Hermann Hesse > Quotes

“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.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian

“Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.”
― Hermann Hesse

“Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.”
― Hermann Hesse

“If I know what love is, it is because of you.”
― Hermann Hesse

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

“Three things can not hide for long: the Moon, the Sun and the Truth.”
― Hermann Hesse

“To hold our tongues when everyone is gossiping, to smile without hostility at people and institutions, to compensate for the shortage of love in the world with more love in small, private matters; to be more faithful in our work, to show greater patience, to forgo the cheap revenge obtainable from mockery and criticism: all these are things we can do. ”
― Hermann Hesse

“Some of us think holding on makes us strong but sometimes it is letting go”
― Hermann Hesse

“We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.”
― Hermann Hesse

“People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.”
― Hermann Hesse

“Oh, love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.”
― Hermann Hesse, Wer lieben kann, ist glücklich. Über die Liebe

“Often it is the most deserving people who cannot help loving those who destroy them.”
― Hermann Hesse

“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.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian

“When someone seeks," said Siddhartha, "then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that he seeks, and he is able to find nothing, to take in nothing because he always thinks only about the thing he is seeking, because he has one goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: having a goal. But finding means: being free, being open, having no goal.”
― Hermann Hesse

“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.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian

“When you like someone, you like them in spite of their faults. When you love someone, you love them with their faults.”
― Hermann Hesse, Wer lieben kann, ist glücklich. Über die Liebe

“Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can - that is their secret. ”
― Hermann Hesse

“There is no escape. You can't be a vagabond and an artist and still be a solid citizen, a wholesome, upstanding man. You want to get drunk, so you have to accept the hangover. 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. Don't try to lie to yourself. You are not a solid citizen. You are not a Greek. You are not harmonious, or the master of yourself. You are a bird in the storm. Let it storm! Let it drive you! How much have you lied! A thousand times, even in your poems and books, you have played the harmonious man, the wise man, the happy, the enlightened man. In the same way, men attacking in war have played heroes, while their bowels twitched. My God, what a poor ape, what a fencer in the mirror man is- particularly the artist- particularly myself!”
― Hermann Hesse

“I live in my dreams. Other people live in dreams too . . . just not their own.”
― Hermann Hesse

“Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.”
― Hermann Hesse

“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.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“You must find your dream...but no dream lasts forever, each dream is followed by another, and one should not cling to any particular dream.”
― Hermann Hesse

“One never reaches home,' she said. 'But where paths that have an affinity for each other intersect, the whole world looks like home, for a time.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian

“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.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“Gaze into the fire, into the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak..surrender to them. Don't ask first whether it's permitted, or would please your teachers or father or some god. You will ruin yourself if you do that.”
― Hermann Hesse

“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 of them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.”
― Hermann Hesse

“In eternity there is no time, only an instant long enough for a joke.”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“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.”
― Hermann Hesse

“My real self wanders elsewhere, far away, wanders on and on invisibly and has nothing to do with my life.”
― Hermann Hesse

“We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. 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.”
― Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund

“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 moldering lyre of thanksgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel the very devil burn in me than this warmth of a well-heated room. A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages, to pull off the wigs of a few revered idols...”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live.”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“Each man had only one genuine vocation - to find the way to himself....His task was to discover his own destiny - not an arbitrary one - and to live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one's own inwardness.”
― Hermann Hesse

“Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian

“I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?”
― Hermann Hesse

“You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves. A whole society composed of men afraid of the unknown within them!”
― Hermann Hesse

“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.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“You've never lived what you are thinking, and that isn't good. Only the ideas we actually live are of any value.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian

“I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it.”
― Hermann Hesse

“When someone is seeking,” said Siddartha, “It happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. You, O worthy one, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for in striving towards your goal, you do not see many things that are under your nose.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.”
― Hermann Hesse

“I have always been a great dreamer. In dreams I have always been more active than in my real life, and these shadows sapped me of my health and energy.”
― Hermann Hesse

“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.
”
― Hermann Hesse, Wer lieben kann, ist glücklich. Über die Liebe

“He has robbed me, yet he has given me something of greater value . . . he has given to me myself.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire”
― Hermann Hesse

“You should never be afraid of people... such fear can destroy us completely. You've simply got to get rid of it, if you want to turn into someone decent. You understand that, don't you?”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian

“I shall no longer be instructed by the Yoga Veda or the Aharva Veda, or the ascetics, or any other doctrine whatsoever. I shall learn from myself, be a pupil of myself; I shall get to know myself, the mystery of Siddhartha." He looked around as if he were seeing the world for the first time.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha