Hermann Hesse quotes - page 7

We cannot evade life's course, but we can school ourselves to be superior to fortune and also to look unflinchingly upon the most painful things. (Hermann Hesse)
Whether you and I and a few others will renew the world someday remains to be seen. But within ourselves we must renew it each day, otherwise we just aren't serious. Don't forget that! View quote
Hermann Hesse
. . . gentleness is stronger than severity, water is stronger than rock, love is stronger than force. View quote
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. View quote
Hermann Hesse
All higher humor begins with ceasing to take oneself seriously. View quote
Hermann Hesse
Every phenomenon on earth is symbolic, and each symbol is an open gate through which the soul, if it is ready, can enter into the inner part of the world, where you and I and day and night are all one. View quote
Hermann Hesse
The truth has a million faces, but there is only one truth. View quote
Hermann Hesse
Opinions mean nothing; they may be beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish, anyone can embrace or reject them. View quote
Hermann Hesse
I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace. View quote
Hermann Hesse
Not in his speech, not in his thoughts, I see his greatness, only in his actions, in his life. View quote
Hermann Hesse
Your soul is the whole world. (Hermann Hesse)
And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life. View quote
Hermann Hesse
The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. The God's name is Abraxas. View quote
Hermann Hesse
It taught him how to listen -- how to listen with a quiet heart and a waiting soul, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinion. View quote
Hermann Hesse
Everything that is thought and expressed in words is one-sided, only half the truth; it all lacks totality, completeness, unity. When the Illustrious Buddha taught about the world, he had to divide it into Samsara and Nirvana, illusion and truth, into suffering and salvation. One cannot do otherwise, there is no other method for those who teach. But the world itself, being in and around us, is never one-sided. Never is a man or a deed wholly Samsara or wholly Nirvana; never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner. This only seems so because we suffer the illusion that time is something real. View quote
Hermann Hesse
our friendship has no other purpose, no other reason, than to show you how utterly unlike me you are. View quote
Hermann Hesse
What is meditation?... It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life. The same escape, the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the inn, drinking a few bowls of rice wine or fermented coconut-milk. View quote
Hermann Hesse
There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught. View quote
Hermann Hesse
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. View quote
Hermann Hesse
You show the world as a complete, unbroken chain, an eternal chain, linked together by cause and effect. View quote
Hermann Hesse
For mountain and stream, tree and leaf, root and blossom, every form in nature is echoed in us and originates in the soul whose being is eternity and is hidden from us but none the less gives itself to us for the most part in the power of love and cr. (Hermann Hesse)
To recognize causes is to think, and through thought alone feelings become knowledge and are not lost, but become real and begin to mature. View quote
Hermann Hesse
So she thoroughly taught him that one cannot take pleasure without giving pleasure, and that every gesture, every caress, every touch, every glance, every last bit of the body has its secret, which brings happiness to the person who knows how to wake it. She taught him that after a celebration of love the lovers should not part without admiring each other, without being conquered or having conquered, so that neither is bleak or glutted or has the bad feeling of being used or misused. View quote
Hermann Hesse
Lovers should not separate from each other after making love without admiring each other, without being conquered as well as conquering, so that no feeling of satiation or desolation arises nor the horrid feeling of misusing or having been misused. View quote
Hermann Hesse
One must find the source within one's own Self, one must possess it. Everything else was seeking -- a detour, an error. View quote
Hermann Hesse