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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

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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
Write
Experiment
Anything
Void
Able
Experiments
Feel
Painful
Feels
Constantly
Writing
Meaning
Skirt
Would
Feet
Skirts
Life
Dangerous
Abyss

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Were not the gods forms created like me and you, mortal, transient?
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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.
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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.
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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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Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.
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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.
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People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest. It was a scandal that a breed of fearless and sinister people ran around freely, so they attached a nickname and a myth to these people to get even with them, to make up for the many times they had felt afraid.
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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.'
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You are only afriad if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves. A whole society composed of men afraid of the unknown within them!
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The world, Govinda my friend, is not imperfect, not to be seen as on a slow path toward perfection: No, it is perfect in every moment, all transgression already bears grace within itself, all little children already have the aged in themselves, all the sucklings death, all the dying eternal life.
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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.
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Art is contemplation of the world in a state of grace and imaginatively reflecting that subjective understanding.
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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.
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The truth is lived, not taught.
Hermann Hesse
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In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.
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Faith is stronger than so-called reality.
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To achieve the possible, we must attempt the impossible again and again.
Hermann Hesse
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I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.
Hermann Hesse
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Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goals, if he is able to think, if he is able to wait, if he is able to fast.
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Without a mother, one cannot love. Without a mother, one cannot die.
Hermann Hesse