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I believe that I am not responsible for the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of life, but that I am responsible for what I do with the life I've got.

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
Meaningfulness
Responsible
Believe
Life

More quotes by Hermann Hesse

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Were not the gods forms created like me and you, mortal, transient?
Hermann Hesse
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The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. The God's name is Abraxas.
Hermann Hesse
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Who travels far will often see things Far removed from what was believed as Truth.
Hermann Hesse
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Everyone can reach his goal, if he can think, wait and fast.
Hermann Hesse
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Some of us think holding on makes us strong but sometimes it is letting go.
Hermann Hesse
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One of the disadwantages of school and learning, he thought dreamily, was that the mind seemed to have the tendency too see and represent all things as though they were flat and had only two dimensions. This, somehow, seemed to render all matters of intellect shallow and worthless.
Hermann Hesse
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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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That life is difficult, I have often bitterly realized.
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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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.
Hermann Hesse
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If my life were not a dangerous, painful experiment, if I did not constantly skirt the abyss and feel the void under my feet, my life would have no meaning and I would not have been able to write anything.
Hermann Hesse
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And what is called history at school, and all we learn by heart there about heroes and geniuses and great deeds and fine emotions, is all nothing but a swindle invented by the schoolmasters for educational reasons to keep children occupied for a given number of years. It has always been so and always will be.
Hermann Hesse
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So you find yourself surrounded by death and horror in the world, and you escape it into lust. But lust has no duration it leaves you again in the desert.
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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Was it not his Self, his small, fearful and proud Self, with which he had wrestled for so many years, but which had always conquered him again, which appeared each time again and again, which robbed him of happiness and filled him with fear?
Hermann Hesse
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It taught him how to listen -- how to listen with a quiet heart and a waiting soul, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinion.
Hermann Hesse
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All birth means separation from the All, the confinement within limitation, the separation from God, the pangs of being born ever anew. The return into the All, the dissolution of painful individuation, the reunion with God means the expansion of the soul until it is able once more to embrace the All.
Hermann Hesse
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Chaos demands to be recognized and experienced before letting itself be converted into a new order.
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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In the beginning was the myth.
Hermann Hesse