It is good to taste for yourself everything you need to know. That worldly pleasures and wealth are not good things, I learned even as a child. I knew it for a long time, but only now have I experienced it. Hermann Hesse More Quotes by Hermann Hesse More Quotes From Hermann Hesse A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself, to committ outrages. Hermann Hesse mad normal strong Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest. Hermann Hesse steppenwolf taken laughing 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 literature mind opposites What he had not learned, however, was this: to find contentment in himself and his own life Hermann Hesse steppenwolf contentment The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation. Hermann Hesse sweet sympathy death That's the way it is when you love. It makes you suffer, and I have suffered much in the years since. 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 life long years Painting is marvelous; it makes you happier and more patient. Afterwards you do not have black fingers as with writing, but blue and red ones. Hermann Hesse black blue writing ...and gradually his face assumed the expressions which are so often found among rich people - the expressions of discontent, of sickliness, of displeasure, of idleness, of lovelessness. Slowly the soul sickness of the rich crept over him. Hermann Hesse soul expression people The world was so beautiful when regarded like this, without searching, so simply, in such a childlike way. Moons and stas were beautiful, beautiful were bank and stream, forest and rocks, goat and gold-bug, flower and butterfly. So lovely, so delightful to go through the world this way, so like a child, awake, open to what is near, without distrust. Hermann Hesse flower beautiful children The man of power is ruined by power, the man of money by money, the submissive man by subservience, the pleasure seeker by pleasure. Hermann Hesse nature power men 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 suicide mean fall Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them. Hermann Hesse behinds literature reality It may be important to great thinkers to examine the world, to explain and despise it. But I think it is only important to love the world, not to despise it, not for us to hate each other, but to be able to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration and respect. Hermann Hesse hate hippie life I call that man awake who, with conscious knowledge and understanding, can perceive the deep unreasoning powers in his soul, his whole innermost strength, desire and weakness, and knows how to reckon with himself. Hermann Hesse understanding soul men All interpretation, all psychology, all attempts to make things comprehensible, require the medium of theories, mythologies, and lies. Hermann Hesse interpretation psychology lying The art of love-giving and taking become one. Hermann Hesse love giving art For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. Hermann Hesse tribes forests tree A tree says: Hermann Hesse spring father children We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, affliction, or infamy. We kill when, because it is easier, we countenance, or pretend to approve of atrophied social, political, educational, and religious institutions, instead of resolutely combating them. Hermann Hesse educational eye religious It is not for me to judge another man's life. I must judge, I must choose, I must spurn, purely for myself. For myself, alone. Hermann Hesse humility judging men