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fbdd617
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So you find yourself surrounded by death and horror in the world, and you escape it into lust. But lust has no duration; it leaves you again in the desert.
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Hermann Hesse |
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97fae73
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Whither will my path yet lead me? This path is stupid, it goes in spirals, perhaps in circles, but whichever way it goes, I will follow it.
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travel
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Hermann Hesse |
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930212b
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The mistaken and unhappy notion that a man is an enduring unity is known to you. It is also known to you that a man consists of a multitude of souls, of numerous selves. The separation of the unity of the personality into these numerous pieces passes for madness. Science has invented the name schizomania for it. Science is in this so far right as no multiplicity maybe dealt with unless there be a series, a certain order and grouping. It is ..
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Hermann Hesse |
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4e90050
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for you know that soft is stronger than hard, water stronger than rock, love stronger than force." Vesadeva to Siddartha"
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monasticism
siddhartha-gautama
siddhartha
buddhism
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Hermann Hesse |
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d14341d
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Our leaders strain every nerve and with success, to get the next war going, while the rest of us, meanwhile, dance the fox trot, earn money and eat chocolates...And perhaps...it has always been the same and always will be, and what is called history at school, and all we learn by heart there about heroes and geniuses and great deeds and fine emotions, is all nothing but a swindle invented by the schoolmasters for educational reasons to keep..
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Hermann Hesse |
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594be66
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The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment, every sin already carries grace in it.
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Hermann Hesse |
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2dfefd9
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I would traverse not once more, but often the hell of my inner being. One day I would be a better hand at the game. One day I would learn how to laugh. Pablo was waiting for me, and Mozart too.
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Hermann Hesse |
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e2329ea
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the river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future.
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time
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Hermann Hesse |
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c6cda54
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Within Siddhartha there slowly grew and ripened the knowledge of what wisdom really was and the goal of his long seeking. It was nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.
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Hermann Hesse |
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9d29db4
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You knew all along that your sanctioned world was only half the world, and you tried to suppress the other half the same way the priests and teachers do. You won't succeed. No one succeeds in this once he has begun to think.
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Hermann Hesse |
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9ed0439
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Our god's name is Abraxas and he is God and Satan and he contains both the luminous and the dark world.
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Hermann Hesse |
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3b612ad
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In fear I hurried this way and that. I had the taste of blood and chocolate in my mouth, the one as hateful as the other.
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Hermann Hesse |
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f8efdd8
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Love can be begged, bought, or received as a gift, one can find it in the street, but one cannot steal it.
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Hermann Hesse |
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43bfd5b
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Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.
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Hermann Hesse |
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b34b7e6
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Stages As every flower fades and as all youth Departs, so life at every stage, So every virtue, so our grasp of truth, Blooms in its day and may not last forever. Since life may summon us at every age Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor, Be ready bravely and without remorse To find new light that old ties cannot give. In all beginnings dwells a magic force For guarding us and helping us to live. Serenely let us move to distant places..
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herman
stages
hesse
the
glass
game
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Hermann Hesse |
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f19233e
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This day will never come again and anyone who fails to eat and drink and taste and smell it will never have it offered to him again in all eternity. The sun will never shine as it does today...But you must play your part and sing a song, one of your best.
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Hermann Hesse |
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dae80fa
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Life is always frightful. We cannot help it and we are responsible all the same. One's born and at once one is guilty.
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Hermann Hesse |
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c22828d
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I believe . . . that the petal of a flower or a tiny worm on the path says far more, contains far more than all the books in the library. One cannot say very much with mere letters and words. Sometimes I'll be writing a Greek letter, a theta or an omega, and tilt my pen just the slightest bit; suddenly the letter has a tail and becomes a fish; in a second it evokes all the streams and rivers of the world, all that is cool and humid, Homer's..
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Hermann Hesse |
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7641935
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For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves..
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struggle
strength
self
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Hermann Hesse |
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3505f52
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Now true humor begins when a man ceases to take himself seriously.
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Hermann Hesse |
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e35d25d
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Teachers dread nothing so much as unusual characteristics in precocious boys during the initial stages of their adolescence. A certain streak of genius makes an ominous impression on them, for there exists a deep gulf between genius and the teaching profession. Anyone with a touch of genius seems to his teachers a freak from the very first. As far as teachers are concerned, they define young geniuses as those who are bad, disrespectful, smo..
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education
hermann-hesse
institution
teachers
genius
students
school
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Hermann Hesse |
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61203f7
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Let me say no more. Words do no justice to the hidden meaning. Everything immediately becomes slightly different when it is expressed in words, a little bit distorted, a little foolish...It is perfectly fine with me that what for one man is precious wisdom for another sounds like foolery.
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spiritual
truth
wisdom
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Hermann Hesse |
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7c78f23
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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.
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Hermann Hesse |
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8b125b6
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If only there were a dogma to believe in. Everything is contradictory, everything is tangential; there are no certainties anywhere. Everything can be interpreted one way and then again interpreted in the opposite sense. The whole of world history can be explained as development and progress and can also be seen as nothing but decadence and meaninglessness. Isn't there any truth? Is there no real and valid doctrine?" Joseph Knect said to his..
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religion
truth
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Hermann Hesse |
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95ea959
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The opposite of every truth is just as true.
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Hermann Hesse |
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1bb517d
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I am a star in the firmament that observe the world, despises the world and consumed in its heat. I am the sea by night in a storm the sea shouting that accumulates new sins and to the ancient makes recompense. I am exiled from your world of pride polite, by pride defrauded, I am the king without crown. I am the passion without words
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passion
world
star
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Hermann Hesse |
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2cf7151
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The cup was emptied and would never be filled again.
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Hermann Hesse |
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a94fdc0
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They slept profoundly, desperately, greedily, as though for the last time, as though they had been condemned to stay awake forever and had to drink in all the sleep in the world during these last hours.
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sleep
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Hermann Hesse |
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ef8977b
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Among the many worlds which man did not receive as a gift of nature, but which he created with his own mind, the world of books is the greatest. Every child, scrawling his first letters on his slate and attempting to read for the first time, in so doing, enters an artificial and complicated world; to know the laws and rules of this world completely and to practice them perfectly, no single human life is long enough. Without words, without w..
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words
literature
history
reading
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Hermann Hesse |
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39ac3b6
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Man is an onion made up of a hundred integuments, a texture made up of many threads. The ancient Asiatics knew this well enough, and in the Buddhist Yoga an exact technique was devised for unmasking the illusion of the personality. The human merry-go-round sees many changes: the illusion that cost India the efforts of thousands of years to unmask is the same illusion that the West has labored just as hard to maintain and strengthen.
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hesse
east
west
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Hermann Hesse |
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5186de3
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I realize that some people will not believe that a child of little more than ten years is capable of having such feelings. My story is not intended for them. I am telling it to those who have a better knowledge of man. The adult who has learned to translate a part of his feelings into thoughts notices the absence of these thoughts in a child, and therefore comes to believe that the child lacks these experiences, too. Yet rarely in my life h..
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thoughts
feelings
demian
hermann-hesse
children
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Hermann Hesse |
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e9ee892
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You love nobody. Is that not true?" "Maybe," said Siddhartha wearily. "I am like you. You cannot love either, otherwise how could you practice love as an art? Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can - that is their secret."
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Hermann Hesse |
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f2271ea
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It is good," he thought "to taste for yourself everything you need to know. That worldly pleasures and wealth are not good things, I learned even as a child. I knew it for a long time, but only now have I experienced it. And now I know it, I know it not only because I remember hearing it, but with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach. And it is good for me to know it!"
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wealth
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Hermann Hesse |
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84c1d53
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The things we see," Pistorius said softly, "are the same things that are within us. There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself. You can be happy that way. But once you know the other interpretation you no longer have the choice of following the crowd. Sinclair, the majority's path ..
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Hermann Hesse |
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b904936
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Tegularius was a willful, moody person who refused to fit into his society. Every so often he would display the liveliness of his intellect. When highly stimulated he could be entrancing; his mordant wit sparkled and he overwhelmed everyone with the audacity and richness of his sometimes somber inspirations. But basically he was incurable, for he did not want to be cured; he cared nothing for co-ordination and a place in the scheme of thing..
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iconoclasm
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Hermann Hesse |
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607f1e4
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Siddhartha has one single goal-to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow-to let the Self die. No longer to be Self, to experience the peace of an emptied heart, to experience pure thought-that was his goal.
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life
siddhartha
self
thought
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Hermann Hesse |
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797749c
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I have no idea whether parents can be of help, and I do not blame mine. It was my own affair to come to terms with myself and to find my own way, and like most well-brought-up children, I managed it badly. Everyone goes through this crisis. For the average person this is the point when the demands of his own life come into the sharpest conflict with his environment, when the way forward has to be sought with the bitterest means at his comma..
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Hermann Hesse |
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7b803c1
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What should I possibly have to tell you, oh venerable one? Perhaps that you're searching far too much? That in all that searching, you don't find the time for finding?
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searching
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Hermann Hesse |
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d976ff6
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The world, my friend Govinda, is not imperfect or confined at a point somewhere along a gradual pathway toward perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment.
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Hermann Hesse |
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befb0a4
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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.
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Hermann Hesse |
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423deb7
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I felt knowledge and the unity of the world circulate in me like my own blood.
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unity
world
siddhartha
knowledge
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Hermann Hesse |
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e4b767c
|
We) consist of everything the world consists of, each of us, and just as our body contains the genealogical table of evolution as far back as the fish and even much further, so we bear everything in our soul that once was alive in the soul of men. Every god and devil that ever existed, be it among the Greeks, Chinese, or Zulus, are within us, exist as latent possibilities, as wishes, as alternatives. If the human race were to vanish from th..
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Hermann Hesse |
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e890f50
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As a body everyone is single, as a soul never
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Hermann Hesse |
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8185006
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Siddhartha stopped fighting his fate this very hour, and he stopped suffering.
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Hermann Hesse |