Herman Hesse

Solitude is independence.

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

Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them.

If I know what love is, it is because of you.

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

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.

Your soul is the whole world.

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

I live in my dreams — that's what you sense. Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. That's the difference.

You must find your dream... but no dream lasts forever, each dream is followed by another, and one should not cling to any particular dream.

Oh, love isn't there to make us happy. I believe it exists to show us how much we can endure.

You have to try the impossible to achieve the possible.

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

I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.

Only the ideas that we really live have any value.

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.

You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live.

Some of us think holding on makes us strong but sometimes it is letting go.

We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering and shame. In the same way all disrespect for life, all hard-heartedness, all indifference, all contempt is nothing else than killing.

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