His life oscillates, as everyone’s does, not merely between two poles, such as the body and the spirit, the saint and the sinner, but between thousands and thousands.
HERMANN HESSEThere 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.
More Hermann Hesse Quotes
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Madness, in a higher sense, is the beginning of all wisdom.
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As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.
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Any attempt to replace a personal conscience by a collective conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism.
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What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.
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When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.
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Faith and doubt go hand in hand, they are complementaries. One who never doubts will never truly believe.
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You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.
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The river is everywhere.
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Theory is knowledge that doesn’t work. Practice is when everything works and you don’t know why.
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Loneliness is the way by which destiny endeavors to lead man to himself.
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A house without books is a poor house, even if beautiful rugs are covering its floors and precious wallpapers and pictures cover its walls
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Seriousness is an accident of time. It consists of putting too high a value on time. In eternity there is no time. Eternity is a moment, just long enough for a joke.
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The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire.
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Not in his speech, not in his thoughts, I see his greatness, only in his actions, in his life.
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You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves. A whole society composed of men afraid of the unknown within them!
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We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.
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In every truth, the opposite is equally true. For example, a truth can only be expressed and enveloped in words if it is onesided.
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A man who is ill-adjusted to the world is always on the verge of finding himself. One who is adjusted to the world never finds himself, but gets to be a cabinet minister.
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Each man’s life represents a road toward himself.
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If time is not real, then the dividing line between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.
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I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.
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The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught.
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I began to understand that suffering and disappointments and melancholy are there not to vex us or cheapen us or deprive us of our dignity but to mature and transfigure us.
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If I know what love is, it is because of you.
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He had loved and he had found himself. Most people love to lose themselves.
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Every phenomenon on earth is symbolic, and each symbol is an open gate through which the soul, if it is ready, can enter into the inner part of the world, where you and I and day and night are all one.
HERMANN HESSE