Hermann Hesse Quotes

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

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.

I hope death will be a great happiness, a happiness as great as that of love, fulfilled love

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

An enlightened man had but one duty - to seek the way to himself, to reach inner certainty, to grope his way forward, no matter where it led.

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

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.

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

Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.

She stood a moment before my eyes, clearly and painfully, loved and deeply woven into my destiny; then fell away again in a deep oblivion, at a half regretted distance.

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.

Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap.

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

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

Romantic souvenirs had a way of attaching themselves to one when one wanted to move on, but they were not to be taken seriously.

There are always a few such people who demand the utmost of life and yet cannot come to terms with its stupidity and crudeness.

Good that you ask. You should always ask, always have doubts.

So you can't dance? Not at all? Not even one step? How can you say that you've taken any trouble to live when you won't even dance?

The truth has a million faces, but there is only one truth.

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

My resolve to die was not the whim of an hour. It was the ripe, sound fruit that had slowly grown to full size, lightly rocked by the winds of fate whose next breath would bring it to the ground.

What should I possibly have to tell you, oh venerable one? Perhaps that you're searching far too much? That in all that searching, you don't find the time for finding?

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.

He had loved and he had found himself. Most people love to lose themselves.

Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal.

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.

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.

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

All life was a breath exhaled by God. All dying was a breath inhaled by God.

Chaos demands to be recognized and experienced before letting itself be converted into a new order.

Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else.

Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goals, if he is able to think, if he is able to wait, if he is able to fast.

Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has reality and presence

Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.

Alas, Siddhartha, I see you suffering, but you're suffering a pain at which one would like to laugh, at which you'll soon laugh for yourself.

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

The sacred sense of beyond, of timelessness, of a world which had an eternal value and the substance of which was divine had been given back to me today by this friend of mine who taught me dancing.

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers.

For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves.

Opinions mean nothing; they may be beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish, anyone can embrace or reject them.

No permanence is ours, we are a wave that flows to fit whatever form it finds.

It taught him how to listen -- how to listen with a quiet heart and a waiting soul, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinion.

The river is everywhere at the same time . . . everywhere and the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future.

His life oscillates, as everyone's does, not merely between two poles, such as the body and the spirit, the saint and the sinner, but between thousands and thousands.

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.

Happiness is love, nothing else.

Each man's life represents a road toward himself, an attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself.

The art of love-giving and taking become one.

Om is the bow, the arrow is soul.

Love is like death. It is fulfillment and an evening after which nothing more may follow.