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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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. . . gentleness is stronger than severity, water is stronger than rock, love is stronger than force.
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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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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It is not for me to judge another man's life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone.
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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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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The mind is international and supra-national ... it ought to serve not war and annihilation, but peace and reconciliation.
Hermann Hesse
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People know, or dimly feel, that if thinking is not kept pure and keen, and if respect for the world of mind is no longer operative, ships and automobiles will soon cease to run right, the engineer's slide rule and the computations of banks and stock exchanges will forfeit validity and authority, and chaos will ensue.
Hermann Hesse
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What you call passion is not spiritual force, but friction between the soul and the outside world.
Hermann Hesse
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I suddenly saw how sad and artificial my life had been during this period, for the loves, friends, habits and pleasures of these years were discarded like badly fitting clothes. I parted from them without pain and all that remained was to wonder that I could have endured them so long.
Hermann Hesse
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I hope death will be a great happiness, a happiness as great as that of love, fulfilled love
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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What we can and should change is ourselves: our impatience, our egoism (including intellectual egoism), our sense of injury, our lack of love and forbearance. I regard every other attempt to change the world, even if it springs from the best intentions, as futile.
Hermann Hesse
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You have no doubt guessed long since that the conquest of time and the escape from reality, or however else it may be that you choose to describe your longing, means simply the wish to be relieved of your so-called personality. That is the prison where you lie.
Hermann Hesse
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Happiness is love, nothing else.
Hermann Hesse
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Your soul is the whole world.
Hermann Hesse
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Siddhartha stopped fighting his fate this very hour, and he stopped suffering.
Hermann Hesse
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Nothing was, nothing will be, everything has reality and presence
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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I am in truth the Steppenwolf that I often call myself that beast astray that finds neither home nor joy nor nourishment in a world that is strange and incomprehensible to him.
Hermann Hesse