25 Hermann Hesse Quotes on Love, Life & Religion

Looking for thought-provoking Hermann Hesse quotes?

Hermann Karl Hesse was a German-born Swiss poet, novelist, and painter whose works explore the search for authenticity, self-knowledge and spirituality.

He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946.

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Hermann Hesse quotes on love, life & religion

1. “Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.” – Hermann Hesse

2. “Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.” – Hermann Hesse

3. “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.” – Hermann Hesse

4. “What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.” – Hermann Hesse

5. “I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.” – Hermann Hesse

6. “Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest.” – Hermann Hesse

7. “If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.” – Hermann Hesse

8. “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 of them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.” – Hermann Hesse

9. “Gaze into the fire, into the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak… surrender to them. Don’t ask first whether it’s permitted, or would please your teachers or father or some god. You will ruin yourself if you do that.” – Hermann Hesse

10. “I have always been a great dreamer. In dreams I have always been more active than in my real life, and these shadows sapped me of my health and energy.” – Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse quotes about love and happiness

11. “Oh, love isn’t there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.” – Hermann Hesse

12. “But it matters little that you suffer, so long as you feel alive with a sense of the close bond that connects all living things, so long as love does not die!” – Hermann Hesse

13. “If what matters in a person’s existence is to accept the inevitable consciously, to taste the good and bad to the full and to make for oneself a more individual, unaccidental and inward destiny alongside one’s external fate, then my life has been neither empty nor worthless.” – Hermann Hesse

14. “All suicides have the responsibility of fighting against the temptation of suicide. Every one of them knows very well in some corner of his soul that suicide, though a way out, is rather a mean and shabby one, and that it is nobler and finer to be conquered by life than to fall by one’s own hand.” – Hermann Hesse

15. “In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.” – Hermann Hesse

16. “The mind is international and supra-national … it ought to serve not war and annihilation, but peace and reconciliation.” – Hermann Hesse

17. “The only reality is the one we have inside us. What makes most people’s lives so artificial and unworthy is that they falsely regard outside images as reality and they never allow their own inner world to speak.” – Hermann Hesse

18. “Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.” – Hermann Hesse

19. “I wanted only to try to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?” – Hermann Hesse

20. “My real self wanders elsewhere, far away, wanders on and on invisibly and has nothing to do with my life.” – Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse quotes to elevate your mind

21. What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday and our present thoughts build our life tomorrow. Our life is the creation of our mind.” – Hermann Hesse

22. “Now everything changed. My childhood world was breaking apart around me. My parents eyed me with a certain embarrassment. My sisters had become strangers to me. A disenchantment falsified and blunted my usual feelings and joys: the garden lacked fragrance, the woods held no attraction for me, the world stood around me like a clearance sale of last year’s secondhand goods, insipid, all its charm gone. Books were so much paper, music a grating noise. That is the way leaves fall around a tree in autumn, a tree unaware of the rain running down its sides, of the sun or the frost, and of life gradually retreating inward. The tree does not die. It waits.” – Hermann Hesse

23. “Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity.” – Hermann Hesse

24. “People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.” – Hermann Hesse

25. “Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.” – Hermann Hesse

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