1,099 Quotes by Hermann Hesse

Man, we feel in the presence of such mighty maxims, is not an animal; he is not a determinate, finite entity, not a being completed once and for all, but a coming-into-being, a project, a dream of the future, a yearning of nature for new forms and possibilities.

There is nothing to opinions, theymay be beautiful or ugly, smart or foolish, everyone can support them ordiscard them. But the teachings, you’ve heard from me, are no opinion,and their goal is not to explain the world to those who seek knowledge.They have a different goal; their goal is salvation from suffering. This iswhat Gotama teaches, nothing else.

وكنت بهذا اكتسب بالتدريج سمعة كرجل من الممكن أن يتكلم معه الآخرون كلام عقل

We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.

...for you know that soft is stronger than hard, water stronger than rock, love stronger than force." Vesadeva to Siddartha

Man is an onion made up of a hundred integuments, a texture made up of many threads. The ancient Asiatics knew this well enough, and in the Buddhist Yoga an exact technique was devised for unmasking the illusion of the personality. The human merry-go-round sees many changes: the illusion that cost India the efforts of thousands of years to unmask is the same illusion that the West has labored just as hard to maintain and strengthen.

And so Gotama wandered into the town to obtain alms, and the two Samanas recognized him only by his complete peacefulness of demeanor, by the stillness of his form, in which there was no seeking, no will, no counterfeit, no effort - only light and peace.

Merchant: 'So you have lived on the possessions of others?'Saddhartha: 'Apparently. The merchant also lives on the possession of others.'Merchant: 'Well spoken...

Sensuality isn't worth a hair more than spirituality, and it's the same the other way around. It's all one, everything is equally good. Whether you embrace a woman or make a poem, it's the same. So long as the main thing is there, the love, the burning, the emotion, it doesn't matter whether you are a monk on Mount Athos or a man about town in Paris.