1,099 Quotes by Hermann Hesse

Every sin already carries grace within in, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people – eternal life. The Buddha exists in the robber and dice player; the robber exists in the Brahmin.

But be warned, oh seeker of knowledge, of the thicket of opinions and of arguing about words.

The reason why I do not know anything about myself, the reason why Siddhartha has remained alien and unknown to myself is due to one thing, to one single thing – I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing from myself. I was seeking Atman, I was seeking Brahman, I was determined to dismember myself and tear away its layers of husk in order to find in its unknown innermost recess the kernel at the heart of those layers, the Atman, life, the divine principle, the ultimate. But in so doing, I was losing myself.

Every life has its radiance and beauty.

You are not strict with him, you do not punish him, you do not command him – because you know that gentleness is stronger than severity, that water is stronger than rock, that love is stronger than force.

There’s something to walking with autumnal thoughts through the evening fog. One likes to compose poems at a time like that.

Ich wollte ja nichts als das zu leben versuchen, was von selber aus mir heraus wollte. Warum war das so sehr schwer?

You’ve never lived what you are thinking, and that isn’t good. Only the ideas we actually live are of any value.

Most men will not swim before they are able to.’ Is not that witty? Naturally, they won’t swim! They are born for the solid earth, not for the water. And naturally they won’t think. They are made for life, not for thought. Yes, and he who thinks, what’s more, he who makes thought his business, he may go far in it, but he has bartered the solid earth for the water all the same, and one day he will drown.