Demian

by Herman Hesse
Germany
2 Jul 1877 // 9 Aug 1962
Writer

Quotes

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I like listening to music, but only the kind you play, absolute music, the kind that makes you feel that someone is rattling at the doors if heaven and hell. I like music very much, I think, because it's so unconcerned with morality.

Demian
Every natural form is latent within us, originates in the soul whose essence is eternity, whose essence we cannot know but which most often intimates itself to us as the power to love and create.

Demian
An enlightened man had but one duty - to seek the way to himself, to reach inner certainty, to grope his way forward, no matter where it led.

Demian
I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.

Demian
The things we see are the same things that are within us. There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.

Demian
You should never be afraid of people... such fear can destroy us completely. You've simply got to get rid of it, if you want to turn into someone decent.

Demian
Good that you ask -- you should always ask, always have doubts.

Demian
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.

Demian
"Love must not entreat," she added, "or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract."

Demian
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.

Demian
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Demian

Herman Hesse

 

On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays