Doug Bernard

“The things we see," Pistorius said softly, "are the same things that are within us. There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself. You can be happy that way. But once you know the other interpretation you no longer have the choice of following the crowd. Sinclair, the majority's path is an easy one, ours is difficult.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“One never reaches home,' she said. 'But where paths that have an affinity for each other intersect, the whole world looks like home, for a time.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“You knew all along that your sanctioned world was only half the world, and you tried to suppress the other half the same way the priests and teachers do. You won't succeed. No one succeeds in this once he has begun to think.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“We who bore the mark might well be considered by the rest of the world as strange, even as insane and dangerous. We had awoken, or were awakening, and we were striving for an ever perfect state of wakefulness, whereas the ambition and quest for happiness of the others consisted of linking their opinions, ideals, and duties, their life and happiness, ever more closely with those of the herd. They, too, strove; they, too showed signs of strength and greatness. But as we saw it, whereas we marked men represented Nature's determination to create something new, individual, and forward-looking, the others lived in the determination to stay the same. For them mankind--which they loved as much as we did--was a fully formed entity that had to be preserved and protected. For us mankind was a distant future toward which we were all journeying, whose aspect no one knew, whose laws weren't written down anywhere.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend