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It was all a lie, it all stank, stank of lies, it all gave the illusion of meaning and happiness and beauty, and all of it was just putrefaction that no one would admit to. Bitter was the taste of the world. Life was a torment.

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
Beauty
Torment
Lying
Admit
Happiness
Bitter
Would
Illusion
Life
Gave
World
Lies
Meaning
Stank
Taste
Putrefaction

More quotes by Hermann Hesse

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Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.
Hermann Hesse
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What he had not learned, however, was this: to find contentment in himself and his own life
Hermann Hesse
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To nobody can you communicate in words and teachings, what happened to you in your hour of enlightenment.
Hermann Hesse
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Truly, nothing in the world has so occupied my thoughts as this I, this riddle, the fact I am alive, that I am separated and isolated from all others, that I am Siddhartha! And about nothing in the world do I know less about than me, about Siddhartha!
Hermann Hesse
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He had loved and he had found himself. Most people love to lose themselves.
Hermann Hesse
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There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught.
Hermann Hesse
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Without a mother, one cannot love. Without a mother, one cannot die.
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Every important cultural gesture comes down to a morality, a model for human behavior concentrated into a gesture.
Hermann Hesse
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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
Hermann Hesse
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Solitude is independence. It had been my wish and with the years I had attained it. It was cold. Oh, cold enough! But it was also still, wonderfully still and vast like the cold stillness of space in which the stars revolve.
Hermann Hesse
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The river has taught me to listen you will learn from it, too. The river knows everything one can learn everything from it. You have already learned from the river that it is good to strive downwards, to sink, to seek the depths.
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, that is Atman, that is in me and you and in every creature, and I am beginning to believe that this knowledge has no worse enemy than the man of knowledge, than learning.
Hermann Hesse
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The tree does not die, it waits.
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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Whither will my path yet lead me? This path is stupid, it goes in spirals, perhaps in circles, but whichever way it goes, I will follow it.
Hermann Hesse
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To such men the desperate and horrible thought has come that perhaps the whole of human life is but a bad joke, a violent and ill-fated abortion of the primal mother, a savage and dismal catastophe of nature.
Hermann Hesse
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It was the first rent in the holy image of my father, it was the first fissure in the columns that had upheld my childhood, which every individual must destroy before he can become himself.
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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How could I fail to be a lone wolf, and an uncouth hermit, as I did not share one of its aims nor understand one of its pleasures?
Hermann Hesse
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Good that you ask. You should always ask, always have doubts.
Hermann Hesse