Hermann Hesse Quotes
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Whether you and I and a few others will renew the world some day remains to be seen. But within ourselves we must renew it each day.
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Only within yourself exists the other reality for which you long. I can give you nothing that has not already its being within yourself. I can throw open to you no picture gallery but your own soul.
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I called the world of phenomena an illusion, I called my eyes and my tongue an accident, valueless phenomena. No, that is all over; I have awakened, I have really awakened and I have just been born today.
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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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You can ride, you can travel with a friend of your own; The final step you must take alone. No wisdom is better than this when known: That every hard thing is done alone.
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To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.
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Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal.
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The highest art... sets down its creations and trusts in their magic, without fear of not being understood.
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You have to try the impossible to achieve the possible.
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You're quite right there," he said. "I have practiced abstinence myself for years, and had my time of fasting, too, but now I find myself once more beneath the sign of Aquarius, a dark and humid constellation.
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One of the disadwantages of school and learning, he thought dreamily, was that the mind seemed to have the tendency too see and represent all things as though they were flat and had only two dimensions. This, somehow, seemed to render all matters of intellect shallow and worthless.
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I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?
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Life is always frightful. We cannot help it and we are responsible all the same. One's born and at once one is guilty.
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Everything that was not suffered to the end and finally concluded, recurred, and the same sorrows were undergone.
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The world, as it is now, wants to die, wants to perish — and it will.
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They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming.
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I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me.
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You should not take old people who are already dead seriously. It does them injustice. We immortals do not like things to be taken seriously. We like joking. Seriousness, young man, is an accident of time. It consists, I don't mind telling you in confidence, in putting too high a value on time. I, too, once put too high a value on time. For that reason I wished to be a hundred years old. In eternity, however, there is no time, you see. Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.
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Once you are able to make your request in such a way that you will be quite certain of its fulfillment, then the fulfillment will come.
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A house without books is a poor house, even if beautiful rugs are covering its floors and precious wallpapers and pictures cover its walls.
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In fear I hurried this way and that. I had the taste of blood and chocolate in my mouth, the one as hateful as the other.
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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.
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Thus Gotama [Buddha] walked toward the town to gather alms, and the two samanas recognized him solely by the perfection of his repose, by the calmness of his figure, in which there was no trace of seeking, desiring, imitating, or striving, only light and peace.
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You say yes to the sunlight and pure fantasies, so you have to say yes to the filth and the nausea. Everything is within you, gold and mud, happiness and pain, the laughter of childhood and the apprehension of death. Say yes to everything, shirk nothing.