Hermann Karl Hesse:
( Calw, Kingdom of Württemberg, German Empire, July 1877 – Montagnola, Ticino, Switzerland, 9 August 1962).
German-Swiss poet, novelist, and painter.
Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.
Tenderness is stronger than harshness. Love is stronger than violence.
You will learn to laugh. To achieve superior humor, first stop taking yourself too seriously.
Luck has nothing to do with reason or morality. It is of magical essence, the attribute of a precocious and youthful level of Humanity.
Never do we feel so completely ignored by our neighbour as when he is sleeping!
One must be a rigorous logician or grammarian, and at the same time be full of fantasy and music.
Music is based on the harmony between Heaven and Earth, on the coincidence of cloudiness and light.
Man is distinguished above all from the rest of nature by a slippery and gelatinous layer of lies which envelops and protects him.
The hardest work is still nothing compared to death.
It’s good to have learned the hard way what you need to know.
You are for me too little yourself.
The older the actor, the more he knows how to reduce our stupidity to a terrifying and ineluctable comic formula, and the more we are forced to laugh.
For each of us there are multiple paths, multiple possibilities, those of birth, of transformation, of return.
What is beauty, what is harmony for one who is condemned to death and who runs between crumbling walls, seeking his life?
Things get distorted easily when looking back.
The pleasant feeling of having something to do, a goal to pursue.
You know nothing of wisdom until you have experienced the darkness, which cuts you off from everyone, without recourse and without noise.
At school, we learn lots of dates of ridiculous battles, names of ancient kings just as absurd… but, of man, we know nothing!
The chained see an imaginary but sovereign world opening up before them: humor.
Each of us is nothing more than human, nothing more than a trial, a stage.
If something precious and irreplaceable disappears, it feels like waking up from a dream.
Repentance alone is useless, you can’t buy grace with repentance, you can’t buy it at all.
People blessed with fortune and success are so easy to deceive!
Whether you become a teacher, scholar, or musician, have respect for “meaning”, but don’t imagine that it can be taught.
The senses do not have the slightest superiority over the mind, and the reverse is also true. They form a whole, they are equal.
You have to learn to live, that’s what we want. You must conceive the humor of life.
Obeying is like eating and drinking: nothing beats that when you’ve been lacking it for a long time.
Love is not made to make us happy. I believe it is meant to reveal to us to what extent we have the strength to suffer and endure.
No, being loved does not bring happiness. But to love, that is happiness!
All elevated humor begins with ceasing to take oneself seriously.
The wisdom that a sage seeks to communicate always has an air of madness.
Tears are melting ice of the soul.
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.
Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.
