Hermann Hesse Quotes

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

Every experience has its element of magic.

It is not Kafka’s fault that his wonderful writings have lately turned into a fad, and are read by people who have neither the ability nor the desire to absorb literature.

To be able to throw one’s self away for the sake of a moment, to be able to sacrifice years for a woman’s smile – that is happiness.

All men are prepared to accomplish the incredible if their ideals are threatened.

When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.

In Germany I have been acknowledged again since the fall of Hitler, but my works, partly suppressed by the Nazis and partly destroyed by the war; have not yet been republished there.

There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.

Among the letters my readers write me, there is a certain category which is continuously growing, and which I see as a symptom of the increasing intellectualization of the relationship between readers and literature.

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.

Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever will be born must destroy a world.

Within us there is someone who knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than we ourselves.

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.