Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse

Novelist, Poet

Hermann Hesse was a German-Swiss poet and novelist known for exploring themes of self-discovery and spirituality in works like 'Siddhartha'.

Men Siddhartha Children World People Life
Born
July 2, 1877
Died
August 9, 1962
Quotes
446
Rank
#70

Quote collection

Hermann Hesse quotes (page 14 of 23)

446 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.

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"Man is not by any means of fixed and enduring form (this, in spite of suspicions to the contrary on the part of their wise men, was the ideal of the ancients). He is nothing else than the narrow and perilous bridge between nature and spirit. His innermost destiny drives him on to the spirit and to God. His innermost longing draws him back to nature, the mother. Between the two forces his life hangs tremulous and irresolute."

Wise Mother Mean
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"I cannot tell my story without reaching a long way back."

Long Stories Way
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"Faith is stronger than so-called reality."

Stronger Reason
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"Whither will my path yet lead me? This path is stupid, it goes in spirals, perhaps in circles, but whichever way it goes, I will follow it."

Travel Stupid Journey
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"Knowledge can communicated but not wisdom."

Inspirational
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"...Every ego so far from being a unity is in the highest degree a manifold world, a constellated heaven, a chaos of forms, of states and stages, of inheritances and potentialities. It appears to be a necessity as imperative as eating and breathing for everyone to be forced to regard this chaos as a unity and to speak of his ego as though is was a one-fold and clearly detached and fixed phenomenon. Even the best of us shares this delusion."

Breathing Heaven Ego
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"You have no doubt guessed long since that the conquest of time and the escape from reality, or however else it may be that you choose to describe your longing, means simply the wish to be relieved of your so-called personality. That is the prison where you lie."

Lying Mean Reality
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"Who travels far will often see things Far removed from what was believed as Truth."

Perception
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"I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins."

Life Order Secret
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"No, a true seeker, one who truly wished to find, could accept no doctrine. But the man who has found what he sought, such a man could approve of every doctrine, each and every one, every path, every goal; nothing separated him any longer from all those thousands of others who lived in the eternal, who breathed the Divine."

Men Goal Siddhartha
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"All interpretation, all psychology, all attempts to make things comprehensible, require the medium of theories, mythologies, and lies."

Lying Psychology Interpretation
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"If a bell failed to ring, if a stove smoked, if a wheel on a machine stuck, you knew at once where to look and did so with alacrity; you found the defect and knew how to cure it. But the thing within you, the secret mainspring that alone gave meaning to life, the thing within us that alone is living, alone is capable of feeling pleasure and pain, of craving happiness and experiencing it- that was unknown. You knew nothing about that, nothing at all, and if the mainspring failed there was no cure. Wasn't it insane?"

Pain Feelings Secret
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"Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the stars revolve."

Stars Years Space
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"It was still quiet in the house, and not a sound was heard from outside, either. Were it not for this silence, my reverie would probably have been disrupted by reminders of daily duties, of getting up and going to school."

School Silence House
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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?"

Failing Lone Wolf Pleasure
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"This happiness consisted of nothing else but the harmony of the few things around me with my own existence, a feeling of contentment and well-being that needed no changes and no intensification."

Feelings Contentment Harmony
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"In Germany I have been acknowledged again since the fall of Hitler, but my works, partly suppressed by the Nazis and partly destroyed by the war; have not yet been republished there."

War Fall Germany
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