Quote

Seriousness is an accident of time. It consists of putting too high a value on time. In eternity there is no time. Eternity is a moment, just long enough for a joke

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
Value
Seriousness
High
Accident
Values
Consists
Moment
Joke
Moments
Accidents
Enough
Putting
Long
Jokes
Time
Eternity

More quotes by Hermann Hesse

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Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.
Hermann Hesse
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Most people...are like a falling leaf that drifts and turns in the air, flutters, and falls to the ground. But a few others are like stars which travel one defined path: no wind reaches them, they have within themselves their guide and path.
Hermann Hesse
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We create gods and struggle with them, and they bless us.
Hermann Hesse
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The highest art... sets down its creations and trusts in their magic, without fear of not being understood.
Hermann Hesse
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Let me say no more. Words do no justice to the hidden meaning. Everything immediately becomes slightly different when it is expressed in words, a little bit distorted, a little foolish...It is perfectly fine with me that what for one man is precious wisdom for another sounds like foolery.
Hermann Hesse
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Because the world is so full of death and horror, I try again and again to console my heart and pick the flowers that grow in the midst of hell.
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.
Hermann Hesse
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When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. . . . Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
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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...Haller's sickness of the soul, as I now know, is not the eccentricity of a single individual, but the sickness of the times themselves, the neurosis of that generation to which Haller belongs, a sickness, it seems, that by no means attacks the weak and worthless only but, rather, precisely those who are strongest in spirit and richest in gifts.
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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I felt knowledge and the unity of the world circulate in me like my own blood.
Hermann Hesse
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It was the first rent in the holy image of my father, it was the first fissure in the columns that had upheld my childhood, which every individual must destroy before he can become himself.
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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When we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy. Whoever has learned how to listen to trees no longer wants to be a tree. He wants to be nothing except what he is. That is home. That is happiness.
Hermann Hesse
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The voices of all creatures are in the voices of the river.
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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Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.
Hermann Hesse
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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.
Hermann Hesse
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A father can pass on his nose and eyes and even his intelligence to his child, but not his soul. In every human being the soul is new
Hermann Hesse