Hermann Hesse Quotes - Page 14

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Life is always frightful. We cannot help it and we are responsible all the same. One's born and at once one is guilty.

Hermann Hesse

Helping, Life Is, Guilty

Hermann Hesse (2013). “Steppenwolf: A Novel”, p.206, Macmillan

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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

Music, Thinking, Moral

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The bourgeois today burns as heretics and hangs as criminals those to whom he erects monuments tomorrow.

Hermann Hesse

Criminals, Today, Tomorrow

Hermann Hesse (1983). “Steppenwolf”, Bantam

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The river taught us how to listen with a silent heart, with a waiting open soul.

Hermann Hesse

Heart, Taught Us, Rivers

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...and the vessel was not full, his intellect was not satisfied, his soul was not at peace, his heart was not still.

Hermann Hesse

Heart, Soul, Intellect

Hermann Hesse (2015). “Siddhartha: An Indian Tale”, p.8, Om Books International

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Yes, what we are doing is probably mad, and probably it is good and necessary all the same. It is not a good thing when man overstrains his reason and tries to reduce to rational order matters that are susceptible of rational treatment. Then there arise ideals such as those of the Americans or of the Bolsheviks. Both are extraordinarily rational, and both lead to a frightful oppression and impoverishment of life, because they simplify it so crudely. The likeness of man, once a high ideal, is in process of becoming a machine-made article. It is for madmen like us, perhaps, to ennoble it again.

Hermann Hesse

Men, Order, Mad

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Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the stars revolve.

Hermann Hesse

Stars, Years, Space

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

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For a while I shall still be leaving, looking back at you as you slip away into the magic islands of the mind. But for a while now all are alive, believing that in a single poignant hour we did say all that we could ever say in a great flowing out of radiant power. It was like seeing and then going blind.

Hermann Hesse

Believe, Islands, Leaving

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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.

Hermann Hesse

Fate, Two, Aphorism

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

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I believe that the struggle against death, the unconditional and self-willed determination to live, is the mode of power behind the lives and activities of all outstanding men.

Hermann Hesse

Determination, Believe, Struggle

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Fortunately, like most children, I had learned what is most valuable, most indispensable for life before school years began, taught by apple trees, by rain and sun, river and woods.

Hermann Hesse

Children, Rain, School

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To such men the desperate and horrible thought has come that perhaps the whole of human life is but a bad joke, a violent and ill-fated abortion of the primal mother, a savage and dismal catastophe of nature.

Hermann Hesse

Mother, Men, Abortion

Hermann Hesse (2013). “Steppenwolf: A Novel”, p.45, Macmillan

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If a bell failed to ring, if a stove smoked, if a wheel on a machine stuck, you knew at once where to look and did so with alacrity; you found the defect and knew how to cure it. But the thing within you, the secret mainspring that alone gave meaning to life, the thing within us that alone is living, alone is capable of feeling pleasure and pain, of craving happiness and experiencing it- that was unknown. You knew nothing about that, nothing at all, and if the mainspring failed there was no cure. Wasn't it insane?

Hermann Hesse

Pain, Feelings, Secret

Hermann Hesse (1974). “Kingsor's Last Summer”

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I am a star in the firmament that observe the world, despises the world and consumed in its heat. I am the sea by night in a storm the sea shouting that accumulates new sins and to the ancient makes recompense. I am exiled from your world of pride polite, by pride defrauded, I am the king without crown. I am the passion without words without stones of the hearth, without weapons in the war, is my same force that make me sick

Hermann Hesse

Stars, Kings, War

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Toward seven o'clock every morning, I leave my study and step Out on the bright terrace; the sun already burns resplendent Between the shadows of the fig tree, makes the low wall of coarse Granite warm to the touch. Here my tools lie ready and waiting, Each one an intimate, an ally: the round basket for weeds: The zappetta, the small hoe with a short haft . . . There's a rake here as well, at at times a mattock and spade, Or two watering cans filled with water warmed by the sun. With my basket and small hoe in hand, facing the sun, I Go out for my morning walk.

Hermann Hesse

Weed, Morning, Wall

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I was given the freedom to discover my own inclination and talents, to fashion my inmost pleasures and sorrows myself and to regard the future not as an alien higher power but as the hope
and product of my own strength.

Hermann Hesse

Fashion, Sorrow, Aliens

"Gertrude". Book by Hermann Hesse, p. 4, 1910.

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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.

Hermann Hesse

Taken, Circles, Full Circle

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A game master or teacher who was primarily concerned with being close enough to the "innermost meaning" would be a very bad teacher. To be candid, I myself, for example, have never in my life said a word to my pupils about the "meaning" of music; if there is one it does not need my explanations. On the other hand I have always made a great point of having my pupils count their eighths and sixteenths nicely. Whatever you become, teacher, scholar, or musician, have respect for the "meaning" but do not imagine that it can be taught.

Hermann Hesse

Teacher, Games, Hands

Hermann Hesse (2002). “The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) A Novel”, p.136, Holt Paperbacks

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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

Reality, Law, Yesterday

Hermann Hesse (2002). “The Glass Bead Game: (Magister Ludi) A Novel”, p.168, Macmillan

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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.

Hermann Hesse

Past, Rivers, Siddhartha

Hermann Hesse (2015). “Siddhartha: An Indian Tale”, p.81, Om Books International

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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.

Hermann Hesse

Struggle, Cutting, Years

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

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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

Time, Faces, Saws

Hermann Hesse (2015). “Siddhartha: An Indian Tale”, p.112, Om Books International

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Friendship is identification and difference

Hermann Hesse

Differences, Identification

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Young people have many pleasures and many sorrows, because they only have themselves to think of, so every wish and every notion assume importance; every pleasure is tasted to the full, but also every sorrow, and many who find that their wishes cannot be fulfilled, immediately put an end to their lives.

Hermann Hesse

Thinking, People, Sorrow

"Gertrude". Book by Hermann Hesse, p. 32, 1910.

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What is the holding of breath? It is a flight from the Self, it is a temporary escape from the torment of Self. It is a temporary palliative against the pain and folly of life.

Hermann Hesse

Pain, Self, Flight

Hermann Hesse (2015). “Siddhartha: An Indian Tale”, p.17, Om Books International

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Born: July 2, 1877
Died: August 9, 1962
Occupation: Poet
Cite this Page: Citation

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