Quotes by Hermann Hesse
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Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.
Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.
Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can - that is their secret.
If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do.
Within us there is someone who knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than we ourselves.
To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.
It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.
Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object.
Solitude is independence.
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.
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.
The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.
As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.
Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.
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.
Those who cannot think or take responsibility for themselves need, and clamor for, a leader.
When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.
Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.
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.
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.
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