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And what is called history at school, and all we learn by heart there about heroes and geniuses and great deeds and fine emotions, is all nothing but a swindle invented by the schoolmasters for educational reasons to keep children occupied for a given number of years. It has always been so and always will be.

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
Reason
Fine
Educational
Nothing
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Deeds
Children
Called
Emotions
Schoolmasters
Great
Learn
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Swindle
Heart
History
Hero
Geniuses
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Always
Keep
Genius
Invented
School
Emotion
Heroes

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You're quite right there, he said. I have practiced abstinence myself for years, and had my time of fasting, too, but now I find myself once more beneath the sign of Aquarius, a dark and humid constellation.
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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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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.
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I am fond of music I think because it is so amoral. Everything else is moral and I am after something that isn't. I have always found moralizing intolerable.
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Everyone can reach his goal, if he can think, wait and fast.
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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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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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Every man's story is important, eternal and sacred. That is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous and worthy of every consideration.
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Good that you ask. You should always ask, always have doubts.
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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.
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Every experience has its element of magic.
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The cup was emptied and would never be filled again.
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Once you are able to make your request in such a way that you will be quite certain of its fulfillment, then the fulfillment will come.
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When the suffering becomes acute enough, one goes forward.
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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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I was out of my bed in one second, trembling with excitement, and I dashed to the door and into the adjoining room, where I could watch the streets below from the windows.
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I shall begin my story with an experience I had when I was ten and attended our small town's Latin school.
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And here is a doctrine at which you will laugh. It seems to me, Govinda, that love is the most important thing in the world.
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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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Faith and doubt go hand in hand, they are complementaries. One who never doubts will never truly believe.
Hermann Hesse