Herman Hesse Quotes

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Quotes About Herman Hesse

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Cruising along once again in this cesspool known as life, I realize that it is too late to make a detour. I will have to pass the anti-abortion pickets (50) outside of Planned Parenthood. Nothing gets on my nerves more than these pro-lifers. Not even astrology enthusiasts (51), Herman Hesse (52) or computer games (53). Look at these fools parading up and down! "Mind your own business," I yell. When one of these busybodies (a man, yet) approaches my car with literature, I lose control and scream, "I wish I was a girl so I could get an abortion!" Trembling with rage, I realize I'd better calm down before I get beat up, but can't resist one last taunt - "I hate the pope" (54), I yell to no one in particular. ~ John Waters
Herman Hesse quotes by John Waters
In Germany I have been acknowledged again since the fall of Hitler, but my works, partly suppressed by the Nazis and partly destroyed by the war; have not yet been republished there. ~ Herman Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Hesse
It was shameless how life made fun of one; it was a joke, a cause for weeping! Either one lived and let one's senses play, drank full at the primitive mother's breast - which brought great bliss but was no protection against death; then one lived like a mushroom in the forest, colorful today and rotten tomorrow. Or else one put up a defense, imprisoned oneself for work and tried to build a monument to the fleeting passage of life - then one renounced life, was nothing but a tool; one enlisted in the service of that which endured, but one dried up in the process and lost one's freedom, scope, lust for life...
Ach, life made sense only if one achieved both, only if it was not split by this brittle alternative! To create, without sacrificing one's senses for it. To live, without renouncing the mobility of creating. Was that impossible? ~ Hermann Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Hermann Hesse
When trying to remember my share in the glow of the eternal present, in the smile of God, I return to my childhood, too, for that is where the most significant discoveries turn up. ~ Herman Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Hesse
And was it not perhaps more childlike and human to lead a Goldmund-life, more courageous, more noble perhaps in the end to abandon oneself to the cruel stream of reality, to chaos, to commit sins and accept their bitter consequences rather than live a clean life with washed hands outside the world, laying out a lonely harmonious thought-garden, strolling sinlessly among one's sheltered flower beds. Perhaps it was harder, braver and nobler to wander through forests and along the highways with torn shoes, to suffer sun and rain, hunger and need, to play with the joys of the senses and pay for them with suffering.
At any rate, Goldmund had shown him that a man destined for high things can dip into the lowest depths of the bloody, drunken chaos of life, and soil himself with much dust and blood, without becoming small and common, without killing the divine spark within himself, that he can err through the thickest darkness without extinguishing the divine light and the creative force inside the shrine of his soul. ~ Hermann Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Hermann Hesse
Workshops, churches, and palaces were full of these fatal works of art; he had even helped with a few himself. They were deeply disappointing because they aroused the desire for the highest and did not fulfill it. They lacked to most essential thing - mystery. That was what dreams and truly great works of art had in common: mystery... It is mystery I love and pursue. ~ Hermann Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Hermann Hesse
This happiness consisted of nothing else but the harmony of the few things around me with my own existence, a feeling of contentment and well-being that needed no changes and no intensification. ~ Herman Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Hesse
This is a time, as Herman Hesse puts it, when a whole generation is caught ... between two ages, two modes of life, with the consequence that it loses all power to understand itself and has no standards, no security, no simple acquiescence. ~ Rollo May
Herman Hesse quotes by Rollo May
All existence seemed to be based on duality, on contrast. Either one was a man or one was a woman, either a wanderer or sedentary burgher, either a thinking person or a feeling person-no one could breathe in at the same time as he breathed out, be a man as well as a woman, experience freedom as well as order, combine instinct and mind. One always had to pay for one with the loss of the other, and one thing was always just as important and desirable as the other. ~ Hermann Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Hermann Hesse
It was as if all of the happiness, all of the magic of this blissful hour had flowed together into these stirring, bittersweet tones and flowed away, becoming temporal and transitory once more. ~ Herman Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Hesse
The marvel of the Bhagavad-Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life's wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom into religion. ~ Herman Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Hesse
Among the letters my readers write me, there is a certain category which is continuously growing, and which I see as a symptom of the increasing intellectualization of the relationship between readers and literature. ~ Herman Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Hesse
Nevertheless, whether in occurrences lasting days, hours or mere minutes at a time, I have experienced happiness often, and have had brief encounters with it in my later years, even in old age. ~ Herman Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Hesse
Stages



As every flower fades and as all youth
Departs, so life at every stage,
So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,
Blooms in its day and may not last forever.
Since life may summon us at every age
Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,
Be ready bravely and without remorse
To find new light that old ties cannot give.
In all beginnings dwells a magic force
For guarding us and helping us to live.

Serenely let us move to distant places
And let no sentiments of home detain us.
The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us
But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.
If we accept a home of our own making,
Familiar habit makes for indolence.
We must prepare for parting and leave-taking
Or else remain the slaves of permanence.

Even the hour of our death may send
Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,
And life may summon us to newer races.
So be it, heart: bid farewell without end. ~ Hermann Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Hermann Hesse
It was morning; through the high window I saw the pure, bright blue of the sky as it hovered cheerfully over the long roofs of the neighboring houses. It too seemed full of joy, as if it had special plans, and had put on its finest clothes for the occasion. ~ Herman Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Hesse
But your questions, which are unanswerable without exception, all spring from the same erroneous thinking. ~ Herman Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Hesse
I did not want to be like anyone else. I wanted to remain in my own skin, although it was often so constrictive... I had to find a bridge to reach people, I must learn to live with them without always feeling at a disadvantage. ~ Hermann Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Hermann Hesse
There was no race - but to the extent that there was an arms competition, it was almost entirely on the Soviet side, first to catch up and then to surpass the Americans. ~ Herman Kahn
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Kahn
How deaf and stupid I have been, he thought, walking on quickly. When anyone reads anything which he wishes to study, he does not despise the letters and punctuation marks, and call them illusion, chance and worthless shells, but he reads them, he studies and loves them, letter by letter. But I, who wished to read the book of the world and of my own nature, did presume to despise the letters and signs. I called the world of appearances, illusion. I called my eyes and tongue, chance. Now it is over; I have awakened. ~ Hermann Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Hermann Hesse
She wanted once more to extract the last sweet drop from this fleeting pleasure. ~ Hermann Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Hermann Hesse
People think that if a man has undergone any hardship, he should have a reward; but for my part, if I have done the hardest possible day's work, and then come to sit down in a corner and eat my supper comfortably -why, then I don't think I deserve any reward for my hard day's work -for am I not now at peace? Is not my supper good? ~ Herman Melville
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Melville
Carla Hesse has given us an astonishing new look at women's struggle for independent expression and moral autonomy during the French Revolution and afterward. Denied the political and civil rights of men, literary women plunged into the expanded world of publication, answering the men's philosophical treatises with provocative novels about women's choices and chances. Lively and learned, The Other Enlightenment links women from Madame de Stael to Simone de Beauvoir in an alternate and daring path to the modern. ~ Natalie Zemon Davis
Herman Hesse quotes by Natalie Zemon Davis
IN ANSWER TO THE QUESTION: WHAT SCENES ONE WOULD LIKE TO HAVE FILMED
Shakespeare in the part of the King's Ghost.
The beheading of Louis the Sixteenth, the drums drowning his speech on the scaffold.
Herman Melville at breakfast, feeling a sardine to his cat.
Poe's wedding.
Lewis Carroll's picnics.
The Russians leaving Alaska, delighted with the deal.
Shot of a seal applauding. ~ Vladimir Nabokov
Herman Hesse quotes by Vladimir Nabokov
Even the unhappiest life has its sunny moments and its little flowers of happiness between sand and stone. ~ Hermann Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Hermann Hesse
Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today. ~ Herman Wouk
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Wouk
You must have plenty of sea-room to tell the truth in. ~ Herman Melville
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Melville
Every politician in the world is all for revolution, reason, and disarmament-but only in enemy countries, not in his own. ~ Hermann Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Hermann Hesse
Better to sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunk Christian. ~ Herman Melville
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Melville
At the first kiss I felt something melt inside me that hurt in an exquisite way. All my longings, all my dreams and sweet anguish, All the secrets that slept deep within me came awake, Everything was transformed and enchanted, everything made sense. ~ Hermann Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Hermann Hesse
Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. ~ Herman Goering
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Goering
War yet shall be, but warriors are now operatives; war's made less grand than peace. ~ Herman Melville
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Melville
A pretty pickle, truly, thought I; abed here in a strange house in the broad day, with a cannibal and a tomahawk. ~ Herman Melville
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Melville
Young woman, fresh face, I don't want to know your name. I don't want to cherish and fatten my love for you. You aren't the end of my love, but its awakening, its beginning. ~ Hermann Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Hermann Hesse
It's only his outside; a man can be honest in any sort of skin. ~ Herman Melville
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Melville
On one side hung a very large oil-painting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the unequal cross-lights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent study and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of the neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its purpose. such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first you almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New England hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint of much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and especially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the entry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however wild, might not be altogether unwarranted.

But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through. - It's the Black Sea in a midnight gale. - It's the unnatural combat of the four primal elements. - It's a blasted heath. - It's a Hyperb ~ Herman Melville
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Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore. ~ Herman Melville
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Melville
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. ~ Hermann Hesse
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Moving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the docks, and heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a swinging sign over the door with a white painting upon it, faintly representing a tall straight jet of misty spray, and these words underneath - "The Spouter Inn: - Peter Coffin." Coffin? - Spouter? - Rather ominous in that particular connexion, thought I. But it is a common name in Nantucket, they say, and I suppose this Peter here is an emigrant from there. As the light looked so dim, and the place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and the dilapidated little wooden house itself looked as if it might have been carted here from the ruins of some burnt district, and as the swinging sign had a poverty-stricken sort of creak to it, I thought that here was the very spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea coffee. ~ Herman Melville
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Melville
The poor peasant here hives under conditions quite different from those of Russia. Though often terrible, they are not as appalling as they were there. ~ Herman Gorter
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Gorter
Even Solomon, he says, "the man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead." Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gore is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar. (pg 465) ~ Herman Melville
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Melville
The American people, Neil, are sick and tired of excuses. They are sick and tired of the blame game. And they're sick and tired of the deception coming from this president and this administration. This is why I believe that I am doing so well in the polls. ~ Herman Cain
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Cain
The objective of nuclear-weapons policy should not be solely to decrease the number of weapons in the world, but to make the world safer - which is not necessarily the same thing. ~ Herman Kahn
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Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon suddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy him a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian trip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a robust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea? Why upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a mystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out of sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? ~ Herman Melville
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Melville
I have always thirsted for knowledge, I have always been full of questions. ~ Hermann Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Hermann Hesse
It was fortunate that love did not need words; or else it would be full of misunderstanding and foolishness. ~ Hermann Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Hermann Hesse
It was a short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor. ~ Herman Melville
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Melville
Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish. ~ Hermann Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Hermann Hesse
The possibility of success was motivating me more than the fear of failure. ~ Herman Cain
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Cain
I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult? ~ Hermann Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Hermann Hesse
There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair. ~ Herman Melville
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Melville
Why did he, the irreproachable one, have to wash off sins every day, strive for a cleansing every day, over and over every day? ~ Hermann Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Hermann Hesse
Are there no Moravians in the Moon, that not a missionary has yet visited this poor pagan planet of ours, to civilise civilisation and christianise Christendom? ~ Herman Melville
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Melville
Your problems are never bigger than your purpose. ~ Herman Edwards
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Edwards
Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? ~ Herman Melville
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Melville
Where does any novelist pick up any character? For the most part, in town, to be sure. ~ Herman Melville
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Melville
No, a true seeker, one who truly wished to find, could accept no doctrine. But the man who has found what he sought, such a man could approve of every doctrine, each and every one, every path, every goal; nothing separated him any longer from all those thousands of others who lived in the eternal, who breathed the Divine. ~ Hermann Hesse
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Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that almost fatal encounter, Ahab had cherished a wild vindictiveness against the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness he at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but all his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam before him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious agencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left living on with half a heart and half a lung. ~ Herman Melville
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Melville
Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity. ~ Hermann Hesse
Herman Hesse quotes by Hermann Hesse
The ideas we really live have any value. ~ Hermann Hesse
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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
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My favorite muscle to train is TRICEPS! Always has been my stongest muscle group as well. ~ Scott Herman
Herman Hesse quotes by Scott Herman
Remember this, if you can
there is nothing, nothing more precious than time. You probably feel you have a measureless supply of it, but you haven't. Wasted hours destroy your life just as surely at the beginning as at the end
only in the end it becomes more obvious. ~ Herman Wouk
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Wouk
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. ~ Hermann Hesse
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But if I know not even the tail of this whale, how understand his head? much more, how comprehend this face, when face he has none? Thou shalt see my back parts, my tail, he seems to say, but my face shall not be seen. But I cannot completely make out his back parts; and hint what he will about his face, I say again he has no face. ~ Herman Melville
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Melville
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
Herman Hesse quotes by Hermann Hesse
The Gospel is temporary, but the law is eternal and is restored precisely through the Gospel. Freedom from the law consists, then, not in the fact that the Christian has nothing more to do with the law, but lies in the fact that the law demands nothing more from the Christian as a condition of salvation. The law can no longer judge and condemn him. Instead he delights in the law of God according to the inner man and yearns for it day and night. ~ Herman Bavinck
Herman Hesse quotes by Herman Bavinck
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