Hermann Hesse Quotes - Page 17

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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?

  Hermann Hesse

  Failing, Lone Wolf, Pleasure

  Hermann Hesse (2013). “Steppenwolf: A Novel”, p.30, Macmillan

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• I realize that some people will not believe that a child of little more than ten years is capable of having such feelings. My story is not intended for them. I am telling it to those who have a better knowledge of man. The adult who has learned to translate a part of his feelings into thoughts notices the absence of these thoughts in a child, and therefore comes to believe that the child lacks these experiences, too. Yet rarely in my life have I felt and suffered as deeply as at that time.

  Hermann Hesse

  Children, Believe, Men

  6 Copy quote

• What a wonderful sleep it had been! Never had sleep so refreshed him, so renewed him, so rejuvenated him! Perhaps he had really died, perhaps he had been drowned and was reborn in another form. No, he recognized himself, he recognized his hands and feet, the place where he lay and the Self in his breast, Siddhartha, self-willed, individualistic. But this Siddhartha was somewhat changed, renewed. He had slept wonderfully. He was remarkably awake, happy and curious.

  Hermann Hesse

  Sleep, Self, Hands

  6 Copy quote

• No, I'm not religious, I'm sorry to say. But I was once and shall be again. There is no time now to be religious." "No time. Does it need time to be religious?" "Oh, yes. To be religious you must have time and, even more, independence of time. You can't be religious in earnest and at the same time live in actual things and still take them seriously, time and money and the Odéon Bar and all that.

  Hermann Hesse

  Religious, Sorry, Independence

  4 Copy quote

• In the beginning was the myth. God, in his search for self-expression, invested the souls of Hindus, Greeks, and Germans with poetic shapes and continues to invest each child's soul with poetry every day.

  Hermann Hesse

  Children, Self, Expression

  "Peter Camenzind". Book by Hermann Hesse, 1904.

  4 Copy quote

• Was that really love? I saw all these passionate people reel about and drift haphazardly as if driven by a storm, the man filled with desire today, satiated on the morrow, loving fiercely and discarding brutally, sure of no affection and happy in no love.

  Hermann Hesse

  Men, People, Storm

  Hermann Hesse (1969). “Gertrude”

  5 Copy quote

• The way to innocence, to the uncreated and to God leads on, not back, not back to the wolf or to the child, but ever further into sin, ever deeper into human life.

  Hermann Hesse

  Children, Way, Innocence

  Hermann Hesse (1983). “Steppenwolf”, Bantam

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• At that time two opposing concepts of the Game called forth commentary and discussion. The foremost players distinguished two principal types of Game, the formal and the psychological.

  Hermann Hesse

  Player, Games, Two

  4 Copy quote

• Therefore, I see whatever exists as good, death is to me like life, sin like holiness, wisdom like foolishness, everything has to be as it is, everything only requires my consent, only my willingness, my loving agreement, to be good for me, to do nothing but work for my benefit, to be unable to ever harm me.

  Hermann Hesse

  Agreement, Holiness, Benefits

  Hermann Hesse (2016). “Siddhartha (World Classics, Unabridged)”, p.67, Vij Books India Pvt Ltd

  4 Copy quote

• 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.)

  Hermann Hesse

  Art, Insanity, Fantasy

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Hermann Hesse

  School, Silence, House

  8 Copy quote

• I have no desire to walk on water," said Siddhartha. "Let the old shamans satisfy themselves with such skills".

  Hermann Hesse

  Skills, Water, Siddhartha

  4 Copy quote

• But your questions, which are unanswerable without exception, all spring from the same erroneous thinking.

  Hermann Hesse

  Spring, Thinking, Exception

  7 Copy quote

• If my life were not a dangerous, painful experiment, if I did not constantly skirt the abyss and feel the void under my feet, my life would have no meaning and I would not have been able to write anything.

  Hermann Hesse

  Writing, Feet, Skirts

  14 Copy quote

• Each man carries the vestiges of his birth; the slime and eggshells of his primeval past with him to the end of his days. Some never become human, remaining frog, lizard, ant. Some are human above the waist, fish below.

  Hermann Hesse

  Past, Men, Lizards

  Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun, Hermann Hesse (1971). “Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun [and] Hermann Hesse”

  4 Copy quote

• Here and there in the ancient literature we encounter legends of wise and mysterious games that were conceived and played by scholars, monks, or the courtiers of cultured princes. These might take the form of chess games in which the pieces and squares had secret meanings in addition to their usual functions.

  Hermann Hesse

  Wise, Squares, Games

  4 Copy quote

• It was the first rent in the holy image of my father, it was the first fissure in the columns that had upheld my childhood, which every individual must destroy before he can become himself.

  Hermann Hesse

  Father, Childhood, Firsts

  Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun, Hermann Hesse (1971). “Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun [and] Hermann Hesse”

  6 Copy quote

• I shall begin my story with an experience I had when I was ten and attended our small town's Latin school.

  Hermann Hesse

  Latin, Book, School

  Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun, Hermann Hesse (1971). “Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun [and] Hermann Hesse”

  4 Copy quote

• If a night-moth were to concentrate its will on flying to a star or some equally unattainable object, it wouldn't succeed. Only, it wouldn't even try in the first place. A moth confines its search to what has sense and value for it, what it needs, what is indispensable to its life... if I imagined that I wanted under all circumstances to get to the North Pole, then to achieve it I would have to desire it strongly enough that my whole being was ruled by it. But if I were to decide to will that the pastor should stop wearing his glasses, it would be useless. That would be making a game of it.

  Hermann Hesse

  Stars, Night, Glasses

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• I had grown a thin mustache, I was a full-grown man, and yet I was completely helpless and without a goal in life.

  Hermann Hesse

  Men, Goal, Mustache

  "Demian". Book by Hermann Hesse (p. 169), 1919.

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• Without a mother, one cannot love. Without a mother, one cannot die.

  Hermann Hesse

  Life, Mother, Dies

  "Narcissus and Goldmund". Book by Hermann Hesse, 1930.

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• Once it happened, as I lay awake at night, that I suddenly spoke in verses, in verses so beautiful and strange that I did not venture to think of writing them down, and then in the morning they vanished; and yet they lay hidden within me like the hard kernel within an old brittle husk.

  Hermann Hesse

  Beautiful, Morning, Writing

  Hermann Hesse (2013). “Steppenwolf: A Novel”, p.30, Macmillan

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• For me, however, that beloved, glowing little word happiness has become associated with everything I have felt since childhood upon hearing the sound of the word itself.

  Hermann Hesse

  Glowing, Childhood, Sound

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• The world, as it is now, wants to die, wants to perish — and it will.

  Hermann Hesse

  World, Want, Wanting To Die

  Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun, Hermann Hesse (1971). “Ernest Hemingway, Knut Hamsun [and] Hermann Hesse”

  4 Copy quote

• The human attitude of which classical music is the expression is always the same; it is always based on the same kind of insight into life and strives for the same kind of victory over blind change. Classical music as gesture signifies knowledge of the tragedy of the human condition, affirmation of human destiny, courage, cheerful serenity.

  Hermann Hesse

  Music, Attitude, Destiny

  "The Glass Bead Game". Book by Hermann Hesse, 1943.

  7 Copy quote

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