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

Oh, love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.

Hermann Hesse

Like an attack this melancholy comes from time to time. I don't know at what intervals, and slowly covers my sky with clouds. It begins with an unrest in the heart, with a premonition of anxiety, probably with my dreams at night. People, houses, colo...

Hermann Hesse

I feel life trembling within me, in my tongue, on the soles of my feet, in my desire or my suffering, I want my soul to be a wandering thing, able to move back into a hundred forms, I want to dream myself into priests and wanderers, female cooks and ...

Hermann Hesse

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, the longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it...

Hermann Hesse

Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.

Hermann Hesse

What is the world doing? Have new gods been discovered, new laws, new freedoms? Who cares! But up here a primrose is blossoming and bearing silver fuzz on its leaves, and the light sweet wind is singing below me in the poplars, and between my eyes an...

Hermann Hesse

Thoughts and sorrows seem to have remained on the other side of the mountains. Between tormented men and hateful deeds, a person has to think and sorrow so much! Back there it is so difficult and so desperately important to find a reason for staying ...

Hermann Hesse

When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.

Hermann Hesse

He had too much to think about. In the course of his long, useless marches he had sunk deeper and deeper into the tangle of his botched life as into a clump of brambles, and still he had found no meaning or consolation.

Hermann Hesse

He had thrown himself away, he had lost interest in everything, and life, falling in with his feelings, had demanded nothing of him. He had lived as an outsider, an idler and onlooker, well liked in his young manhood, alone in his illness and advanci...

Hermann Hesse

He tried to think of death as he had done now and then, but that tired him and he dozed off. When he awoke an hour later, he felt fresh and calm as though he had slept for days.

Hermann Hesse

This day will never come again and anyone who fails to eat and drink and taste and smell it will never have it offered to him again in all eternity. The sun will never shine as it does today...But you must play your part and sing a song, one of your ...

Hermann Hesse

Cada época, cada cultura, cada costume e tradição tem seu próprio estilo, tem sua delicadeza e sua severidade, suas belezas e crueldades, aceitam certos sofrimentos como naturais, sofrem pacientemente certas desgraças. O verdadeiro sofrimento, o...

Hermann Hesse

People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.

Hermann Hesse

Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.

Hermann Hesse

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

Hermann Hesse

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

Hermann Hesse

To be able to throw one's self away for the sake of a moment, to be able to sacrifice years for a woman's smile - that is happiness.

Hermann Hesse

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.

Hermann Hesse

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

Hermann Hesse

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.

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