Alejandro > Alejandro's Quotes

“And everything together, all voices, all goals, all yearning, all suffering, all pleasure, all that was good and evil, all of this together was the world. All of this together was the flow of events, was the music of life.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross.”
― Hermann Hesse , Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“Novelists when they write novels tend to take an almost godlike attitude toward their subject, pretending to a total comprehension of the story, a man's life, which they can therefore recount as God Himself might, nothing standing between them and the naked truth, the entire story meaningful in every detail. I am as little able to do this as the novelist is, even though my story is more important to me than any novelist's is to him - for this is my story; it is the story of a man, not of an invented, or possible, or idealized, or otherwise absent figure, but of a unique being of flesh and blood, Yet, what a real living human being is made of seems to be less understood today than at any time before, and men - each one of whom represents a unique and valuable experiment on the part of nature - are therefore shot wholesale nowadays. If we were not something more than unique human beings, if each one of us could really be done away with once and for all by a single bullet, storytelling would lose all purpose. But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of every consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“God help us -- for art is long, and life so short.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part

“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“Who alone suffers, suffers most i' th' mind,
Leaving free things and happy shows behind.
But then the mind much sufferance doth o'erskip
When grief hath mates and bearing fellowship.”
― William Shakespeare, King Lear

“Alas, I now know only too well that there is nothing in the world more hateful to a person than walking the path that leads to himself!”
― Hermann Hesse

“It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.

If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him? The workman of today works everyday in his life at the same tasks, and his fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“I was not afraid of anyone and my schoolmates knew it too. They treated me with a furtive respect that often made me laugh. I could see right though most of them whenever I wanted, and I sometimes startled and amazed them by doing so. But I rarely or never wanted to. I cared only about myself, always myself. But I desperately yearned to someday, at long last, live a little too: to put something of myself out into the world; to struggle against, and connect with, the world.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“I have nothing to tell you, Knauer. No one can help anyone else. No one helped me either. You have to just reflect on yourself and then do what truly comes from your nature. There's nothing else. If you can't find yourself, then you won't find any spirtis either, it seems to me.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground

“So she thoroughly taught him that one cannot take pleasure without giving pleasure, and that every gesture, every caress, every touch, every glance, every last bit of the body has its secret, which brings happiness to the person who knows how to wake it. She taught him that after a celebration of love the lovers should not part without admiring each other, without being conquered or having conquered, so that neither is bleak or glutted or has the bad feeling of being used or misused.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“Above all Siddartha learned from the river how to listen, to listen with a still heart, with a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgments, without opinions.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“All theory is gray, my friend. But forever green is the tree of life.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, First Part

“Such a creature—my, I’d love to know him!—   I’d call him Mr. Microcosm.   FAUST. What am I, then, if it can never be:   The realization of all human possibility,   That crown my soul so avidly reaches for?   MEPHISTO. In the end you are—just what you are.   Wear wigs high-piled with curls, oh millions,   Stick your legs in yard-high hessians,   You’re still you, the one you always were.   FAUST. I feel it now, how pointless my long grind 1840 To make mine all the treasures of man’s mind;   When I sit back and interrogate my soul,   No new powers answer to my call;   I’m not a hair’s breadth more in height,   A step nearer to the infinite.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: A Tragedy, Parts One and Two

“And with love one can live even without happiness.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead

“Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“This absurd, godless world is, then, peopled with men who think clearly and have ceased to hope. And I have not yet spoken of the most absurd character, who is the creator.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“Creating is living doubly. The groping, anxious quest of a Proust, his meticulous collecting of flowers, of wallpapers, and of anxieties, signifies nothing else.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven.”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost

“Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions, seems still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth. Such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery, and be overwhelmed by disappointments; yet, when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil, the void that presents itself to the soul, and the despair that is exhibited on the countenance. It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw every day and whose very existence appeared a part of our own can have departed forever—that the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished and the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear can be hushed, never more to be heard. These are the reflections of the first days; but when the lapse of time proves the reality of the evil, then the actual bitterness of grief commences. Yet from whom has not that rude hand rent away some dear connection? And why should I describe a sorrow which all have felt, and must feel? The time at length arrives when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity; and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished. My mother was dead, but we had still duties which we ought to perform; we must continue our course with the rest and learn to think ourselves fortunate whilst one remains whom the spoiler has not seized.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

“you must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame;
how could you rise anew if you have not first become ashes?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“The creator seeks companions, not corpses- and not herds or believers either. The creator seeks fellow-creators - those who grave new values on new law-tablets.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground

“We should show life neither as it is, nor as it should be, but as we see it in our dreams.”
― Anton Chekhov, The Seagull