Hermann Hesse

The man of power is ruined by power, the man of money by money, the submissive man by subservience, the pleasure seeker by pleasure.
Hermann Hesse

You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.
Hermann Hesse

What I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.
Hermann Hesse

Love is stronger than violence.
Hermann Hesse

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.
Hermann Hesse

I am fond of music I think because it is so amoral. Everything else is moral and I am after something that isn't. I have always found moralizing intolerable.
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 intellect, but with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach.
Hermann Hesse

Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and cruelties; it accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap.
Hermann Hesse

The truth has a million faces, but there is only one truth.
Hermann Hesse

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.
Hermann Hesse

The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire.
Hermann Hesse

Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.
Hermann Hesse

What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature are shot down wholesale.
Hermann Hesse

When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.
Hermann Hesse

If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do.
Hermann Hesse

Solitude is independence.
Hermann Hesse

Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can - that is their secret.
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 woman's smile - that is happiness.
Hermann Hesse

One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.
Hermann Hesse

Those who cannot think or take responsibility for themselves need, and clamor for, a leader.
Hermann Hesse

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.
Hermann Hesse

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.
Hermann Hesse

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.
Hermann Hesse

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.
Hermann Hesse

As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.
Hermann Hesse

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.
Hermann Hesse

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.
Hermann Hesse

All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.
Hermann Hesse

Only the ideas that we really live have any value.
Hermann Hesse

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.
Hermann Hesse

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.
Hermann Hesse

People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.
Hermann Hesse

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.
Hermann Hesse

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.
Hermann Hesse

Within us there is someone who knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than we ourselves.
Hermann Hesse

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.
Hermann Hesse

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.
Hermann Hesse

The truth is lived, not taught.
Hermann Hesse

Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object.
Hermann Hesse

Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.
Hermann Hesse

In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.
Hermann Hesse

To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.
Hermann Hesse

Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.
Hermann Hesse

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.
Hermann Hesse

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.
Hermann Hesse