Quotes from Hermann Hesse

Love must not entreat,' she added, 'or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract.

That life is difficult, I have often bitterly realized.

What he had not learned, however, was this: to find contentment in himself and his own life

I have always been a great dreamer; in dreams I am more active than in my real life, and these shadows sapped me of health and energy.

Fortunately, like most children, I had learned what is most valuable, most indispensable for life before school years began, taught by apple trees, by rain and sun, river and woods.

It was morning; through the high window I saw the pure, bright blue of the sky as it hovered cheerfully over the long roofs of the neighboring houses. It too seemed full of joy, as if it had special plans, and had put on its finest clothes for the occasion.

Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else.

Everyone gives what he has. The soldier gives strength, the merchant goods, the teacher instruction, the farmer rice, the fisherman fish.

All I really wanted was to try and live the life that was spontaneously welling up within me. Why was that so very difficult?

Life is always frightful. We cannot help it and we are responsible all the same. One's born and at once one is guilty.

The day had gone by just as days go by. I had killed it in accordance with my primitive and retiring way of life.

The way to innocence, to the uncreated and to God leads on, not back, not back to the wolf or to the child, but ever further into sin, ever deeper into human life.

That seems to be the way of things. Everyone takes, everyone gives. Life is like that.

There's no reality except the one contained within us. That's why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.

Within you there is a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself

Seriousness is an accident of time. It consists of putting too high a value on time. In eternity there is no time. Eternity is a moment, just long enough for a joke

One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.

If time is not real, then the dividing line between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.

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?

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

The river is everywhere at the same time . . . everywhere and the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future.

During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the past, present, and future, and then everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman.

When two cultures collide is the only time when true suffering exists.

Nevertheless, whether in occurrences lasting days, hours or mere minutes at a time, I have experienced happiness often, and have had brief encounters with it in my later years, even in old age.