Hermann Hesse Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Hermann Hesse's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Poet Hermann Hesse's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 447 quotes on this page collected since July 2, 1877! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
  • Art is the contemplation of the world in a state of grace.

  • For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche.

    Men  
    Hermann Hesse (1980). “Six Novels: With Other Stories and Essays”
  • One of the disadwantages of school and learning, he thought dreamily, was that the mind seemed to have the tendency too see and represent all things as though they were flat and had only two dimensions. This, somehow, seemed to render all matters of intellect shallow and worthless.

  • I have transported many, thousands; and to all of them, my river has been nothing but an obstacle on their travels. They travelled to seek money and business, and for weddings, and on pilgrimages, and the river was obstructing their path, and the ferryman's job was to get them quickly across that obstacle. But for some among thousands, a few, four or five, the river has stopped being an obstacle, they have heard its voice, they have listened to it, and the river has become sacred to them, as it has become sacred to me.

  • Let me say no more. Words do no justice to the hidden meaning. Everything immediately becomes slightly different when it is expressed in words, a little bit distorted, a little foolish...It is perfectly fine with me that what for one man is precious wisdom for another sounds like foolery.

    Men  
  • 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.)

  • 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: each the other's opposite and complement.

    "Narcissus and Goldmund". Book by Hermann Hesse, 1930.
  • One must find the source within one's own Self, one must possess it. Everything else was seeking -- a detour, an error.

    Hermann Hesse (2015). “Siddhartha: An Indian Tale”, p.9, Om Books International
  • Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish.

    Men  
    Hermann Hesse (2015). “Siddhartha: An Indian Tale”, p.106, Om Books International
  • A girl had bidden me eat and drink and sleep, and had shown me friendship and had laughed at me and had called me a silly little boy. And this wonderful friend had talked to me of the saints and shown me that even when I had outdone myself in absurdity I was not alone.

    Hermann Hesse (2013). “Steppenwolf: A Novel”, p.101, Macmillan
  • At one time I had given much thought to why men were so very rarely capable of living for an ideal. Now I saw that many, no, all men were capable of dying for one.

    Men  
  • No permanence is ours, we are a wave that flows to fit whatever form it finds.

    Hermann Hesse (2002). “The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) A Novel”, p.429, Macmillan
  • Who travels far will often see things Far removed from what was believed as Truth.

  • I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books. I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams -- like the lives of all men who stop deceiving themselves.

    "Demian". Book by Hermann Hesse, p. 9, 1919.
  • 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.

    "Demian". Book by Hermann Hesse, p. 166, 1919.
  • When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured.

    Years  
    Hermann Hesse (1980). “Six Novels: With Other Stories and Essays”
  • A thousand times I was ready to regret and take back my rash statement - yet it had been the truth.

  • One can beg, buy, be presented with and find love in the streets, but it can never be stolen.

    Hermann Hesse (2015). “Siddhartha: An Indian Tale”, p.44, Om Books International
  • The bourgeois today burns as heretics and hangs as criminals those to whom he erects monuments tomorrow.

    Hermann Hesse (1983). “Steppenwolf”, Bantam
  • I hope death will be a great happiness, a happiness as great as that of love, fulfilled love

    Hermann Hesse (2013). “Narcissus and Goldmund: A Novel”, p.288, Macmillan
  • I, also, would like to look and smile, sit and walk like that, so free, so worthy, so restrained, so candid, so childlike and mysterious. A man only looks and walks like that when he has conquered his Self. I also will conquer my Self.

    Men  
    Hermann Hesse (2015). “Siddhartha: An Indian Tale”, p.30, Om Books International
  • There is no reality except the one contained within us.

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

  • I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary for me to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world.

    "Siddhartha: An Indian Tale".
  • The judge who sits over the murderer and looks into his face, and at one moment recognizes all the emotions and potentialities and possibilities of the murderer in his own soul and hears the murderer's voice as his own, is at the next moment one and indivisible as the judge, and scuttles back into the shell of his cultivated self and does his duty and condemns the murderer to death.

    Hermann Hesse (1983). “Steppenwolf”, Bantam
  • You say yes to the sunlight and pure fantasies, so you have to say yes to the filth and the nausea. Everything is within you, gold and mud, happiness and pain, the laughter of childhood and the apprehension of death. Say yes to everything, shirk nothing.

    Hermann Hesse (1980). “Six Novels: With Other Stories and Essays”
  • 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.

  • He saw all these forms and faces in a thousand relationships become newly born. Each one was mortal, a passionate, painful example of all that is transitory. Yet none of them died, they only changed, were always reborn, continually had a new face: only time stood between one face and another.

    Hermann Hesse (2015). “Siddhartha: An Indian Tale”, p.112, Om Books International
  • How foolish to wear oneself out in vain longing for warmth! Solitude is independence.

    "Six Novels: With Other Stories and Essays".
  • What you call passion is not spiritual force, but friction between the soul and the outside world.

    Hermann Hesse (2002). “The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) A Novel”, p.82, Macmillan
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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 447 quotes from the Poet Hermann Hesse, starting from July 2, 1877! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!