Quotes by Hermann Hesse
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All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.
Knowledge can be communicated, but wisdom cannot. A man can find it, he can live it, he can be filled and sustained by it, but he cannot utter or teach it.
To die is to go into the Collective Unconscious, to lose oneself in order to be transformed into form, pure form.
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.
For example, there is a species of butterfly, a night-moth, in which the females are much less common than the males. The moths breed exactly like all animals, the male fertilizes the female and the female lays the eggs. Now, if you take a female night moth----many naturalists have tried this experiment---the male moths will visit this female at night and they will come from hours away. From hours away! Just think! From a distance of several miles all these males sense the only female in the region. One looks for an explanation for this phenomenon but it is not easy. You must assume that they have a sense of smell of some sort like a hunting dog that can pick up and follow a semmingly imperceptible scent. Do you see? Nature abounds with such inexplicable things. But my argument is: if the female moths were as abundant as the males, the latter would not have such a highly developed sense of smell. They've acquired it only because they had to train themseleves to to have it. If a person were to concentrate all his will power on a certain end, then he would achieve it. That's all. And that also answers your question. Examine a person closely enough and you know more about him than he does himself.
In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.
Every man is more than just himself he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again.
You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation...and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else.
So wie die Verruecktheit in einem hoeheren Sinn, der Anfang aller Weisheit ist, so ist die Schizophrenie der Anfang aller Kunst, aller Phantasie. (As insanity in a higher sense, is the beginning of all wisdom, so is schizophrenia the beginning of all art, all fantasy.)
Often it is the most deserving people who cannot help loving those who destroy them.
The best weapons against the infamies of life are courage, wilfulness and patience. Courage strenthens, wilfulness is fun and patience provides tranquility.
Opinions mean nothing; they may be beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish, anyone can embrace or reject them.
The truth has a million faces, but there is only one truth.
You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.
The man of power is ruined by power, the man of money by money, the submissive man by subservience, the pleasure seeker by pleasure.
People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.
If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
I have known it for a long time but I have only just experienced it. Now I know it not only with my intellect, but with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach.
Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.
...each of us has to find out for himself what is permitted and what is forbidden - forbidden for him. It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard. And vice versa. Actually it's only a question of convenience. Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them things are forbidden to them that every honorable man will do any day in the year and other things are allowed to them that are generally despised. Each person must stand on his own feet.
One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.
The truth is lived, not taught.
Love of God is not always the same as love of good.
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 ...
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