Quote

A mere nothing suffices — and the lightning strikes.

Hermann Hesse

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Lightning
Strikes
Mere
Nothing
Suffices

More quotes by Hermann Hesse

Image
It is not our purpose to become each other it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other's opposite and complement.
Hermann Hesse
Image
Good that you ask. You should always ask, always have doubts.
Hermann Hesse
Image
When a writer receives praise or blame, when he arouses sympathy or is ridiculed, when he is loved or rejected, it is not on the strength of his thoughts and dreams as a whole, but only of that infinitesimal part which has been able to make its way through the narrow channel of language and the equally narrow channel of the reader's understanding.
Hermann Hesse
Image
Gratitude is not a virtue I believe in, and to me it seems hypocritical to expect it from a child.
Hermann Hesse
Image
Our god's name is Abraxas and he is God and Satan and he contains both the luminous and the dark world.
Hermann Hesse
Image
I began to understand that suffering and disappointments and melancholy are there not to vex us or cheapen us or deprive us of our dignity but to mature and transfigure us.
Hermann Hesse
Image
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
Image
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
Image
It taught him how to listen -- how to listen with a quiet heart and a waiting soul, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinion.
Hermann Hesse
Image
One cannot apologize for something fundamental, and a child feels and knows this as well and as deeply as any sage.
Hermann Hesse
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner.
Hermann Hesse
Image
...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
Image
Who travels far will often see things Far removed from what was believed as Truth.
Hermann Hesse
Image
If my life were not a dangerous, painful experiment, if I did not constantly skirt the abyss and feel the void under my feet, my life would have no meaning and I would not have been able to write anything.
Hermann Hesse
Image
A girl had bidden me eat and drink and sleep, and had shown me friendship and had laughed at me and had called me a silly little boy. And this wonderful friend had talked to me of the saints and shown me that even when I had outdone myself in absurdity I was not alone.
Hermann Hesse
Image
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