The Journey to the East Quotes

“Despair is the result of each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, justice and understanding, and to fulfill their requirements. Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“The whole of world history often seems to me nothing more than a picture book which portrays humanity's most powerful and a senseless desire - the desire to forget. Does not each generation, by means of suppression, concealment, and ridicule, efface what the previous generation considered most important?”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“Everything becomes questionable as soon as I consider it closely, everything slips away and dissolves.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“For our goal was not only the East, or rather the East was not only a country and something geographical, but it was the home and youth of the soul, it was everywhere and nowhere, it was the union of all times.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“I shall always remember how the peacocks’ tails shimmered when the moon rose amongst the tall trees, and on the shady bank the emerging mermaids gleamed fresh and silvery amongst the rocks…”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“Faith is stronger than so-called reason.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“He who travels far will often see things Far removed from what he believed was Truth. When he talks about it in the fields at home, He is often accused of lying, For the obdurate people will not believe What they do not see and distinctly feel. Inexperience, I believe, Will give little credence to my song.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East: A Novel

“That is just what life is when it is beautiful and happy - a game! Naturally, one can also do all kinds of other things with it, make a duty of it, or a battleground, or a prison, but that does not make it any prettier.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“That is just what life is when it is beautiful and happy - a game! Naturally, one can also do all kinds of other things with it, make a duty of it, or a battleground, or a prison, but that does not make it any prettier...”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“شاید غم انگیز باشد اما زیبا هم هست”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“Once in their youth the light shone for them; they saw the light and followed the star, but then came reason and the mockery of the world; then came faint-heartedness and apparent failure; then came weariness and disillusionment, and so they lost their way again, they became blind again.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East: A Novel

“Next to the hunger to experience a thing, men have perhaps no stronger hunger than to forget.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“When something precious and irretrievable is lost, we have the feeling of having awakened from a dream.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“A shudder went through me at the thought of what I should still learn in this hour. How awry, altered and distorted everything and everyone was in these mirrors, how mockingly and unattainably did the face of truth hide itself behind all these reports, counter-reports and legends! What was still truth? What was still credible? And what would remain when I also learned about myself, about my own character and history from the knowledge stored in these archives?
I must be prepared for anything. Suddenly I could bear the uncertainty and suspense no longer. I hastened to the section Chattorum res gestas, looked for my sub-division and number and stood in front of the part marked with my name. This was a niche, and when I drew the thin curtains aside I saw that it contained nothing written. It contained nothing but a figure, an old and worn-looking model made from wood or wax, in pale colours. It appeared to be a kind of deity or barbaric idol. At first glance it was entirely incomprehensible to me. It was a figure that really consisted of two; it had a common back. I stared at it for a while, disappointed and surprised. Then I noticed a candle in a metal candlestick fixed to the wall of the niche. A match-box lay there. I lit the candle and the strange double figure was now brightly illuminated.
Only slowly did it dawn upon me. Only slowly and gradually did I begin to suspect and then perceive what it was intended to represent. It represented a figure which was myself, and this likeness of myself was unpleasantly weak and half-real; it had blurred features, and in its whole expression there was something unstable, weak, dying or wishing to die, and looked rather like a piece of sculpture which could be called "Transitoriness" or "Decay," or something similar. On the other hand, the other figure which was joined to mine to make one, was strong in colour and form, and just as I began to realise whom it resembled, namely, the servant and President Leo, I discovered a second candle in the wall and lit this also. I now saw the double figure representing Leo and myself, not only becoming clearer and each image more alike, but I also saw that the surface of the figures was transparent and that one could look inside as one can look through the glass of a bottle or vase. Inside the figures I saw something moving, slowly, extremely slowly, in the same way that a snake moves which has fallen asleep. Something was taking place there, something like a very slow, smooth but continuous flowing or melting; indeed, something melted or poured across from my image to that of Leo's. I perceived that my image was in the process of adding to and flowing into Leo's, nourishing and strengthening it. It seemed that, in time, all the substance from one image would flow into the other and only one would remain: Leo. He must grow, I must disappear.
As I stood there and looked and tried to understand what I saw, I recalled a short conversation that I had once had with Leo during the festive days at Bremgarten. We had talked about the creations of poetry being more vivid and real than the poets themselves.
The candles burned low and went out. I was overcome by an infinite weariness and desire to sleep, and I turned away to find a place where I could lie down and sleep.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“I imagine that every historian is similarly affected when he begins to record the events of some period and wishes to portray them sincerely. Where is the center of events, the common standpoint around which they revolve and which gives them cohesion? In order that something like cohesion, something like causality, that some kind of meaning might ensue and that it can in some way be narrated, the historian must invent units, a hero, a nation, an idea, and he must allow to happen to this invented unit what has in reality happened to the nameless.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“devoted to small details exalts us and increases our strength.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East: A Novel

“با مهر مرگ جاودانه خواهم کرد”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“Notre frere a ete conduit par son epreuve au desespoir, et les desespoir est la resultat de toute tentative serieuse pour comprendre et justifier la vie humaine. le desespoir est le resultat de tout effort serieux pour mettre sa vie en harmonie avec la vertu, avec la justice, avec la raison, tout en repondant a ses exigences. les enfants vivent en deca de ce desespoir, les adultes au-dela.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“إنه قانون الخدمة. إن الذي يرغب أن يعيش طويلًا، يجب أن يَخدم. أما الذي يرغب في أن يَحكم، فلا يعيش طويلا.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“إن التوبة وحدها لا تساعده. والعفو لا يمكن أن يُشترى بالتوبة. العفو لا يمكن أن يُشترى أبدا.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“ما أكثرَ ما يبدو لي أن تاريخ العالم كله ليس أكثر من كتاب مصور يرسم أشد رغبات الإنسانية قوةً وانعدام معنى؛ وأقصد بها الرغبة في النسيان.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“كل شيء يصبح مدعاة للتساؤل حالما أتأمله بعناية، وكل شيء يهرب ويتلاشى.”
― هرمان هيسه, The Journey to the East

“واليأس هو نتيجة كل محاولة مخلصة لفهم الإنسانية وتبريرها. اليأس هو نتيجة كل محاولة مخلصة لعبور الحياة مع الفضيلة والعدالة والفهم وتلبية متطلباتها.”
― هرمان هيسه, The Journey to the East

“الكلمات لا تعبر عن الأفكار جيدًا. فكل شيء يصبح بغتة مختلفًا قليلًا، ومشوشًا قليلًا، وأحمق قليلًا. إلا أن ما يريحني ويبدو لي صحيحًا هو أن ما يراه الإنسان قيّمًا وحكيمًا يراه آخر هراء.”
― هرمان هيسه, The Journey to the East

“the”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“I had experienced similar hours in the past. During such periods of despair it seemed to me as if I, a lost pilgrim, had reached the extreme edge of the world, and there was nothing left for me to do but to satisfy my last desire: to let myself fall from the edge of the world into the void—to death. In the course of time this despair returned many times; the compelling suicidal impulse, however, had been diverted and had almost vanished. Death was no longer nothingness, a void, negation. It had also become many other things to me. I now accepted the hours of despair as one accepts acute physical pain; one endures it, complainingly or defiantly; one feels it swell and increase, and sometimes there is a raging or mocking curiosity as to how much further it can go, to what extent the pain can still increase.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“believe,”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“The law of service. He who wishes to live long must serve, but he who wishes to rule does not live long.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“انچه یکی را گنجینه حکمت است، در گوش دیگری طنین یاوه و ترفند دارد”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East

“But he relapsed into brooding, depression and mistrust, became more than negligent in his duties, and began to be intolerant, nervous and quarrelsome. As he finally remained behind on the march one day and did not appear again, it did not matter to anyone to stop on his behalf and look for him; it was evidently a case of desertion.”
― Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East