Herman Hesse Quotes

“Never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“All existence seemed to be based on duality, on contrast. Either one was a man or one was a woman, either a wanderer or sedentary burgher, either a thinking person or a feeling person-no one could breathe in at the same time as he breathed out, be a man as well as a woman, experience freedom as well as order, combine instinct and mind. One always had to pay for one with the loss of the other, and one thing was always just as important and desirable as the other.”
― Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund

“And was it not perhaps more childlike and human to lead a Goldmund-life, more courageous, more noble perhaps in the end to abandon oneself to the cruel stream of reality, to chaos, to commit sins and accept their bitter consequences rather than live a clean life with washed hands outside the world, laying out a lonely harmonious thought-garden, strolling sinlessly among one's sheltered flower beds. Perhaps it was harder, braver and nobler to wander through forests and along the highways with torn shoes, to suffer sun and rain, hunger and need, to play with the joys of the senses and pay for them with suffering.
At any rate, Goldmund had shown him that a man destined for high things can dip into the lowest depths of the bloody, drunken chaos of life, and soil himself with much dust and blood, without becoming small and common, without killing the divine spark within himself, that he can err through the thickest darkness without extinguishing the divine light and the creative force inside the shrine of his soul.”
― Herman Hesse

“It was shameless how life made fun of one; it was a joke, a cause for weeping! Either one lived and let one's senses play, drank full at the primitive mother's breast—which brought great bliss but was no protection against death; then one lived like a mushroom in the forest, colorful today and rotten tomorrow. Or else one put up a defense, imprisoned oneself for work and tried to build a monument to the fleeting passage of life—then one renounced life, was nothing but a tool; one enlisted in the service of that which endured, but one dried up in the process and lost one's freedom, scope, lust for life...
Ach, life made sense only if one achieved both, only if it was not split by this brittle alternative! To create, without sacrificing one's senses for it. To live, without renouncing the mobility of creating. Was that impossible?”
― Herman Hesse

“There is much to be said for contentment and painlessness, for these bearable and submissive days, on which neither pain nor pleasure is audible, but pass by whispering and on tip-toe. But the worst of it is that it is just this contentment that I cannot endure. After a short time it fills me with irrepressible hatred and nausea. In desperation I have to escape and throw myself on the road to pleasure, or, if that cannot be, on the road to pain. When I have neither pleasure nor pain and have been breathing for a while the lukewarm insipid air of these so-called good and tolerable days, I feel so bad in my childish soul that I smash my mouldering lyre of thanksgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel the very devil burn in me than this warmth of a well-heated room. A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages, to pull off the wigs of a few revered idols, to provide a few rebellious schoolboys with the longed-for ticket to Hamburg, or to stand one or two representatives of the established order on their heads. For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf

“Workshops, churches, and palaces were full of these fatal works of art; he had even helped with a few himself. They were deeply disappointing because they aroused the desire for the highest and did not fulfill it. They lacked to most essential thing—mystery. That was what dreams and truly great works of art had in common: mystery... It is mystery I love and pursue.”
― Herman Hesse

“Φοβόμαστε το θάνατο, ανατριχιάζουμε στην αστάθεια της ζωής, λυπόμαστε να βλέπουμε τα λουλούδια να μαραίνονται ξανά και ξανά και τα φύλλα που πέφτουν και στις καρδιές μας γνωρίζουμε ότι εμείς, το ίδιο εφήμεροι είμαστε και σύντομα θα εξαφανιστούμε.
Όταν οι καλλιτέχνες δημιουργούν εικόνες και οι στοχαστές ψάχνουν για νόμους και δίνουν σώμα στις σκέψεις, είναι για να διασώσουν κάτι από τον θαυμαστό χορό του θανάτου, είναι για να φτιάξουν κάτι το οποίο θα διαρκέσει περισσότερο από ό, τι εμείς.”
― Herman Hesse

“Now, instead of being just attracted, I was really in love, and it seemed that a thin, grey veil had fallen from my eyes and that the world lay before me in its original divine light as it does to children, and as it appears to us in our dreams of Paradise.”
― Hermann Hesse, Gertrude

“Workshops, churches, and palaces were full of these fatal works of art; he had even helped with a few himself. They were deeply disappointing because they aroused the desire for the highest and did not fulfill it. They lacked the most essential thing—mystery. That was what dreams and truly great works of art had in common: mystery... It is mystery I love and pursue.”
― Herman Hesse

“I did not want to be like anyone else. I wanted to remain in my own skin, although it was often so constrictive... I had to find a bridge to reach people, I must learn to live with them without always feeling at a disadvantage.”
― Hermann Hesse, Gertrude

“Quando qualcuno cerca, allora accade facilmente che il suo occhio perda la capacità di vedere ogni altra cosa, fuori di quella che cerca [...]
Cercare significa: avere uno scopo.
Ma trovare significa: esser libero, restare aperto, non avere scopo.”
― Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

“A la patria nunca se llega- dijo amablemente -. Pero cuando los caminos amigos se cruzan, todo el universo parece por un momento la patria anhelada.”
― Herman Hesse, Demian

“İnsanların büyük çoğunluğu Kamala, düşen bir yaprak gibidir, kapılıp gider rüzgarın önüne, havada süzülür, dönüp durur, sağa sola yalpalar vurarak iner yere. Pek az kişi de vardır, yıldızlara benzer, belli bir yörüngede ilerler durur, hiçbir rüzgar varamaz yanlarına, kendi yasalarını ve izleyecekleri yolu kendi içlerinde taşırlar.”
― Herman Hesse, Siddartha