Hermann Hesse

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish. And yet it also pleases me and seems right that what is of value and wisdom to one man seems nonsense to another.

Sometimes quoted in grammatically corrected form as "They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed..." but the apparent editing error here is retained in the published versions of this translation., 1922

The world had caught him; pleasure, covetousness, idleness, and finally also that vice he had always despised and scorned as the most foolish—acquisitiveness. Property, possessions and riches had also finally trapped him. They were no longer a game and a toy. They had become a chain and a burden.

H. Rosner, trans. (Bantam: 1971), pp. 76-79, 1922

You are like me; you are different from other people. You are Kamala and no one else, and within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself, just as I can. Few people have that capacity and yet everyone could have it.

Siddhartha to Kamala, p. 58, 1922

Like one who has eaten and drunk too much and vomits painfully, and then feels better, so did the restless man wish he could rid himself with one terrific heave of these pleasures, of these habits of this entirely senseless life.

H. Rosner, trans. (Bantam: 1971), p. 82, 1922

I cannot tell my story without reaching a long way back.

p. 9. Prologue, 1919

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.

p. 162, 1919

Abraxas was the god who was both god and devil.

p. 168, 1919

I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.

p. 134, 1919

Only the ideas that we actually live are of any value. You knew all along that your sanctioned world was only half the world and you tried to suppress the second half the same way the priests and teachers do. You won't succeed. No one succeeds in this once he has begun to think.

p. 146, 1919

People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest. It was a scandal that a breed of fearless and sinister people ran around freely, so they attached a nickname and a myth to these people to get even with them, to make up for the many times they had felt afraid.

p. 123, 1919

The south winds roars at night, Curlews hasten in their flight, The air is damp and warm. Desire to sleep has vanished now, Spring has arrived in the night In the wake of a storm.

p. 164, 1910

I found some consolation or narcotic. Sometimes it was a woman, sometimes a good friend — yes, you too once helped me that way — at other times it was music or applause in the theater. But now these things no longer give me pleasure and that is why I drink. I could never sing without first having a couple of drinks, but now I can also not think, talk, live and feel tolerably well without first having a couple of drinks.

p. 225, 1910

Passion is always a mystery and unaccountable, and unfortunately there is no doubt that life does not spare its purest children and often it is just the most deserving people who cannot help loving those that destroy them.

p. 217, 1910

Be still, my heart, away with pain! Though passion stirs again In blood that now flows slowly And leads to paths once known, These paths you tread in vain For youth has flown.

p. 165, 1910

In the beginning was the myth. God, in his search for self-expression, invested the souls of Hindus, Greeks, and Germans with poetic shapes and continues to invest each child's soul with poetry every day.

Variant translation: In the beginning was the myth. Just as the great god composed and struggled for expression in the souls of the Indians, the Greeks and Germanic peoples, so too it continues to compose daily in the soul of every child., 1904