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6648b70 At Night on the High Seas At night, when the sea cradles me And the pale star gleam Lies down on its broad waves, Then I free myself wholly From all activity and all the love And stand silent and breathe purely, Alone, alone cradled by the sea That lies there, cold and silent, with a thousand lights. Then I have to think of my friends And my gaze sinks into their eyes, And I ask each one, silent and alone: "Are you still mine? Is my sorrow .. grief hermann-hesse love poetry Hermann Hesse
0882e66 It's so good to know that inside us there's a self that knows everything! Hermann Hesse
89f67a0 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... beauty game life nature pretty prison Hermann Hesse
94a3abf When Siddhartha left the grove, where the Buddha, the perfected one, stayed behind, where Govinda stayed behind, then he felt that in this grove his past life also stayed behind and parted from him. He pondered about this sensation, which filled him completely, as he was slowly walking along. He pondered deeply, like diving into a deep water he let himself sink down to the ground of the sensation, down to the place where the causes lie, bec.. Hermann Hesse
7569fcd We can understand one another, but each of us can only interpret himself. Hermann Hesse
ef92f9e He lived in this dream world more than in the real one. The real world: classroom, courtyard, library, dormitory, and chapel were only the surface, a quivering film over the dream-filled super-real world of images. Hermann Hesse
cff4bcf There I often walked along the shore, listened to the sea, and thought as I had done in my youth, with amazement and horror, about the sad and senseless confusion of life, that one could love in vain, that people who meant well toward each other should work out their destinies separately, each one going his own inexplicable way, and how each would like to help and draw close to the other and yet was unable to do so, as in troubled meaningle.. friendship love Hermann Hesse
61977b5 And so every one of us has to find out for himself what is allowed and what is forbidden--forbidden for him. It is entirely possible to never do anything forbidden at all and still be an absolute scroundel. And vice versa. Hermann Hesse
b6eb3d8 In his heart he heard the voice talking, which was newly awaking, and it told him: Love this water! Stay near it! Learn from it! Oh yes, he wanted to learn from it, he wanted to listen to it. He who would understand this water and its secrets, so it seemed to him, would also understand many other things, many secrets, all secrets. Hermann Hesse
ca46c83 she seemed to know more of life than is known to the wisest of the wise. It might be the highest wisdom or the merest artlessness. It is certain in any case that life is quite disarmed by the gift to live so entirely in the present, to treasure with such eager care every flower by the wayside and the light that plays on every passing moment. Hermann Hesse
e25b7cd For awakened human beings, there was no obligation--none, none, none at all--except this: to search for yourself, become sure of yourself, feel your way forward along your own path, wherever it led. self-discovery Hermann Hesse
146cdbd content with small pleasures and yet never really satisfied! Hermann Hesse
0793bf1 I paint because I have no tail to wag. Hermann Hesse
d9d04fa Seeking means; to have a goal; but finding means; to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. Hermann Hesse
f814d55 There was only greed for living and dread, and out of dread, out of stupid childish dread of the cold, of loneliness, of death, two people fled to one another, kissed, embraced, rubbed cheek to cheek, put leg to leg, cast new human beings into the world. That was how it was. klein-and-wagner love procreation Hermann Hesse
e5fd3dc wfy kl bdy@ sHr*** yHmyn wys`dn `l~ lHy@.. Hermann Hesse
fe4627b You were willing. Look, Kamala, when you throw a rock into the water, it will speed on the fastest course to the bottom of the water. This is how it is when Siddhartha has a goal, a resolution. Siddhartha does nothing, he waits, he thinks, he fasts, but he passes through the things of the world like a rock through water, without doing anything, without stirring; he is drawn, he lets himself fall. His goal attracts him, because he doesn't le.. Hermann Hesse
66e2f8b I lived in those dreams--I was always a heavy dreamer--more than in real life; those shadows consumed my strength and life. Hermann Hesse
97fecc1 Narcissus looked at him gravely: "I take you seriously when you are Goldmund. But you're not always Goldmund. I wish nothing more than to see you become Goldmund through and through. You are not a scholar, you are not a monk - scholars and monks can have a coarser grain. You think you're not learned or logical or pious enough for me. On the contrary, you are not enough yourself." Hermann Hesse
a0102d7 I wanted only to try to live in obedience to the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult? Hermann Hesse
e39927b When you listen to radio you are a witness of the everlasting war between idea and appearance, between time and eternity, between the human and the divine. Exactly, my dear sir, as the radio for ten minutes together projects the most lovely music ithout regard into the most impossible places, into respectable drawing rooms and attics and into the midst of chattering, guzzling, yawning and sleeping listeners, and exactly as it strips this mu.. radio reality Hermann Hesse
3a3213b no matter how close two human beings may be, there is always a gulf between them which only love can bridge, and that only from hour to hour. Hermann Hesse
78ce83c All brightness was gone, leaving nothing. We stepped out of the tent onto nothing. Sledge and tent were there, Estraven stood beside me, but neither he nor I cast any shadow. There was dull light all around, everywhere. When we walked on the crisp snow no shadow showed the footprint. We left no track. Sledge, tent, himself, myself: nothing else at all. No sun, no sky, no horizon, no world. setting Ursula K. Le Guin
c058ada They tended to be stolid, slovenly, heavy, and to my eyes effeminate - not in the sense of delicacy, etc., but in just the opposite sense: a gross, bland fleshiness, a bovinity without point or edge. Ursula K. Le Guin
98d79d1 I am yours by parentage and custom and by duty undertaken towards you. I am your wizard. But it is time you recalled that, tough I am a servant, I am not your servant. Ursula K. Le Guin
6cdcdc4 He was one whose power was akin to, and as strong as, the Old Powers of the earth; one who talked with dragons, and held off earthquakes with his word. And there he lay asleep on the dirt, with a little thistle growing by his hand. It was very strange. Living, being in the world, was a much greater and stranger thing than she had ever dreamed. The glory of the sky touched his dusty hair, and turned the thistle gold for a little while. Ursula K. Le Guin
23c60f1 This writing doesn't affect reality any more than any writing does; that is to say, indirectly, but considerably. Ursula K. Le Guin
ff4f074 If we insist that in the real world the ultimate victor must be the good guy, we've sacrificed right to might. (That's what History does after most wars, when it applauds the victors for their superior virtue as well as their superior firepower.) If we falsify the terms of the competition, handicapping it, so that the good guys may lose the battle but always win the war, we've left the real world, we're in fantasy land--wishful thinking cou.. Ursula K. Le Guin
e760df5 the Old Powers of earth are not for men to use. They were never given into our hands, and in our hands they work only ruin. Ill means, ill end. I was not drawn here, but driven here, and the force that drove me works to my undoing. Ursula K. Le Guin
d432ea6 It isn't changing around from place to place that keeps you lively. It's getting time on your side. Working with it, not against it. Ursula K. Le Guin
ca4708c I think if you have lost a great happiness and try to recall it, you are only asking for sorrow, but if you do not try to dwell on the happiness, sometimes you find it dwelling in your heart and body, silent but sustaining. Ursula K. Le Guin
fbf5bb2 If the foreman had no experience in bossing a mob, they had no experience in being one. Members of a community, not elements of a collectivity, they were not moved by mass feeling; there were as many emotions there as there were people. And they did not expect commands to be arbitrary, so they had no practice in disobeying them. Their inexperience saved the passenger's life. community Ursula K. Le Guin
8439bdb It was easy to share when there was enough, even barely enough, to go round. But when there was not enough? Then force entered in; might making right; power, and its tool, violence, and its most devoted ally, the averted eye. shame violence Ursula K. Le Guin
d546bb8 A people that doesn't live at the center of the world, as defined and described by its poets and storytellers, is in a bad way. The center of the world is where you live fully, where you know how things are done, how things are done rightly, done well. Ursula K. Le Guin
217ac97 The really terrible thing about being young is the triviality Ursula K. Le Guin
2ed82b8 Try to choose carefully, Arren, when the great choices must be made. {...} But each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply be. being choices Ursula K. Le Guin
b480571 Ged saw all these things from outside and apart, alone, and his heart was very heavy in him, though he would not admit to himself that he was sad. As night fell he still lingered in the streets, reluctant to go back to the inn. He heard a man and a girl talking together merrily as they came down the street past him towards the town square, and all at once he turned, for he knew the man's voice. He followed and caught up with the pair, comin.. loneliness recognition solitude welcome Ursula K. Le Guin
414f233 Well," he said slowly, "sometimes there's a passion that comes in its springtime to ill fate or death. And because it ends in its beauty, it's what the harpers sing of and the poets make stories of: the love that escapes the years.... "All or nothing, the true lover says, and that's the truth of it. My love will never die, he says. He claims eternity. And rightly. How can it die when it's life itself? What do we know of eternity but the gli.. love lovers Ursula K. Le Guin
418fae4 chronosophy does involve ethics. Because our sense of time involves our ability to separate cause and effect, means and end. The baby, again, the animal, they don't see the difference between what they do now and what will happen because of it. They can't make a pulley, or a promise. We can. Seeing the difference between now and not now, we can make the connection. And there morality enters in. Responsibility. To say that a good end will fo.. ethics responsibility Ursula K. Le Guin
e4bf2ae On the blank leaf glued to the inner back cover I drew the double curve within the circle, and blacked the yin half of the symbol, then pushed it back to my companion. 'Do you know that sign?' He looked at it a long time with a strange look, but he said, 'No.' 'It's found on Earth, and on Hain-Davenant, and on Chiffewar. It is yin and yang. Light is the left hand of darkness...how did it go? Light, dark. Fear, courage. Cold, warmth. Female,.. Ursula K. Le Guin
28cb9ec Why is it that if you say you don't enjoy using an e-reader, or that you aren't going to get one till the technology is mature, you get reported as "loathing" it? digital e-books e-reading reading Ursula K. Le Guin
eb87b86 Laws are made against the impulse a people most fears in itself. Do not kill was the Shing's vaunted single Law. All else was permitted: which meant, perhaps, there was little else they really wanted to do... Ursula K. Le Guin
af1b793 So when one stands in a cherished place for the last time before a voyage without return, he sees it all whole, and real, and dear, as he has never seen it before and never will see it again. Ursula K. Le Guin
96aae49 We are not seeking power. We are seeking the end of power! ... The means are the end. ... Only peace brings peace, only just acts bring justice! Ursula K. Le Guin