Hermann Hesse Quotes

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

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.

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

Until 1914 I loved to travel; I often went to Italy and once spent a few months in India. Since then I have almost entirely abandoned travelling, and I have not been outside of Switzerland for over ten years.

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

Among the letters my readers write me, there is a certain category which is continuously growing, and which I see as a symptom of the increasing intellectualization of the relationship between readers and literature.

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

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.

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.

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.

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

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.

If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do.

I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me.

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

As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.

To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.