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Hermann Karl Hesse was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include Demian, Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game, each of which explores an individual’s search for authenticity, self-knowledge and spirituality. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Quotes

Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.
There is a miracle in every new beginning.
I can think. I can wait. I can fast.
The true profession of a man is to find his way to himself.
You have to try the impossible to achieve the possible.
If I know what love is, it is because of you.

Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest.
There is no reality except the one contained within us.
Youth ends when egotism does; maturity begins when one lives for others.
Siddhartha stopped fighting his fate this very hour, and he stopped suffering.
You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself.
To achieve the possible, we must attempt the impossible again and again.
Your soul is the whole world.

As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.
He had loved and he had found himself. Most people love to lose themselves.
Making music together is the best way for two people to become friends.
Happiness is love, nothing else.
Art is the contemplation of the world in a state of grace.
The river is everywhere.
Words can not express the joy of new life.
Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object.

Each man’s life represents a road toward himself.
Loneliness is the way by which destiny endeavors to lead man to himself.
Solitude is independence.
People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.
A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening…
All higher humor begins with ceasing to take oneself seriously.
No permanence is ours, we are a wave that flows to fit whatever form it finds.
All life is a breath exhaled by God. All dying is a breath inhaled by God.

Yes, I am going into the woods; I am going into the unity of all things.
I have always thirsted for knowledge, I have always been full of questions.
You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live.
Often it is the most deserving people who cannot help loving those who destroy them.
Each man had only one genuine vocation to find the way to himself.
Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.
Only the ideas that we really live have any value.

When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.
The opposite of every truth is just as true.
Only within yourself exists that other reality for which you long.
I cannot tell my story without reaching a long way back.
Did all this make sense?
The truth has a million faces, but there is only one truth.
Good that you ask – you should always ask, always have doubts.
Every healthy person must have a goal in life and that life must have content.
Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.

Who travels far will often see things Far removed from what was believed as Truth.
Every experience has its element of magic.
I felt knowledge and the unity of the world circulate in me like my own blood.
Faith is stronger than so-called reason.
You must find your dream, then the way becomes easy.
When the suffering becomes acute enough, one goes forward.
Abraxas was the god who was both god and devil.
If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do.
A mere nothing suffices – and the lightning strikes.
The voices of all creatures are in the voices of the river.
Friendship is identification and difference.

Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has reality and presence.
Your soul has fallen to bits and pieces. Good. Rearrange them to suit yourself.
Everyone can reach his goal, if he can think, wait and fast.
Fate and character are different names for the same idea.
But it’s a poor fellow who can’t take his pleasure without asking other people’s permission.
Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal.
The world, as it is now, wants to die, wants to perish – and it will.
Those who cannot think or take responsibility for themselves need, and clamor for, a leader.
What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.
Beautiful was this world, looking at it thus, without searching, thus simply, thus childlike.

The art of love-giving and taking become one.
In the beginning was the myth.
There are many ways in which the god can make us lonely and lead us to ourselves.
Charm me. Furiously. Torment me. In detail.
One can beg, buy, be presented with and find love in the streets, but it can never be stolen.
When two cultures collide is the only time when true suffering exists.
Without a mother, one cannot love. Without a mother, one cannot die.
The tree does not die, it waits.
I will not make a gift of myself, I must be won.