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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.

Hermann Hesse

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Hermann Hesse
Age: 85 †
Born: 1877
Born: July 2
Died: 1962
Died: August 9
Illustrator
Literary
Novelist
Painter
Philosopher
Poet
Resistance Fighter
Writer
Hermann Karl Hesse
Way
Priests
Think
Teachers
Thinking
Tried
World
Succeed
Demian
Along
Sanctioned
Teacher
Suppress
Knew
Succeeds
Half
Begun

More quotes by Hermann Hesse

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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.
Hermann Hesse
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Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.
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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
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How could I fail to be a lone wolf, and an uncouth hermit, as I did not share one of its aims nor understand one of its pleasures?
Hermann Hesse
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In Germany I have been acknowledged again since the fall of Hitler, but my works, partly suppressed by the Nazis and partly destroyed by the war have not yet been republished there.
Hermann Hesse
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A tree says: My strength is trust. I know nothing about my fathers, I know nothing about the thousand children that every year spring out of me. I live out the secret of my seed to the very end, and I care for nothing else. I trust that God is in me. I trust that my labor is holy. Out of this trust I live.
Hermann Hesse
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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
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Every important cultural gesture comes down to a morality, a model for human behavior concentrated into a gesture.
Hermann Hesse
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The diabolical thing about melancholy is not that it makes you ill but that it makes you conceited and shortsighted yes almost arrogant. You lapse into bad taste, thinking of yourself as Heine's Atlas, whose shoulders support all the world's puzzles and agonies, as if thousands, lost in the same maze, did not endure the same agonies.
Hermann Hesse
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It was lovely, and tempting, to exert power over men and to shine before others, but power also had its perditions and perils.
Hermann Hesse
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So you can't dance? Not at all? Not even one step? How can you say that you've taken any trouble to live when you won't even dance?
Hermann Hesse
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Should we be mindful of dreams? Joseph asked. Can we interpret them? The Master looked into his eyes and said tersely: We should be mindful of everything, for we can interpret everything.
Hermann Hesse
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Love must neither beg nor demand. Love must be strong enough to find certainty within itself. It then cease to be moved and becomes the mover.
Hermann Hesse
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The cup was emptied and would never be filled again.
Hermann Hesse
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Each of us is merely one human being, merely an experiment, a way station. But each of us should be on the way toward perfection, should be striving to reach the center, not the periphery.
Hermann Hesse
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Truly, nothing in the world has so occupied my thoughts as this I, this riddle, the fact I am alive, that I am separated and isolated from all others, that I am Siddhartha! And about nothing in the world do I know less about than me, about Siddhartha!
Hermann Hesse
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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.
Hermann Hesse
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Those who direct the maximum force of their desires toward the center, toward true being, toward perfection, seem quieter than the passionate souls because the flame of their fervor cannot always be seen.
Hermann Hesse
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If a man has nothing to eat, fasting is the most intelligent thing he can do.
Hermann Hesse
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. . . gentleness is stronger than severity, water is stronger than rock, love is stronger than force.
Hermann Hesse