Quotes from Hermann Hesse

Those who cannot think or take responsibility for themselves need, and clamor for, a leader.

In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.

In Germany I have been acknowledged again since the fall of Hitler, but my works, partly suppressed by the Nazis and partly destroyed by the war; have not yet been republished there.

I believe that the struggle against death, the unconditional and self-willed determination to live, is the mode of power behind the lives and activities of all outstanding men.

I had grown a thin mustache, I was a full-grown man, and yet I was completely helpless and without a goal in life.

Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother.

I am fond of music I think because it is so amoral. Everything else is moral and I am after something that isn't. I have always found moralizing intolerable.

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.

Every man's story is important, eternal and sacred. That is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous and worthy of every consideration.

The mind cannot live in nature, only against nature, only as its counterpart.

The best weapons against the infamies of life are courage, wilfulness and patience. Courage strenthens, wilfulness is fun and patience provides tranquility.

God does not send us despair in order to kill us; he sends it in order to awaken us to new life.

But peace, too, is a living thing and like all life it must wax and wane, accommodate, withstand trials, and undergo changes.

Life is waiting everywhere, the future is flowering everywhere, but we only see a small part of it and step on much of it with our feet

The man of power is ruined by power, the man of money by money, the submissive man by subservience, the pleasure seeker by pleasure.

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. The God's name is Abraxas.

Abraxas was the god who was both god and devil.

Our god's name is Abraxas and he is God and Satan and he contains both the luminous and the dark world.

Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object.

For me, however, that beloved, glowing little word happiness has become associated with everything I have felt since childhood upon hearing the sound of the word itself.

If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do.

We have to stumble through so much dirt and humbug before we reach home. And we have no one to guide us. Our only guide is our homesickness.

All higher humor begins with ceasing to take oneself seriously.

How foolish to wear oneself out in vain longing for warmth! Solitude is independence.