Hermann Hesse Quotes

Here, too, I found neither home nor company, nothing but a seat from which to view a stage where strange people played strange parts.

I like listening to music, but only the kind you play, absolute music, the kind that makes you feel that someone is rattling at the doors if heaven and hell. I like music very much, I think, because it's so unconcerned with morality.

من فقط خواستم آن طور که در کنه وجودم هستم،زندگی کنم.چرا این کار آنقدر مشکل بود؟؟

All I wanted to do was live the life that was inside me, trying to get out. Why was that so hard?

A man cannot live intensely except at the cost of the self

"A game master or teacher who was primarily concerned with being close enough to the "innermost meaning" would be a very bad teacher. To be candid, I myself, for example, have never in my life said a word to my pupils about the "meaning" of music; if there is one it does not need my explanations. On the other hand I have always made a great point of having my pupils count their eighths and sixteenths nicely. Whatever you become, teacher, scholar, or musician, have respect for the "meaning" but do not imagine that it can be taught."

Within yourself is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.

People like best what is hard for them to obtain.

I have
transported many, thousands; and to all of them, my river has been
nothing but an obstacle on their travels. They travelled to seek money
and business, and for weddings, and on pilgrimages, and the river was
obstructing their path, and the ferryman's job was to get them quickly
across that obstacle. But for some among thousands, a few, four or
five, the river has stopped being an obstacle, they have heard its
voice, they have listened to it, and the river has become sacred to
them, as it has become sacred to me.

One thing, however, did become clear to him [Goldmund] – why so many perfect works of art did not please him at all, why they were almost hateful and boring to him, in spite of a certain undeniable beauty. Workshops, churches, and palaces were full of these fatal works of art; he had even helped with a few himself. They were deeply disappointing because they aroused the desire for the highest and did not fulfill it. They lacked the most essential thing – mystery. That was what dreams and truly great works of art had in common: mystery.

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.

Perfect music has its cause. It arises from equilibrium. Equilibrium arises from righteousness, and righteousness arises from the meaning of the cosmos. Therefore one can speak about music only with a man who has perceived the meaning of the cosmos.

الحقيقي في حكاية من الحكايات هو دائماً الشيء الذي يصدقه المستمع.

I am a star in the firmament
that observe the world, despises the world
and consumed in its heat.

I am the sea by night in a storm
the sea shouting that accumulates new sins
and to the ancient makes recompense.

I am exiled from your world
of pride polite, by pride defrauded,
I am the king without crown.

I am the passion without words
without stones of the hearth, without weapons in the war,
is my same force that make me sick

بیش از یک قرن اروپا کاری جز ساختن ماشین نکرد. اکنون، مقدار دقیق باروتی که برای کشتن آدمی لازم است را می داند، اما نمی داند چطور یک ساعت خوشبخت باشد.