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
children perfection grace
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.
two suffering culture
When two cultures collide is the only time when true suffering exists
order demand chaos
Chaos demands to be recognized and experienced before letting itself be converted into a new order.
children educational hero
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.
children way innocence
The way to innocence, to the uncreated and to God leads on, not back, not back to the wolf or to the child, but ever further into sin, ever deeper into human life.
self voice judging
The judge who sits over the murderer and looks into his face, and at one moment recognizes all the emotions and potentialities and possibilities of the murderer in his own soul and hears the murderer's voice as his own, is at the next moment one and indivisible as the judge, and scuttles back into the shell of his cultivated self and does his duty and condemns the murderer to death.
today criminals tomorrow
The bourgeois today burns as heretics and hangs as criminals those to whom he erects monuments tomorrow.
writing feet able
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.
wise wisdom men
Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish.
discovery glowing childhood
When trying to remember my share in the glow of the eternal present, in the smile of God, I return to my childhood, too, for that is where the most significant discoveries turn up.
latin book school
I shall begin my story with an experience I had when I was ten and attended our small town's Latin school.
fate two aphorism
One of the aphorisms occurred to me now and I wrote it under the picture: "Fate and temperament are two words for one and the same concept." That was clear to me now.
rivers voice water
The voices of all creatures are in the voices of the river.
glowing childhood littles
For me, however, that beloved, glowing little word happiness has become associated with everything I have felt since childhood upon hearing the sound of the word itself.