Hermann Karl Hesse was a German-born poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include Demian, 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. Profoundly inspirational Hermann Hesse quotes will encourage growth in life, make you wiser and broaden your perspective.

If you’re searching for powerful quotes by famous poets that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of quotes by Atticus, best Langston Hughes quotes and greatest Lord Byron quotes.

Famous Hermann Hesse Quotes

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

Words do not express thoughts very well. they always become a little different immediately they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another. Hermann Hesse

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

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

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

One never reaches home, she said. But where paths that have an affinity for each other intersect, the whole world looks like home, for a time. 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

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. That is why every man’s story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross. Hermann Hesse

Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest. Hermann Hesse

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

I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins. Hermann Hesse

Gaze into the fire, into the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak surrender to them. Don’t ask first whether it’s permitted, or would please your teachers or father or some god. You will ruin yourself if you do that. Hermann Hesse

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. Herman Hesse

I have always been a great dreamer. In dreams I have always been more active than in my real life, and these shadows sapped me of my health and energy. Hermann Hesse

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

If what matters in a person’s existence is to accept the inevitable consciously, to taste the good and bad to the full and to make for oneself a more individual, unaccidental and inward destiny alongside one’s external fate, then my life has been neither empty nor worthless. Hermann Hesse

I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I’m beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn’t pleasant, it’s not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves. Hermann Hesse

My real self wanders elsewhere, far away, wanders on and on invisibly and has nothing to do with my life. Hermann Hesse

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. Hermann Hesse

What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday and our present thoughts build our life tomorrow. Our life is the creation of our mind. Hermann Hesse

Your soul is the whole world. Hermann Hesse

Now everything changed. My childhood world was breaking apart around me. My parents eyed me with a certain embarrassment. My sisters had become strangers to me. A disenchantment falsified and blunted my usual feelings and joys the garden lacked fragrance, the woods held no attraction for me, the world stood around me like a clearance sale of last year’s secondhand goods, insipid, all its charm gone. Books were so much paper, music a grating noise. That is the way leaves fall around a tree in autumn, a tree unaware of the rain running down its sides, of the sun or the frost, and of life gradually retreating inward. The tree does not die. It waits. Hermann Hesse

Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future. Hermann Hesse

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity. Hermann Hesse

In eternity there is no time, only an instant long enough for a joke. Hermann Hesse

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

My real self wanders elsewhere, far away, wanders on and on invisibly and has nothing to do with my life. Hermann Hesse

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

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

Solitude is independence. Hermann Hesse

Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can that is their secret. Hermann Hesse

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

For 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

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

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

Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life. Hermann Hesse

When I have neither pleasure nor pain and have been breathing for a while the lukewarm insipid air of these so called good and tolerable days, I feel so bad in my childish soul that I smash my moldering lyre of thanksgiving in the face of the slumbering god of contentment and would rather feel the very devil burn in me than this warmth of a well heated room. A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to commit outrages, to pull off the wigs of a few revered idols. Hermann Hesse

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

You’ve never lived what you are thinking, and that isn’t good. Only the ideas we actually live are of any value. Hermann Hesse

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

I can think. I can wait. I can fast. Herman Hesse

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

I have always thirsted for knowledge, I have always been full of questions. Hermann Hesse

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

You must find your dream but no dream lasts forever, each dream is followed by another, and one should not cling to any particular dream. Hermann Hesse

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

Most men will not swim before they are able to. Is that not witty? Naturally, they won’t swim! They are born for the solid earth, not for the water. And naturally they wont think. They are made for life, not for thought. Yes, and he who thinks, what’s more, he who makes thought his business, he may go far in it, but he has bartered the solid earth for the water all the same, and one day he will drown. Hermann Hesse

The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment, every sin already carries grace in it. Hermann Hesse

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

It is not Kafka’s fault that his wonderful writings have lately turned into a fad, and are read by people who have neither the ability nor the desire to absorb literature.  Hermann Hesse

I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself. 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

And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life. Hermann Hesse

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity. Hermann Hesse

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. Hermann Hesse

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

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

Those who cannot think or take responsibility for themselves need, and clamor for, a leader. Hermann Hesse

They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming. Hermann Hesse

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

You should never be afraid of people such fear can destroy us completely. You’ve simply got to get rid of it, if you want to turn into someone decent. You understand that, don’t you? Hermann Hesse

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever will be born must destroy a world. Hermann Hesse

He has robbed me, yet he has given me something of greater value he has given to me myself. Hermann Hesse

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

We fear death, we shudder at life’s instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something last longer than we do. Hermann Hesse

Love of God is not always the same as love of good. Hermann Hesse

A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to committ outrages. 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

Opinions mean nothing; they may be beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish, anyone can embrace or reject them. Hermann Hesse

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

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