Hermann Hesse Quotes: 39

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

• 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.

  Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

• I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.

• Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

• I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.

  Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

• Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

  Siddhartha

• If I know what love is, it is because of you.

• Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.

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

  Wer lieben kann, ist glücklich. Über die Liebe

• Often it is the most deserving people who cannot help loving those who destroy them.

• You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live.

  Steppenwolf

• When you like someone, you like them in spite of their faults. When you love someone, you love them with their faults.

  Wer lieben kann, ist glücklich. Über die Liebe

• 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.

  Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

• It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect.

  Siddhartha

• Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can - that is their secret.

• In eternity there is no time, only an instant long enough for a joke.

  Steppenwolf

• I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins.

• You've never lived what you are thinking, and that isn't good. Only the ideas we actually live are of any value.

  Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

• I believe that I am not responsible for the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of life, but that I am responsible for what I do with the life I've got.

  Verliebt in die verrückte Welt: Betrachtungen, Gedichte, Erzählungen, Briefe

• I have always thirsted for knowledge, I have always been full of questions.

  Siddhartha

• I began to understand that suffering and disappointments and melancholy are there not to vex us or cheapen us or deprive us of our dignity but to mature and transfigure us.

  Peter Camenzind

• You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation...and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else.

  Wer lieben kann, ist glücklich. Über die Liebe

• We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something last longer than we do.

  Narcissus and Goldmund

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

  Siddhartha

• Dreams and restless thoughts came flowing to him from the river, from the twinkling stars at night, from the sun's melting rays. Dreams and a restlessness of the soul came to him.

  Siddhartha

• Not in his speech, not in his thoughts, I see his greatness, only in his actions, in his life.

  Siddhartha

• 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.

  Narcissus and Goldmund

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

  Siddhartha

• 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.

  Steppenwolf

• A thousand times I was ready to regret and take back my rash statement - yet it had been the truth.

• I felt knowledge and the unity of the world circulate in me like my own blood.

  Siddhartha

• Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.

• There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only a knowledge-that is everywhere, that is Atman, that is in me and you and in every creature, and I am beginning to believe that this knowledge has no worse enemy than the man of knowledge, than learning.

  Siddhartha

• I called the world of phenomena an illusion, I called my eyes and my tongue and accident, valueless phenomena. No, that is all over; I have awakened, I have really awakened and have just been born today.

  Siddhartha

• The old man slowly raised himself from the piano stool, fixed those cheerful blue eyes piercingly and at the same time with unimaginable friendliness upon him, and said: "Making music together is the best way for two people to become friends. There is none easier. That is a fine thing. I hope you and I shall remain friends. Perhaps you too will learn how to make fugues, Joseph.

  The Glass Bead Game

• When a tree is polled, it will sprout new shoots nearer its roots. A soul that is ruined in the bud will frequently return to the springtime of its beginnings and its promise-filled childhood, as though it could discover new hopes there and retie the broken threads of life. The shoots grow rapidly and eagerly, but it is only a sham life that will never be a genuine tree.

  Beneath the Wheel

• Faith is stronger than so-called reason.

  The Journey to the East

• É muito mais lisonjeiro,(...)lutar-se por alguma coisa bela e ideal e saber ao mesmo tempo que não se conseguirá alcançá-la. Os ideais serão algo que se possa alcançar? Viveremos para cabar com a morte? Não, viveremos para temê-la e também para amá-la, e precisamente por causa da morte é que nossa vida vez por outra resplandece tão radiosa num belo instante.

• Uit deze belevenissen, die niemand ziet, bestaat de innerlijke, wezenlijke lijn van ons lot. Zulk een breuk en scheur groeit weer dicht, hij heelt en wordt vergeten, maar in de diepst verborgen hoek leeft en bloedt hij verder.