Wise Reminders From Hermann Karl Hesse

Hermann Karl Hesse (July 2, 1877–August 9, 1962) was a German-Swiss novelist and poet who received the Nobel Prize in Literature. His writings focused on spirituality and the search for self-understanding.

Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity influenced him the most, but he believed, "for different people, there are different ways to God."

Below we list some words of wisdom from Hermann Karl Hesse.

“Every experience has its element of magic.”

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

“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.”

“Youth ends when egotism does; maturity begins when one lives for others.”

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

“Love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is only your aversion to it that hurts, nothing else.”

“Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours.”

“All birth means separation from the All, the confinement within limitation, the separation from God, the pangs of being born ever anew. The return into the All, the dissolution of painful individuation, the reunion with God means the expansion of the soul until it is able once more to embrace the All.”

“We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.”

“When you like someone, you like them in spite of their faults. When you love someone, you love them with their faults.”

“Everything that is thought and expressed in words is one-sided, only half the truth; it all lacks totality, completeness, unity. When the Illustrious Buddha taught about the world, he had to divide it into Samsara and Nirvana, illusion and truth, into suffering and salvation. One cannot do otherwise, there is no other method for those who teach. But the world itself, being in and around us, is never one-sided. Never is a man or a deed wholly Samsara or wholly Nirvana; never is a man wholly a saint or a sinner. This only seems so because we suffer the illusion that time is something real.”

“There is a miracle in every new beginning.”

“And all the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, all the sorrows, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them together was the world. All of them together was the stream of events, the music of life.”

“I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I'm beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn't pleasant, it's not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.”

“To hold our tongues when everyone is gossiping, to smile without hostility at people and institutions, to compensate for the shortage of love in the world with more love in small, private matters; to be more faithful in our work, to show greater patience, to forgo the cheap revenge obtainable from mockery and criticism: all these are things we can do.”

“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.”

“Madness, in a higher sense, is the beginning of all wisdom.”

“Every phenomenon on earth is symbolic, and each symbol is an open gate through which the soul, if it is ready, can enter into the inner part of the world, where you and I and day and night are all one.”

“Happiness is love, nothing else. A man who is capable of love is happy.”

“Only within yourself exists that other reality for which you long.”

Copyright © Scott Petullo, Stephen Petullo