Hermann Hesse Quotes
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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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Nothing is harder, yet nothing is more necessary, than to speak of certain things whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable. The very fact that serious and conscientious men treat them as existing things brings them a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born.
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There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.
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It is not for me to judge another man's life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone.
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My real self wanders elsewhere, far away, wanders on and on invisibly and has nothing to do with my life.
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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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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.
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He has robbed me, yet he has given me something of greater value . . . he has given to me myself.
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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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The river has taught me to listen; you will learn from it, too. The river knows everything; one can learn everything from it. You have already learned from the river that it is good to strive downwards, to sink, to seek the depths.
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In my brain were stored a thousand pictures.
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When I have neither pleasure nor pain and have been breathing for a while the lukewarm insipid air of these so-called good and tolerable days, I feel so bad in my childish soul that I smash my rusty lyre of thanksgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel the most devilish pain burn in me than this warmth of a well-heated room. - Harry Haller
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If man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do. If, for instance, Siddhartha had not learned to fast, he would have had to seek some kind of work today, either with you, or elsewhere, for hunger would have driven him. But as it is, Siddhartha can wait calmly. He is not impatient, he is not in need, he can ward off hunger for a long time and laugh at it. Therefore, fasting is useful, sir.
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All life was a breath exhaled by God. All dying was a breath inhaled by God.
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When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. . . . Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
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During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the past, present, and future, and then everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman.
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And here is a doctrine at which you will laugh. It seems to me, Govinda, that love is the most important thing in the world.
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The truth is lived, not taught.
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Only within yourself exists that other reality for which you long.
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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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I felt knowledge and the unity of the world circulate in me like my own blood.
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The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught.
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Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object.
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All this had always been and he had never seen it; he was never present. Now he was present and belonged to it. Through his eyes he saw light and shadows; through his mind he was aware of moon and stars.