Hermann Hesse

“Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.”

“When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.”

“Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.”

“You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.”

“Love of God is not always the same as love of good.”

“As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.”

“To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.”

“Solitude is independence.”

“It was as if all of the happiness, all of the magic of this blissful hour had flowed together into these stirring, bittersweet tones and flowed away, becoming temporal and transitory once more.”

“There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only a knowledge - that is everywhere.”

“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.”

“People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest.”

“Nevertheless, whether in occurrences lasting days, hours or mere minutes at a time, I have experienced happiness often, and have had brief encounters with it in my later years, even in old age.”

“To be able to throw one's self away for the sake of a moment, to be able to sacrifice years for a woman's smile - that is happiness.”

“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.”

“One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.”

“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.”

“Happiness is a how; not a what. A talent, not an object.”

“Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.”

“Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”

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