The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse Quotes

“All the books of the world full of thoughts and poems are nothing in comparison to a minute of sobbing, when feeling surges in waves, the soul feels itself profoundly and finds itself. Tears are the melting ice of snow. All angels are close to the crying person.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“Love is like death. It is fulfillment and an evening after which nothing more may follow.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“You see, King, we have a legend - I used to believe that it was all fairy-tale rubbish and empty smoke. It is a legend about how such things as war and death and despair were common in our country at one time. These terrible words, which we have long since stopped using in our language, can be read in collections of our old tales, and they sound awful to us and even a little ridiculous. Today I've learned that these tales are all true... But now tell me, don't you have in your soul a sort of intimation that you're not doing the right thing? Don't you have a yearning for bright, serene gods, for sensible and cheerful leaders and mentors? Don't you ever dream in your sleep about another, more beautiful life where nobody is envious of others, where reason and order prevails, where people treat other people only with cheerfulness and considerations?”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“He brooded on how close destruction always was to all creatures, animals as well as humans, and he realized that there is nothing we can predict or know for certain in this world except death.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“I felt and saw the night outside deep within me. Wind and wetness, autumn, bitter smell of foliage, scattered leaves of the elm tree.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“The world had been divided into two parts that sought to annihilate each other because they both desired the same thing, namely the liberation of the oppressed, the elimination of violence, and the establishment of permanent peace.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“He had very few doubts, and when the facts contradicted his views on life, he shut his eyes in disapproval.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“...I thought, with a certain amount of sorrow, how much enormous talent there must be in the world for nature simply to toss it away so arbitrarily! But nature could not care less what we think about it, and as far as talent is concerned, there is such an excess that our artists will soon become their own audiences, and audiences made up of ordinary people will no longer exist.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“From the bowed crowns of ancient trees simple soft human beauty spoke pure poems and symphonies; a world of noble intimations and charmingly civilized delights.”
― Hermann Hesse, Fairy Tales

“In his tears he felt that he was now supposed to encounter the sweetest thing that a person could experience, and when he tried to ponder this, he knew quite well what love truly was, but he could not imagine it exactly and ended with the feeling that love is like death. It is fulfillment and an evening after which nothing more may follow.

from “The Beautiful Dream”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“Every person encounters the open door here and there in the course of life, and it occurs to everyone at one time or another that everything visible is symbolic and that spirit and eternal life are living behind the symbol. Of course, very few people go through the gate and abandon the beautiful phenomenon of the outside world for the interior reality that they intuit.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“All children, as long as they still live in the mystery, are continuously occupied in their souls with the only thing that is important, which is themselves and their enigmatic relationship to the world around them. Seekers and wise people return to these preoccupations as they mature. Most people, however, forget and leave forever this inner world of the truly significant very early in their lives. Like lost souls they wander about for their entire lives in the multicoloured maze of worries, wishes, and goals, none of which dwells in their innermost being and none of which leads them to their innermost core”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“We are created and resurrected with our dreams.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“Don't you ever dream … about another … more beautiful life where nobody is envious of others, … where people treat other people only with cheerfulness and consideration? Have you never thought that the world might be a totality, and that it might be beneficial and salutary to honour this unity of all things?”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“The fact that the student enjoyed his happiness only in a dream should not diminish it, for most people experience their dreams more intensely than their lives.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“My gift and uniqueness consist in this: I store images of the external world in my head, and out of them I am able to produce new images and arrangements only for myself. I can conceive the entire world in my mind. That is, I can create it anew.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“First you must climb the Mountain of Knowledge, then you must perform some deeds, and finally you must find love and become happy.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“El rostro del enano era tan feo y estaba tan inmóvil como siempre; no reflejaba nada de sus pensamientos. Precisamente estaba pensando en su perrito ahogado, Fino, y en el papagayo a quien habían retorcido el cuello, y se le ocurrió que él, como todos los seres, así animales como hombres, estaba permanentemente cerca de la mina, que en este mundo nada podemos prever ni saber como no sea la segura muerte. Pensaba en su padre, en la patria, y en toda su vida, y entonces una sonrisa burlona se extendió por su rostro, porque consideraba que casi siempre y en todas partes los sabios están al servicio de los necios y que la vida de casi todos los hombres bien puede compararse a una mala comedia.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“Humanity came first for him, not a political party or movement, and he believed peace could be achieved only if people were given freedom to realize their humanitarian impulses.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“Korkak halkların yürekliliği göklere çıkaran halk ezgileri vardır. Sevgi nedir bilmeyenlerin de sevginin yüceliği üzerine yazılmış tiyatro yapıtları.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“Bu insanlar, içlerindeki gizli istek yansılarıyla yanıp tutuşuyor, zihinlerindeki rsimlerle özdeşleşiyor, ülkülere bağlanıyor ve aptalca ya da akıllıca olsun , herhangi bir biçimde bunlara ulaşmaya çabalıyordu. İçinde Napoleon'un yansısını taşımayan bir teğmen ve ara sıra maymun olduğunu duyumsamayan, başarılarını birere oyuncak, amaçlarını da bir düş gibi görmeyen bir Napoleon hiç olmamıştır.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“Çocuk aklımla onu inanılmaz derecede aptal bulurdum. Öyleydi de. Ama mutlu bir insandı ve bazen mutlu insanların aptal olsalar bile gizli bir bilgelikleri olduğuna inananasım geliyor. Zeki olmak kadar aptalca olan ve insanı mutsuz eden ne var ki!”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“All they thought about was how to get rich fast, and whoever had owned a mill or forge now had to have a factory quickly, and whoever had three workers now had to have ten. … And the faster the many hands and machines worked, the faster the money accumulated – especially for those individuals who were adept at accumulating. Many, many workers … suffered under conditions of drudgery and slavery.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“[A]ll the countries had enough to pay for these enormous protective walls, and nobody thought about war. They only armed themselves 'just in case' – because rich people like to see steel walls around their money.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“In the meantime the Great Revolution occurred and moved throughout the entire world – that strange transformation of human beings and things. It arose like a ghost or malady from the smoke of the first steam machines and transformed life all over the place. The world became full of work and industry. It came to be ruled by machines and was continually propelled to accomplish new kinds of work.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“I had walked but a short time when I met a man with a tin number on his hat, and he asked me what I was doing. I told him I was taking a walk.

His response: 'Do you have permission?’

I did not understand him.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“The world had been divided into … parts that sought to annihilate each other because they both desired the same thing, namely the liberation of the oppressed, the elimination of violence, and the establishment of permanent peace.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“I became unhappy because I saw nothing but the usual tribulations, trade, progress, and improvements on the earth.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“Over his soul in fleeting waves of happiness, the dreamlike presentiment of a bright earth ruled by the sun began to flicker, an earth on which bright liberated creatures lived in lightness and were subservient to no one except the sun.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse

“They were … neither beautiful nor ugly[.]”
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse