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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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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
Struggle
Outstanding
Lives
Mode
Death
Unconditional
Power
Activities
Live
Determination
Self
Activity
Believe
Behinds
Men
Behind
Willed

More quotes by Hermann Hesse

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In the beginning was the myth.
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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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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The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire.
Hermann Hesse
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Each man carries the vestiges of his birth the slime and eggshells of his primeval past with him to the end of his days. Some never become human, remaining frog, lizard, ant. Some are human above the waist, fish below.
Hermann Hesse
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If time is not real, then the dividing line between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.
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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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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The opposite of every truth is just as true.
Hermann Hesse
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There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.
Hermann Hesse
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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.
Hermann Hesse
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Faith and doubt go hand in hand, they are complementaries. One who never doubts will never truly believe.
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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Is not every life, every work fine?
Hermann Hesse
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I have always been a great dreamer in dreams I am more active than in my real life, and these shadows sapped me of health and energy.
Hermann Hesse
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I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins.
Hermann Hesse
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The tree does not die, it waits.
Hermann Hesse
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Siddhartha stopped fighting his fate this very hour, and he stopped suffering.
Hermann Hesse
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The bourgeois today burns as heretics and hangs as criminals those to whom he erects monuments tomorrow.
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