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At one time I had given much thought to why men were so very rarely capable of living for an ideal. Now I saw that many, no, all men were capable of dying for one.

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
Much
Ideals
Men
Saws
Time
Capable
Dying
Living
Given
Demian
Thought
Rarely
Many
Ideal

More quotes by Hermann Hesse

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When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is not difficult. Those are childish thoughts. . . . Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all.
Hermann Hesse
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our friendship has no other purpose, no other reason, than to show you how utterly unlike me you are.
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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.
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But peace, too, is a living thing and like all life it must wax and wane, accommodate, withstand trials, and undergo changes.
Hermann Hesse
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A mere nothing suffices — and the lightning strikes.
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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People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.
Hermann Hesse
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...Haller's sickness of the soul, as I now know, is not the eccentricity of a single individual, but the sickness of the times themselves, the neurosis of that generation to which Haller belongs, a sickness, it seems, that by no means attacks the weak and worthless only but, rather, precisely those who are strongest in spirit and richest in gifts.
Hermann Hesse
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It was morning through the high window I saw the pure, bright blue of the sky as it hovered cheerfully over the long roofs of the neighboring houses. It too seemed full of joy, as if it had special plans, and had put on its finest clothes for the occasion.
Hermann Hesse
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You can ride, you can travel with a friend of your own The final step you must take alone. No wisdom is better than this when known: That every hard thing is done alone.
Hermann Hesse
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...and gradually his face assumed the expressions which are so often found among rich people - the expressions of discontent, of sickliness, of displeasure, of idleness, of lovelessness. Slowly the soul sickness of the rich crept over him.
Hermann Hesse
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I cannot tell my story without reaching a long way back.
Hermann Hesse
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Words can not express the joy of new life.
Hermann Hesse
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a person is never entirely holy or entirely sinful.
Hermann Hesse
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Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.
Hermann Hesse
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The river is everywhere at the same time . . . everywhere and the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future.
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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The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a long path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment every sin already carries grace within it, all small children are potential old men, all sucklings have death within them, all dying people — eternal life.
Hermann Hesse
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Gratitude is not a virtue I believe in, and to me it seems hypocritical to expect it from a child.
Hermann Hesse
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Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding then all is well with me and nothing can harm me.
Hermann Hesse