Hermann Hesse
Hermann Hesse
Hermann Karl Hessewas a German-born Swiss poet, novelist, and painter. His best-known works include Steppenwolf, Siddhartha, and The Glass Bead Game, each of which explores an individual's search for authenticity, self-knowledge and spirituality. In 1946, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth2 July 1877
CityCalw, Germany
CountryGermany
faith mean order
To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.
men order mad
Yes, what we are doing is probably mad, and probably it is good and necessary all the same. It is not a good thing when man overstrains his reason and tries to reduce to rational order matters that are susceptible of rational treatment. Then there arise ideals such as those of the Americans or of the Bolsheviks. Both are extraordinarily rational, and both lead to a frightful oppression and impoverishment of life, because they simplify it so crudely. The likeness of man, once a high ideal, is in process of becoming a machine-made article. It is for madmen like us, perhaps, to ennoble it again.
life order secret
I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins.
heart order siddhartha
The reason why I do not know anything about myself, the reason why Siddhartha has remained alien and unknown to myself is due to one thing, to one single thing--I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing from myself. I was seeking Atman, I was seeking Brahman, I was determined to dismember myself and tear away its layers of husk in order to find in its unknown innermost recess the kernel at the heart of those layers, the Atman, life, the divine principle, the ultimate. But in so doing, I was losing myself.
order collective-unconscious confusion
To die is to go into the Collective Unconscious, to lose oneself in order to be transformed into form, pure form.
peace order despair
God does not send us despair in order to kill us; he sends it in order to awaken us to new life.
order demand chaos
Chaos demands to be recognized and experienced before letting itself be converted into a new order.
order perfection soul
I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it.
finding indeed means perhaps seeking striving towards worthy
Seeking means to have a goal; but finding means to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal. You, O worthy one, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for in striving towards your goal, you do not see many things that are under your nose.
clear poet year
From my thirteenth year on, it was clear to me that I wanted to be a poet or nothing at all.
attracted begins ceases love merely nor power
Love must not entreat, nor demand. Love must have the power to find its own way to certainty. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract. Your love, Sinclair, is attracted by me. When it begins to attract me, I will come. I will not
capture dream finds followed happy
One can be happy when he finds his dream, but every dream has to be followed by a new one and you can't capture any of them forever.
books later men sooner whenever
Whenever books are burned, sooner or later men also are burned.
It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.