Quotes by Hermann Hesse

• Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.
• Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.
• One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.
• Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.
• As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.
• Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object.
• The truth is lived, not taught.
• Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can - that is their secret.
• You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.
• Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.
• Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.
• Within us there is someone who knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than we ourselves.
• When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.
• 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.
• What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature are shot down wholesale.
• To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.
• To be able to throw one's self away for the sake of a moment, to be able to sacrifice years for a woman's smile - that is happiness.
• Those who cannot think or take responsibility for themselves need, and clamor for, a leader.
• Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.
• There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only a knowledge - that is everywhere.
• People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.
• The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.
• The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire.
• Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.
• Solitude is independence.
• If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do.
• In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.
• 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.
• It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.
• Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.
• Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.
• Only the ideas that we really live have any value.
• There's no reality except the one contained within us. That's why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.