Hermann Hesse

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.

— Hermann Hesse

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.

— Hermann Hesse

I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.

— Hermann Hesse

Happiness is a how, not a what: a talent, not an object

— Hermann Hesse

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

You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.

— Hermann Hesse

One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.

— Hermann Hesse

The man of power is ruined by power, the man of money by money, the submissive man by subservience, the pleasure seeker by pleasure.

— Hermann Hesse

What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men -- each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature -- are shot down wholesale.

— Hermann Hesse

In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.

— Hermann Hesse

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.

— Hermann Hesse

Love is stronger than violence.

— Hermann Hesse

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

I am fond of music I think because it is so amoral. Everything else is moral and I am after something that isn't. I have always found moralizing intolerable.

— Hermann Hesse

Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.

— Hermann Hesse

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

— Hermann Hesse

Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and cruelties; it accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap.

— Hermann Hesse

The truth is lived, not taught.

— Hermann Hesse

The truth has a million faces, but there is only one truth.

— Hermann Hesse

Knowledge can be communicated, but wisdom cannot. A man can find it, he can live it, he can be filled and sustained by it, but he cannot utter or teach it.

— Hermann Hesse

I have known it for a long time but I have only just experienced it. Now I know it not only with my intellect, but with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach.

— Hermann Hesse

People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.

— Hermann Hesse

So wie die Verruecktheit in einem hoeheren Sinn, der Anfang aller Weisheit ist, so ist die Schizophrenie der Anfang aller Kunst, aller Phantasie. (As insanity in a higher sense, is the beginning of all wisdom, so is schizophrenia the beginning of all art, all fantasy.)

— Hermann Hesse

If I know what love is, it is because of you.

— Hermann Hesse

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever 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.

— Hermann Hesse

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

— Hermann Hesse