Hermann Hesse quotes - page 8

He lost his Self a thousand times and for days on end he dwelt in non-being. But although the paths took him away from Self, in the end they always led back to it. Although Siddhartha fled from the Self a thousand times, dwelt in nothing, dwelt in animal and stone, the return was inevitable; the hour was inevitable when he would again find himself in sunshine or in moonlight, in shadow or in rain, and was again Self and Siddhartha, again felt the torment of the onerous life cycle. (Hermann Hesse)
There are always a few such people who demand the utmost of life and yet cannot come to terms with its stupidity and crudeness. View quote
Hermann Hesse
The opposite of every truth is just as true. View quote
Hermann Hesse
But it's a poor fellow who can't take his pleasure without asking other people's permission. View quote
Hermann Hesse
Whether it is good or evil, whether life in itself is pain or pleasure, whether it is uncertain-that it may perhaps be this is not important-but the unity of the world, the coherence of all events, the embracing of the big and the small from the same stream, from the same law of cause, of becoming and dying. View quote
Hermann Hesse
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. View quote
Hermann Hesse
Siddhartha stopped fighting his fate this very hour, and he stopped suffering. View quote
Hermann Hesse
He has robbed me, yet he has given me something of greater value . . . he has given to me myself. View quote
Hermann Hesse
My resolve to die was not the whim of an hour. It was the ripe, sound fruit that had slowly grown to full size, lightly rocked by the winds of fate whose next breath would bring it to the ground. View quote
Hermann Hesse
One can beg, buy, be presented with and find love in the streets, but it can never be stolen. View quote
Hermann Hesse
Man is an onion made up of a hundred integuments, a texture made up of many threads. The ancient Asiatics knew this well enough, and in the Buddhist Yoga an exact technique was devised for unmasking the illusion of the personality. The human merry-go-round sees many changes: the illusion that cost India the efforts of thousands of years to unmask is the same illusion that the West has labored just as hard to maintain and strengthen. (Hermann Hesse)
Every important cultural gesture comes down to a morality, a model for human behavior concentrated into a gesture. View quote
Hermann Hesse
I felt knowledge and the unity of the world circulate in me like my own blood. View quote
Hermann Hesse
I have always thirsted for knowledge, I have always been full of questions. View quote
Hermann Hesse
Siddhartha has one single goal-to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow-to let the Self die. No longer to be Self, to experience the peace of an emptied heart, to experience pure thought-that was his goal. View quote
Hermann Hesse
I will not pretend to justify this espionage I carried on, and I will say openly that all these signs of a life full of intellectual curiosity, but thoroughly slovenly and disorderly at the same time, inspired me at first with aversion and mistrust. I am not only a middle-class man, living a regular life, fond of work and punctuality; I am also an abstainer and a nonsmoker, and these bottles in Haller's room pleased me even less than the rest of his artistic disorder. View quote
Hermann Hesse
With a secret smile, not unlike that of a healthy child,he walked along, peacefully, quietly. He wore his gown and walked along exactly like the other monks, but his face and his step, his peaceful downward glance, his peaceful downward-hanging hand, and every finger of his hand spoke of peace, spoke of completeness, sought nothing, imitated nothing, reflected a continuous quiet, an unfading light, an invulnerable peace. View quote
Hermann Hesse
One of the aphorisms occurred to me now and I wrote it under the picture: "Fate and temperament are two words for one and the same concept." That was clear to me now. View quote
Hermann Hesse
His way had therefore come full circle, or rather had taken the form of an ellipse or a spiral, following as ever no straight unbroken line, for the rectilinear belongs only to Geometry and not to Nature and Life. View quote
Hermann Hesse
The cup was emptied and would never be filled again. View quote
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. View quote
Hermann Hesse
People know, or dimly feel, that if thinking is not kept pure and keen, and if respect for the world of mind is no longer operative, ships and automobiles will soon cease to run right, the engineer's slide rule and the computations of banks and stock exchanges will forfeit validity and authority, and chaos will ensue. View quote
Hermann Hesse
People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest. It was a scandal that a breed of fearless and sinister people ran around freely, so they attached a nickname and a myth to these people to get even with them, to make up for the many times they had felt afraid. View quote
Hermann Hesse
The river is everywhere at the same time ... everywhere and the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future. View quote
Hermann Hesse