#hesse

Siddhartha has one single goal-to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow-to let the Self die. No longer to be Self, to experience the peace of an emptied heart, to experience pure thought-that was his goal. ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#life #self #siddhartha #thought #dreams

I felt knowledge and the unity of the world circulate in me like my own blood. ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#knowledge #siddhartha #unity #world #unity

There is no escape. You can't be a vagabond and an artist and still be a solid citizen, a wholesome, upstanding man. You want to get drunk, so you have to accept the hangover. You say yes to the sunlight and pure fantasies, so you have to say yes to the filth and the nausea. Everything is within you, gold and mud, happiness and pain, the laughter of childhood and the apprehension of death. Say yes to everything, shirk nothing. You are not harmonious, or the master of yourself. You are a bird in the storm. Let it storm! Let it drive you! ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#herman-hesse #life #philosophy #art

We who bore the mark might well be considered by the rest of the world as strange, even as insane and dangerous. We had awoken, or were awakening, and we were striving for an ever perfect state of wakefulness, whereas the ambition and quest for happiness of the others consisted of linking their opinions, ideals, and duties, their life and happiness, ever more closely with those of the herd. They, too, strove; they, too showed signs of strength and greatness. But as we saw it, whereas we marked men represented Nature's determination to create something new, individual, and forward-looking, the others lived in the determination to stay the same. For them mankind--which they loved as much as we did--was a fully formed entity that had to be preserved and protected. For us mankind was a distant future toward which we were all journeying, whose aspect no one knew, whose laws weren't written down anywhere. ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#hermann-hesse #humanity #life

Sinclair, your love is attracted to me. Once it begins to attract me, i will come. I will not make a gift of myself, I must be won. ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#hermann-hesse #love

...and the vessel was not full, his intellect was not satisfied, his soul was not at peace, his heart was not still. ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#intellect #restlessness #siddhartha #soul #intellect

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, that is Atman, that is in me and you and in every creature, and I am beginning to believe that this knowledge has no worse enemy than the man of knowledge, than learning. ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#knowledge #learning #self #siddhartha #self-knowledge

Man is an onion made up of a hundred integuments, a texture made up of many threads. The ancient Asiatics knew this well enough, and in the Buddhist Yoga an exact technique was devised for unmasking the illusion of the personality. The human merry-go-round sees many changes: the illusion that cost India the efforts of thousands of years to unmask is the same illusion that the West has labored just as hard to maintain and strengthen. ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#east #hesse #west #change

And they didn't like to pay with trust and love, but rather with money and goods. They betrayed each other and expected being betrayed themselves. ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#hesse #rainmaker #love

Aux jeunes, je dis: regardez autour de vous, vous y trouverez les thèmes qui justifient votre indignation — le traitement faits aux immigrés, aux sans-papiers, aux Roms. Vous trouverez des situations concrètes qui vous amènent à donner cours à une action citoyenne forte. Cherchez et vous trouverez! ↗

— Stéphane Hessel

#stéphane-hessel #attitude