Hermann Hesse Quotes

Oh, love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.

Obeying is like eating and drinking. There's nothing like it if you've been without it for too long.

Om is the bow, the arrow is soul, The Brahman is the arrow's target that one should incessantly hit.

The town in which ... I had spent my youth ... had nothing to give me but memories.

How foolish it is to wear oneself out in vain longing for warmth! Solitude is independence.

How easy human frailties could thrive under the cover of idealism

Whenever he is hungry and opens his bag, there are only pearls inside.

But be warned, oh seeker of knowledge, of the thicket of opinions and of arguing about words.

The voices of all creatures are in the voices of the river.

I realised that all this talk was of no value and at its best only led to clever phrases.

I will learn from myself, be my own pupil; I will learn from myself the secret of Siddhartha.

Let us enjoy this fruit and await further ones,

We passed for jolly, unruly, even dangerous rioters, which was untrue of me, and we enjoyed a doubtful but heroic reputation.

I do want more. I am not content with being happy. I was not made for it. It is not my destiny. My destiny is the opposite.

I want to learn from myself, want to be my student, want to get to know myself, the secret of Siddhartha.

How beautiful the world was when one looked at it, without searching ... just looked, simply and innocently.

Fate and character are different names for the same idea.

Words can not express the joy of new life.

Psychoanalysis has at bottom no other goal than to create a space within oneself in which God's voice can be heard

Now, he had to experience his self.. . . But never, he had really found
this self, because he had wanted to capture it in the net of thought.

What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.

Nothing," said he in the mirror, "I am only waiting. I am waiting for death."
"Where is death then?"
"Coming," said the other.

Every important cultural gesture comes down to a morality, a model for human behavior concentrated into a gesture.

Disclosing his wound to his listener was the same as bathing it in the river, until it became cool and one with the river.

Every life has its radiance and beauty.

A person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful.

These people are rare who knows how to listen.

Those who love nothing and hate nothing in the world, have no fetters.

What are reason and sobriety without the knowledge of intoxication?

The freedom to ... regard the future as the hope and product of my own strength and not as something fashioned by some strange power from above.

Both, the thoughts as well as the senses, were pretty things, the ultimate meaning was hidden behind both of them,

Happiness is a how, not a what. A talent, not an object.

All higher humor begins with ceasing to take oneself seriously.

The day had gone by just as days go by. I had killed it in accordance with my primitive and retiring way of life.

The highest art ... sets down its creations and trusts in their magic, without fear of not being understood.

I do not want to kill and dissect myself any longer,

Gratitude is not a virtue I believe in, and to me it seems hypocritical to expect it from a child.

Faith is stronger than so-called reason.

To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.

To listen with a still heart, with a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgement, without opinions.

My path had led me at that time into a new life, which had now grown old and is dead

The ideas we really live have any value.

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?

What for me is bliss and life and ecstasy and exaltation, the world in general seeks at most in imagination; in life it finds it absurd.

Siddhartha stopped fighting his fate this very hour, and he stopped suffering.

And the vessel was not full, his intellect was not satisfied, his soul was not at peace, his heart was not still.

Her chatter had set her free from a long week of loneliness, of doing what she was told and saying nothing. She was all cheered up.

Painting is marvelous; it makes you happier and more patient. Afterwards you do not have black fingers as with writing, but blue and red ones.

The teachers apparently regarded a dead student very differently from a living one.

Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest.

I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.

The man of power is ruined by power, the man of money by money, the submissive man by subservience, the pleasure seeker by pleasure.

Your tranquil yes to the changing over into the formless void of the unlimited.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

When we hate a man, we hate in him something which resides in us ourselves. What is not in us does not move us." Never

Happiness is love, nothing else.

If a person were to concentrate all his will power on a certain end, then he would achieve it. That's all.

We marked men were not at all worried about the shape the future would take.

The wheel of physical manifestations is turning quickly, Govinda.

I felt and saw the night outside deep within me. Wind and wetness, autumn, bitter smell of foliage, scattered leaves of the elm tree.

Here it is Saturday. You wouldn't know how good it feels after a hard week."
"Oh, I can imagine," said Knulp with a smile.

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

To him, art and craftmanship were usless unless they burned like the sun and had power of storms.

We create gods and struggle with them, and they bless us.

A mere nothing suffices - and the lightning strikes.

Her little treasure of experiences opened up, and it was larger than she herself would have supposed.

But it's a poor fellow who can't take his pleasure without asking other people's permission.

The feeling swept over me that I was not born for a normal life at home among my people or in cities and houses

Inasmuch as every man takes the sufferings that fall to his share as the greatest.

How exhausting all this was. In fact, if only people knew how madly tiresome it is to be a criminal ... !

This is what makes them so dear and worthy of veneration for me: they are like me. Therefore, I can love them.

But I am so voluntarily, and therefore I am not destitute.

In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.

The world, as it is now, wants to die, wants to perish - and it will.

He let himself be led into the night, into the forest, into the blind secret wordless, thoughtless country.

When two cultures collide is the only time when true suffering exists

Suffering was life, full of suffering was the world.

Was it not a comedy, a strange and stupid matter, this repetition, this running around in a fateful circle?

Were not the gods forms created like me and you, mortal, transient?

The opposite of every truth is just as true.

T is useless for you to build walls and dormitories and chapels and churches. Death looks through the window and laughs..

Only the weak are put on paths without peril.

He has robbed me, yet he has given me something of greater value ... he has given to me myself.

I hope that you two young scholars may never lack superiors who are less intelligent than you; it is the best cure for pride.

When we hate a person, what we hate in his image is something inside ourselves. Whatever isn't inside us can't excite us.

Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.

Possibly the apparent relapse they had suffered was not a fall and a cause for suffering, but a leap forward and a positive act.

Never again!" commanded his will.
"Again! Tomorrow!" begged his heart.

Therefore, it seems to me that everything that exists is good - death as well as life, sin as well as holiness, wisdom as well as folly.

Yes, I am going into the woods; I am going into the unity of all things.

You're free this evening, Barbele. You just don't want to come.

Too much thinking was still not good for me.

It was fortunate that love did not need words; or else it would be full of misunderstanding and foolishness.

Without a mother you cannot die.

I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me.

Remember this: one can be a strict logician or grammarian and at the same time full of imagination and music.

A person can neither think what he wants to nor can I make him think what I want to.

Novalis and Dostoyevsky, awaited me just as do the mother, or the wife, the children, maids, dogs and cats in the case of more sensible people.

One must find the source within one's own Self, one must possess it. Everything else was seeking
a detour, an error.