Demian

by Hermann Hesse

I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I’m beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me.

Every person’s life is a journey toward himself,

No person has ever been completely himself, but each one strives to become so, some gropingly, others more lucidly, according to his abilities.

We can understand one another, but each of us can only interpret himself.

In this world there were straight lines and paths leading to the future, there were duty and guilt, a troubled conscience and confession, forgiveness and good resolutions, love and respect, Bible sayings and wisdom. This was the world to adhere to if one’s life was to be bright and pure, lovely and well-ordered.

For the first time I tasted death, and death tastes bitter because it is birth, it is anxiety and terror in the face of a frightening innovation.

we see the borderline between us and nature tremble and dissolve, and we become acquainted with the mood in which we don’t know whether the images on our retina are coming from external impressions or from within us. In no other way than through this practice do we discover so simply and easily how very creative we are, how much our soul always participates in the perpetual creation of the world.

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

The person who truly wants nothing except his destiny no longer has others of his own kind; he stands completely alone and has only the chill of outer space around him.

All over, 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.

we were separated from the majority of people not by frontiers but merely by a different way of seeing. Our task was to represent an island in the world, perhaps a model to be followed, but at any rate to make our life the annunciation of a different possibility.

“Love ought not to make requests,” she said, “but shouldn’t make demands, either. Love must have the strength to reach certainty for itself. Then it no longer undergoes the power of attraction, but exerts it. Sinclair, your love is being attracted by me. Whenever it begins to attract me, I shall come. I don’t want to make a gift of myself, I want to be won.”

He had loved and, by doing so, had found himself. But most people love in order to lose themselves.

A gigantic bird was fighting its way out of the egg, and the egg was the world, and the world had to fall to pieces.