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Published Monday, July 02, 2012 @ 2:30 AM EDT
Jul 02 2012

Quotes of the day- Hermann Hesse:
 
Hermann Hesse (July 2, 1877 – August 9, 1962) was a German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game, each of which explores an individual's search for authenticity, self-knowledge and spirituality. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. (Click for complete article.)

All gods and devils that have ever existed are within us.

Any attempt to replace the personal conscience by a collective conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism.

Faith and doubt go hand in hand, they are complementaries. One who never doubts will never truly believe.

God does not send us despair in order to kill us, he sends it in order to awaken us to new life.

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

Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap.

I am much inclined to live from my rucksack, and let my trousers fray as they like.

I believe that I am not responsible for the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of life, but that I am responsible for what I do with the life I've got.

I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.

I hold that it is permissible for each one of us to die for his faith, but not to kill for his faith.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is a part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom.

Nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.

Often it is the most deserving people who cannot help loving those who destroy them.

Oh, love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.

One cannot have pleasure without giving it.

Only the ideas that we actually live are of any value.

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

Property, possessions and riches had also finally trapped him. They were no longer a game and a toy. They had become a chain and a burden.

Seriousness is an accident of time. It consists in putting too high a value on time. In eternity there is no time. Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.

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

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

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.

There is nothing so evil, savage, and cruel in nature as the normal man.

There's 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.

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.

Three things can not hide for long: the Moon, the Sun and the Truth.

We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.

When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.

When you like someone, you like them in spite of their faults. When you love someone, you love them with their faults.

Within us there is someone who knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than we ourselves.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

Youth ends when egotism does; maturity begins when one lives for others.

No permanence is ours, we are a wave that flows to fit whatever form it finds.


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