Demian

by Hermann Hesse

we should honor everything and hold it sacred, the whole world, not just this artificially detached, official half!

that inside us there’s a self that knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than we ourselves do.—But

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

Everyone had only one true vocation: to find himself.

people were seeking “freedom” and “happiness” somewhere behind themselves, out of the sheer fear of being reminded of their own responsibilities and being admonished to travel their own path. For a couple of years they drank and raised hell, and then they knuckled under and became serious citizens in the civil service. Yes, things were rotten, rotten, among us, and this stupidity of student life was less stupid and harmful than a hundred other kinds.

paths of friends meet, the whole world looks like home