Top 500 Hermann Hesse Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “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

52. “Each man’s life represents a road toward himself.”

— Hermann Hesse

53. “A house without books is a poor house, even if beautiful rugs are covering its floors and precious wallpapers and pictures cover its walls.”

— Hermann Hesse

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

— Hermann Hesse

55. “Loneliness is the way by which destiny endeavors to lead man to himself.”

— Hermann Hesse

56. “To be able to throw one’s self away for the sake of a moment, to be able to sacrifice years for a woman’s smile – that is happiness.”

— Hermann Hesse

57. “Only within yourself exists the other reality for which you long. I can give you nothing that has not already its being within yourself. I can throw open to you no picture gallery but your own soul.”

— Hermann Hesse

58. “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.”

— Hermann Hesse

59. “Solitude is independence.”

— Hermann Hesse

60. “It is not for me to judge another man’s life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone.”

— Hermann Hesse

61. “Opinions mean nothing; they may be beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish, anyone can embrace or reject them.”

— Hermann Hesse

62. “Each man carries the vestiges of his birth; the slime and eggshells of his primeval past with him to the end of his days. Some never become human, remaining frog, lizard, ant. Some are human above the waist, fish below.”

— Hermann Hesse

63. “Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.”

— Hermann Hesse

64. “My real self wanders elsewhere, far away, wanders on and on invisibly and has nothing to do with my life.”

— Hermann Hesse

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

— Hermann Hesse

66. “A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening...”

— Hermann Hesse

67. “The best weapons against the infamies of life are courage, wilfulness and patience. Courage strenthens, wilfulness is fun and patience provides tranquility.”

— Hermann Hesse

68. “It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is.”

— Hermann Hesse

69. “All higher humor begins with ceasing to take oneself seriously.”

— Hermann Hesse

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

— Hermann Hesse

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

— Hermann Hesse

72. “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.”

— Hermann Hesse

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

— Hermann Hesse

74. “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.”

— Hermann Hesse

75. “I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins.”

— Hermann Hesse

76. “All life is a breath exhaled by God. All dying is a breath inhaled by God.”

— Hermann Hesse

77. “An enlightened man had but one duty – to seek the way to himself, to reach inner certainty, to grope his way forward, no matter where it led.”

— Hermann Hesse

78. “I call that man awake who, with conscious knowledge and understanding, can perceive the deep unreasoning powers in his soul, his whole innermost strength, desire and weakness, and knows how to reckon with himself.”

— Hermann Hesse

79. “To nobody can you communicate in words and teachings, what happened to you in your hour of enlightenment.”

— Hermann Hesse

80. “You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live.”

— Hermann Hesse

81. “Chaos demands to be recognized and experienced before letting itself be converted into a new order.”

— Hermann Hesse

82. “The marvel of the Bhagavad-Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life’s wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom into religion.”

— Hermann Hesse

83. “Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.”

— Hermann Hesse

84. “Siddhartha has one single goal-to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow-to let the Self die. No longer to be Self, to experience the peace of an emptied heart, to experience pure thought-that was his goal.”

— Hermann Hesse

85. “Yes, I am going into the woods; I am going into the unity of all things.”

— Hermann Hesse

86. “I have always thirsted for knowledge, I have always been full of questions.”

— Hermann Hesse

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

— Hermann Hesse

88. “Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.”

— Hermann Hesse

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

— Hermann Hesse

90. “In every truth, the opposite is equally true. A truth can only be expressed and enveloped in words if it is one-sided.”

— Hermann Hesse

91. “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.”

— Hermann Hesse

92. “Only the ideas that we really live have any value.”

— Hermann Hesse

93. “Only within yourself exists that other reality for which you long.”

— Hermann Hesse

94. “It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect.”

— Hermann Hesse

95. “Each man had only one genuine vocation to find the way to himself.”

— Hermann Hesse

96. “But your questions, which are unanswerable without exception, all spring from the same erroneous thinking.”

— Hermann Hesse

97. “Age is a state of mind. Youth and age exist only among the ordinary people. All the more talented and exceptional of us; are sometimes old, just as we are sometimes happy, and sometimes sad.”

— Hermann Hesse

98. “One must find the source within one’s own Self, one must possess it. Everything else was seeking – a detour, an error.”

— Hermann Hesse

99. “Beauty does not bring happiness to the one who possesses it, but to the one who loves and admires it.”

— Hermann Hesse

100. “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.”

— Hermann Hesse