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Age is a state of mind. Youth and age exist only among the ordinary people. All the more talented and exceptional of us are sometimes old, just as we are sometimes happy, and sometimes sad.

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
Mind
Ordinary
People
Among
Youth
State
Age
Happy
Exceptional
States
Talented
Sometimes
Exist

More quotes by Hermann Hesse

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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.
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Opinions mean nothing they may be beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish, anyone can embrace or reject them.
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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.
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Those who cannot think or take responsibility for themselves need, and clamor for, a leader.
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Not in his speech, not in his thoughts, I see his greatness, only in his actions, in his life.
Hermann Hesse
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Each of us is merely one human being, merely an experiment, a way station. But each of us should be on the way toward perfection, should be striving to reach the center, not the periphery.
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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.
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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.
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I suddenly saw how sad and artificial my life had been during this period, for the loves, friends, habits and pleasures of these years were discarded like badly fitting clothes. I parted from them without pain and all that remained was to wonder that I could have endured them so long.
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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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I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me.
Hermann Hesse
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Whether it is good or evil, whether life in itself is pain or pleasure, whether it is uncertain-that it may perhaps be this is not important-but the unity of the world, the coherence of all events, the embracing of the big and the small from the same stream, from the same law of cause, of becoming and dying.
Hermann Hesse
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The mind is international and supra-national ... it ought to serve not war and annihilation, but peace and reconciliation.
Hermann Hesse
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At the first kiss I felt something melt inside me that hurt in an exquisite way. All my longings, all my dreams and sweet anguish, all the secrets that slept deep within me came awake, everything was transformed and enchanted, and everything made sense.
Hermann Hesse
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The world was beautiful when looked at in this way-without any seeking, so simple, so childlike.
Hermann Hesse
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What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature are shot down wholesale.
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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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.
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Without a mother, one cannot love. Without a mother, one cannot die.
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