Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.
HERMANN HESSE The truth is lived, not taught.
HERMANN HESSE The truth has a million faces, but there is only one truth.
HERMANN HESSE I wanted only to try to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was tha...
HERMANN HESSE Love is stronger than violence.
HERMANN HESSE At the first kiss I felt something melt inside me that hurt in an exquisite way. All my longings, al...
HERMANN HESSE ...the opposite of every truth is just as true! That is to say, any truth can only be expressed and ...
HERMANN HESSE When someone is searching then it might easily happen that the only thing his eyes still see is that...
HERMANN HESSE E ora vedi: questo "un giorno" è illusione, è soltanto un modo di dire! Il peccatore non è in cam...
HERMANN HESSE Man svarbu mokėti mylėti pasaulį, neniekinti jo, nejausti neapykantos jam ir sau, žvelgti į jį...
HERMANN HESSE He had heard a voice, a voice in his own heart, which had commanded him to seek rest under this tree...
HERMANN HESSE Meilę galima iškaulyti, nupirkti, gauti dovanų, atrasti gatvėje, bet jėga jos išplėšti negal...
HERMANN HESSE The world, Govinda, is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is p...
HERMANN HESSE And so Gotama wandered into the town to obtain alms, and the two Samanas recognized him only by his ...
HERMANN HESSE Suchen heißt: ein Ziel haben. Finden aber heißt: frei sein, offen stehen, kein Ziel haben ... Ein ...
HERMANN HESSE Never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner.
HERMANN HESSE But of all the water's secrets, he saw today only a single one-one that struck his soul. He saw that...
HERMANN HESSE Yes Siddhartha,' he said. 'Is this what you mean: that the river is in all places at once, at its so...
HERMANN HESSE ...for you know that soft is stronger than hard, water stronger than rock, love stronger than force....
HERMANN HESSE Most people...are like a falling leaf that drifts and turns in the air, flutters, and falls to the g...
HERMANN HESSE For it cannot be denied that all over the world and in all ages there are beings who are perceived t...
HERMANN HESSE el desesperado no querer morir, es el camino más seguro para la muerte eterna, en tanto que saber m...
HERMANN HESSE E' sempre stranamente toccante vedere come la nebbia separi tutto ciò che è vicino o apparentement...
HERMANN HESSE Dù bị đau đớn quằn quại, tôi vẫn tha thiết yêu thương trần gian điên dại n�...
HERMANN HESSE Thật đáng hổ thẹn nếu cứ sống trôi lăn, để cuộc đời lừa lọc, thay khóc ...
HERMANN HESSE No está la muerte ni allí ni aquí,
se alza en todos los senderos.
Está en ti y está ...
HERMANN HESSE Más o menos, mi muchacho querido, todas la palabras humanas acaban siendo un embuste; donde relativ...
HERMANN HESSE Mira, todos los hombres son capaces de hacer lo increíble cuando están amenazados sus ideales. Per...
HERMANN HESSE Pero en los casos en los que no ha sido costumbre sino el más íntimo impulso el que nos ha llevado...
HERMANN HESSE ¿No irá usted a creer que todos esos bípedos que andan por la calle son hombre sólo porque anden...
HERMANN HESSE [...] tutto mentiva, tutto puzzava, puzzava di menzogna, tutto simulava un significato di bontà e d...
HERMANN HESSE Pero cada uno de los hombres no es tan solo él mismo; es también un punto único, particularismo, ...
HERMANN HESSE Quien no lleva dentro un lobo no tiene por eso que ser feliz tampoco.
HERMANN HESSE Könnte ich es sagen und lehren, so wäre ich ein Weiser. So aber bin ich nur ein Fährmann und mein...
HERMANN HESSE He sat thus, lost in meditation, thinking Om, his soul as the arrow directed at Brahman.
HERMANN HESSE Were not the gods forms created like me and you, mortal, transient?
HERMANN HESSE ...Haller's sickness of the soul, as I now know, is not the eccentricity of a single individual, but...
HERMANN HESSE There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There ...
HERMANN HESSE You show the world as a complete, unbroken chain, an eternal chain, linked together by cause and eff...
HERMANN HESSE I felt knowledge and the unity of the world circulate in me like my own blood.
HERMANN HESSE Siddhartha has one single goal-to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure ...
HERMANN HESSE Man is an onion made up of a hundred integuments, a texture made up of many threads. The ancient Asi...
HERMANN HESSE Stages



As every flower fades and as all youth
Departs, so life at every ...
HERMANN HESSE A thousand times I was ready to regret and take back my rash statement - yet it had been the truth.
HERMANN HESSE ...and the vessel was not full, his intellect was not satisfied, his soul was not at peace, his hear...
HERMANN HESSE The reason why I do not know anything about myself, the reason why Siddhartha has remained alien and...
HERMANN HESSE One can beg, buy, be presented with and find love in the streets, but it can never be stolen.
HERMANN HESSE And here is a doctrine at which you will laugh. It seems to me, Govinda, that love is the most impor...
HERMANN HESSE Not in his speech, not in his thoughts, I see his greatness, only in his actions, in his life.
HERMANN HESSE They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, t...
HERMANN HESSE Dreams and restless thoughts came flowing to him from the river, from the twinkling stars at night, ...
HERMANN HESSE One must find the source within one's own Self, one must possess it. Everything else was seeking -- ...
HERMANN HESSE The river is everywhere.
HERMANN HESSE Opinions mean nothing; they may be beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish, anyone can embrace or rejec...
HERMANN HESSE I shall no longer be instructed by the Yoga Veda or the Aharva Veda, or the ascetics, or any other d...
HERMANN HESSE He has robbed me, yet he has given me something of greater value . . . he has given to me myself.
HERMANN HESSE I have always thirsted for knowledge, I have always been full of questions.
HERMANN HESSE And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the go...
HERMANN HESSE I can think. I can wait. I can fast.
HERMANN HESSE When someone is seeking,” said Siddartha, “It happens quite easily that he only sees the thing t...
HERMANN HESSE . . . gentleness is stronger than severity, water is stronger than rock, love is stronger than force...
HERMANN HESSE My real self wanders elsewhere, far away, wanders on and on invisibly and has nothing to do with my ...
HERMANN HESSE I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins.
HERMANN HESSE Your soul is the whole world.
HERMANN HESSE Words do not express thoughts very well. they always become a little different immediately they are ...
HERMANN HESSE I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusio...
HERMANN HESSE We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed man...
HERMANN HESSE What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a res...
HERMANN HESSE When someone seeks," said Siddhartha, "then it easily happens that his eyes see only the thing that ...
HERMANN HESSE If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourse...
HERMANN HESSE I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to li...
HERMANN HESSE For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribe...
HERMANN HESSE We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of ...
HERMANN HESSE I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we c...
HERMANN HESSE So she thoroughly taught him that one cannot take pleasure without giving pleasure, and that every g...
HERMANN HESSE It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think i...
HERMANN HESSE We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; i...
HERMANN HESSE Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?" That the riv...
HERMANN HESSE It is not for me to judge another man's life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for ...
HERMANN HESSE I am fond of music I think because it is so amoral. Everything else is moral and I am after somethin...
HERMANN HESSE For example, there is a species of butterfly, a night-moth, in which the females are much less commo...
HERMANN HESSE In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one ...
HERMANN HESSE People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.
HERMANN HESSE Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.
HERMANN HESSE He saw all these forms and faces in a thousand relationships become newly born. Each one was mortal,...
HERMANN HESSE So wie die Verruecktheit in einem hoeheren Sinn, der Anfang aller Weisheit ist, so ist die Schizophr...
HERMANN HESSE If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselv...
HERMANN HESSE The man of power is ruined by power, the man of money by money, the submissive man by subservience, ...
HERMANN HESSE What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men -- each...
HERMANN HESSE One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a ...
HERMANN HESSE You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas ...
HERMANN HESSE You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have nev...
HERMANN HESSE There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There ...
HERMANN HESSE Within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself...
HERMANN HESSE What I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness ...
HERMANN HESSE Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.
HERMANN HESSE Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its...
HERMANN HESSE It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the othe...
HERMANN HESSE You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single sa...
HERMANN HESSE You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself.
HERMANN HESSE Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness ...
HERMANN HESSE When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.
HERMANN HESSE The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we ac...
HERMANN HESSE The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the...
HERMANN HESSE Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.
HERMANN HESSE Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concep...
HERMANN HESSE Those who cannot think or take responsibility for themselves need, and clamor for, a leader.
HERMANN HESSE I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that le...
HERMANN HESSE Youth ends when egotism does; maturity begins when one lives for others.
HERMANN HESSE At one time I had given much thought to why men were so very rarely capable of living for an ideal. ...
HERMANN HESSE (We) consist of everything the world consists of, each of us, and just as our body contains the gene...
HERMANN HESSE The things we see," Pistorius said softly, "are the same things that are within us. There is no real...
HERMANN HESSE I have no idea whether parents can be of help, and I do not blame mine. It was my own affair to come...
HERMANN HESSE I realize that some people will not believe that a child of little more than ten years is capable of...
HERMANN HESSE Our god's name is Abraxas and he is God and Satan and he contains both the luminous and the dark wor...
HERMANN HESSE You knew all along that your sanctioned world was only half the world, and you tried to suppress the...
HERMANN HESSE For the first time in my life I tasted death, and death tasted bitter, for death is birth, is fear a...
HERMANN HESSE An enlightened man had but one duty - to seek the way to himself, to reach inner certainty, to grope...
HERMANN HESSE Each of us has to find out for himself what is permitted and what is forbidden.. forbidden for him. ...
HERMANN HESSE We who bore the mark might well be considered by the rest of the world as strange, even as insane an...
HERMANN HESSE The things we see are the same things that are within us. There is no reality except the one contain...
HERMANN HESSE She stood before him and surrendered herself to him and sky, forest, and brook all came toward him i...
HERMANN HESSE You should never be afraid of people... such fear can destroy us completely. You've simply got to ge...
HERMANN HESSE Good that you ask -- you should always ask, always have doubts.
HERMANN HESSE I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so ve...
HERMANN HESSE You've never lived what you are thinking, and that isn't good. Only the ideas we actually live are o...
HERMANN HESSE I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer s...
HERMANN HESSE Gaze into the fire, into the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak... surrender to ...
HERMANN HESSE Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always sign...
HERMANN HESSE I live in my dreams — that's what you sense. Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. Th...
HERMANN HESSE There's no reality except the one contained within us. That's why so many people live an unr...
HERMANN HESSE Love must not entreat,' she added, 'or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within ...
HERMANN HESSE Once he said to her: 'You are like me; you are different from other people. You are Kamala and no on...
HERMANN HESSE One never reaches home,' she said. 'But where paths that have an affinity for each other intersect, ...
HERMANN HESSE In eternity there is no time, only an instant long enough for a joke.
HERMANN HESSE Oh oak tree, how they have pruned you.
Now you stand odd and strangely shaped!
You were h...
HERMANN HESSE So the tree rustles in the evening, when we stand uneasy before our own childish thoughts: Trees hav...
HERMANN HESSE Voll Blüten steht der Pfirsichbaum
nicht jede wächst zur Frucht
sie schimmern hell wie...
HERMANN HESSE When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: B...
HERMANN HESSE When a tree is polled, it will sprout new shoots nearer its roots. A soul that is ruined in the bud ...
HERMANN HESSE No, a true seeker, one who truly wished to find, could accept no doctrine. But the man who has found...
HERMANN HESSE When I have neither pleasure nor pain and have been breathing for a while the lukewarm insipid air o...
HERMANN HESSE I believe that I am not responsible for the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of life, but that I am...
HERMANN HESSE O how incomprehensible everything was, and actually sad, although it was also beautiful. One knew no...
HERMANN HESSE When someone is searching, said Siddhartha, then it might easily
happen that the only thing his...
HERMANN HESSE If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of our...
HERMANN HESSE Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after the...
HERMANN HESSE I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we...
HERMANN HESSE Capitalism and communism stand at opposite poles. Their essential difference is this: The communist,...
HERMANN HESSE The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the...
HERMANN HESSE Solitude is independence.
HERMANN HESSE He reflected deeply, until this feeling completely overwhelmed him and he reached a point where he r...
HERMANN HESSE Knowledge can be communicated, but wisdom cannot. A man can find it, he can live it, he can be fille...
HERMANN HESSE Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of o...
HERMANN HESSE Now everything changed. My childhood world was breaking apart around me. My parents eyed me with a c...
HERMANN HESSE I have known it for a long time but I have only just experienced it. Now I know it not only with my ...
HERMANN HESSE I began to understand that suffering and disappointments and melancholy are there not to vex us or c...
HERMANN HESSE Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of op...
HERMANN HESSE Happiness is a how, not a what: a talent, not an object
HERMANN HESSE To be able to throw one's self away for the sake of a moment, to be able to sacrifice years for a wo...
HERMANN HESSE If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do.
HERMANN HESSE To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning. It...
HERMANN HESSE Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wond...
HERMANN HESSE The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever will be born must destroy a wo...
HERMANN HESSE Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always sign...
HERMANN HESSE Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always sign...
HERMANN HESSE There I often walked along the shore, listened to the sea, and thought as I had done in my youth, wi...
HERMANN HESSE (...) y todo aquello unido era el río, todas las voces, los fines, los anhelos, los sufrimientos, l...
HERMANN HESSE Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh,...
HERMANN HESSE Oh, love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.
HERMANN HESSE Often it is the most deserving people who cannot help loving those who destroy them.
HERMANN HESSE When you like someone, you like them in spite of their faults. When you love someone, you love them ...
HERMANN HESSE Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work i...
HERMANN HESSE The Wolf trots to and fro,
The world lies deep in snow,
The raven from the birch tree flie...
HERMANN HESSE Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest.
HERMANN HESSE Alas, Siddhartha, I see you suffering, but you're suffering a pain at which one would like to laugh,...
HERMANN HESSE To hold our tongues when everyone is gossiping, to smile without hostility at people and institution...
HERMANN HESSE Oh, if only it were possible to find understanding,” Joseph exclaimed. “If only there were a dog...
HERMANN HESSE For him, behind every feeling and thought was the sense of the open door leading into nothingness. T...
HERMANN HESSE If I were to reduce all my feelings and their painful conflicts to a single name, I can think of no ...
HERMANN HESSE There was only greed for living and dread, and out of dread, out of stupid childish dread of the col...
HERMANN HESSE Whenever books are burned, sooner or later men also are burned.
HERMANN HESSE He does not educate children but rejoices in their happiness
HERMANN HESSE Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom
HERMANN HESSE Wisdom is not communicable.
HERMANN HESSE If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do
HERMANN HESSE As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.
HERMANN HESSE Es gehört meist mehr Mut dazu, einfach menschlich, statt heldenhaft heroisch zu sein.
HERMANN HESSE Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object.
HERMANN HESSE You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, single power, a single salv...
HERMANN HESSE Teachers dread nothing so much as unusual characteristics in precocious boys during the initial stag...
HERMANN HESSE It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.
HERMANN HESSE Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can - that is their secret
HERMANN HESSE There's no reality except the one contained within us. That's why so many people live an unreal life...
HERMANN HESSE But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always ...
HERMANN HESSE Paradise is seldom recognized as such until it is considered from the outside.
HERMANN HESSE And every occasion when a mask was torn off, an ideal broken, was preceded by this hateful vacancy a...
HERMANN HESSE Seeking means to have a goal; but finding means to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. You, O...
HERMANN HESSE If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselv...
HERMANN HESSE What he had not learned, however, was this: to find contentment in himself and his own life
HERMANN HESSE