Soul of the Age Quotes

“Not everyone is allotted the chance to become a personality; most remain types, and never experience the rigor of becoming an individual. But those who do so inevitably discover that these struggles bring them into conflict with the normal life of average people and the traditional values and bourgeois conventions that they uphold. A personality is the product of a clash between two opposing forces: the urge to create a life of one's own and the insistence by the world around us that we conform. Nobody can develop a personality unless he undergoes revolutionary experiences. The extent of those experiences differs, of course, from person to person, as does the capacity to lead a life that is truly personal and unique.”
― Hermann Hesse, Soul of the Age: Selected Letters, 1891-1962

“And I don't want to live like a fleeting shadow, a consumptive, no. I want to live genuinely, with the true warmth and in full bloom. I want to be a gay worshipper in the temple of the muses rather than a mere hunted prey. Each day I ask in my prayers for the ability to preserve my own inner world rather than become stifled, so that the sweet poison, which I see thousands of people sipping, may not consume me as well.”
― Hermann Hesse, Soul of the Age: Selected Letters, 1891-1962

“I'm always running into the Sunday God of churchgoing Christians and cannot help noticing that he doesn't help out much on weekdays.”
― Hermann Hesse, Soul of the Age: Selected Letters, 1891-1962

“Even souls that are intensely alive will soon age and grow weary of this bustling, frenetic, satiated life.”
― Hermann Hesse, Soul of the Age: Selected Letters, 1891-1962