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

More quotes by Hermann Hesse

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So wie die Verruecktheit in einem hoeheren Sinn, der Anfang aller Weisheit ist, so ist die Schizophrenie der Anfang aller Kunst, aller Phantasie. (As insanity in a higher sense, is the beginning of all wisdom, so is schizophrenia the beginning of all art, all fantasy.)
Hermann Hesse
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Our god's name is Abraxas and he is God and Satan and he contains both the luminous and the dark world.
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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Slowly blossomed, slowly ripened in Siddhartha the realisation, the knowledge, what wisdom actually was, what the goal of his long search was. It was nothing but a readiness of the soul, an ability, a secret art, to think every moment, while living his life, the thought of oneness, to be able to feel and inhale the oneness.
Hermann Hesse
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In fear I hurried this way and that. I had the taste of blood and chocolate in my mouth, the one as hateful as the other.
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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People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.
Hermann Hesse
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Never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner.
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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... let us recall the well-known statement of a university professor in the Republic of the Massagetes: 'Not the faculty but His Excellency the General can properly determine the sum of two and two.'
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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And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life.
Hermann Hesse
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Art is the contemplation of the world in a state of grace.
Hermann Hesse
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What should I possibly have to tell you, oh venerable one? Perhaps that you're searching far too much? That in all that searching, you don't find the time for finding?
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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Often it is the most deserving people who cannot help loving those who destroy them.
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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I, also, would like to look and smile, sit and walk like that, so free, so worthy, so restrained, so candid, so childlike and mysterious. A man only looks and walks like that when he has conquered his Self. I also will conquer my Self.
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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Happiness is love, nothing else. A man who is capable of love is happy.
Hermann Hesse