Hermann Hesse was a 19th-century novelist and poet from Germany.Hermann Hesse’s classic works like ‘Demian’, ‘Siddhartha’, ‘Steppenwolf’, and ‘Gertrude’ remain popular because of his interesting philosophies on self-knowledge, ordinary people, spirituality, and real life. Besides being an acclaimed novelist, Hermann Hesse was also a painter and had also volunteered for the Imperial Army during World War I.The most remarkable point in his career was when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946. To get an insight into the philosophy of Hermann Hesse and understand the many aspects of human life, read some thought-provoking Hermann Hesse quotes below.Best Hermann Hesse QuotesCheck out some enlightening Hermann Hesse quotes on life and self-knowledge from his famous novels like ‘Siddhartha’, ‘Steppenwolf’, and ‘Gertrude’ below.“All of this had always existed, and he had not seen it; he had not been with it. Now he was with it, he was part of it. Light and shadow ran through his eyes, stars and moon ran through his heart.”- ‘Siddhartha’.“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.”- ‘Siddhartha’.“Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.”- ‘Steppenwolf’.“That is where my dearest and brightest dreams have ranged — to hear for the duration of a heartbeat the universe and the totality of life in its mysterious, innate harmony.”- ‘Gertrude’.“Man is an onion made up of a hundred integuments, a texture made up of many threads.”- ‘Steppenwolf’.“One can call these moments creative, because they seem to give a feeling of union with the creator, and while they last, one is sensible of everything being necessary, even what is seemingly fortuitous. It is what the mystics call union with God.”- ‘Gertrude’.“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 that lasts longer than we do.”- ‘Narcissus And Goldmund’.“How mysterious this life was, how deep and muddy its waters ran, yet how clear and noble what emerged from them.”- ‘Narcissus And Goldmund’.“As every flower fades and as all youth”.- ‘The Glass Bead Game’.“We demonstrate to anyone whose soul has fallen to pieces that he can rearrange these pieces of a previous self in what order he pleases, and so attain to an endless multiplicity of moves in the game of life.”- ‘Steppenwolf’.“Every phenomenon on earth is symbolic, and each symbol is an open gate through which the soul, if it is ready, can enter into the inner part of the world, where you and I and day and night are all one.”- ‘The Fairy Tales Of Hermann Hesse’.“You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live.”- ‘Steppenwolf’.“It is not my place to judge another person’s life. Only for myself, for myself alone, I must decide, I must chose, I must refuse.”- ‘Siddhartha’.“When all the Self was conquered and dead, when all passions and desires were silent, then the last must awaken, the innermost of Being that is no longer Self - the great secret!”- ‘Six Novels: With Other Stories and Essays’.“I was given the freedom to discover my own inclination and talents, to fashion my inmost pleasures and sorrows myself and to regard the future not as an alien higher power but as the hope and product of my own strength.”- ‘Gertrude’.“One day I would be a better hand at the game. One day I would learn how to laugh.”- ‘Steppenwolf’.“Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap.”- ‘Steppenwolf’.“The world, Govinda, is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment; every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people – eternal life.”- ‘Siddhartha’.“A man cannot live intensely except at the cost of the self.”- ‘Steppenwolf’.“We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. 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: each the other’s opposite and complement.”- ‘Siddhartha’.“Even in him, even in your great teacher, I prefer the thing to the words, his actions and his life are more important than his speech, the gestures of his hand more important than his opinions.”- ‘Siddhartha’.“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.”- ‘Siddhartha’.“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.”- ‘Steppenwolf’.“During deep meditation it is possible to dispel time, to see simultaneously all the past, present, and future, and then everything is good, everything is perfect, everything is Brahman.”- ‘Siddhartha’.“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.”- ‘Gertrude’.“They knew a tremendous number of things — But was it worthwhile knowing all these things if they did not know the one important thing, the only important thing?”- ‘Siddhartha’.“Like one who has eaten and drunk too much and vomits painfully, and then feels better, so did the restless man wish he could rid himself with one terrific heave of these pleasures, of these habits of this entirely senseless life.”- ‘Siddhartha’.Hermann Hesse Quotes from ‘Demian’(Read some fascinating Hermann Hesse quotes on love, life, and spirituality here.)‘Demian’ is among the most-renowned novels written by Hermann Hesse. Find some beautiful quotes from this novel, below.“But since this is so, you know, don’t you, that you’ve never lived what you are thinking and that isn’t good. Only the ideas that we actually live are of any value."“That which is within you and directs your life knows already. It’s good to realize that within us there is someone who knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than we ourselves.”“You knew all along that your sanctioned world was only half the world, and you tried to suppress the other half the same way the priests and teachers do. You won’t succeed. No one succeeds in this once he has begun to think.”“The inner, the essential line of our fate consists of such invisible experiences. Such fissures and rents consists of such invisible experiences. Such fissures and rents grow together again, heal and are forgotten, but in the most secret recesses they continue to live and bleed.”“We create gods and struggle with them, and they bless us.““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."“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.”“I am as little able to do this as the novelist is, even though my story is more important to me than any novelist’s is to him - for this is my story; it is the story of a man, not of an invented, or possible, or idealized, or otherwise absent figure, but of a unique being of flesh and blood."“At one time I had given much thought to why men were so very rarely capable of living for an ideal. Now I saw that many, no, all men were capable of dying for one.”“Each man had only one genuine vocation — to find the way to himself.““Fate and temperament are two words for one and the same concept.““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.““Yet, what a real living human being is made of seems to be less understood today than at any time before, and men - each one of whom represents a unique and valuable experiment on the part of nature - are therefore shot wholesale nowadays.““Love does not entreat; or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract.““We ought not to consider the opinions of those sects as naïve as they appear from the rationalist point of view.““People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.““Only the ideas that we actually live are of any value.““The tree does not die. It waits.““One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.““In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.““Whether you and I and a few others will renew the world someday remains to be seen. But within ourselves we must renew it each day, otherwise we just aren’t serious. Don’t forget that!““The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world."“Each man’s life represents a road toward himself, and attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself.”“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.““In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross.““You, too, have mysteries of your own.““I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself."“I was in the hands of fate and it was useless to try to escape.”“I realize that some people will not believe that a child of little more than ten years is capable of having such feelings. My story is not intended for them. I am telling it to those who have a better knowledge of man.”“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."“For the first time in my life I tasted death, and death tasted bitter, for death is birth, is fear and dread of some terrible renewal.““I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me."“Such fear can destroy us completely. You’ve got to get rid of it, you’ve simply got to, if you want to turn into someone decent.”“We have a wider scope, greater variety of choice, and wider interests than an animal. But we, too, are confined to a relatively narrow compass which we cannot break out of.”“You must find your dream, then the way becomes easy. But there is no dream that lasts forever, each dream is followed by another, and one should not cling to any particular one."“My goal was not joy but purity, not happiness but beauty, and spirituality.”“However, one can study someone very closely and then one can often know almost exactly what he thinks or feels and then one can also anticipate what he will do the next moment. It’s simple enough, only people don’t know it.”“Each person must stand on his own feet.““I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?“Famous Hermann Hesse QuotesRead some of the most famous quotes by Hermann Hesse below.“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.”- ‘Steppenwolf’.“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.”- ‘Siddhartha’.“What you call passion is not spiritual force, but friction between the soul and the outside world.”- ‘The Glass Bead Game’.“Never is a man or a deed wholly Samsara or wholly Nirvana; never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner.”- ‘Siddhartha’.“Merchant: ‘So you have lived on the possessions of others?‘Siddhartha: ‘Apparently. The merchant also lives on the possession of others.‘Merchant: ‘Well spoken…”- ‘Siddhartha’.“Listen my friend! I am a sinner and you are a sinner, but someday the sinner will be Brahma again, will someday attain Nirvana, will someday become a Buddha.”- ‘Siddhartha’.“Youth ends when egotism does; maturity begins when one lives for others.”- ‘Gertrude’.“We cannot evade life’s course, but we can school ourselves to be superior to fortune and also to look unflinchingly upon the most painful things.”- ‘Gertrude’.“The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught.”- ‘The Glass Bead Game’.“Even the most obscure hermit in the forest was not utterly alone; he too was enfolded in belonging.”- ‘Siddhartha’.“Everything that is thought and expressed in words is one-sided, only half the truth; it all lacks totality, completeness, unity.”- ‘Siddhartha’.“Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.“- ‘Siddhartha’.“To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning. It is a very serious task, young man, and possibly a tragic one.”- ‘The Glass Bead Game’.“There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist.”- ‘The Glass Bead Game’.“All the tasks are in themselves small, but each one has to be carried out at its proper hour, and the day has far more tasks than hours.”- ‘The Glass Bead Game’.“The most lively young people become the best old people, not those who pretend to be as wise as grandfathers while they are still in school.”- ‘Gertrude’.“Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.”- ‘Gertrude’.“The likeness of man, once a high ideal, is in process of becoming a machinemade article. It is for madmen like us, perhaps, to ennoble it again.”- ‘Steppenwolf’.“I had a feeling that he was unhappy and that he had an undesired, powerful way of seizing on people as if he wanted to snatch something from them that would comfort him.”- ‘Gertrude’.“My goal is this: always to put myself in the place in which I am best able to serve, wherever my gifts and qualities find the best soil, the widest field of action. There is no other goal.”- ‘Narcissus And Goldmund’.“Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish… Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”- ‘Siddhartha’.“At about the age of six or seven, I realized that of all the invisible powers the one I was destined to be most strongly affected and dominated by was music.”- ‘Gertrude’.“You, Venerable One, may indeed be a seeker, for, striving toward your goal, there is much you do not see which is right before your eyes.”- ‘Siddhartha’.“I have never lost the feeling of contradiction that lies behind all knowledge.”- ‘Gertrude’.“Obeying is like eating and drinking. There’s nothing like it if you’ve been without it too long.”- ‘Steppenwolf’.“Familiar habit makes for indolence.”- ‘The Glass Bead Game’.“Opinions mean nothing; they may be beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish, anyone can embrace or reject them.”- ‘Six Novels: With Other Stories and Essays’.“It was lovely, and tempting, to exert power over men and to shine before others, but power also had its perditions and perils.”- ‘The Glass Bead Game’.“Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.”- ‘Six Novels: With Other Stories and Essays’.“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.”- ‘Steppenwolf’.“For although in a certain sense and for light-minded persons non-existent things can be more easily and irresponsibly represented in words than existing things, for the serious and conscientious historian it is just the reverse.”- ‘The Glass Bead Game’.“Without a mother, one cannot love. Without a mother, one cannot die.”- ‘Gertrude’.Hermann Hesse Love QuotesCheck out some beautiful quotes by Hermann Hesse on love and separation below.“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.”- ‘Siddhartha’.“None of us knew how terribly these two fine people suffered in secret. I do not think that they ever stopped loving each other, but deep down in their nature they did not belong to one another.”- ‘Gertrude’.“Love between young people and love after many years of marriage is not the same thing.”- ‘Gertrude’.“It was fortunate that love did not need words; or else it would be full of misunderstanding and foolishness.”- ‘Narcissus And Goldmund’.“You are not strict with him, you do not punish him, you do not command him – because you know that gentleness is stronger than severity, that water is stronger than rock, that love is stronger than force.”- ‘Siddhartha’.“Passion is always a mystery and unaccountable, and unfortunately there is no doubt that life does not spare its purest children and often it is just the most deserving people who cannot help loving those who destroy them.”- ‘Gertrude’.“I already thought on that first evening of our meeting how glorious it would be to spend one’s whole life regarded by those beautiful, candid eyes, and how it would then be impossible ever to think or do ill.”- ‘Gertrude’.“If I know what love is, it is because of you.”- ‘Gertrude’.“That’s the way it is when you love. It makes you suffer, and I have suffered much in the years since. But it matters little that you suffer, so long as you feel alive with a sense of the close bond that connects all living things, so long as love does not die!”- ‘Peter Camenzind’.“As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.”- ‘Steppenwolf’.“I sped through heaven and saw God at work. I suffered holy pains. I dropped all my defences and was afraid of nothing in the world. I accepted all things and to all things I gave up my heart.”- ‘Steppenwolf’.“Oh, love isn’t there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.”- ‘Peter Camenzind’.“So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.”- ‘The Glass Bead Game’.“Although he had reached a high stage of self-discipline and bore his last wound well, he now felt as if these ordinary people were his brothers. Their vanities, desires, and trivialities no longer seemed absurd to him; they had become understandable, lovable, and even worthy of respect.”- ‘Siddhartha’.“We must prepare for parting and leave-taking.”- ‘The Glass Bead Game’.
Hermann Hesse was a 19th-century novelist and poet from Germany.
