Hermann Hesse Quotes

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.

When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.

Seriousness is an accident of time. It consists of putting too high a value on time. In eternity there is no time. Eternity is a moment, just long enough for a joke

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

Loneliness is the way by which destiny endeavors to lead man to himself.

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

Faith and doubt go hand in hand, they are complementaries. One who never doubts will never truly believe.

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.

What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

Each man's life represents a road toward himself.

We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.

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.

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

The true profession of a man is to find his way to himself.

A man who is ill-adjusted to the world is always on the verge of finding himself. One who is adjusted to the world never finds himself, but gets to be a cabinet minister.

Youth ends when egotism does; maturity begins when one lives for others.

If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do.

One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.

Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish.

The best weapons against the infamies of life are courage, wilfulness and patience. Courage strenthens, wilfulness is fun and patience provides tranquility.

If time is not real, then the dividing line between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.

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.

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

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.

Beautiful was this world, looking at it thus, without searching, thus simply, thus childlike.

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.

Age is a state of mind. Youth and age exist only among the ordinary people. All the more talented and exceptional of us; are sometimes old, just as we are sometimes happy, and sometimes sad.

The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught.

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.

Never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner.

I was out of my bed in one second, trembling with excitement, and I dashed to the door and into the adjoining room, where I could watch the streets below from the windows.

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

Words can not express the joy of new life.

our friendship has no other purpose, no other reason, than to show you how utterly unlike me you are.

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

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

Only the ideas that we really live have any value.

To achieve the possible, we must attempt the impossible again and again.

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.

It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other's opposite and complement.

Art is the contemplation of the world in a state of grace.

My real self wanders elsewhere, far away, wanders on and on invisibly and has nothing to do with my life.

Each of us is merely one human being, merely an experiment, a way station. But each of us should be on the way toward perfection, should be striving to reach the center, not the periphery.

The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire.

Your soul is the whole world.

Only within yourself exists that other reality for which you long.

Beauty does not bring happiness to the one who possesses it, but to the one who loves and admires it.

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.

Should we be mindful of dreams?" Joseph asked. "Can we interpret them?" The Master looked into his eyes and said tersely: "We should be mindful of everything, for we can interpret everything.

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening...