Hermann Hesse Quotes (154 Quotes)

As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.

Those who cannot think or take responsibility for themselves need, and clamor for, a leader.

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.

Wisdom is only taught through experience.

Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them.

All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.

Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.

He does not educate children but rejoices in their happiness

Paradise is seldom recognized as such until it is considered from the outside.

Everything becomes a little bit different as soon as it is spoken out loud.

There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only a knowledge - that is everywhere.

In this evil year, autumn comes early.

Everything that was not suffered to the end and finally concluded, recurred, and the same sorrows were undergone.

In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.

Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can - that is their secret.

And every occasion when a mask was torn off, an ideal broken, was preceded by this hateful vacancy and stillness, this deathly constriction and loneliness and unrelatedness, this waste and empty hell of lovelenessness and despair, such as I had now t

Lovers should not separate from each other after making love without admiring each other, without being conquered as well as conquering, so that no feeling of satiation or desolation arises nor the horrid feeling of misusing or having been misused.

To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.

Within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.

One can be happy when he finds his dream, but every dream has to be followed by a new one and you can't capture any of them forever.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object.

Love is stronger than violence.

When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.

The river is everywhere at the same time ... everywhere and the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future.

There was once a man, Harry, called the Steppenwolf. He went on two legs, wore clothes and was a human being, but nevertheless he was in reality a wolf of the Steppes. He had learned a good deal of all that people of a good intelligence can, and was a fairly clever fellow. What he had not learned, however, was this to find contentment in himself and his own life.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature are shot down wholesale.

What I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

Perhaps you seek too much...as a result of your seeking you cannot find.

The man of power is ruined by power, the man of money by money, the submissive man by subservience, the pleasure seeker by pleasure.

I am fond of music I think because it is so amoral. Everything else is moral and I am after something that isn't. I have always found moralizing intolerable.

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.

Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.

Knowledge can be communicated, but wisdom cannot. A man can find it, he can live it, he can be filled and sustained by it, but he cannot utter or teach it.

From my thirteenth year on, it was clear to me that I wanted to be a poet or nothing at all.

To be able to throw one's self away for the sake of a moment, to be able to sacrifice years for a woman's smile - that is happiness.

I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.

I have known it for a long time but I have only just experienced it. Now I know it not only with my intellect, but with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach.

Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and cruelties it accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap.

Wisdom is not communicable.

There's no reality except the one contained within us. That's why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.

One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.

What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.

The true vocation of man is to find his way to himself.

It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is.

You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulae exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.