Top 500 Hermann Hesse Quotes (2024 Update)

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

— Hermann Hesse

Featured in: Life Quotes, Moving On Quotes

2. “Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.”

— Hermann Hesse

3. “There is a miracle in every new beginning.”

— Hermann Hesse

4. “I can think. I can wait. I can fast.”

— Hermann Hesse

Featured in: Quotes About Waiting

5. “Within you there is a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.”

— Hermann Hesse

6. “The true profession of a man is to find his way to himself.”

— Hermann Hesse

7. “You have to try the impossible to achieve the possible.”

— Hermann Hesse

8. “Love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is only your aversion to it that hurts, nothing else.”

— Hermann Hesse

9. “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

Featured in: Uplifting Quotes

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

— Hermann Hesse

11. “The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God’s name is Abraxas.”

— Hermann Hesse

Featured in: Fighting Quotes

12. “Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest.”

— Hermann Hesse

Featured in: Quotes About Laughing

13. “Alas, Siddhartha, I see you suffering, but you’re suffering a pain at which one would like to laugh, at which you’ll soon laugh for yourself.”

— Hermann Hesse

Featured in: Quotes About Laughing

14. “I am in truth the Steppenwolf that I often call myself; that beast astray that finds neither home nor joy nor nourishment in a world that is strange and incomprehensible to him.”

— Hermann Hesse

Featured in: Joy Quotes, Quotes About Home

15. “There is no reality except the one contained within us.”

— Hermann Hesse

16. “Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.”

— Hermann Hesse

Featured in: Book Quotes

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

— Hermann Hesse

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

— Hermann Hesse

19. “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.”

— Hermann Hesse

Featured in: Book Quotes

20. “Siddhartha stopped fighting his fate this very hour, and he stopped suffering.”

— Hermann Hesse

21. “You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself.”

— Hermann Hesse

22. “To achieve the possible, we must attempt the impossible again and again.”

— Hermann Hesse

23. “Your soul is the whole world.”

— Hermann Hesse

24. “When we hate a person, what we hate in his image is something inside ourselves. Whatever isn’t inside us can’t excite us.”

— Hermann Hesse

25. “Because the world is so full of death and horror, I try again and again to console my heart and pick the flowers that grow in the midst of hell.”

— Hermann Hesse

Featured in: Flower Quotes

26. “I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?”

— Hermann Hesse

27. “As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.”

— Hermann Hesse

Featured in: Being Single Quotes

28. “Theory is knowledge that doesn’t work. Practice is when everything works and you don’t know why.”

— Hermann Hesse

29. “There’s no reality except the one contained within us. That’s why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.”

— Hermann Hesse

30. “Making music together is the best way for two people to become friends.”

— Hermann Hesse

31. “I live in my dreams – that’s what you sense. Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. That’s the difference.”

— Hermann Hesse

32. “He had loved and he had found himself. Most people love to lose themselves.”

— Hermann Hesse

33. “I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace.”

— Hermann Hesse

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

— Hermann Hesse

35. “Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the stars revolve.”

— Hermann Hesse

36. “Happiness is love, nothing else.”

— Hermann Hesse

37. “The river has taught me to listen; you will learn from it, too. The river knows everything; one can learn everything from it. You have already learned from the river that it is good to strive downwards, to sink, to seek the depths.”

— Hermann Hesse

38. “Art is the contemplation of the world in a state of grace.”

— Hermann Hesse

39. “The river is everywhere.”

— Hermann Hesse

40. “How could I fail to be a lone wolf, and an uncouth hermit, as I did not share one of its aims nor understand one of its pleasures?”

— Hermann Hesse

41. “Words can not express the joy of new life.”

— Hermann Hesse

42. “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!”

— Hermann Hesse

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

— Hermann Hesse

44. “Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goals, if he is able to think, if he is able to wait, if he is able to fast.”

— Hermann Hesse

45. “Our god’s name is Abraxas and he is God and Satan and he contains both the luminous and the dark world.”

— Hermann Hesse

46. “It was all a lie, it all stank, stank of lies, it all gave the illusion of meaning and happiness and beauty, and all of it was just putrefaction that no one would admit to. Bitter was the taste of the world. Life was a torment.”

— Hermann Hesse

47. “Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”

— Hermann Hesse

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

— Hermann Hesse

49. “The river taught us how to listen with a silent heart, with a waiting open soul...”

— Hermann Hesse

50. “Each man’s life represents a road toward himself, an attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself.”

— Hermann Hesse