Quotes By Person: Hermann Hesse
“Often it is the most deserving people
who cannot help loving
those who destroy them.”
-Gertrude, Hermann Hesse
~
“She came, that day, alone and dreamingly up the hill toward me. She had not seen me and the sight of her approaching filled me with apprehension and suspense. I saw her hair, tied in two thick plaits, with loose strands on either side, her cheeks blown by the wind. I saw for the first time in my life how beautiful she was, and how beautiful and dreamlike the play of the wind in her delicate hair, how beautiful and provocative the fall of her thin blue dress over her young limbs; and just as the bitter spice of the chewed bud coursed through me with the whole dread pleasure and pain of spring, so the sight of the girl filled me with the whole deadly foreboding of love, the foreboding of woman.”
-Harry's Loves, Herman Hesse
~
“Most people, Kamala, are like a falling leaf that drifts and turns in the air, flutters, and falls to the ground. But a few others are like stars which travel one defined path: no wind reaches them, they have within themselves their guide and path.”
-Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse
~
“And here it must be said that to call suicides only those who actually destroy themselves is false. Among these, indeed, there are many who in a sense are suicides only by accident and in whose being suicide has no necessary place. Among the common run of men there are many of little personality and stamped with no deep impress of fate, who find their end in suicide without belonging on that account to the type of the suicide by inclination; while, on the other hand, of those who are to be counted as suicides by the very nature of their beings are many, perhaps a majority, who never in fact lay hands upon themselves. [...]
But just as there are those who at the least indisposition develop a fever, so do those whom we call suicides, and who are always very emotional and sensitive, develop at the least shock the notion of suicide. [...]
All suicides are familiar with the struggle 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 felled by life than by one's own hand.”
-Steppenwolf: A Novel, Hermann Hesse
~
“I saw no other way of escape from this dreadful spectre. Suppose that today cowardice won a victory over despair, tomorrow and each succeeding day I would again face despair heightened by self-contempt. It was merely taking up and throwing down the knife till at last it was done. Better today then I reasoned with myself as though with a frightened child. But the child would not listen. It ran away. It wanted to live. ”
-Steppenwolf: A Novel, Herman Hesse
~
“The day had gone by just as days go by. I had killed it in accordance with my primitive and retiring way of life.”
-Steppenwolf: A Novel, Hermann Hesse
~
“The day had gone by just as days go by. I had killed it in accordance with my primitive and retiring way of life.”
-Steppenwolf: A Novel, Hermann Hesse
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