Quote

What is meditation?... It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life. The same escape, the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the inn, drinking a few bowls of rice wine or fermented coconut-milk.

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
Pain
Milk
Cart
Self
Finds
Carts
Life
Escape
Fleeing
Fermented
Senses
Rice
Pointlessness
Drinking
Bowls
Coconut
Wine
Driver
Coconuts
Meditation
Agony
Numbing
Short
Drivers
Inns

More quotes by Hermann Hesse

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Often it is the most deserving people who cannot help loving those who destroy them.
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That is why we were drawn to one another and why we are brother and sister. I am going to teach you to dance and play and smile, and still not be happy. And you are going to teach me to think and to know and yet not be happy. Do you know that we are both children of the Devil?
Hermann Hesse
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They both listened silently to the water, which to them was not just water, but the voice of life, the voice of Being, the voice of perpetual Becoming.
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.
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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
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There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only a knowledge - that is everywhere.
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Those who cannot think or take responsibility for themselves need, and clamor for, a leader.
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Words can not express the joy of new life.
Hermann Hesse
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Happiness is love, nothing else. A man who is capable of love is happy.
Hermann Hesse
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The art of love-giving and taking become one.
Hermann Hesse
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How foolish to wear oneself out in vain longing for warmth! Solitude is independence.
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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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We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral we have already climbed many steps.
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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I sped through heaven and saw god at work. I suffered holy pains. I dropped all my defenses and was afraid of nothing in the world. I accepted all things and to all things I gave up my heart.
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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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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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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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.
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One cannot apologize for something fundamental, and a child feels and knows this as well and as deeply as any sage.
Hermann Hesse