torment of the onerous life cycle.
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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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Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else.
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The many-voiced song of the river echoed softly. Siddhartha looked into the river and saw many pictures in the flowing water. The river's voice was sorrowful. It sang with yearning and sadness, flowing towards its goal ... Siddhartha was now listening intently...to this song of a thousand voices ... then the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om - Perfection ... From that hour Siddhartha ceased to fight against his destiny.
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If time is not real, then the dividing line between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.
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Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has reality and presence.
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The man of power is ruined by power, the man of money by money, the submissive man by subservience, the pleasure seeker by pleasure.
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You must find your dream...but no dream lasts forever, each dream is followed by another, and one should not cling to any particular dream.
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I live in my dreams — that's what you sense. Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. That's the difference.
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You are only afriad if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves. A whole society composed of men afraid of the unknown within them!
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I call that man awake who, with conscious knowledge and understanding, can perceive the deep unreasoning powers in his soul, his whole innermost strength, desire and weakness, and knows how to reckon with himself.
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Faith and doubt go hand in hand, they are complementaries. One who never doubts will never truly believe.