Quotes by Hermann Hesse

That is just what life is when it is beautiful and happy - a game! Naturally, one can also do all kinds of other things with it, make a duty of it, or a battleground, or a prison, but that does not make it any prettier...

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, who ever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life. A tree says: A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique the form and veins of my skin, unique the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my own smallest special detail. A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my father, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.

I believe that the struggle against death the unconditional and self-willed determination to live is the mode of power behind the lives and activities of all outstanding men.

If you hate a person you hate something in him that is part of yourself.

If you hate a person you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isnt part of ourselves doesnt disturb us.

Some of us think holding on makes us strong but sometimes it is letting go.

The middle class prefers comfort to pleasure convenience to liberty and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire.

Every man is more than just himself he also represents the unique the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the worlds phenomena intersect only once in this way and never again.

Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them.

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.

There is no reality except the one contained within us.

Knowledge can be communicated but not wisdom.

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

Some of us think holding on makes us strong but sometimes it is letting go.

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.

To be able to throw ones self away for the sake of a moment, to be able to sacrifice years for a womans smile - that is happiness.

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

Solitude is independence.

There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only a knowledge - that is everywhere.

To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.