Quotes by Hermann Hesse

About Hermann Hesse:

Hermann Karl Hesse was a German-born Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game, each of which explores an individual's search for authenticity, self-knowledge and spirituality. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

If a night-moth were to concentrate its will on flying to a star or some equally unattainable object, it wouldn't succeed. Only, it wouldn't even try in the first place. A moth confines its search to what has sense and value for it, what it needs, wh...

Hermann Hesse

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

Hermann Hesse

In this hour, Siddhartha stopped fighting his fate, stopped suffering. On his face flourished the cheerfulness of a knowledge, which is no longer opposed by any will, which knows perfection, which is in agreement with the flow of events, with the cur...

Hermann Hesse

Painting is marvelous; it makes you happier and more patient. Afterwards you do not have black fingers as with writing, but blue and red ones.

Hermann Hesse

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.

Hermann Hesse

I am a star in the firmament that observe the world, despises the world and consumed in its heat. I am the sea by night in a storm the sea shouting that accumulates new sins and to the ancient makes recompense. I am exiled from your world of pride po...

Hermann Hesse

(...) y todo aquello unido era el río, todas las voces, los fines, los anhelos, los sufrimientos, los placeres; el río era la música de la vida. Y cuando Siddharta escuchaba con atención al río, podía oír esa canción de mil voces; y sino escu...

Hermann Hesse

Was then not all sorrow in time, all self-torment and fear in time? Were not all difficulties and evil in the world conquered as soon as one conquered time, as soon as one dispelled time?

Hermann Hesse

Nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to follow the path that leads to himself.

Hermann Hesse

É muito mais lisonjeiro,(...)lutar-se por alguma coisa bela e ideal e saber ao mesmo tempo que não se conseguirá alcançá-la. Os ideais serão algo que se possa alcançar? Viveremos para cabar com a morte? Não, viveremos para temê-la e também ...

Hermann Hesse

The Wolf trots to and fro, The world lies deep in snow, The raven from the birch tree flies, But nowhere a hare, nowhere a roe, The roe -she is so dear, so sweet - If such a thing I might surprise In my embrace, my teeth would meet, What else is ther...

Hermann Hesse

I call a man awake who knows in his conscious reason his innermost unreasonable forces, drives, and weaknesses and knows how to deal with them.

Hermann Hesse

A thousand times I was ready to regret and take back my rash statement - yet it had been the truth.

Hermann Hesse

How I hated myself, thwarted, poisoned and tortured myself, made myself old and ugly. Never again, as I once fondly imagined, will I consider that Siddartha is clever. But one thing I have done well, which pleases me, which I must praise- I have now ...

Hermann Hesse

Each man had only one genuine vocation - to find the way to himself....His task was to discover his own destiny - not an arbitrary one - and to live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attemp...

Hermann Hesse

How foolish it is to wear oneself out in vain longing for warmth! Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stilln...

Hermann Hesse

...your tranquil yes to the changing over into the formless void of the unlimited.

Hermann Hesse

How deaf and stupid I have been, he thought, walking on quickly. When anyone reads anything which he wishes to study, he does not despise the letters and punctuation marks, and call them illusion, chance and worthless shells, but he reads them, he st...

Hermann Hesse

Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and ugliness; accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced...

Hermann Hesse

It is easier to bear the worries of wandering than to find peace in your hometown, where only the sage can live in a happy house surrounded by trite troubles and daily distractions.

Hermann Hesse

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, who ever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life. A tree says: A kernel is ...

Hermann Hesse

Author Bio

  • NameHermann Hesse
  • Descriptionnovelist and winner of Nobel Prize in Literature
  • BornJuly 2, 1877
  • DiedAugust 9, 1962
  • CountryGermany; Switzerland
  • ProfessionNovelist; Poet; Writer; Literary; Painter
  • WorksThe Glass Bead Game; Demian; Steppenwolf; Siddhartha
  • AwardsNobel Prize In Literature; Order Of Merit For Arts And Science; ; Peace Prize Of The German Book Trade