Hermann Hesse

One must find the source within one's own Self, one must possess it. Everything else was seeking -- a detour, an error.

You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live.

I began to understand that suffering and disappointments and melancholy are there not to vex us or cheapen us or deprive us of our dignity but to mature and transfigure us.

Oh, love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.

You've never lived what you are thinking, and that isn't good. Only the ideas we actually live are of any value.

When you like someone, you like them in spite of their faults. When you love someone, you love them with their faults.

I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins.

Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.

You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation...and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else.

In eternity there is no time, only an instant long enough for a joke.

Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can - that is their secret.

If I know what love is, it is because of you.

Love must not entreat,' she added, 'or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract.

Often it is the most deserving people who cannot help loving those who destroy them.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.

I have always thirsted for knowledge, I have always been full of questions.

I believe that I am not responsible for the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of life, but that I am responsible for what I do with the life I've got.