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Love must not entreat,' she added, 'or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract.

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
Must
Cease
Love
Begins
Life
Merely
Entreat
Demand
Demian
Strength
Ceases
Within
Attract
Become
Attracted
Certain
Added

More quotes by Hermann Hesse

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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.
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We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering and shame.In the same way all disrespect for life, all hard-heartedness,all indifference, all contempt is nothing else than killing.
Hermann Hesse
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Only the ideas that we really live have any value.
Hermann Hesse
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The day had gone by just as days go by. I had killed it in accordance with my primitive and retiring way of life.
Hermann Hesse
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I believe that the struggle against death, the unconditional and self-willed determination to live, is the mode of power behind the lives and activities of all outstanding men.
Hermann Hesse
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One day I would be a better hand at the game. One day I would learn how to laugh. Pablo was waiting for me, and Mozart too.
Hermann Hesse
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I am fond of music I think because it is so amoral. Everything else is moral and I am after something that isn't. I have always found moralizing intolerable.
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Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish.
Hermann Hesse
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A soul that is ruined in the bud will frequently return to the springtime of its beginning and its promise-filled childhood, as though it could discover new hopes there and retie the broken threads of life. The shoots grow rapidly and eagerly, but it is only a sham life that will never be a genuine tree.
Hermann Hesse
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For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche.
Hermann Hesse
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There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught.
Hermann Hesse
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I call that man awake who, with conscious knowledge and understanding, can perceive the deep unreasoning powers in his soul, his whole innermost strength, desire and weakness, and knows how to reckon with himself.
Hermann Hesse
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Not in his speech, not in his thoughts, I see his greatness, only in his actions, in his life.
Hermann Hesse
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Things are going downhill with you!' he said to himself, and laughed about it, and as he was saying it, he happened to glance at the river, and he also saw the river going downhill, always moving on downhill, and singing and being happy through it all.
Hermann Hesse
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Once you are able to make your request in such a way that you will be quite certain of its fulfillment, then the fulfillment will come.
Hermann Hesse
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a person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful.
Hermann Hesse
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How foolish to wear oneself out in vain longing for warmth! Solitude is independence.
Hermann Hesse
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Never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner.
Hermann Hesse
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A thousand times I was ready to regret and take back my rash statement - yet it had been the truth.
Hermann Hesse
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It was all a lie, it all stank, stank of lies, it all gave the illusion of meaning and happiness and beauty, and all of it was just putrefaction that no one would admit to. Bitter was the taste of the world. Life was a torment.
Hermann Hesse