Quotes About Hesse

Hesse's ultimate message about the unity of the cosmos and the importance of loving the world, not despising it, was censored out by his convictions in the other direction. Hermann Hesse's books were banned after Hitler took power.

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

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.

Among the letters my readers write me, there is a certain category which is continuously growing, and which I see as a symptom of the increasing intellectualization of the relationship between readers and literature.

Hesse in his mature years suffered from the tragic and painful state of being separated from his true self, to which doctors refer offhandedly as depression.

Hesse sees Haller's record "as a document of the times, for Haller's sickness of the soul, as I now know, is not the eccentricity of a single individual, but the sickness of the times themselves, the neurosis of that generation to which Haller belongs...a sickness which attacks...precisely those who are strongest in spirit and richest in gifts.

I read Hesse's Steppenwolf thrice. The first time I was enchanted, the second time disappointed, the third time appalled.

Love can be begged, bought, or received as a gift, one can find it in the street, but one cannot steal it.

Fiction writing and journalism, in my experience, are really excellent training grounds for each other.

But your questions, which are unanswerable without exception, all spring from the same erroneous thinking.

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.

Love must not entreat, nor demand. Love must have the power to find its own way to certainty. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract. Your love, Sinclair, is attracted by me. When it begins to attract me, I will come. I will not