1,099 Quotes by Hermann Hesse

Forgive me, father, I am not certain what my own wishes are. I shall always take pleasure in study, how could it be otherwise? But I do not believe that my life will be limited to study. A man’s wishes may not always determine his destiny, his mission; perhaps there are other predetermining factors.

Everything becomes questionable as soon as I consider it closely, everything slips away and dissolves.

When someone is seeking,’ said Siddhartha, ’it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he is only thinking of the thing he is seeking, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal.

No, there was no teaching a truly searching person, someone who truly wanted to find, could accept. But he who had found, he could approve of any teachings, every path, every goal, there was nothing standing between him and all the other thousand any more who lived in that what is eternal, who breathed what is divine.

Each man had only one genuine vocation to find the way to himself.

That is where my dearest and brightest dreams have ranged – to hear for the duration of a heartbeat the universe and the totality of life in its mysterious, innate harmony.

What would many happy citizens and trustworthy officials have become but unruly, stormy innovators and dreamers of useless dreams, if not for the effort of their schools?

Each of us has to find out for himself what is permitted and what is forbidden... forbidden for him. It’s possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard. And vice versa.

Every day you are apt to see someone whom you thought you knew through and through do something that proves how little you really know people or can be certain about anything.