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dd93932
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Those who direct the maximum force of their desires towards the center, toward the true being, toward perfection, seem quieter than the passionate souls because the flame of their fervor cannot always be seen. In argument, for example, they will not shout and wave their arms. But I assure you, they are nevertheless burning with subdued fires.
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Hermann Hesse |
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ffefcaa
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One of the disadwantages of school and learning, he thought dreamily, was that the mind seemed to have the tendency too see and represent all things as though they were flat and had only two dimensions. This, somehow, seemed to render all matters of intellect shallow and worthless...
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Hermann Hesse |
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50b7012
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bysh z ykh qrn rwp khry jz skhtn mshyn nkhrd. khnwn, mqdr dqyq brwty khh bry khshtn admy lzm st r my dnd, m nmy dnd chTwr ykh s`t khwshbkht bshd.
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Hermann Hesse |
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879a629
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Knowledge can be conveyed, but not wisdom. It can be found, it can be lived, it is possible to be carried by it, miracles can be performed with it, but it cannot be expressed in words and taught.
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wisdom
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Hermann Hesse |
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b1d889a
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I don't know whether my life has been useless and merely a misunderstanding, or whether it has a meaning.
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Hermann Hesse |
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d341050
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All the women of this fevered night, all that I had danced with, all whom I had kindled or who have kindled me, all whom I had courted, all who had clung to me with longing, all whom I had followed with enraptured eyes were melted together and had become one, the one whom I held in my arms.
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Hermann Hesse |
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cf95e7b
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His way had therefore come full circle, or rather had taken the form of an ellipse or a spiral, following as ever no straight unbroken line, for the rectilinear belongs only to Geometry and not to Nature and Life.
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nature
life
lines
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Hermann Hesse |
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c5f72bf
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Every natural form is latent within us, originates in the soul whose essence is eternity, whose essence we cannot know but which most often intimates itself to us as the power to love and create.
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Hermann Hesse |
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a8e9c80
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That is the way leaves fall around a tree in autumn, a tree unaware of the rain running down its sides, of the sun or the frost, and of life gradually retreating inward. The tree does not die. It waits.
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Hermann Hesse |
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bfa6268
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Yes, what we are doing is probably mad, and probably it is good and necessary all the same. It is not a good thing when man overstrains his reason and tries to reduce to rational order matters that are susceptible of rational treatment. Then there arise ideals such as those of the Americans or of the Bolsheviks. Both are extraordinarily rational, and both lead to a frightful oppression and impoverishment of life, because they simplify it so..
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Hermann Hesse |
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de9b74c
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I feel life trembling within me, in my tongue, on the soles of my feet, in my desire or my suffering, I want my soul to be a wandering thing, able to move back into a hundred forms, I want to dream myself into priests and wanderers, female cooks and murderers, children and animals, and, more than anything else, birds and trees; that is necessary, I want it, I need it so I can go on living, and if sometime I were to lose these possibilities ..
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freedom
living
life
possibility
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Hermann Hesse |
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ff782e1
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I had grown accustomed to living within myself. I was resigned to the knowledge that I had lost all appreciation of the outside world, that the loss of its bright colors was an inseparable part of the loss of my childhood, and that, in a certain sense, one had to pay for freedom and maturity of the soul with the renunciation of this cherished aura. But now, overjoyed, I saw that all this had only been buried or clouded over and that it was ..
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Hermann Hesse |
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6b0e8dd
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She stood a moment before my eyes, clearly and painfully, loved and deeply woven into my destiny; then fell away again in a deep oblivion, at a half regretted distance.
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Hermann Hesse |
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f753ed0
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People like you and me are quite lonely really but we still have each other, we have the secret satisfaction of being different, of rebelling, of desiring the unusual.
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Hermann Hesse |
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ecb0d30
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Novelists when they write novels tend to take an almost godlike attitude toward their subject, pretending to a total comprehension of the story, a man's life, which they can therefore recount as God Himself might, nothing standing between them and the naked truth, the entire story meaningful in every detail. I am as little able to do this as the novelist is, even though my story is more important to me than any novelist's is to him - for th..
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story
religion
hermann-hesse
human-beings
novel
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Hermann Hesse |
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7cd845b
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Even the wolf has two, and more than two, souls in his wolf's breast, and he who desires to be a wolf falls into the same forgetfulness as the man who sings: "If I could be a child once more!" He who sentimentally sings of blessed childhood is thinking of the return to nature and innocence and the origin of things, and has quite forgotten that these blessed children are beset with conflict and complexities and capable of all suffering. Ther..
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Hermann Hesse |
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3398bb1
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Haller's sickness of the soul, as I now know, is not the eccentricity of a single individual, but the sickness of the times themselves, the neurosis of that generation to which Haller belongs, a sickness, it seems, that by no means attacks the weak and worthless only but, rather, precisely those who are strongest in spirit and richest in gifts.
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steppenwolf
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Hermann Hesse |
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5e281f9
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For there is not a single human being, not even the primitive Negro, not even the idiot, who is so conveniently simple that his being can be explained as the sum of two or three principal elements; and to explain so complex a man as Harry by the artless division into wolf and man is a hopelessly childish attempt. Harry consists of a hundred or a thousand selves, not of two. His life oscillates, as everyone's does, not merely between two pol..
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spirituality
philosophy
truth
soul
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Hermann Hesse |
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7b51ad6
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Even the wolf has two, and more than two, souls in his wolf's breast, and he who desires to be a wolf falls into the same forgetfulness as the man who sings: "If I could be a child once more!" He who sentimentally sings of blessed childhood is thinking of the return to nature and innocence and the origin of things, and has quite forgotten that these blessed children are beset with conflict and complexities and capable of all suffering. Ther..
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Hermann Hesse |
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8df8ee9
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He looked around, as if he was seeing the world for the first time. Beautiful was the world, colorful was the world, strange and mysterious was the world! Here was blue, here was yellow, here was green, the sky and the river flowed, the forest and the mountains were rigid, all of it was beautiful, all of it was mysterious and magical, and in its midst was he, Siddhartha, the awakening one, on the path to himself.
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Hermann Hesse |
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7899f3a
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Oh, if I had had a friend at this moment, a friend in an attic room, dreaming by candlelight and with a violin lying ready at his hand! How I should have slipped up to him in his quiet hour, noiselessly climbing the winding stair to take him by surprise, and then with talk and music we should have held heavenly festival throughout the night!
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music
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Hermann Hesse |
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dfa6e36
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Like an attack this melancholy comes from time to time. I don't know at what intervals, and slowly covers my sky with clouds. It begins with an unrest in the heart, with a premonition of anxiety, probably with my dreams at night. People, houses, colors, sounds that otherwise please me become dubious and seem false. Music gives me a headache. All my mail becomes upsetting and contains hidden arrows. At such times, having to converse with peo..
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depression
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Hermann Hesse |
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50811b0
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Never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner.
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inspiration
living
life-lessons
life
siddhartha
sin
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Hermann Hesse |
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c8f4fd2
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The scholar who knowingly speaks, writes, or teaches falsehood, who knowingly supports lies and deceptions, not only violates organic principles. He also, no matter how things may seem at the given moment, does his people a grave disservice. He corrupts its air and soil, its food and drink; he poisons its thinking and its laws, and he gives aid and comfort to all the hostile, evil forces that threaten the nation with annihilation.
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Hermann Hesse |
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12d514c
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What for me is bliss and life and ecstasy and exaltation, the world in general seeks at most in imagination; in life it finds it absurd.
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imagination
life
personal-joy
the-world
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Hermann Hesse |
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1b56440
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And these men, for whom life has no repose, live at times in their rare moments of happiness with such strength and indescribable beauty, the spray of their moment's happiness is flung so high and dazzling over the wide sea of suffering, that the light of it, spreading its radiance, touches others too with its enchantment. Thus, like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a single individu..
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Hermann Hesse |
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fdd3b0a
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How could I fail to be a lone wolf, and an uncouth hermit, as I did not share one of its aims nor understand one of its pleasures?
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Hermann Hesse |
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7a01d6b
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What are reason and sobriety without the knowledge of intoxication?
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Hermann Hesse |
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d7ce966
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H]e never ceased in his heroic and earnest endeavor to love them, to be just to them, to do them no harm, for the love of his neighbor was as deeply in him as the hatred of himself, and so his whole life was an example that love of one's neighbor is not possible without love of oneself, and that self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same cruel isolation and despair.
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Hermann Hesse |
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661f4e7
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Like animals we call to each other," was the thought that came to him as he remembered the hour of love in the afternoon."
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Hermann Hesse |
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08368ea
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No, I'm not religious, I'm sorry to say. But I was once and shall be again. There is no time now to be religious." "No time. Does it need time to be religious?" "Oh, yes. To be religious you must have time and, even more, independence of time. You can't be religious in earnest and at the same time live in actual things and still take them seriously, time and money and the Odeon Bar and all that."
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Hermann Hesse |
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e8ae37e
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m '`jb lsyr fy lDbb lHy@ wHd@
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Hermann Hesse |
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5a0b99b
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In any case, the most lively young people become the best old people, not those who pretend to be as wise as grandfathers while they are still at school.
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Hermann Hesse |
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3bff241
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With a secret smile, not unlike that of a healthy child,he walked along, peacefully, quietly. He wore his gown and walked along exactly like the other monks, but his face and his step, his peaceful downward glance, his peaceful downward-hanging hand, and every finger of his hand spoke of peace, spoke of completeness, sought nothing, imitated nothing, reflected a continuous quiet, an unfading light, an invulnerable peace.
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Hermann Hesse |
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a2c07d3
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Als Korper ist jeder Mensch eins, als Selle nie.
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Hermann Hesse |
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4254fb6
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Only when I found myself sitting in front of you did I realize that my wish was only half fulfilled and that my sole aim was to sit next to you.
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Hermann Hesse |
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171cde5
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A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, the longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home.
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nature
trees
longing
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Hermann Hesse |
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caa0787
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Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I have attained it.
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Hermann Hesse |
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2c6ed56
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kl wHd mn nsn , bshr, 'y 'nh mjrd mHwl@, mjrd shy' fy mntSf lTryq. w `ly lnsn 'n ykwn fy mntSf lTryq lmw'dy ly lkml w 'n ys`y lblwG lmrkz l lHf@.
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Hermann Hesse |
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0a4c94d
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People like best what is hard for them to obtain.
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Hermann Hesse |
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36c3d2b
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Ich werde stehen und warten. Ich werde mude werden. Ich werde nicht einschlafen. Ich werde sterben.
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sleep
existence
waiting
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Hermann Hesse |
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ad8ad29
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nhm y`rfwn km Grman mn lbrwd tHtj lqtl nsn lknhm l yGrfwn kyf tSly l~ llh, l y`rfwn Ht~ kyf tkwn s`ydan w lw lmd@ s`h mn lrD
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Hermann Hesse |
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4a5f5f1
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I have no desire to walk on water," said Siddhartha. "Let the old shramanas satisfy themselves with such skills."
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Hermann Hesse |
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43ebef2
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Light the Christmas candles for your children! Let them sing carols! But don't delude yourselves, don't content yourselves year after year with the shabby, pathetic, sentimental feeling you have when you celebrate your holidays! Demand more of yourselves! Love and joy and the mysterious thing we call "happiness" are not over here or over there, they are only "within yourselves."
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Hermann Hesse |