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

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The truth is lived, not taught.
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Making music together is the best way for two people to become friends.
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The day had gone by just as days go by. I had killed it in accordance with my primitive and retiring way of life.
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What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
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What you call passion is not spiritual force, but friction between the soul and the outside world.
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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.
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Everyone can reach his goal, if he can think, wait and fast.
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How foolish to wear oneself out in vain longing for warmth! Solitude is independence.
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Because the world is so full of death and horror, I try again and again to console my heart and pick the flowers that grow in the midst of hell.
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Youth ends when egotism does maturity begins when one lives for others.
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Those who cannot think or take responsibility for themselves need, and clamor for, a leader.
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To nobody can you communicate in words and teachings, what happened to you in your hour of enlightenment.
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It was lovely, and tempting, to exert power over men and to shine before others, but power also had its perditions and perils.
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I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me.
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Romantic souvenirs had a way of attaching themselves to one when one wanted to move on, but they were not to be taken seriously.
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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!
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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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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.
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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.
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What he had not learned, however, was this: to find contentment in himself and his own life
Hermann Hesse