1,099 Quotes by Hermann Hesse

What for me is bliss and life and ecstasy and exaltation, the world in general seeks at most in imagination; in life it finds it absurd.

I'm always running into the Sunday God of churchgoing Christians and cannot help noticing that he doesn't help out much on weekdays.

When the world is at peace, when all things are tranquil and all men obey their superiors in all their courses, then music can be perfected. When desires and passions do not turn into wrongful paths, music can be perfected. Perfect music has its cause. It arises from equilibrium. Equilibrium arises from righteousness, and righteousness arises from the meaning of the cosmos. Therefore one can speak about music only with a man who has perceived the meaning of the cosmos.

All the books of the world full of thoughts and poems are nothing in comparison to a minute of sobbing, when feeling surges in waves, the soul feels itself profoundly and finds itself. Tears are the melting ice of snow. All angels are close to the crying person.

then Siddhartha began to understand that his son had not brought him happiness and peace, but suffering and worry. But he loved him, and he preferred the suffering and worries of love over happiness and joy without the boy.

After having been standing by the gate of the garden for a long time, Siddhartha realised that his desire was foolish, which had made him go up to this place, that he could not help his son, that he was not allowed to cling him. Deeply, he felt the love for the run-away in his heart, like a wound, and he felt at the same time that this wound had not been given to him in order to turn the knife in it, that it had to become a blossom and had to shine.

What should I possibly have to tell you, oh venerable one? Perhaps that you're searching far too much? That in all that searching, you don't find the time for finding?

Au cours de ces semaines, j’avais commencé une lecture qui avait fait sur moi une impression plus profonde que toutes les lectures faites jusqu’à ce jour. Plus tard aussi, il est peu de livres qui m’aient donné autant, sauf Nietzsche peut-être.

Er liebte nichts als seine Freiheit, sein ewiges Studententum, und zog es vor, lebenslänglich der Leidende, der Unberechenbare und störrische Einzelgänger zu sein, der geniale Narr und Nihilist, statt den Weg der Einordnung in die Hierarchie zu gehen und zum Frieden zu gelangen.