Hermann Hesse Quotes
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There are always a few such people who demand the utmost of life and yet cannot come to terms with its stupidity and crudeness.
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I sped through heaven and saw god at work. I suffered holy pains. I dropped all my defenses and was afraid of nothing in the world. I accepted all things and to all things I gave up my heart.
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In the beginning was the myth.
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Loneliness is the way by which destiny endeavors to lead man to himself.
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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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As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.
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I have known it for a long time but I have only just experienced it. Now I know it not only with my intellect, but with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach.
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I have always been a great dreamer; in dreams I am more active than in my real life, and these shadows sapped me of health and energy.
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All men of goodwill have this in common - that our works put us to shame.
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Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them.
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You've never lived what you are thinking, and that isn't good. Only the ideas we actually live are of any value.
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When two cultures collide is the only time when true suffering exists.
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For the first time in my life I tasted death, and death tasted bitter, for death is birth, is fear and dread of some terrible renewal.
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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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Every experience has its element of magic.
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Whither will my path yet lead me? This path is stupid, it goes in spirals, perhaps in circles, but whichever way it goes, I will follow it.
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I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.
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Siddhartha has one single goal-to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow-to let the Self die. No longer to be Self, to experience the peace of an emptied heart, to experience pure thought-that was his goal.
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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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It was still quiet in the house, and not a sound was heard from outside, either. Were it not for this silence, my reverie would probably have been disrupted by reminders of daily duties, of getting up and going to school.
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Love is like death. It is fulfillment and an evening after which nothing more may follow.
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Faith and doubt go hand in hand, they are complementaries. One who never doubts will never truly believe.
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When all the Self was conquered and dead, when all passions and desires were silent, then the last must awaken, the innermost of Being that is no longer Self - the great secret!
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Once it happened, as I lay awake at night, that I suddenly spoke in verses, in verses so beautiful and strange that I did not venture to think of writing them down, and then in the morning they vanished; and yet they lay hidden within me like the hard kernel within an old brittle husk.